Outside, dew-soaked blossoms dotted the trees and shrubs, and the grass was soft enough to sleep on. Raum drew an oddly wide berth around a creek. I longed for the water, and my dirty skin mourned as we strode past.
Vines wrapped around crumbling bricks and pillars tucked behind the leaves. I drew in a sharp breath when we approached because seated on stones was the Nightrender.
Except he was no longer hidden beneath a cowl. I saw his face plainly.
″Elof?” This wasn’t right. I saw the Nightrender. I’d worked beside Elof. It . . . it couldn’t be.
″Dännisk.” Elof’s pale eyes took me in, but his smile had nothing kind about it now.
″Y-You’re . . .” Bleeding gods, I was a stammering fool.
″Yes,” he finished for me. “I might’ve hidden a few things. I’m a rather private person, after all.”
Elof leaned back against the stones. A chill gathered in the air, like a north wind picked up and carved through my flesh to my bones. With a simple wave of his hand in front of his face the shadow of Prince Fell melted away.
Skin shifted. His hair lengthened into dark waves with a few small, scattered braids decorated in black beads. His patchy beard slimmed into a stubbled chin of the man I saw last night. Runes and lines painted his face, but the most unnerving of the changes were his eyes. The striking blue was now black, glossy ink.
I’d met folk with dark eyes before, but these weren’t typical black. An illusion over his features, no doubt.
″Clever trick, don’t you think?” Tova whispered.
No. Nothing was clever. I didn’t understand. I hated how his face reminded me more of Kase than Prince Fell. The whole revelation left my stomach sour.
My palms pressed to the sides of my head. “All this time, you’ve . . . been an illusion?”
I said it more to myself, but Elof—the Nightrender—responded, his voice a new, deep rasp. “Illusions can be quite useful. Seems folk trust Elof more than—” He paused, then grinned with a touch of smugness. “Me.”
Damn the gods. Curse the Kryv. For months—nearly a bleeding turn—they’d been in my life, plotting and scheming. My head reeled through all those times on Strom land I’d taunted the Nightrender.
My mind could not accept that the man who’d pulled me away from the skydguard at House Strom was a villain. A thief. A killer.
He’d been angry I’d stepped in his way to take Hagen.
So, why was I alive?
My eyes lifted to those pitch holes in his face. He must be a wicked sort of Hypnotik.
″Perfect,” Raum said with an arrogant applause. “Marvelous. Exactly the reaction I’d hoped to see. I love a good reveal.”
He elbowed Vali in the ribs until his fellow Kryv broke a half smile.
Behind the boulders the second child, the little drummer girl, peeked out. She had two braids hanging over her skinny shoulders, and watched me with big, seafoam eyes.
The young Kryv who’d counted the knives skipped up to the Nightrender’s side. After a moment, the girl made deliberate gestures with her fingers. The boy watched without blinking, then nodded.
She never said a word, but she and the boy were clearly speaking.
Under the silent, unyielding scrutiny of the Nightrender, I cautiously tallied the Kryv with sly movements of my head. They’d duped me. Known me from the start. Been hiding in plain sight, and I was the fool who sought them out.
The Nightrender, disguised as Elof, had pulled me into their world. He made no mistake by mentioning the Kryv. He’d wanted me here, and I was determined to find out why. I wouldn’t fall for their tricks again.
The more I knew who to watch for, the safer I’d be.
To the left, Fiske settled against a tree trunk. Isak rested his head over his lap and glared at me as if I were a flea on his skin. Lynx stood near a lean Kryv with golden hair and pink, grisly scars on his arms. The scarred Kryv drank from a flacon and wore a timid smile, but when he caught my stare, he narrowed his eyes.
Hells he looked familiar.
The Nightrender cocked his head as I kneeled on the damp grass. He wasn’t the sort of man who’d think twice about snapping my neck, so it was a personal betrayal when I acknowledged the strong shape of his new jawline, and how the black in his eyes suited, oddly enough.
He resembled a boy I once loved, so his face was not unworthy to look upon.
The Nightrender leaned over his knees, eyes narrowed. I waited for him to speak, but he seemed content to study me without a word.
″What?” I finally asked when the quiet became unbearable.
“Already this plan of yours has put us in battle with the skydguard.”
What was I supposed to say? It was not as if I’d intended to be surrounded by Black Palace guards. I fought the urge to retort. The Guild of Kryv had warned me of the risks, the bleeding Nightrender ought to know when the Masque av Aska was involved, skydguard would be a constant nuisance.
