Excerpt: The Nightshade God by Hannah Whitten
The Nightshade Crown is in the hands of a ruthless god and Lore will stop at nothing to defeat him in the final installment of this lush, romantic, New York Times bestselling fantasy series from breakout star Hannah Whitten.
Read the first three chapters of The Nightshade God on sale July 15th below!
CHAPTER ONE
LORE
Let all my abasements be used for glory, for the uplifting of my betters.
—The Book of Prayer, Tract 367
Lore was exceedingly bad at being a convict.
Maybe if she’d been left to languish in a prison, draped dramatically over a cot in a bare stone cell and not required to do anything but wallow, she could have excelled in her newfound position. She wasn’t as good at brooding as Gabe—gods, no one was—but she thought she could have given it a solid go. At least then she wouldn’t have perpetually watering eyes from the ash in the air, and always-open blisters on her hands, and a crick in her neck that at this point she assumed was permanent.
No, Lore was not good at this at all.
But she tried her best not to show it, because the guards on the Burnt Isles all wanted to make her as miserable as possible. And if there was one thing Lore hated more than her current circumstances, it was letting someone else win.
She straightened as much as her sore back would let her and wiped her wrist across her brow. The ridged skin at her temple was still a surprise every time she felt it. A scar from that day in the North Sanctuary when she’d brought the whole thing down, tried to kill herself enough to banish the gods in her and Bastian’s heads.
Thinking of him hurt. Thinking of Gabe hurt, too. She tried to do both as little as possible. Thankfully, there were many other things to think of, like how in every hell she was going to get off this damn island. How in even more hells she was going to get to Apollius’s body on the Golden Mount.
How she was going to kill Him.
But even though she thought of those things constantly, she wasn’t any closer to actually knowing how to accomplish them.
And in all that thinking, she still had to find at least three pieces of gems or gold if she wanted a meal and a place to sleep tonight.
Lore wiped at her temple again. It was hard to get a good look at her new scar—mirrors were scarce on the Burnt Isles—but she’d managed to glimpse her reflection in the trough where they were allowed to scoop water into tin cups four times a day for five-minute intervals, drinking as much as they could before the seconds ran dry and their cups did, too. Red lines wavering from the corner of her eye up to her hairline and down to her cheekbone. It wasn’t terrible, but Lore was vain, and it still made her want to cry.
She didn’t. Couldn’t spare the water.
The pickax had a splintery handle, and she took a furtive moment to rewrap the cloth around her bleeding palms before picking it up again. Bastian’s old trick from the boxing ring served her well. None of the pickaxes were in especially good shape, but some were in worse shape than others, and the better ones were on unspoken reserve for the most senior inmates.
Though Lore was sure she’d have to use a shitty pickax even if she was here for fifty years.
She lifted the pickax again, brought it down on the rock in front of her. It bounced off, barely making a dent. A faint gleam of gold seamed the scratch the blade had made.
“Guess we’re eating tonight,” Lore muttered, resenting her own inner leap of enthusiasm. Sleeping on the ground was no particular horror after the life she’d led, but hunger was. Her first few days here, when she’d barely managed to find anything and gone without dinner most nights, her stomach had felt like a feral animal trying to claw its way out of her throat. Desperation had claws, too, and when she saw inmates attacking each other for pieces to turn into rations, she understood.
There wasn’t much here—the Second Isle had been mined to death already—but she managed to find at least one piece a day. Mostly because she didn’t want to think about how far she could push that understanding before it became a plan.
The main mine on the Second Isle was mostly just a hole in the ground, dizzyingly deep. Concentric rings lined the hole, different levels where prisoners hacked the chasm ever deeper in search of jewels and gold made by Apollius’s and Nyxara’s blood, dripping to the ground in the Godsfall, growing treasure like seeds. The deeper you went, the more there was to find.
There were paltry railings to keep prisoners from falling to their deaths, but they were as splintery as the pickax handles. It wasn’t unusual for someone to pitch over the edge, whether by accident or with a push. Or by a solemn decision.
The railings on the First Isle were better, apparently. That was where the prisoners with money went, those who had a few years to serve instead of a lifetime. The Second Isle was for poison runners, back-alley murderers, and petty thieves. You only ended up here if the Sainted King didn’t care about you or was very, very angry.
So Lore’s arrival was bound to be a topic of amusement.
Something slammed into the small of her back, nearly sending her headfirst into the open pit. “Fuck!” Lore dropped her pickax,cloth unraveling from her bleeding hands as she gripped a rock beside her to keep from pitching over. The sharp edges she’d made earlier this morning bit into her palms, thin blood obscuring the seam of uncovered gold.
Below, jagged stones, winking with the occasional gem; prisoners winding around them like ants headed for the hill. It all shimmered in her vision, dehydration and exhaustion turning the belly of the mine into a kaleidoscope.
“Apologies, Your Majesty.” Gods, they all got a kick out of that. Lore had hoped that maybe her identity could be kept under wraps, but that proved exceptionally foolish of her. Every convict on the Second Isle knew who she was, and every one of them hated her for it. “I thought your balance would be better, being honed in ballrooms.”
“You do know that I spent maybe six months of my life in ballrooms, right, Jilly?” Lore turned, her balance regained, and scowled at the woman behind her. “The rest of it was spent poison running. Just like you.”
Jilly scowled right back. She was probably forty, but years in the mines had put a hunch in her back, and her skin looked sun-leathered despite the coating of ash and fog in the air. Her own pickax, with a handle that looked silky smooth to Lore’s eyes, waved in her direction again. “You were never just like me.”
Truer than the other woman could know.
“And now you’re here, with your big death-power,” Jilly continued, “and you won’t even use it to get us out. Fat lot of good you are, Your Majesty.”
Lore’s fingers twitched involuntarily against the linen wraps. Searching for Mortem threads, trying to call them. She could feel the filaments of death running through everything here, the rock and the dirt, closer to the surface in the people than they should be.
But they wouldn’t come. Mortem wouldn’t obey her.
Lore couldn’t tell Jilly that, either. “How exactly do you think that would work? I turn all the guards to stone and we take the ships, only to be executed when we get to the mainland? I know dust inhalation is bad for your brain, but surely you still have one.”
