The Girl at Midnight (15 page)

“Tell me, Echo. What do you know about the firebird?”

She tensed, and judging from the sharpness in his eyes
and the slight tilt of his head, she knew that Caius had noticed.

“What’s the firebird?”
When bravado fails
, she thought,
play dumb
.

Caius pushed away from the chair to stand before her, far too close for comfort. Echo took a step back, cursing herself for it but unable to fight the compulsion to put space between them. Caius crowded her against the door, the point of the magpie dagger resting between her collarbones.

“Don’t lie to me, Echo.” He leaned in, face mere inches from hers. He tapped the blade against her skin, too lightly to pierce it, but firmly enough that she was well aware of how close the dagger was. “I don’t like being lied to.”

Echo swallowed, and the blade pressed harder against the soft skin of her throat. “I don’t know what the firebird is. That’s not a lie.” Caius stilled the knife’s tapping but kept it against her neck. “I was sent to find the locket and the dagger, but I don’t know why. It’s bad for business if I ask too many questions, so I don’t. Surely a man like you understands.”

Caius studied her for a moment. Echo hoped there was enough truth mixed in to hide the taste of the lie.

“A man like me,” he murmured. “Fine.” He stepped back, twirling the blade away from her neck. “Let’s say I believe you. Just tell me one more thing: why are you, a human, helping the Avicen? Such a secretive people would never accept you as one of their own. There must be another reason.”

“How did you—”

Echo pressed her lips together, but she’d already said too much. This hired gun had found her deepest insecurity and poked at it.
Damn him. Damn him to infinity and beyond
.

She was ready to lie, to tell him that the Avicen had bought her loyalty with genuine green American dollars when the door behind her burst open. It slammed into her back, and the force of it sent her careering into Caius’s chest. He caught her by the biceps, and, for a brief moment, their faces were so close she could see little flecks of gold in his green eyes. He spun her behind him to face whoever had hurtled through the door.

A guard leaned heavily against the doorframe, sagging to the floor, hands clutching his side. Blood trickled between his fingers, and Echo thought that maybe he was holding his intestines in. Her stomach heaved.

Caius knelt by the guard, steadying him. “Ribos,” he said. “It’s Ribos, isn’t it?”

The guard nodded, beads of sweat clinging to his sallow skin.

“What happened?” Caius asked. He pressed his hands above the guard’s, but there was so much blood, it hardly made a difference. “Who did this to you?”

Echo thought about making a break for it, but looking at the freshly spilled blood pooling around the guard’s torso, she wasn’t sure that outside would be any safer. Caius, at least, seemed calm.

The devil you know
, Echo thought.

“Tanith,” Ribos croaked. “Her Firedrakes.” He coughed, blood peppering Caius’s face. Caius didn’t so much as flinch. “A vote’s been called. She’s killing those who stand against her. She’s going to make herself Dragon Prince.”

Caius debated washing Ribos’s blood off his hands after he’d called in another guard to take Echo to the dungeons. He wasn’t done with her, not by a long shot, but he had more pressing matters at hand. He was torn between two urges, one infinitely more reasonable than the other. He wanted to storm the great hall, covered in the blood that Tanith had spilled to secure votes from nobles who had sworn their allegiance to him. He wanted to show them what she had done, what their own cowardice had wrought.

But he left Ribos crumpled on the floor of his study, and he washed his hands. This was not a battle that would be won with emotionally charged theatrics, no matter how loudly, how viciously his heart howled for justice. He would keep a level head. If he didn’t, Tanith just might try to separate it from his neck.

The Firedrakes on the door didn’t want to let him in.
He’d had to remind them that Dragon Prince or not, he was still a noble of the court, and he would enter the great hall to pay his respects, as was his right. The falsehood was sour on his tongue, but Caius swallowed his bitterness with a cordial smile.

Denied entry into my own court
, Caius thought.
Honestly, the very notion
.

He wanted to be surprised by what he saw when the Firedrakes finally opened the doors leading into the great hall, but all he felt was a terrible, sinking resignation.

