“I’ll be right back.” I don’t need to peer over my shoulder to glean that he’s trailing me, for the crunch of his heavy footfalls resonates in the stagnant village air.
I circumvent two towering horses with shaggy chestnut coats. Upon sensing me, they tense, their large eyes flaring as they peer at me through the curtain of their long forelocks. When they begin to nicker and blow, I pat their necks, then present them with my palms. A whiff of my skin—of my Shabbin blood—instantly unpins their ears and relaxes their posture.
I give each of them one more rub before slinking toward a high-perched window and rising onto my toes. There, beside a hearth, sits a girl in a homespun dress and a turban, stirring a large wooden spoon through a soup pot while reading a book.
“So much for the daughter having left the premises…” Konstantin’s low words plume beside my ear, echoing my thoughts.
When the kitchen door flaps open, I duck. Konstantin doesn’t.
I spring back up, grab his shoulders, and yank him down. “Your spying skills leave much to be desired, Vizosh.”
Under his breath, he mutters that he’s never had need for such skills until me. My eyeroll is the last thing he sees before I paint an invisibility sigil on my forehead. Since I hold him, he also winks out of existence. His breath punches my nose in sharp, panicked gusts.
“I take it this is your first time becoming a specter?”
“It was my first time taking someone else’s face, too. I wasn’t even sure it would work.”
Right.But since glamouring himself hadn’t harmed him, the magic had taken to his skin just fine.
Keeping one hand anchored to his arm, I stand. When I peer through the kitchen window, the kitchen is empty.
I set my teeth and am about to expel an annoyed growl when I catch a shadow drifting over the tiles, and then the girl is exiting from what must be a small pantry, carrying a stack of books. I squint to make out the gilt titles pressed into the leatherspines. Cookbooks? Revolutionary edicts? Whatever they are, the fact that she can read proves that she’s cultured. Like Alyona.
Turn, turn, turn. Come on.She does, but not in our direction.Ugh.
“I cannot wait to hear the reason we’re standing out here like creepers,” the Ice King grouses as his fingers find purchase on my waist.
“AndIcannot wait to hear the reason you took Lev’s face,” I volley back in a hush.
The girl’s shoulders pinch as though she’d heard us. When she looks straight at the window, straight at us, my lungs hold still, and not to avoid fogging up the glass, but because of the hue of her irises: bright-amber.
Not Alyona.
I stare at Svyato’s daughter a moment longer, cataloguing her features—sharp nose, tiny mole above her lip, pasty skin. I wish for a glimpse of her hair, but what would I gain from knowing its color? Even if it’s white like Alyona’s, the cook isn’t Konstantin’s undead sister.
Frustrated, I pluck the fingers my accomplice has wound around my waist and haul him away from the Tin Teapot and across the street. “Remove your medallion, and I’ll fly us back.”
“Because you think shifting within the reach of so many antimorphs is wise?”
“Wiser than trekking through the human lands on the arm of their fucking king.”
“Good thing they can’t see us.”
“If I let go, they’ll be able to seeyoujust fine.” My reminder makes his fingers close snugly around mine. I’m guessing the male won’t be releasing me any time soon. “I can’t believe you fooled me.”
“Says the girl poking around my kingdom. Why were you saluting my dead sister? Why were you spying on a taverncook?” His strides are so brisk that, more than once, the tread beneath my boots fails me and I skid, but his vise-like grip keeps me upright.
“Tell me who gave you Lev’s face, and I’ll tell you why I visitedOloho Samov.”
“Katya.”
“…Katya?”
“She was repaying a favor from long ago.” Konstantin maneuvers us down a side street that’s so narrow, the dwellers from one side could reach out and high-five their neighbors without leaving the comfort of their homes. “I answered your question. Now answer mine.”
“I heard Svyato Suprovic took Alyona in after your father banished her from the capital. If I’m not mistaken, Svyato’s sister, Olena, was the royal child-minder.”
A beat of silence echoes between us before he says, “It still doesn’t explain what?—”