The older woman’s lip lifted, a sneer that showed her nightshade-stained teeth. “It’d be something,” she said quietly, with a lace of desperation. “Something other than this. Hope is enough, even when it doesn’t make sense.”
“Get moving!”
The guards on the Burnt Isles were somehow even worse than the bloodcoats in the Citadel. Just as self-important, with an extra helping of stupidity and brute strength. This one, Fulbert, was as tall as Gabe and probably twice his weight, with what seemed to be the common sense of a dazed cow.
“You’re up farther than you should be, Jilly; get back down to your tier and leave the Queen alone.” Fulbert leered at Lore, waving Jilly on with a hand built for fistfights. “Are you trying to hold court, Your Majesty? Miss having a whole Citadel pay attention to you?”
“You people desperately need a different bit,” Lore muttered, rewrapping her hands and retrieving her pickax.
Fulbert wagged his finger and grabbed it from her. “No more mines for you today, Queenie. You’re on dock duty. Martin’s orders.”
Ah. Time to make a bad day even worse.
The sun was covered in a gray miasma, but Lore still squinted as she stepped out of the rickety lift between the central mine and the beach—the sunlight reflected off the particles in the air, making it bright but not really sunny, which didn’t seem fair. She paused, trying to get her bearings, but Fulbert was impatient and pushed her out, sending her stumbling onto the rocky sand.
“The beach is no marble floor, huh?” He grinned, poking her again. The end of his bayonet was blunt, but it still hurt. “Not like the Citadel. Can’t walk without iron bars under your feet?”
Lore kept her mouth shut. It was the one skill she’d honed on the Burnt Isles. If she had any hope of escaping, of finding a way to the Golden Mount so she could finish the job Nyxara had left undone, she had to let them tire of her. Become one more unwatched face in the crowd.
With no response to his needling, Fulbert grew bored quickly, as men of his intelligence were wont to do. “Martin’s at the lighthouse,” he grumbled, turning back to the lift. “Go straight there and get a mop.”
She was sure a mop was not the only thing Martin would try to give her. Fists already clenched, Lore stumbled her way across the beach in her flimsy prisoner-issue boots, blisters screaming across her arches.
At first, she’d been shocked by how little the guards here… well, guarded. But after a week or so, it made sense. For the few miles directly around the Isles, the sea was nigh unnavigable, the ash so thick in the air that you could barely see a yard in front of your face. The only way the prison barges were able to make it was by following the steel lines in the water, anchored to the Auverrani shore and the island’s beach, laid by the first generation of prisoners. Every once in a while an inmate would disappear, but it was chalked up to either suicide or murder. If you were on the Second Isle, those were the only two ways to get off it.
Lore walked slowly across the beach, since there was no guard to prod her on. She wanted to spend as little time at the lighthouse as she could and already felt the first pangs of hunger. It’d be bad tonight. When you worked dock duty, Martin decided if you got your rations or not.
The Burnt Isles’ harbor hardly deserved the name. Five sun-bleached docks jutting out into the surf and a barnacle-encrusted lighthouse a few yards out, barely visible before the curtains of fog and ash closed over it, both thickening over open water. Depending on the tide, you had to either climb over sharp rocks to reach the lighthouse or wade through the ocean and hope you didn’t trip over them.
Today was a wading day. Lore hitched up the baggy trousers she’d been given upon her arrival—too long in the leg, too tight in the waist—and made her way to the lighthouse. The current pulled at her from the moment she stepped into the sea, forceful as hands on her ankles.
Martin was waiting. The lighthouse keeper lounged in the doorway and watched her approach, his tall, thin frame giving the impression of a spider lingering in a web. A sly smile revealed blindingly white teeth in a sunburnt white face, his cut-short hair turned the same grayish not-color as the sky. His neck was tanned, but his arms were nearly as pale as his teeth, as if he covered them up when he went outdoors. “If it isn’t the Queen.”
Lore stopped on the rock closest to the lighthouse, blessedly flat and mostly out of the water, locking her legs against the wind. “You called?”
He pushed off from the door, hands in his pockets, eyes flickering lazily up and down her form. She’d been wrong before. He wasn’t like a spider; he was like a snake, eyes slitted against the ashy light, body primed for striking.
“I have work for you.” Where most of the other guards on the Isles spoke roughly, Martin always had a superciliously polite air about him, carefully articulate. “Both inside and outside. Which will it be, Your Majesty?”
A seemingly benign question. But Lore had an advantage, the one kindness her fellow prisoners had shown her.
Space in the communal bunkhouse was reserved for prisoners who found at least five valuable pieces a day, and Lore never had. Her first night, she found a shallow cave with a relatively soft sandy floor, one that already held a few others who’d had the same idea. One of them was a girl who’d been on the Isles for weeks, and she gave them all a rundown of the guards.
“Gellert is an ass, but he’ll let you get an extra drink from the trough if you’re quick about it and no captains are watching. Don’t try to go down a tier in the mine, or the seniors will jump you, and the guards won’t do shit about it. And if Martin calls you to the lighthouse, never tell him you want inside work.” She’d narrowed reddened eyes, pointed with a broken-nailed finger at no one in particular. “Or do—I’m certainly not above sticky work for a favor—but be smart about it. He’s the kind who doesn’t just want that.”
The bruises on her cheekbone had told the rest of the story.
The girl had been gone in the next couple days. No one looked for her. Martin started calling up new girls for the lighthouse afterward.
And it hadn’t taken long for him to ask for Lore by name. This was the third time he’d called her here, given her the choice of inside or outside work. They both knew what he was really asking.
And they both knew a time was coming when she wouldn’t get the luxury of choice.
“Outside,” Lore answered, same as she always did.
The smile on his face turned sharp at the corners. Martin advanced a step, out onto the flat rock where Lore stood. She fought the urge to step back, knowing it’d just send her toppling into the water—onto the rocks. The tide was going out.
“You think you’re too good for me?” He still spoke with that polite tone, and it made gooseflesh ripple up Lore’s arms. She’d had similar things spat at her before when she rebuffed an advance in a tavern or alleyway, but none of those catcallers had been in a position of power over her. “You think that because you were a Queen for two minutes, I can’t have you whenever I want? I keep asking because I like them willing, but I’ll be having some of what the King was having, deathwitch.”