Tanith reclined on the throne that had been his, the crimson silk of her gown pooling around her feet like blood. Her hair was arranged in several thick braids piled atop her head, with a few curling strands framing her face. The gold cloak fastened around her shoulders perfectly matched the thin diadem she’d donned for the occasion. Caius had no doubt she’d picked the cloak for that very reason. His sister had always had a flair for the dramatic. How many times had he lounged on that throne, one leg thrown over the arm, as if he owned it. As if it were his by right. As if no one could take it away from him. But there was Tanith, as lovely as ever in her signature colors. The throne wasn’t his anymore. Perhaps it never had been. Perhaps he should have paid more attention to the enemy within rather than scanning the horizon for the one he only imagined was there.

“That seat’s taken,” he said. The words were empty. He knew it. Tanith knew it. The courtiers cowering behind their layers of finery knew it.

“Yes,” Tanith said. “But not by you. Not anymore.”

“You work quickly.” Dozens of eyes bounced between him
and Tanith, as though this were nothing more than a sporting event. There were fewer nobles present than there should have been, but the only sign that there’d been a disagreement over Tanith’s call for a vote were a few scattered bloodstains and black burns on the stone floor. Trust his sister to handle her dissenters with fire and death. The rest huddled together, silent as mice.
Cowards. All of them, cowards
.

“I’m gone for a few hours, and you have yourself elected Dragon Prince. I’m impressed, Sister, really, I am.”

Tanith rose, long skirts cascading to the ground. The epitome of royal elegance. “It was a free and fair election, Caius, as is the way of our people.”

“I’m not so sure that’s what Ribos would call it.”

“Is that name supposed to mean something to me?”

“It should,” Caius said. “He was one of my guards, and you killed him.”

“The ends have justified the means among the Drakharin since the age of the first Dragon Prince.” Tanith walked down from the dais with careful steps. The gown was lovely, but she’d always been better suited to armor, much like she had always been better suited to battle than statecraft. She would learn that soon enough, and if she didn’t, then the Drakharin who voted her in would, when it was their own blood spilled across her killing fields.

“Still,” Caius said. He was pushing his luck, but Ribos had been loyal. He deserved to have that loyalty returned. “It hardly seems fair that he should die so that you could gain a crown.”

Tanith paused halfway between Caius and the throne. “Fair?” She laughed. “This is what you never understood.
It isn’t about right or wrong. It isn’t about good or evil. It’s about power. Who has it, who doesn’t. And now, Caius, you don’t. And I do.” She nodded at the Firedrakes that flanked the inner doors. “Take him. Let him cool his temper in the dungeon until he sees the error of his ways.”

Caius held up a hand, and the guards halted. Tanith’s mouth tightened into a firm line. They were her Firedrakes, but he had been their prince for a century. Old habits died hard.

“That won’t be necessary,” Caius said. From the corner of his eye, he spotted four more Firedrakes within the hall, in addition to the two behind him. If this went south, he could take out four of them, maybe five. But if Tanith was to jump into the fray, the odds would be stacked against him. There was only one way out, no matter how much it pained him to admit it.

“You’re right,” Caius said. “If you’ve won the vote, then you are the rightful Dragon Prince. I’ve always done my best to honor the wishes of our people, and I will do no less now.” With a graceful sweep of his arm, Caius cut a deep bow, eyes downcast, as was right and proper. “You’ve won, Tanith. Congratulations.”

Tanith was a master of many things. Few swordsmen could hope to best her in combat and fewer still had her keen eye for strategy on the battlefield. Her acts of bravery and feats of daring were known far and wide. But there was one skill that Tanith had never been able to master, and that was the art of spotting a lie, even when it was presented before her, bowed in a pretense of humble prostration.

“Thank you, Caius.” Tanith closed the distance between
them. She placed a hand on his shoulder, urging him to stand. Her hand was warm, even through his tunic. “I was hoping you would see things my way.”

“Of course,” Caius said. He forced a small smile. “You are my only sister, and no matter what, you have my support.”

Tanith smiled, and it was almost genuine. “Your loyalty does you credit, Brother.” She gathered up her skirts and turned her back to him, a show of confidence among the Drakharin. Giving someone your back meant you trusted them not to stick a blade in it. Caius’s hands itched to reach for the long knives he still wore, but Tanith was right. By Drakharin standards, it had been a fair and free election.
Laughable
, he thought.
Absolutely laughable
.

