Darkdawn

“Mister Kindly?” she called. “Eclipse?”

No answer. Nothing but the thud of her pulse in her veins, the dreadful empty of their absence. Eclipse had walked beside her since Lord Cassius had died, Mister Kindly since her father had been hanged. She’d not been without them save by request for an age. But now, to find herself alone …

“Where are we?” she whispered, studying the sea of faces and hands.

“I do not know,” Jonnen said, a small tremble in his voice.

Her heart softened, and she reached out to him in the dark. “It’s all right, Jonnen, I’m here with—”

“My name is Lucius!” he shouted, stamping his little foot. “Lucius Atticus Scaeva! I am firstborn son of Consul Julius Maximillianus Scaeva, and I am honorbound to kill you!” He pointed an accusing finger, cheeks pink with fury. “You murdered my father!”

Mia withdrew her hand, studying the boy’s face. The bared teeth and quivering lip. Those dark, brooding eyes, so like her own. So like his.

“I used to sing to you,” she said. “When you were little and it stormed. You hated the thunder.” She found herself smiling at the memory. “A squalling, pink-faced screamer with a pair of lungs on him that might wake the dead, you were. The nursemaids couldn’t do anything to still you. I was the only one who could give you calm. Do you remember?”

She cleared her throat, croaking a rusty tune.

“In bleakest times, in darkest climes,

When wind blows cold—”

“You sound like a harpy shrieking for supper,” the boy snarled.

Mia bit her lip, struggling to keep her infamous temper in check. She’d spent almost eight years plotting the deaths of the men who’d killed her kin. Six years training under the most dangerous killers in the Republic, another year in service to the Red Church, almost another year fighting for her life on the sands of Itreya’s arenas, up to her armpits in blood. Never once in all that time did she learn how to deal with a spoiled marrowborn brat grieving the loss of his bastard father. But still, she tried to imagine what the boy must think. How he must feel looking at the girl who’d murdered his da.

In truth, it wasn’t that hard to see his side. She remembered her own version of this moment, years past. Watching the men who hanged her own da in the forum. Her vow of vengeance ringing in her head, the hatred like whitehot acid in her veins.

Did Jonnen now feel the same way about her?

Am I his Scaeva?

“Jonnen, I’m sorry,” she said. “I know this is hard. I know you’re frightened and angry, that there’s things you—”

“Do not speak to me, slave,” he growled.

Her hand went to the arkemical brand on her cheek. The twin circles that marked her as the property of the Remus Collegium. She could feel the scar on the other side of her face. The gash cutting down through her brow, curling in a cruel hook along her left cheek—a memento from her ordeals on the sands. She thought briefly of Sidonius. Bladesinger and the other Falcons. Wondering if they’d made it to safety.

“I am no slave,” she said, iron creeping into her voice. “I’m your sister.”

“I have no sister,” Jonnen snarled.

“Half sister, then,” Mia said. “We’ve the same mother.”

“You’re a liar!” he cried, stamping his feet again. “Liar!”

“I’m not lying,” Mia insisted, pinching the bridge of her nose to stop the ache. “Jonnen, listen to me, please … you were too young to remember. But you were taken from our mother as a babe. Her name was Alinne. Alinne Corvere.”

“Corvere?” he scoffed, his dark eyes narrowed. “The Kingmaker’s wife?”

Mia blinked. “… You know of the rebellion?”

“I am no gutter urchin, slave,” Jonnen said, straightening his filthy robes. “I’ve a memory sharp as swords, all my tutors swear it. I know of the Kingmaker. My father sent that traitor to the hangman, and his harlot to the Philosopher’s Stone.”

“Mind your tongue,” Mia warned, her finger rising along with her temper. “That’s your mother you’re talking about.”

“I am the son of a consul!” the boy stormed.

“Aye,” Mia nodded. “But Liviana Scaeva is not your mother.”

“You dare?” Jonnen pulled his little hands into fists. “You may be the daughter of some traitor’s whore, but I am no bas—”

Her slap sent him stumbling, dropping onto his backside like a brick. Mia could feel rage in her veins, swelling and rolling, threatening to swallow her whole. Jonnen blinked up at her, wide eyes brimming with tears, one hand raised to his burning cheek. He was a marrowborn lordling, heir to a vast estate, child of a noble house. Mia imagined no one had ever laid hands on him before. Especially no one with a slave brand. But still …

“Brother or no,” Mia warned, “you don’t talk about her that way.”