″Oh, let’s talk of the skyds later.” Tova clapped her hands. “Shall we introduce them?”
With one hand she yanked on the scarred Kryv’s arm. He recoiled slightly, jaw tight, but followed her to my side.
The Nightrender shrugged. “A decision I leave to Gunnar.”
I looked at the fleshy scars. Made by a lash, no doubt. I had witnessed similar marks on runaway serfs in town. He was hardly a man. No more than seventeen, maybe eighteen. I squinted at him, trying to place him. “Do I know you?”
He hesitated. “My name is Gunnar Strom.”
Raum laughed, shaking Vali’s shoulders. “Reveals, my friend. Reveals. One more to go.”
″S-Strom?” My voice cracked. I did recognize the Kryv. But for a few darker features he was the exact image of Hagen.
″As we told you,” the Nightrender said, “your brother has a family. Meet one of them.”
I blinked my stun to Gunnar. “Hagen is your father?”
″Yes,” Gunnar said. “I came from the North and became a Kryv to find him for my mother and my sister.”
″Sister.” I closed my eyes. Damn you, Hagen. “Why would he never mention you?”
″I don’t know. Likely because our lives were not simple or safe in the north.”
″Nephew of a rebel king,” Tova whispered to me, mouthing a prince as she jabbed her thumb at Gunnar.
She closed her eyes and gave me a little nod as if she’d cleared up all confusion.
″Your brother has mighty connections, that’s all you need to know,” the Nightrender said. “We have other things to discuss. What more do you have for us?”
″I don’t understand.” My head was still reeling over the face of my brother on a Kryv.
″You’d said there would be memories. Where are they?”
I cleared my throat. “In the basket . . . I dropped it.”
″No, I snagged it,” Tova said. “And the penge you hid in that satchel of yours.”
My mouth parted. “That was mine.”
The Nightrender clicked his tongue. “Consider it a bonus payment for our assistance in saving your neck.”
Bleeding gods. I had nothing now. No memories. No penge. They owned me.
″Remember, only I can make them valuable,” I hurried to say, “so don’t get any ideas of slitting my throat. Without me they’ll be worthless to you.”
The Nightrender regarded me with a hint of wicked amusement. “Someone knows how to make a deal. What are in these memories?”
He saw my mesmer, there was no point hiding it now. “Last thoughts of high-ranking folk from the Masque av Aska. There are plenty of secrets in their final moments.”
The Nightrender slouched against the stones. “Good. Fair payment for a near impossible plan.”
″It is impossible,” Vali grumbled for the first time. “No one steals from the masquerade. Especially not an Alver. Apologies, Gunnar, I know this matters, but you must know—it’s never been done.”
″And no one barters to join the Nightrender in his den,” I insisted. “And yet, here I am.”
Vali’s face twisted into something between a grimace and a snarl.
The Nightrender rose from the stones and stood in front of me. Up close, the surface of his eyes was like dark smoke. The way he tilted his head, I guessed he was deciding the best place to stick me with the sword hanging from his waist.
Once a cave bear ventured down from the Northern Cliffs, killed some of our mares, and frightened our staff half to death. After, Ansel taught me how to face a beast with a lifted chin and confidence, all to seem bigger. The Nightrender was a kind of beast, so I fought the urge to turn away. “I made a legitimate deal. One, after learning my brother’s son is among you, I have no doubt I did not need to make. You would’ve continued going after my brother.”
The Nightrender only grinned like he enjoyed hearing me unravel his deception and trickery.
″Even still,” I went on, “I expect it to be seen through, and to be part of it. Or are these not the Kryv everyone speaks of with such fear and reverence?”
His mouth twitched in one corner. “Making demands will get your tongue cut from your head.”
I believed him.
He lowered to one knee, slid his blacksteel blade from its sheath, and used the edge to lift my chin. I stiffened and looked straight ahead when his fingers caressed the curve of my neck and down my throat. The Nightrender pulled out the yarn with the wooden raven on the end.
For half a breath he rubbed his thumb over the surface, lost somewhere in his thoughts.
“Thieving from the masquerade is impossible,” he said. “To anyone but us.”
“Then why are we hiding away instead of facing it now?” I bit the inside of my cheek. My temper would not serve me well here.
“Hiding?” The Nightrender locked me in his black stare. “Who said anything about hiding? We have a meet tonight. Yes, while you were sleeping it off in a cart, we were working. We keep our deals.”
The Nightrender cracked his neck side to side, allowed the raven to fall from his grip, and returned his sword to the sheath. “Tell me why you’ve hunted the masque, dännisk.”