“Thank you again, Caius,” Tanith said as she ascended the dais. She sat down on the throne that was now hers. “That will be all.” It must have been a unique pleasure, throwing Caius’s words back in his face.

With another bow, low and reverent, Caius took her words for what they were: a dismissal. They nodded to each other, across a distance more vast than the great hall itself. It was all so terribly civilized, and that, too, was pretense. If he wasn’t gone by morning, the next body the Drakharin found bearing the marks of Tanith’s sword would be his own. The Firedrakes opened the doors for him, and he left, his twin’s crimson eyes burning a hole in his back.

The darkened corners and moldy stench of the Drakharin dungeons were the only company Ivy had as she sat on the stone floor, arms wrapped around her knees, shivering with cold. Perrin had been silent after the blond Drakharin left, her golden armor stained red with his blood, and Ivy wondered if he was dead.

There was a leak somewhere in the dungeons, and she’d been counting the drips to pass the time. She reached five thousand before she started to worry that she was slowly going mad. Her cheek still stung where the one-eyed Drakharin had struck her. She rubbed her face, sticky with tears and blood and snot. Maybe madness wouldn’t be so bad. So long as her sanity anchored her to this hell, there would be no hope for her. Madness might be the only escape left, even if it was only in her mind.

The drips persisted, and Ivy persisted in counting them,
clinging to the tattered remnants of her sanity with clumsy fingers. She’d only counted to seven when the dungeon’s heavy iron doors swung open and she heard the most beautiful sound in the whole entire world.

“Whoa there, sailor, buy a girl a drink first.”

Echo
.

Ivy flung herself toward the voice as far as her chains would allow. Echo was here, in the Drakharin fortress. Echo had found her. They would escape. They would be free.

“You call this a frisk? Ha!”

And just like that, Ivy’s heart began to sink. She settled back against the wall, shackled wrists hugging her knees. There would be no escape. Echo was here as a prisoner.

“Hands!” Echo shouted. “In places!”

Ivy closed her eyes. The sound of at least two pairs of boots scuffing against stone and a cell door opening and closing was enough to kill the hope that had sprung in her heart. Echo wasn’t a savior. She was as trapped as Ivy. When the dungeon’s main doors clanged shut Ivy said, “Echo?”

A muffled curse drifted through the darkness before Echo’s face appeared between the bars of the cell opposite hers.

“Ivy?” Echo said, hands clutching the bars. “Are you okay?”

Ivy crawled forward, the raw skin on her knees keenly aware of every bump and ridge through her jeans. She met Echo’s eyes across the walkway between them, and tears stung her own. She thought she’d cried herself out hours before, but there was a well inside her that stubbornly refused to dry up. Echo smiled, though it was a bit wobbly at the corners. She had the unflappable composure of those who have lived too long in too short a span of time, and Ivy
felt a twisted sort of envy at her ability to keep cool under pressure.

“I’m fine,” Ivy said. She wasn’t—not even close. “What are you doing here?”

“Would you believe me if I told you I was here to rescue you?” Echo said.

“Say it,” Ivy hissed, “and I will smack you.”

Echo snorted. “From all the way over there?”

“I swear to the gods, I will find a way.” The tendrils of madness that had wrapped themselves around Ivy’s mind slowly dissolved, forced back by their comfortable banter. It was strained, but it was familiar. Ivy clung to it, letting Echo’s voice be her rock.

“Why are you here?” Ivy asked. “For real.”

“Long story short, the Dragon Prince hired some jerk to hunt me down for stealing some crap,” Echo said. “I just wish I knew how they found me.”

It was an innocent enough statement, curious without the expectation of an answer, but bile rose in Ivy’s throat. She remembered the sound of Perrin’s choked screams and garbled words, thick and wet, as if he had been drowning in his own blood. She dug her nails into the soft flesh of her forearm as she recalled the part of Perrin’s interrogation that stung most of all. She’d screamed, called him a liar, a traitor, a coward. It hadn’t mattered to her that he’d resisted as long as he was able, that he’d told them selling information was one thing, but handing over children was another. He’d gone quiet hours ago, and Ivy tasted the sour venom of regret for the things she’d said to him.