Beneath her anger, Mia was horrified at herself. Exhausted and frightened and aching all the way to her bones. She’d thought Jonnen dead all these years, else she’d never have left him in Scaeva’s keeping. She should have been throwing her arms about him for joy, not knocking him onto his pompous little arse.

Especially not for telling the truth.

Mia had learned from Sidonius that her parents’ marriage was one of expedience, not passion. Darius Corvere was in love with General Antonius, the man who’d sought to become king of Itreya. The Kingmaker’s arrangement with his wife was a political alliance, not a grand love affair. And it was no strange thing—such was life in many marrowborn houses of the Republic.

But of all the men Alinne Corvere could have taken as a lover, borne a child to, of all the men in all the world, how could she have chosen Julius fucking Scaeva?

Jonnen pawed at his eyes, at the handprint Mia had etched on his cheek. She could see he wanted to cry. But he stomped the tears down instead, clenching his teeth and turning his hurt to hate.

Maw’s teeth, he really is my brother.

“I’m sorry,” Mia said, softening her voice. “These are sharp truths I’m speaking. But your father was an evil man, brother. A tyrant who wanted to carve himself a throne out of the Republic’s bones.”

“Like the Kingmaker did?” Jonnen spat.

Mia swallowed hard, feeling the boy’s words like a punch to the stomach. Though she tried to keep a grip on it, she could feel herself growing angry again. As if Jonnen’s rage were somehow stoking her own.

“You’re just a boy. You’re too young to understand.”

“You’re a liar!” The boy climbed to his feet, his temper and volume rising along with him. “My father beat yours, and you’re just mad about it!”

“Of course I’m mad about it!”

“You tricked him!” the boy shouted. “On the victor’s stage! You hid that knife in your armor and you never would have touched him otherwise!”

“I did what needed to be done,” she snapped. “Julius Scaeva deserved to die!”

“You don’t fight fair!”

“Fair?” she cried. “He killed our mother!”

“You have no honor, no …”

The boy’s voice died, the twisted snarl on his face slackening into silent wonder. Mia followed his eyeline to the floor, that tableau of wailing faces and open hands, lit by the spectral glow of their single lantern. There, on the graven stone, she could see their shadows, dark and tenebrous in the ghostly light. And they were moving.

Jonnen’s shadow was slithering back, like a viper coiling to strike. Her own shadow was reaching toward his, hair flowing as if in a gentle breeze. In a blinking, Jonnen’s shade lashed out at hers, wrapping its hands around its opponent’s throat. Mia’s shadow surged and rippled as the smaller shadow slipped hands about its neck. The shades lashed and slashed at each other, sudden violence painted in rippling black, though Mia and Jonnen both stood still and unharmed.

Mia could see the perfect fury in her brother’s eyes, reflecting the war in the dark between them. It seemed as if their shadows were playing out their innermost feelings: his hatred, her affection scorned. And she knew it then, sure as she knew her own name—this boy would kill her if he could. Cut her throat and leave her for the rats. She watched those ribbons of darkness, recalling that her shadow had reacted the same in Furian’s presence. Looking at her brother, she felt the same sickness and longing she’d felt near other darkin. As if she’d fallen asleep with someone beside her and woken to find herself alone. The sense of something … missing.

She forced calm into her voice. Willed her shadow to still itself.

“I am your sister, Jonnen,” she said. “We’re the same, you and I.”

The boy made no reply, hateful stare still fixed on her. But the enmity between their shadows slowly calmed, the shades returning to their normal shapes, only faint ripples to mark anything was odd about them at all. The darkness around them was deathly silent. The wide eyes of a thousand stone faces watching them.

“How long has it spoken to you?” Mia asked softly. “The dark?”

Jonnen remained silent. Little hands curled into little fists.

“I wasn’t much older than you, the turn it first spoke to me.” Mia sighed, tired in her soul. “The turn your father hanged mine, ordered me drowned, ripped you from our mother’s arms. The turn he destroyed everything.”

The boy looked at their shadows, his dark eyes clouded.

“Eight long years it took me,” she continued. “All those miles and all that blood. But it’s over now. For good or ill, Julius Scaeva is dead. And we’re a familia again.”

“Lost,” he spat, “is what we are, Kingmaker.”

