“I’ve heard a great deal about you,” says Dark, the amber-eyed one, and there is something in his voice that might be warmth. He looks at me with the assessing expression of someone who has been told a lot about a person and is now putting it together with the reality. Whatever conclusion he reaches seems to satisfy him. “You called him a baby duck.”
I open my mouth. Close it.
“He told you that,” I say.
“He told us quite a lot,” says Night, and he is smiling now, which makes him look considerably less severe and considerably more like someone I might actually like.
“In my defence,” I say, “he was being very intense and I panicked.”
Dark makes a sound that is almost certainly a laugh converted, with some effort, into something more appropriate for someone who just bowed to his prince. He glances at Hex. “I like him.”
“Glad you approve,” I mutter.
“Come through,” says Hex, and there is a quiet authority in it that nobody in the room is going to argue with, including me. We all migrate to the living room. I perch on the edge of the sofa. Night and Dark settle into the room the way shadow beings seem to settle into rooms, present but not entirely constrained by the furniture.
Hex remains standing.
“Tell me,” he says.
Night and Dark exchange a glance. Something passes between them, a shorthand that needs no words.
“Dis knows you’re alive,” says Night.
The room gets very quiet. Hex’s expression doesn’t change but something in the air does, a subtle shift in pressure, like the moment before a storm decides what it’s going to do.
“How long has he known?” Hex asks.
“We think a few days.” Dark’s jaw tightens. “He’s not happy about it.”
“No,” says Hex, and there is something in his voice that might be grim satisfaction. “I imagine he isn’t.”
I look between them. “Who is Dis?” I ask, because nobody seems to be going to tell me and I am sitting in my own living room and I think I’ve earned the right to know what is happening in it.
Three pairs of eyes turn to me. Night’s green. Dark’s amber. Hex’s red, still burning with that quality I haven’t seen before tonight, that quiet princely thing I am going to need considerably more time to process.
“Dis is the current Shadow King,” says Night carefully. “He sits on the throne that should be Hex’s.”
“He orchestrated the coup,” says Dark, and his voice has gone flat and hard. “Overthrew Hex’s father. Bound Hex’s powers. Sent him here to fade.”
I think about what Hex told me in the kitchen so many days ago, when I asked about the curse.My father was not a good king. But those who overthrew him are worse.
“So he’s the one who did this to you,” I say to Hex.
Hex doesn’t answer directly. He looks at the window instead, at the dark Bristol street beyond the glass, and his expression is unreadable. “Dis is powerful,” he says. “More powerful than most people know. More than he lets on.”
“He has been sitting on your throne,” says Dark, “and ruling your realm, and now he knows you survived exile and are recovering, and he will not simply wait for you to come to him.”
“Wraith is already moving,” says Night quietly. “We don’t know where yet. But he’s been given a task. We’re fairly certain we know what it is.”
The silence stretches. I am acutely aware that I am the only person in this room without shadow powers and the only person whose flat this technically is and probably the only person who doesn’t fully understand what’s being said but understands enough to know it’s bad.
“What’s the task?” I ask.
Night looks at Hex. Hex looks at me, and for just a moment that measured princeliness softens back into something more familiar. Something that looks almost apologetic.
“You,” says Dark simply.
Oh.