Gods, she hated feeling afraid. She’d fielded many unpleasant emotions recently, but fear was always the worst, the most helpless. Lore’s fingers worked back and forth, metaphysically clawing at the rock below her, the dead driftwood on the beach, the stone of the lighthouse.
“Outside work,” Lore said again. Then, choking on it, “Please.”
Martin stood right in front of her, now. Still smiling, he shook his head. “No. I think you need some inside work today, Hemlock Queen.”
“What about a trade?” she said, quickly, the words racing her disgust so they couldn’t be overtaken. “I’ll do something for you if you do something for me.”
“Something,” Martin scoffed. “Say it. I want to hear it.”
The back of her throat tasted sour. “I’ll choose inside work if you get me a boat.”
Martin stared at her, near-colorless eyebrow raised to near-colorless hairline. Then he brayed a laugh. “You think you’re in a position to bargain?” His leathery hand closed around her wrist. Instinctually, Lore jerked backward, losing her balance—he used the moment to pull her to his chest, his breath in her face, hot and harsh and smelling like cheap alcohol. “Even if I gave you a ship all to yourself, you wouldn’t be able to get off this island. The prison galleys can barely navigate through the ash even with the steel guidelines. What makes you think you can?”
Nothing did, but she was desperate. Lore’s fingers worked and worked as she tried to pull away from Martin, weaving at magic that was no longer there.
She’d held all of it, every drop of Mortem left in the world. And now there was nothing.
It’d happened right as the barge approached the shoreline of the Second Isle, a deep ripping feeling, something vital as an organ torn out. Lore had gasped, pressing a hand against her middle. Nyxara?
Something happened, the goddess had murmured, a thrum of anxiety in the back of Lore’s mind.
She knew even before she reached for magic that it was gone, her grasping hands gripping nothing. No darkness, no death, just the stale, smoggy air of the Isles.
What do I do? Panic made her heart race and her breath come heavy.
I don’t know, the goddess said, sounding as helpless as Lore felt. I don’t know.
The next morning, the gray stars on Lore’s palms had faded. She could feel Mortem, but she still couldn’t wield it. And though that was something she’d always wanted, now it felt like a punishment. One she couldn’t figure out what she’d done to deserve.
Especially since the damn Buried Goddess was still in her head.
Not now, though, as the sun burned high behind the ash, this awful man trying to haul her toward the door and not caring about anything but showing his own power. Now Nyxara was silent. Cowed once again by a man who looked at a woman and saw nothing but a vessel for his violence, a tool for his use. Lore’s feet fought for purchase on the rock, her hands pressing fruitlessly at Martin’s chest, trying to keep him away.
“Stop fighting,” Martin said, slapping the side of her face, the barely healed lines of her new scar. “I own you, Lore Arceneaux.”
And something about that—how it reminded her of Apollius, reminded her of how she was married to Bastian when Bastian had been locked inside his own mind—made Lore’s fear alchemize into rage.
She tore away from Martin, letting the momentum force her off the rock and into the churn of the sea. The currents pulled at her ankles, but she didn’t topple. “Don’t touch me.”
“Have you forgotten where you are?” He crowded her again, his face mere inches from her own, gaining extra height from his position on the rock. “I can do whatever I like, and then I can throw you in the sea, and no one will care. No one will come looking for you.” He smiled again, sour wine fuming into her face. “I’ll make you call me Your Majesty while you’re choking on—”
Maybe it was the reminders of Bastian. Maybe it was something that had been brewing ever since she set foot on the Isles, so near to the Golden Mount and the Fount the gods had broken.
Or maybe it was just plain desperation making her try something she wasn’t sure would work.
Part of her didn’t expect that she could use Spiritum anymore. Mortem had been pulled from her grasp when she arrived here; she assumed the same thing had happened to the power of life, especially now that she was separated from Bastian, their Law of Opposites sundered. Using magic didn’t really fit into her tentative plan to become an irrelevant face in the crowd, unmarked enough to someday, somehow slip away.
But when she reached for the threads of Spiritum lurking in Martin’s skin and bone and blood, they jumped to her like they’d been waiting.
Lore channeled it through her, second nature. She tugged on a strand, and Martin’s heart sped, galloping behind his ribs. He dropped back, hands pressed to his chest, his face turning red and his veins swelling like leeches.
Martin stumbled on the rock, gasping, crawling toward the lighthouse door. When he reached it, he pulled himself up, his face an alarming shade of purple.
She let the thread go, slowly. Let it wind its way out of her, let his heart regain its rhythm, his veins return to their usual dimensions.
“Be careful, Martin,” Lore said quietly. “Seems like your heart isn’t doing so well. You probably don’t want to get too excited for the next few days.”
Martin said nothing, still gasping, the doorframe the only thing keeping him upright. Watching her like she was the spider now, and he the fly.
Stupid of her to try bargaining with him. But her chances of success were already thin and getting thinner.
Martin closed the door, apparently content to leave her be for now.
That was all well and good, but she still needed a mop.
Sighing, Lore picked her way around the lighthouse, headed for the back entrance. The incoming tide swept over her boots and soaked the too-long hem of her trousers.
Mops and buckets for swabbing the prison ships were right inside the back door. Lore stepped into the lighthouse and grabbed one, enjoying the momentary coolness and a break for her eyes from the constant itch and glare.
Something moved in the shadows. One of the other prisoners, probably; one who’d taken the risks of Martin’s attentions along with the easier labor. Lore opened her eyes, sure she’d be shooed out.
A familiar face stared at her from the spiral stairs that led farther up into the lighthouse. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Beautiful.
For a minute, Lore thought it was Amelia, come back to haunt her.
No, not Amelia. Her sister.
“Dani?” Lore breathed, but the other woman was already gone.
CHAPTER TWO
GABE
If you can’t find love, start looking for a fight. —Caldienan proverb
He was getting better at taking a punch.