Mia looked about them, peering into the blackness beyond the circle of their lantern’s light. From the chill in the air, the silence engulfing them, she’d guess they were far underground. In some hidden part of the necropolis, perhaps.

Why had that Hearthless one saved her life, only to abandon her down here?

Where were Mister Kindly and Eclipse?

Mercurio?

Ashlinn?

Why was she still standing here like some frightened maid?

Mia picked up the lantern. Its surface was pale and smooth as raven’s claws, carved with reliefs of an odd crescent shape.

Gravebone, she realized.[1]

She could still feel that longing inside her. Looking at the boy, at their shadows on the floor. But there was something more, she realized. Something tugging at her out there in all that dark and all that cold. As she shifted the lantern in her hand, she realized their shadows weren’t moving in response to the light. Instead, they remained fixed in one direction, like iron being pulled toward a lodestone.

Mia was tired beyond sleeping. Bruised and bleeding and afraid. But the will that had kept her moving when all seemed lost, when the whole world seemed against her, when her task seemed all but impossible, bid her keep walking. She didn’t know where they were, but she knew they couldn’t stay. And so she held out her hand to her brother.

“Come.”

“Where?”

She nodded to their shadows on the floor. “They know the way.”

The boy looked at her, rage and mistrust in his eyes.

“Our familia had a saying,” Mia said. “Before your father destroyed it. Neh diis lus’a, lus diis’a. Do you know what that means?”

“I do not speak Liisian,” the boy growled.

“When all is blood, blood is all.”

She held out her hand again.

“Blood is all, little brother,” she repeated.

Jonnen looked up at her. In the dark, among those beautiful howling faces and open hands and the ghostly gravebone light, Mia could see the reflection of his father in those bottomless black eyes.

But in the end, he took her hand.

Do you feel that?”

Mia’s voice echoed in the gloom, far too loud for comfort. They’d been walking for what seemed like miles, through a twisting labyrinth of tunnels. The walls and floor were all made of those stone hands and faces, uneven under her feet.

It felt singularly disconcerting to be walking on a surface of silent screams. Mia felt sure this was part of the Godsgrave necropolis, but nothing looked familiar, and she’d no idea why anyone would have spent years carving the walls and floors like this. The farther they walked, the more ill at ease she felt. She’d occasionally catch movement from the corner of her eye, swearing that one of the stone hands had moved, or a face had turned to follow her as she passed. But when she looked at them direct, they were motionless.

The darkness was oppressive, the air heavy, sweat burning in the cuts and gouges on her skin. That nameless, shapeless anger was budding in her chest, and she had no idea why. With every step, the feeling that had been dogging Mia since she woke in this place grew more pronounced. The pull of moth to flame.

For the time being, Jonnen’s fear of the dark seemed to have overcome his hatred for her, and though he’d refused to keep hold of Mia’s hand for long, he stayed close on her heels. As she led him on through the tunnels, gravebone lantern held high, she’d sometimes glance back and find him staring at her with unveiled hatred.

In complete defiance of the lantern’s ghostly light, their shadows were still stretching away down the corridor, now far longer than they should have been.

With every step, the pull seemed to grow stronger.

The anger burning brighter in her breast.

“I do not like it here,” Jonnen whispered.

“Nor I,” Mia replied.

They walked on, pressing closer together. Mia could feel a fury, thrumming in the air around her. A sense of deep and abiding rage. Of pain and need and hunger all entwined. It was the same sensation she’d felt during the truedark massacre. The same as she’d felt during her victory in the arena.

The sense of malice in this city’s very bones.

The air felt oily and thick, and Mia swore she could smell blood. The faces on the walls were definitely moving now, the ground shifting under their feet as stone hands reached toward them, stone lips mouthed silent words. Mia’s heart almost leapt from her throat as she felt fingers touch hers. Looking down, she saw Jonnen taking hold of her hand again and gripping it tight, eyes wide with fear.

Hunger.

Anger.

Hate.

The tunnel opened into another chamber, too vast to see the walls. The anguished faces beneath their feet sloped downward to form a large basin, barely visible in the lantern’s pale glow. The shore was all open hands and mouths, and Mia saw the basin was filled with liquid—black and velvety and still, spilling over the eyes and into the mouths of those faces closest to the edge. It looked like tar, but the reek was unmistakable. Salty and copperish and tinged with rot.

Blood.

Black blood.

And there, on that silently screaming shoreline, Mia saw two familiar shapes. Staring out at the pool of black with their not-eyes.