He didn’t deserve to know, but a man like him had ways of finding out whatever he wanted. “Because I lost someone I loved at the masque before.”
″The masque draws many crowds,” he said. “A good place for accidents to happen.”
″This was no accident. Children do not just disappear as though they never existed.” I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath in through my nose. “I know if we find the Masque av Aska trade, we’ll find Hagen.”
″And the playmate you lost?”
″I never said we were playmates.”
″An assumption.”
Raum paced near the Nightrender’s stone seat, but I didn’t think it was from nerves, more he simply enjoyed moving. Any frustration he had with me was gone. “When are we going to talk about her tricky kiss?”
Vali grimaced. “What?”
″I need breath for memories,” I insisted. “I do not do it for pleasure.”
″Tell me everything you know about your mesmer,” the Nightrender said.
″You saw—”
″But what do you know?” he interrupted. “Information and knowledge is valuable.”
″When . . . when I take memories, I leave only bits and pieces behind, but that is in those who are living. The dead, I only get the final memory.”
Raum balked. “You could call it a kiss of death.”
A few taunting chuckles slammed into my back from the Guild of Kryv.
Feverish heat gathered in my face. I gritted my teeth, uncertain how they’d react to my methods. “I have a few standing deals with a crewman on the grave barge, so whenever there is a death from the festival, I buy a little finger, then take the memory from the crushed bone.”
The lawn was silent. I yearned for the earth to swallow me whole.
Raum cleared his throat. “And, uh, what exactly do you do with that crushed bone?”
″She eats it,” the Nightrender answered for me. “Right?”
″I prefer to say breathe it in. The final breath lives in the bones of the dead.” I had no reason to be ashamed of my mesmer, yet under his stare I was. “The dead go to the Otherworld with secrets, and I can choke down a bit of bone for such a potential deal. Through them, I’ve learned there is more to the Masque av Aska than a mere festival. Don’t tell me you haven’t done worse.”
The Nightrender flashed his cruel grin. “No one here said we hadn’t.”
″Daj said she was powerful,” Gunnar whispered to Lynx. I still heard, and I didn’t think he cared.
The Nightrender circled me. “Is that all you can do?”
″What else is there? I’ve only read of Anomalies, but there aren’t many memory workers to study.”
″I’ve no doubt there is more you can do than steal memories and deliver them through gentle kisses. I’m sure you could cause a bit of pain somewhere along the line.”
Of course, a man as him would hope I could be cruel. What would I become with the Kryv? What was I willing to become to save Hagen?
One heartbeat was all it took to decide I’d be anything I needed to be.
The Nightrender held a karambit knife with a finger hole in the hilt; I never saw him reach for a weapon. The curved blade was blacker than his soul, and he spun the steel through a slew of tricky maneuvers.
Why were we even here discussing my mesmer when we ought to be planning our next move? I was exhausted from the night and irritated the guild still behaved as though they weren’t going to help me.
As the Nightrender spun his knife, I reached out and caught his wrist when the knifepoint was aimed at the sky. He was stronger, and I didn’t angle his wrist correctly. With a few lithe movements he could have the blade carving my innards.
Those inky eyes narrowed as he glanced to where my hand held his, as if the stun of being touched stopped him more than the pressure.
″I am done talking about this,” I said, low and raw. “I want to know the plan on how I get my brother back. We’ve both suffered long enough, and I will see to it his ends now.”
The Nightrender drew his face close; heat radiated off his skin. All at once it was as though no one existed but me and him. “You think you know suffering? Why? Because your stepfather ignored you? Put you in the hayloft? What do you know? Nothing.”
Each word ripped from the back of his throat.
For a moment I forgot I challenged the Nightrender. “You do not know how far I will go to protect the people I love. Even against the likes of you.”
The black of his eyes pooled with what I took as hate. “You’d be surprised the things I know.”
″Now. It’s now,” Raum hissed, shaking out his hands, grinning that foolish grin at Vali again.
The Nightrender closed his eyes in an extended blink. When he opened them again, the shadows were gone. His face had gone unaltered, but his eyes were golden like the morning sun.
″I know a great many things about you, Malin.”
My lip trembled. I was enraged, breathless, certainly very confused. Tears I reserved for the memories of what was lost dripped over my lashes. I blinked them away to see, to be certain this was real. His bright, unforgettable eyes were things I’d not seen since childhood.
And they hated me now.
My voice came as a breath, hardly there before it was gone. “Kase?”