His opponent was shorter, but broader, and had clearly been fighting far longer than Gabe had. Gabe hunched over, the back of his wrist against his bloodied nose, and knew that taking a moment to regain his bearings was a mistake even before the massive Caldienan man kicked him in the gut.
Heat at the tips of his fingers as he fell, his back cracking against a stone floor softened by dirty straw. Flame flickering in the corners of his vision.
No, Gabe snarled inside his head. Stop.
It did.
Briefly, he considered getting up, refusing through sheer spite to let the bout end. But his eyes were watering, and his stomach hurt, and he was already going to be sore as every hell tomorrow, when he’d have to either come back here or find work in the market somewhere. Rent was due.
He closed his eyes, ears ringing as the referee shouted the countdown. The crowd roared, stomping onto the straw, rallying around the man who’d won.
Good foer you, Gabe thought. He pushed himself up, wincing. Be thankful I didn’t use every tool at my disposal.
A singed smell in his nostrils, like burning wood.
The crowd mostly left him alone. That was something different between the fighting rings here and those in Auverraine. There wasn’t much jeering in Caldien. They were content to celebrate their winners without heaping misery on the loser.
It was an odd dichotomy, since the fighting was so much more brutal. There was no genteel pretense of boxing, with wrapped hands and defined rules. In Caldien, people just beat the shit out of each other.
That suited his mood fine. Gabe felt like he probably deserved to get the shit beat out of him.
It was not lost on him, the irony that he was coping the same way Bastian had, back when Bastian was… well, was Bastian. Gabe tried not to think of the implications, of why he felt better when he was subjecting himself to the same humbling. A twisted kind of closeness.
He wished he could find something that made him feel even marginally closer to Lore.
Now upright, Gabe limped to the edge of the ring, holding on to a wooden post for balance. Most fights here took place in repurposed barns, since outside it was always either raining or about to be. Gabe supposed that was a good thing, for him. The weather in Caldien was not conducive to fire.
The referee approached holding a small bag, clinking coins. He handed it to Gabe with an almost-pitying look before turning back to the next fight. Gabe stuck it in his pocket without counting the winnings. He didn’t necessarily want to draw attention to the fact that he was betting against himself. His dignity had taken enough hits as it was, no pun intended.
After arriving in Caldien two weeks ago, following a week on the sea, Val had found them a few rooms in a hovel near the harbor. She knew the landlord from running poisons, but smugglers were not a warm bunch, and even their acquaintance didn’t equal out to free rent. Malcolm’s friend at the university, a librarian named Adrian, had offered to help them with accommodations, but there were no cheaper rooms to be found, and Adrian’s own apartment was far too small for all of them.
And there were the Citadel guards crawling all over the city that made staying near an escape route seem like a good idea.
So they earned money however they could. Mari had sold off one pistol, though she still wore a bandolier with enough ammunition for two. Malcolm did the landlord’s accounting.
And Gabe bet against himself in the fighting rings.
“Again, Gabe?”
Michal. He’d known the other man was here; he always came to watch the fights. Gabe supposed it was a nostalgia thing, Michal remembering who he’d been before he got caught up in god-schemes.
“You only have the one eye,” Michal said, leaning against one of the barn’s support beams. “You should really take better care of it.”
The aforementioned eye was already swelling, smarting to the touch. “I’ll sacrifice my eye so that we don’t have to sleep in Caldienan weather.”
Michal glanced at the sky beyond the door. Rainy, as always, and threatening to blow into a full storm. “There are other ways to earn coin.”
“Nothing I’m good at.”
There were other reasons, reasons Gabe probably wasn’t hiding half as well as he wanted to be. Getting beaten to a pulp every day gave him something to think about that wasn’t the complete mess they found themselves in. His body being one constant ache made other thoughts, if not disappear, at least recede into background noise.
Thoughts like Bastian being Apollius. That the return of the benevolent god their entire religion—Gabe’s entire life—was predicated on was actually the precursor to an Empire that would smash everything beneath a holy fist.
As if in response to the thought, the perpetually threatening storm finally arrived, thunder crashing as endless rain poured from the clouds. A spear of lightning split the sky.
“You’re making a spectacle of yourself,” Michal said quietly. “You’re someone they’ll all remember.”
A risk, certainly. Gabe hadn’t heard any murmurs of whether the Citadel was looking for them, but the bloodcoats lurking in every corner of Farramark made it seem likely. He and Malcolm had taken to wearing fingerless gloves to hide their palm tattoos, but there was nothing to be done for his eye patch.
He nodded. “Point taken.”
But he wasn’t going to stop, and Michal’s pinched expression said he knew it.
The punishment of fighting felt right. Penance for the ones he couldn’t save, for his betrayals. He wasn’t worthy of the love he held, and though no one could beat it out of him, he could at least feel the pain of it and be reminded of all the ways he’d failed, so maybe, hopefully, he wouldn’t again.
“Myriad hells.” A winner from a previous bout approached the barn door, hands on her hips, bruises blooming on her shoulders. The broad brogue of her accent made the profanity somehow softer. “The weather in autumn has never been good, but storms like this are usually reserved for summertime.”
“We have cloaks,” pointed out her friend, presumably antsy to leave the barn. “We can brave it.”
The fighter snorted. “Raincoats are as useless as the Rotunda when it’s this bad.”
Her friend smirked. “Maybe they’ll put the weather to a vote next session. It’d be just as effective as the shit they actually vote on.”
The fighter laughed, then the two of them wandered back into the barn, supposedly to wait out the storm.
“Malcolm wants you to meet him at the boardinghouse,” Michal said when the fighters were far enough away not to overhear. “He’s found something.”
Water from the trough dripped off Gabe’s bruised nose. “In one of those books from Adrian?”
Michal shrugged and didn’t answer, canting his eyes toward the milling crowd. “Something that shouldn’t be discussed in mixed company.”
Gabe ran another handful of water through his hair. It was longer than he liked; he’d have to get Mari to cut it again. “Lead the way, then.”
“You don’t want to do something about that nose first?”
“What’s the point?”
Michal sighed, headed for the door, shoulders already hunching in expectation of rain. “Sometimes I can’t believe you were the Priest Exalted.”
Sometimes Gabe couldn’t, either.