“Mister Kindly!” she cried. “Eclipse!”

Her passengers remained motionless as she stumbled across the faces and palms, sinking to her knees beside them. Sighing with relief, she ran her hands over their bodies, their shapes shifting and rippling like black smoke in a breeze. But neither one broke their stare from that pool of velvet darkness.

Mister Kindly tilted his head, speaking as if in a daze.

“… do you feel it …?”

“… I FEEL IT …,” Eclipse replied.

“Mia?”

She turned at the voice, heart leaping in her chest. And there in the gloom, among the stone eyes and empty screams, Mia saw a sight more beautiful than any she could recall. A tall girl dressed in the bloodstained garb of an arena guard, another gravebone lantern in her hand, a gravebone sword at her waist. Blond hair dyed henna-red, tanned cheeks smattered with freckles, eyes the blue of sunsburned skies.

“Ashlinn …,” Mia breathed.

She ran. So light and fast it felt like she was flying. All the hurt and exhaustion became distant memory, even the sight of that black pool was forgotten. Stumbling over the stone faces, heart bursting in her chest, Mia flung her arms open and crashed into Ashlinn’s embrace. She hit so hard, she almost knocked the taller girl off her feet. Overcome with maddening joy at seeing her again, Mia wove her fingers into Ashlinn’s hair, touched her face to see if she was real, and breathless, she finally dragged the girl in for a hungry kiss.

“O, Goddess,” she whispered.

Ashlinn tried to speak, her words smothered by Mia’s mouth. Mia could taste blood from the reopened split in her lip, heedless of the pain, pressing her body tight against Ash’s.

“I’m never letting you go again.” She seized Ash’s cheeks in both hands and crushed their lips together again. “Never, do you hear me? Ever.”

“Mia,” Ashlinn protested, placing a hand on her chest.

“What?” Mia whispered.

Overcome, she lunged at the girl’s mouth again, but Ashlinn turned aside, looked deep into her eyes, and pushed her gently away. Mia stared hard into that sunsburned blue, blinking in confusion.

“… Ash, what is it?”

“HELLO, MIA.”

Mia’s blood ran cold as she heard the voice behind her. The temperature around them grew chill as she turned, her skin prickling. She saw a familiar figure, twin gravebone blades upon its back. Its robes were dark and frayed at the hems, its hands black, shadows writhing like tentacles at the edge of its hood.

Mia glanced at Ashlinn, saw fear swimming plain in her blue stare. She pulled herself from her lover’s arms, turned to face the strange figure. Pale wisps of breath spilled from her bloody lips.

“Well,” she said. “My mysterious savior.”

The figure bowed low, robes rippling in some phantom breeze. Its voice was hollow, sibilant, reverberating somewhere in the pit of her belly.

“MI DONA.”

“I suppose thanks are in order.” Mia folded her arms, tossed her hair over her shoulder. “But they can come after introductions. Who the ’byss are you?”

“A GUIDE,” the figure replied. “A GIFT.”

“Speak plainly,” Mia snarled, temper rising. “Who are you?”

“Mia …,” Ashlinn murmured, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Speak!” Mia demanded, stepping forward with clenched fists.

The figure raised those ink-black hands, drew back its hood. In the ghostly light, Mia saw pitch-black eyes and flawless alabaster skin. Dark, thick saltlocks, swaying as if they were alive. He was still achingly handsome—strong jaw and high cheekbones, once scrawled with hateful ink stains, then made perfect by the weaver’s hands.

Lips she’d once kissed.

Eyes she’d once drowned in.

A face she’d once adored.

Mia looked into Ashlinn’s frightened blue eyes. Back to the pools of bottomless black that passed for his.

“Black fucking Mother,” she breathed.

CHAPTER 5

EPIPHANIES

“How?” Mia whispered.

She looked Tric up and down, crossing her arms over her breasts and shivering in the cold. He was different than he’d been—his once-olive skin was now carved of marble, his once-hazel eyes were pools of purest darkness. He seemed a statue in the forum, wrought cold and perfect from the stone by some master’s hand and now come to life. His face was beautiful. Flawless. Pale and smooth as gravebone, cutting just as deep. Her heart could scarcely believe the tale her eyes were telling.

But there was no mistaking the boy she’d known.

The boy she’d loved?

“But she …” Mia turned to Ashlinn, bewildered. “You killed him.”

