Page 1 of House of Crimson Cloak and Silver Teeth

Part I

Into the Woods

Prologue

They say the hive city of Tiamat has a mechanical heart. You can hear it ticking in the distant rumble of thousands of factories that never sleep. The taste of ash coats my tongue even through the filtration mesh of my lupine half-mask. Down here in the guild’s sanctum, three levels beneath Tiamat’s choking streets, the air should be cleaner. It’s still poisonous enough to kill you in seconds.

Shade hasn’t moved in twenty minutes.

He’s sprawled against the opposite wall with one leg bent and arms crossed. To anyone else, he might look relaxed. I know better. I can smell the tension on him. There’s something else too. Anticipation? With Shade, it’s impossible to tell.

His demonic mask has a perpetual grin. The painted teeth and curved horns give him the look of something that crawled out of the worst nightmare. I’ve seen him sleep in that thing, eat in it, kill in it. In five years, I’ve never seen his face. No one has, except maybe our Arbiter, Rowan Shepherd.

Shade holds the unsealed scroll of his mission. I shouldn’t look. It’s not my business. Guild contracts are private until the assassin chooses to share them. I try not to think about what my own orders will say. But then his parchment unfurls with a rustling breeze from the vents and I catch the header in my peripheral vision.

My head snaps toward him before I can stop myself.

“Aelfheim?” The word escapes me and echoes in the narrow chamber.

Shade’s masked face turns toward me. “For one hundred days.”

“There were other contracts. Shorter ones,” I say, pushing off from my pillar.

“It’s my last mission.” Shade’s voice carries no emotion, muffled further by his mask.

Of course. This is the job no one wants. The guild is offering it to Shade because they know he’s desperate enough to take it.

“But Aelfheim is where...” I stop myself.

Aelfheim is where the Wiolants are.

The current ruler, Queen Rhianelle Wiolant, sits on the throne of the elven kingdom.

Shade tilts his head just a fraction.

I want to shake him and ask if he’s planning to slit the queen’s throat the moment he gets close enough. The Wiolants destroyed Shade’s family and left his mother to rot in the crypts beneath our feet for nearly five decades. She was once the guild’s most lethal blade, the assassin who could kill a man with a whisper and leave no trace. But she fell in love with Reinhart Wiolant and chose to run. Now she survives on whatever slop the guild bothers to send down through that narrow slit barely wide enough for a bowl.

A punishment for the crime of almost choosing love over duty. Her fate is a reminder that even the greatest assassin cannot escape the guild’s long reach.

I’ve faced death a hundred times, but the crypts remain the one place that truly frightens me. Sometimes when the guild grows quiet in those dead hours before dawn, you can hear the screaming from below.

It’s just the wind from the ventilation shafts, I used to tell myself when I was young.

The guild promised Shade that after years of flawless service, they’d release her from the crypts after his hundredth mission. He’s been working toward this for years. Every contract, every kill, every coin saved and favor earned. All of it building toward the one thing he wants more than anything. His mother’s freedom.

He’s so close now.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” I tell him.

Behind the mask, I think he might be smiling. “When have I ever?”

All the damn time.

I hope he doesn’t throw away everything for revenge. I cross the small space between us and grip his shoulder. “When do you leave?”

“The carriage should be here at any moment,” he says easily.

Above us, I hear the distant scrape of boots. Other assassins moving through the warren of tunnels that make up our home. Laughter resounds, high and cruel. The sound makes my jaw clench beneath my mask. It’s fucking Carver, fresh from whatever poor bastard he tortured for practice today.