The storm had mostly stopped by the time they reached the boardinghouse. Calling it such was kind; it was more like a shed with bedrooms. It wasn’t as dilapidated as some of the row houses in the Auverrani Harbor District, but it was close.
Val waited just inside the door, perched on a stool, picking at her nails with a knife. She looked up as they entered, water from the erstwhile rain streaming off their shoulders and puddling on the floor. She raised a brow at Gabe. “Did you lose another fight?”
“Maybe.”
“You might earn more if you won once in a while.”
But Gabe was not prone to betting on himself. Not in anything.
A small room right off the main entrance served as Malcolm’s office, cluttered with stacks of water-spotted paper. Apparently, the landlord’s accounts had been neglected for quite a while before Malcolm came along. He sat at the table, dark circles under his eyes. “Took you long enough.”
“He was getting beat within an inch of his life again,” Michal said, going to sit next to Malcolm. The two of them were always in close proximity when they were in the same room.
But Gabe was not interested in defending his extracurriculars. He was far more interested in the man standing in front of Malcolm’s desk.
He was dressed too well for the slums, though not so well that it immediately stood out. Handsome, well-groomed, with short dark hair and a trimmed beard to match, green eyes with a glint that said he would be a good friend to have at a bar and a bad enemy to have in a dark alley. The bare outline of a dark tattoo showed beneath the white linen of his shirt, and he stood with a lazy grace that reminded Gabe of Bastian.
The mysterious man looked to Gabe’s eye, which must be fully purple by now. He raised a brow.
“I wish you’d…” But Malcolm didn’t finish the thought, just shook his head instead. He didn’t stand up, but waved a hand at the newcomer. “This is Finn Lucais.”
“And?” Whatever manners Gabe’s nobility had bred into him had bled out by now.
Finn didn’t look offended. He looked delighted, in fact. “And,” he said, “I believe I can help you with your bloodcoat problem.”
The name clicked into place, recognition dawning even as Gabe’s muscles tensed for yet another fight. Finn Lucais, the former pirate. The Caldienan naval officer.
The only inroad into Caldien that the Kirythean Empire had ever almost made was through the Ourish Pass in the mountains. That was due, in large part, to Finn Lucais. He’d been an outlaw then, back when Ouran was the Emperor of Kirythea and slowly conquering the whole continent. Finn’s crew had targeted mostly Kirythean ships, and they’d done such a good job at it that the ships had never made it to the Caldienan shore, leaving Ouran stranded at the pass without reinforcements or supplies. After the battle, Finn had been pardoned on all charges of piracy and made an honorary officer. By all counts, the rest of the navy loved him. The way he managed to leak charisma even in this tiny room with a tired, hostile audience made it easy to see why.
But Gabe had little patience for charisma, and he was across the small room with his hand on Finn’s throat in two strides.
“Our bloodcoat problem?” he said, sneering. “Currently, we don’t have one, but I assume you’re here to make one if we don’t pay up?”
“Gabriel!” Malcolm shouted, standing so quickly his chair toppled over. “Hear him out—”
“Fuck that,” Gabe snarled, but the low words were nearly drowned by Finn’s chuckle.
The fact that the man chuckled when Gabe was seconds away from crushing his windpipe just made his fingers tighten.
“While we can certainly discuss payment,” Finn wheezed, “I was actually thinking more along the lines of getting you under the Prime Minister’s protection.”
Gabe’s hand relaxed by increments. If looks could kill, Malcolm’s glare would be a bullet, and Michal and Val both looked less than pleased with him, too. With a stormy frown, he stepped back and crossed his arms. “I’m listening.”
Finn grinned and made a show of straightening his pristine shirt. “In the course of my service to Caldien, the Prime Minister became my lover. Pillow talk suggestions tend to go over fairly easy. Though I’m not surprised you don’t know that, given your station.” He cocked his head. “I’ve heard interesting rumors in that regard.”
Gabe had never been one to play the subtle insult game. He sat heavily in one of the chairs at the table.
“Finn,” Malcolm said, rubbing wearily at his eyes. “If you could tell Gabe what you told me, please? I know he’s an ass. We’re working on it.”
“Oh, don’t try to fix it.” Finn flopped in another chair, still grinning. “I like it.”
“Gods dead and dying,” Val muttered.
“Now.” Finn knit his long, pale fingers together and set them on top of a stack of rent records. Nearly every finger wore a ring, the most ostentatious an emerald glinting on his thumb. “Eoin—the Prime Minister—was an ally to King August, but ever since his son took the throne, he’s been… rethinking some things.”
Gabe’s jaw clenched. Malcolm sent him a warning look. “And why is that?”
“Mostly, the new King’s strict attitude about religion.”
“I thought Caldien wasn’t religious?” Michal said. “So why would they care?”
“We aren’t, at least not compared with Auverraine. But that doesn’t mean Eoin isn’t fascinated by the gods,” Finn continued. “He and a handful of others are very invested in… alternative paths, I suppose you could say.”
“So he doesn’t like Apollius,” Gabe said bluntly.
Finn tipped his head. “I wouldn’t say he doesn’t like Him. Just that he’s skeptical, and more interested in the rest of the pantheon. Which the new King in Auverraine doesn’t much appreciate.”
Across the table, Malcolm stared intently at Gabe, as if compelling him to listen closely.
“He’s particularly taken with the elemental gods,” Finn concluded.
Gabe kept his face composed, though his hand twitched. Going further down that path would raise questions he didn’t want to answer; he changed subjects. “And how, exactly, does this information help with our bloodcoat problem?”
“They’re looking for you.” Finn sat back, tapped one of those rings on a watery ink-bloom in a neglected ledger. “Reportedly because you have the same fascination.”
That was one way to put it.
“At this juncture,” Finn continued, “I believe if you asked Eoin for religious asylum, he’d be inclined to give it to you.”
Gabe and Malcolm slid each other calculating looks across the desk. Their entire escape here had been predicated on finding help to stop Apollius, to warn Caldien that Auverraine would invade sooner or later. If they could get an audience with the Prime Minister, warn him while ensuring his protection…
“Why are you helping us?” Val asked, still glowering by the door. “How did you even know we needed help?”