Ashlinn was uncharacteristically silent, her eyes bright with fear. Mister Kindly and Eclipse were still sitting side by side on that strange shoreline, and Jonnen had joined them, dark eyes locked on that darker pool. The stone faces around them mouthed silent entreaties, stone tresses flowing as if in a wintersdeep wind. But Mia simply stood, staring at her old flame. Trying to ignore the flood of emotion rushing through her chest and simply make sense of it all.

“How can you be here if you’re dead?”

Tric’s black eyes glinted in the cold lantern light.

“THE MOTHER KEEPS ONLY WHAT SHE NEEDS.”

Mia drew a few deep breaths, her lungs aching from the chill. She’d heard tell of wraiths returning from the Hearth to haunt the living, dismissed most of them as old wives’ tales. But this was no children’s fable standing before her. This was her old friend, sure as her heart was beating in her chest. The boy who’d traveled with her through the Whisperwastes of Ashkah, who’d been her ally and confidant during the Red Church trials, who’d shared her bed and chased her nightmares away during her darkest hours. Her first real lover.

Killed by her second.

Mia could feel Ashlinn behind her, close enough to reach out and touch. She could still taste the girl’s lips. Smell the perfume of sweat and leather on her skin. She knew Tric must have seen them together, that he must have witnessed the passion and joy Mia had felt kissing his murderer.

“I …” She shook her head. Searching for some explanation. Wondering why she felt the need to explain anything at all. “I thought you were dead …”

Those pitch-black eyes flickered to Ashlinn.

“I AM,” Tric replied.

“He saved my life, Mia,” Ashlinn murmured behind her. “The Ministry ambushed me at the chapel. They took Mercurio back to the Mountain. They were set to steal me, too, but … Tric … he helped me.”

Mia’s stomach sank at the news of Mercurio’s capture.

“Why?” she asked. “Why help you after what you did to him?”

“I don’t know.” Ash put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Mia, I have to tell y—”

“What’s your game, Tric?” Mia turned back to the boy, burning with curiosity and indignity. “Why save Ashlinn after she killed you? Why save Jonnen and me, then leave us to wander like rats in the dark?”

At the sound of his name, Mia’s brother turned from the black pool. He blinked hard, rubbing his eyes like a boy just woken from sleep. He seemed to notice Tric for the first time, but Mia could see suspicion in his stare instead of fear. Curiosity narrowed his eyes as he looked Ashlinn up and down, and a healthy dose of hatred resurfaced as his gaze fell on her.

Tric’s eyes were fixed on Mia. She realized she hadn’t yet seen him blink.

“IT’S TRUELIGHT,” HE REPLIED. “THE THREE EYES OF AA THE EVERSEEING BURN BRIGHT IN THE SKY ABOVE. MOTHER NIAH IS NEVER SO FAR AWAY FROM THIS WORLD AS SHE IS AT THIS MOMENT. AND IT’S ONLY THROUGH HER WILL THAT I WALK THIS WORLD AT ALL. IT TOOK ALL I HAD TO DO WHAT I DID.”

“And Mister Kindly?” Mia asked. “Eclipse? Why separate us?”

“THEY WERE DRAWN HERE WHILE YOU SLEPT.”

Mia looked to that darkened shore, her passengers sitting beside it. Now that the joy of seeing Ashlinn, the shock of seeing Tric, was wearing off, she could still feel the pull of this place thrumming under her skin. The black, intoxicating malice reverberating in that vast black pool. Looking down at her feet, she could see her shadow stretching toward it, despite the lantern’s light. And she realized she wanted to join it.

“No more riddles, Tric,” she said. “Tell me once and for all what’s going on here.”

“IT WILL NOT PLEASE YOU.”

“Fucking speak, damn you!” she demanded.

The shadow of a smile curled Tric’s bloodless lips. “YOU STILL HAVE A STRANGE WAY OF MAKING FRIENDS, PALE DAUGHTER.”

The words made Mia’s heart ache, dispelling any lingering suspicion that this apparition wasn’t her old friend. She remembered their time together, the promises they’d made each other, the way his touch had made her feel …

“Please,” she whispered.

The Hearthless boy breathed deep, as if he were about to speak. All the air around him seemed to hush, the whispering stone faces and writhing stone hands at last falling still. His saltlocks swayed like dreaming vipers, the tattered edge of his robe danced in a wind that touched only him.