“Like I said, I’ve heard interesting rumors about this one.” Finn gestured to Gabe. “The eye patch and palm tattoos are rather distinctive. He matches a description that should be making its way around town soon, once Auverraine officially puts out warrants for your arrest.”
A frisson of dread coursed around the room, straightening every spine.
“Eoin’s protection would keep you from being extradited,” Finn said. “And it seems you’re going to need it.”
“So what do we do?” Michal’s voice was quiet, his eyes wide. He was no stranger to running away from the law, but the prospect of the law catching up made him sound half strangled. “To get his protection?”
“I can take you there.” Finn shrugged. “Probably only two of you, to be safe.” He gestured to Gabe and then Malcolm. “You two would be sufficient. You could petition for everyone in your party.”
“When?” Gabe asked.
“Let’s say tomorrow night.” Finn stood and stretched, as if all this talking had put an ache in his back. “I’ll knock four times. That’s your signal.” He grinned. “Wear something with a hood.”
Then he left, strolling out the door as if on his way to a party.
They all sat in silence, waiting to hear his footsteps recede. “Well,” Val said. “That’s suspicious. I can’t be the only person who finds that suspicious?”
“You aren’t,” Gabe replied. “But it seems we have little choice. We’ll meet him.”
“And if he’s lying?” Michal asked.
Gabe sighed. “Then at least it’s only two of us. The rest of you, run.”
Michal reached over and grabbed Malcolm’s hand. “I’ll go with you.”
“No, you won’t,” Malcolm said, though he didn’t remove the other man’s hand. “Worst case, it’ll be blackmail. Gabe and I can handle that.”
Gabe’s fingertips warmed. Oh yes, he could handle that.
“If we aren’t back by the next morning,” Malcolm continued, looking to Val, “you, Michal, and Mari take the ship.”
Val’s lips were a bloodless line, but she nodded.
And that was that.
A book sat on the desk, one smuggled to Malcolm from the library at Farramark University. Gabe jerked his chin toward it, eager to change the subject. “Find anything in there?”
“Possibly.” Malcolm waved his hand at the notes. “Something about pieces of the Fount, bringing them back together. Could be something, could be nothing.”
That singed scent was in Gabe’s nostrils again. He eyed Malcolm’s notes, flames flickering at the edges—three pieces, marked with a moon and a sun and elemental carvings. Hidden, the notes said, both in plain sight and in deep places…
“I need a drink,” Malcolm murmured.
Gabe shut the book, closing the notes inside. “On that, we agree. Come on; if there’s one thing this city has, it’s an abundance of taverns.”
CHAPTER THREE
ALIE
Keep your lovers close at hand And your enemies near your heart. —Excerpt from Mother Says by Honora Torlius, Kirythean poet
“They both hold knives. Alie.”
She ignored him. She had gotten very good at ignoring him. Especially when he used her shortened name, as if they were friends. As if this engagement were anything more than a punishment.
“Alienor.”
No. Still ignoring. Even though there was a pleading edge to his voice now, and even though they were in mixed company. Once, she’d cared what this court thought of her. She’d done her best to play her part perfectly. A good daughter, even if she and her father barely spoke. A witty socialite, hosting the best parties for the right people. A loyal friend.
Now she was the fiancée of the Kirythean Emperor, half sister of the Sainted King. Alie didn’t know how to play those parts. She was stumbling around on the same stage without cues or lines.
Jax sat next to her, face expectant and anxious. It still unnerved her, how anxious he always looked when he was trying to engage her in conversation. When he was trying to make it seem like this was real.
It was easier to believe that he was playing a part, just like she was. Alie didn’t want to consider the alternatives. But he was undoubtedly a better actor.
She finally tore her gaze away from her half-full wineglass and focused her attention on the Emperor. He was attractive, unfortunately. Not in the way she usually preferred, rugged and brooding, but in a clean, meticulous way. His blond hair was always tied back just so. His spine was always straight.
“Yes?” Alie said, realizing she’d completely missed whatever it was he wanted her to comment on.
He relaxed, just a bit. Every call and response between them seemed like a game, points kept in a croquet match. “Lady Villiers was wondering if your afternoon walk was disrupted by the high winds today.”
“They were dreadful.” The aforementioned lady shivered theatrically in her seat, making sure the reaction could be seen. The long table in the rose-choked atrium was full of courtiers today, and she was clearly relishing being sat so close to the head. So close to the King.
“It’s been such a nice autumn,” Lady Villiers continued, picking at the roasted pheasant on her plate, “so lovely and warm, I’d forgotten that winter was on the way.” A high, tinkling laugh. “Those winds surely reminded me.”
Alie’s hand tightened around her goblet, so much so that she was sure her engagement ring would shriek against the crystal. It was a pretty, simple thing, a square-cut diamond on a golden band. Too big, so it was always twisting toward her palm. “I suppose I missed them,” she said. “I don’t recall any winds when I took my walk.”
None that were natural, anyway. None that she hadn’t conjured herself. She’d have to be more careful now, since it’d been so unseasonably warm. The deep heat of this past summer had abated, somewhat, but it certainly didn’t feel like fall.
Her eyes flicked toward the head of the table, the man sitting there. Flicked away.
“Well, count yourself lucky,” Lady Villiers breezily replied. “I nearly broke out the furs!”
The surrounding courtiers tittered, louder than necessary so that those at the foot of the table would hear and hopefully think they’d shared an inside joke with the King. Alie didn’t join in. She polished off her wine, ardently wishing for something stronger.
His eyes were on her. She could feel them, the burnished gold of a starving wolf, Bastian’s dark irises banished. If any of the courtiers had noticed the change, they didn’t comment.
Alie had managed not to look at the Sainted King through the entirety of this cursed dinner, but she would have to eventually. Might as well be now.
She looked up. Met those gold eyes. Refused to cower.
Apollius grinned.
The god’s assimilation into Bastian’s place had been seamless, even as He dismantled the citizen payments, as He bought or bullied back the art pieces Bastian had auctioned off to build up the treasury. All the courtiers loved Him again, even those who’d been angry before. He’d stopped trying to change tax laws, stopped trying to change anything.
At least, as far as they knew.
Behind the scenes, the entire Kirythean Empire was slowly being handed over to Him, a bit more power relinquished from Jax day by day. In the usual, pedestrian way: money and paperwork, the way wars were really won once the battles were over. Or if they’d never happened.
The plan was to wait and unveil the Sainted King as the Emperor on the day of Jax and Alie’s wedding, when Jax would essentially become the regent of Auverraine.
Alie, whose royal blood made that possible, wouldn’t get any extra power at all.
But she wasn’t supposed to know any of that. Those were the whispers her winds brought her, on those long afternoon walks when she ranged around the edge of the Citadel green, one hand on the cool stone wall, the fingers of the other twitching as she wound iridescent threads of air.
There’d been an argument between Jax and Apollius today. Probably the reason Jax was focused so much on Alie rather than his King, his god.
“It isn’t time yet,” Jax had said. “I promise You will get the worship You are owed, Holy One. This entire continent will bow to You in Your fullness, not just to effigies. You will direct them to venerate You as You see fit—”
“Yes, I’m aware,” Apollius had hissed, every syllable enunciated. “What I’m telling you, Emperor, is that I am going to tell them who I am now. Not when it’s all over. Not when every country is won.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.” There was no waver in Jax’s voice, and Alie had to give him that: He held tight to his convictions in the face of a god, and that counted for something. Even if those convictions were dead wrong. “You’ll be opening Yourself to assassination—”
Apollius’s laugh hurt Alie’s ears, nearly made her pull back on her threads of wind. “They’d be welcome to try.”
“You are immortal, Holy One. The body You inhabit is not. And though You can heal Yourself, there could come a point when the damage is too great.”
One lie and one truth. Apollius wasn’t immortal, and that was the inconvenient fact that had spawned this whole nightmare.
But Bastian could die, easily.
She couldn’t see the god from her place by the Citadel Wall, but she could imagine His face, the thoughts racing through His silence. “I take your meaning.”
He’d said nothing else, no promises made. But they’d gotten all the way through this dinner without Him standing on the table and declaring His divinity, so Alie supposed Jax’s meaning had, indeed, been taken.
It was risky. She knew that. Not just that she was eavesdropping, but how she was doing it. Right now, it seemed that Apollius didn’t know she’d inherited the power of Lereal, though Alie couldn’t really figure out how that was true—He’d known about the others, somehow. But if Apollius knew about her, He hadn’t yet done anything about it, for reasons Alie couldn’t fathom.
There were rumors in the court about the day Gabe and Malcolm left, how Alie had defended herself with… something. Scraps of elemental magic was the prevailing thought, though none of the courtiers were brave enough to actually ask her about it.
Maybe Apollius thought her betrothal to Jax was more important than an admittedly paltry power, putting her at the bottom of His priority list. The lies He’d concocted about Gabe kidnapping her made it seem likely. That part she’d played for so long came in handy here; Alie was a fixture of the Citadel, and it would take massive effort to make them accept her execution or banishment even if she was proven to have used lost, illegal magic. Especially now that she was an Arceneaux.
However she’d managed to get lucky, it didn’t make her complacent. Apollius had killed Amelia for her god-power; whatever plan had stayed His hand wouldn’t last forever.
But she had to do something, and magic was the only tool at her disposal. Surely, she couldn’t be expected to sit around and attend parties and wait.
So she experimented. Read everything about her god-power and how it might be used that she could find in the books Malcolm had sourced before his hasty departure. Listening on the wind was one thing. There were others she’d tried.
But she was the only one of the five of them using her magic, apparently, so walking in their dreams was proving difficult.
She kept trying, though. Every night for the past two weeks, when they’d been scattered to the corners of the continent.
Maybe the fact that the others weren’t accessing their power should have made her reconsider her own willingness to do so. But, Alie felt, if it would make a difference, she would be selfish not to use it.
“Hopefully the weather will hold for your ceremony, Your Highness.” Another sycophant, Lady Beaumont. She’d tried to seduce Jax on more than one occasion. Alie heard it while she was listening to the wind. Jax had never given in, though Alie wasn’t sure if that was because he didn’t realize he was being propositioned, or from some misguided sense of loyalty to their engagement. “It’s soon, is it not?”
“Two months,” Jax replied. Alie couldn’t parse his tone. He sat up a little straighter, the austere planes of his face unreadable.
“If you choose to wait that long.” Finally, Apollius, butting into the conversation from His place at the head of the table. He leaned forward, speared a potato off Jax’s plate, and popped it in His mouth. “I’ve told Jax that I can move the ceremony up, if he prefers. I know how hard it can be to wait for your bride.” He raised a brow. “Though before her betrayal, My own bride didn’t make Me wait for the perks of matrimony.”
Laughter at the table again, uproarious this time. A blush heated Alie’s cheeks. One would think that a jilted husband wouldn’t want to dwell on his absent wife, but Apollius brought up Lore—and Nyxara, in subtle ways that only Alie would understand—every chance He got.
It annoyed the new lovers He’d taken. Alie heard that on the wind, too. Everyone Apollius had brought to bed dreamed of taking Lore’s place, but He wasn’t looking for a new consort. There was only one person He would deign to share a throne with, and She was locked in Lore’s head in the Burnt Isles.
Color stained Jax’s pale cheeks. “I am content to wait as long as I need to,” he said stiffly.
Apollius waved a dismissive hand. “Where’s that indomitable spirit I heard so much about, Jax? I’d think a man who built an Empire would have no problem changing situations to take what he wanted.”
More laughter, though some gave Alie slantwise looks, those married to powerful nobles. They were familiar with being treated like objects, art pieces to be moved and gazed upon and owned.
That was another reason she used her magic. All her life, she’d seen what happened to the powerless.
“Land and people are very different matters.” Jax’s voice was low. There was a gleam in his eye, almost dangerous. “I find that patience is rewarding.”
Alie clenched her fists beneath the table.
Golden eyes narrowed, as if Apollius wanted to stoke the flames of the latent fight she’d overheard. But He shrugged instead, sat back. “I suppose I’m used to indulging My impatience. Terrible habit.”
“Who would make you wait, Bastian?” Beaumont smiled, only the glint in her eyes showing her nerves at using the Sainted King’s given name. It still jarred Alie to hear it, knowing Bastian was long gone. “I’m sure you’ve never had to wait for anything.”
Apollius grinned with Bastian’s mouth. He’d only slept with Beaumont once, a fact she lamented at her weekly tea with her friends. Alie had stopped listening in on those; it upset her too much to think of Apollius using Bastian’s body like that.
“Not often,” He said. “And when I do, it’s always worth it.”
Something low in His voice, contemplative. Alie stared at her empty plate.
“So I suppose I agree with you, Jax,” the god said. “Some things are worth the wait.”
No change in Jax’s expression, but the tension in his body dissipated.
“I grow tired.” Apollius stood and stretched His arms over His head. “Go to your chambers, all of you.”
And with that, dinner was dismissed.
The courtiers tried to linger, some from the end of the table coming closer to where Apollius had sat, hoping to catch Him in conversation. But the Sainted King was already out the door, headed to His own chamber.
Outside the window, the sky darkened.
It gave Alie the smallest spark of hope. Apollius didn’t seem to fade fully away at night—at least, He hadn’t at first. Alie had listened, carefully manipulating threads of air from her own apartments, tapping at the door of the Sainted King’s suite for clues. Nothing interesting, other than sounds of the King enjoying Himself with whomever He’d summoned that evening. That was enough to tell Alie it wasn’t Bastian. Bastian would never, not anymore.
But the past few nights, Alie had heard crashing. Cursing. The sounds of a brawl, but with only one physical participant.
“Jax.” Apollius turned around in the doorframe. There were circles beneath His eyes, as if He’d grown exhausted in the thirty seconds since standing up. “Come to My apartments when you can. We have things to discuss.”
Jax’s mouth thinned. He nodded.
Hope, that tiny spark flaring in Alie’s chest.
Alie stood from the table and went to the door without saying goodbye to anyone. Her part was played for the evening; she had no further energy to expend.
“Alie, wait.” Her fiancé caught up with her, holding out his elbow.
She looked at it as if he were offering her an insect. She said nothing.
With a sigh, Jax dropped his arm. The only time she ever saw him look anything but completely self-possessed was in moments like these, when he tried to act like her betrothed and there was no incentive for her to match his performance. It almost made her think that, for him, it wasn’t all a farce.
That was a dangerous line of thought.
“May I walk you to your apartments?” he asked, stiff and formal.
And there were enough people still in the atrium that it would look odd if she refused.
“Yes,” she said.
He smiled at her. Just the barest corner of one.
Jax didn’t offer his arm again, instead ambling beside her as Alie made her way out of the atrium and toward the turret stairs. They walked in silence, and while it wasn’t exactly comfortable, it didn’t make Alie feel like she was on the verge of a full-blown panic, either. Small mercies.
But when they reached her door, Jax reached out and touched her arm. Anxiety bloomed just below her breastbone, her stomach hollowing.
“Alie, I…” It was strange to see him lost for words. Jax stopped touching her, as if suddenly aware that it wasn’t welcome, and tucked his hands behind his back. “I understand that our circumstances are not ideal.”
“That,” she said primly, “is an understatement.”
He lifted a shoulder and let it fall, conceding. “But I truly want to have a partnership,” he continued. He didn’t meet her eye, instead looking at the pothos vine curling over her door. That nervousness, again, making him strangely vulnerable. “I want us to be friends. I wouldn’t presume to ask for anything more, but I hope we can cultivate that.”
“A friend wouldn’t lie,” Alie said. “A friend wouldn’t chase all of my other, true friends out of the damn country. A friend wouldn’t use me for power.” She looked up at him, resolutely set her chin. “I don’t know you, Jax Andronicus. And I do not care to.”
She stepped into her room without looking at him and closed the door. She didn’t need to tap into air threads to hear his sigh or the soft pad of his boots down the corridor.
Alie slumped once she was alone in the dark, blowing out a harsh breath and making one white curl flutter on her forehead. She stripped out of her gown and left it on the floor, collapsing on the unmade bed in her chemise.
She had things to do.
It was easy to fall asleep. Alie had never been someone who struggled with it; her body let her rest without much fanfare. But this kind of dreaming took precision, keeping a handle on her mind even as it slipped into sleep. She’d perfected the technique with the same determination she’d used to hone her croquet swing and the steps of a complicated minuet. There was no skill she could not acquire, given proper time.
An island. That’s where this kind of dreaming took her. A beach, white sand beneath her feet, cliffs at her back, and foaming blue water before her, meeting the equally blue sky in a blurred horizon line. The beach was silent, even the waves soundless.
There was no one here. That didn’t surprise her. There never was. According to the books, dreamwalking could be done by any two people with power from the Fount, and the more you had, the easier it was. But Alie assumed that in order to truly dreamwalk, you had to be using that power.
And she was, apparently, the only one foolish enough for that.
Something flickered in the corner of her eye. Short and softly curved, long brown-gold hair, the runnels of a new scar.
Alie shot to her feet. “Lore?”
And there she was, just for a moment. Long enough to turn and look at her, long enough for her eyes to go wide.
But then she vanished, and Alie was all alone on the beach again.
Banished to the Burnt Isles, Lore must use every skill she earned on the streets of Dellaire to survive the prison colony and figure out a way to defeat the power that’s captured everything and everyone she holds dear. When a surprise ally joins her on the Burnt Isles she realizes the way forward may lie on the island itself. Somehow, her friends must help her collect the far-scattered pieces of the broken Fount—the source of all the god’s powers—and bring them back together on the Burnt Isles, returning all magic to its source and destroying, once and for all, the gods corrupting the land. But as Lore gets closer to her goal, her magic grows stronger… and to a woman who’s always had to fight for survival, that kind of power may be hard to give up. 
Lore has failed. She couldn’t save King Bastian from the rotten god speaking voices in his mind. She couldn’t save her allies from being scattered across the continent—their own lesser gods whispering to them in their dreams. She couldn’t save her beautiful, corrupt city from the dark power beneath the catacombs. And she couldn’t save herself.
