KANE

AFTER THE WORST SLEEP OF my life—filled with the most lurid, debased dreams—we left bright and early for the bookmaker. As we’d

dressed, I could hardly look at Arwen through the haze of my own shame and pent-up need.

By the time we stalked down a charming avenue on our way to Oleander’s home, I’d shaken off at least some of my mind-bending desire. We had an important day ahead of us, and I couldn’t spend it fantasizing about Arwen’s breathy moans.

Mainspring, the neighborhood we’d been staying in, was a hub for serious intellectuals and unsociable fine craftsmen. The cobbled street was lined with still, moody townhomes and luxurious, manicured hedges, most of which sealed the houses off completely from prying eyes such as ours.

“I expected the streets to be filled with artists’ cottages and expensive bookstores,” Mari said. “This is a little dreary.”

Arwen nodded. “And too quiet.” Her long dark hair had been pulled back with an onyx ribbon and it swirled in the sharp wind. “Where is everybody?”

They were right. Despite the sunny winter’s day, the winding street was silent and bare of horses and carriages. Bare of any people at all.

“They’re working. Mainspring is the quarter reserved for those dedicated to the craft and nothing else.”

“And those successful enough to own land here,” Griffin added.

Arwen observed one of the painterly cream-white homes with its fine black detailing and picket fence. “Crafts like portraits? Sculpting?”

I shook my head. “The sculptors and artists live in a more boisterous region of Revue, where there’s far more wine and women. These residents build clever mechanisms. They write dissertations and spend hours poring over philosophical texts.”

“So this historian and ledger-maker is someone quite serious.” “Oleander crafts the finest tomes in Evendell,” Mari said to her. “Dagan

has a few of his original works back in the Shadowhold library.”

“I actually sent a noble of mine here years ago to offer him a stay in Willowridge.” I’d hoped the old man might bring some of his impressive young apprentices and peers. Willowridge had a bounty of artists and restaurateurs, poets and novelists…I thought Oleander might fit in nicely and help to draw more like him to the capital.

“But?”

I shrugged. “He refused. I never found out why.”

I’d sent Lady Kleio, one of my most persuasive dignitaries. She’d returned with little more than a regretful shake of her head, and for whatever reason—perhaps I’d been distracted with the ancient Blade that had just disappeared from my vault at the time—I’d never pressed the issue. As we neared the elderly man’s home, it occurred to me how lonely living in Mainspring must’ve been. These men and women, working on their novels or machinery day in and day out. And I thought then how close I’d come to a similarly solitary existence—revenge my sole craft. Stealing me away from any meaningful human contact, bringing out the most

brutish, selfish parts of me.

I reached for Arwen’s hand and she laced her fingers between mine contentedly.

Oleander’s house was a little weather-beaten and could have used a fresh coat of oxblood paint. The two-story manor was still affluent, and the wrought-iron fence and oil lamps glinted in the stark sunlight.

Griffin led the way. The ornate knocker rang out into the garden, and we waited.

Water trickled from a stone fountain. A breeze rustled Arwen’s lengthy hair. Mari fidgeted with her spinach-colored velvet cloak. “Maybe he isn’t home.”

Griffin frowned before tramping off the stone path into the grass spotted with patches of snow like a speckled egg. He leaned against one of the bowed windows.

“There’s a fire still crackling inside.”

Worry flickered in Arwen’s bright olive eyes. “How long until we’re expected to meet with the Scarlet Queen?”

There was no clock tower for miles, but the sun had anchored itself in the middle of the clear blue sky. “A few hours at most.”

Not enough time to come up with another plan. And my father would have his lighte reserves back soon—we couldn’t postpone.

My heart had begun to thud. I drew a hand down my face in frustration.

Nothing was easy. Nothing.

“What if someone got to him first?” Mari posed. “Found out about our plan?”

The thought of yet another betrayal…after Aleksander, Amelia…I didn’t allow myself to touch that rage.

“There’s no evidence of a struggle.” Griffin’s nose hovered against the bookmaker’s window.

Without another word I moved past Arwen, Mari, and my commander and slammed the heel of my boot into the dark red door. Tendrils of smoke black as oblivion spun from my foot. The hinges of the door swung open so violently it nearly wrenched clean off.

I stalked through the warm foyer and away from the sound of Mari’s squeaks.

Griffin had been right. The fireplace in the sitting room was crackling and full of life, oil lamps were hot and candles still burning. But the vaguely cluttered house was too quiet and I followed an instinct past the

grand staircase and that cozy sitting room and deeper into the bowels of the home.

In the darkly tiled kitchen, a fresh kettle curled steam into the air. I made a left and my boots echoed down a hallway dotted with doors. Between them hung ornate gold-and-silver-framed glass casings with leather-bound history books on display. Fine embossing, edges sprayed with paint—work that could only have belonged to the missing bookmaker.

The doors of the hallway were all cracked open to various degrees. A peek into a spare bedroom. A sliver of a porcelain tub. Only one door was closed fully.

I yanked it open and strolled inside.

Oleander’s craft room was a battlefield—hides of leather from every animal I could name, white-bone tools for folding and pressing those skins into submission. A wooden tray of awls and rulers, brushes of every size, a massive sewing frame in one corner and a stained canvas smock tossed hastily over a well-worn desk in the other.

Griffin slunk into the room behind me, Mari and Arwen surely not far behind. “If he made it like he agreed to—”

I finished the thought for him. “Then it’s in here somewhere.”

My hand reached for the first tome I saw—one with a tan leather binding similar to the ledger from Reaper’s Cavern—and closed around nothing but air as an old man’s voice bit across the disorderly room.

“Do not lay a single oily finger on that.” Griffin growled before I’d even spun.

When my eyes found Oleander, hobbled and gangly as he was, I snarled, too. His crafting knife was held to Mari’s trembling throat.

“Not a finger,” he repeated. I moved for them—

And stopped myself. Likely for the same reason Mari hadn’t spelled him into an early grave. If we killed the old man, we’d never find the decoy ledger. Griffin must have come to the same conclusion, because for all the power shared between us, nobody had used an ounce of it.

Where was Arwen?

“Let the girl go,” I said once in warning. “We aren’t here to steal anything, nor to harm you.”

The man only pressed the knife closer to Mari’s neck, and Griffin took one intent step forward. I’d never expected the day it would be his fury I’d have to concern myself with. I lowered my brows in strict warning.

“I know who you are, King Ravenwood,” Oleander said. “I know what you seek. And I request you leave my home, this instant.” The old man was trembling. So much so, the knife he’d pressed to Mari’s throat was at risk of severing her flesh unintentionally.

“I won’t ask you again,” I cautioned. “Let her go, or I will be forced to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.”

“Listen to him,” Mari urged, voice quieter than I’d ever heard. “He—” “Out! Out of my house!” Spittle flew from the old man’s cracked lips

and Mari flinched and that knife—it shifted just a bit too close for Griffin’s liking. Oleander was given no further notice as an arc of ruthless, glossy lighte snapped across the room and straight for the wrinkles in the old man’s head.

No, no, fuck—

Griffin’s lighte sputtered on impact. But not against the man’s flesh. No, it was a shimmering, iridescent orb of lighte that his power smacked.

Arwen’s shield.

Mari stumbled away from the deranged bookmaker and his knife as Arwen pushed through the doorway, panting. She snapped at Griffin. “What were you thinking?”

But my commander had already crossed the room to Mari and was brushing her hair from her face and checking her neck for any damage. Mari gasped in heaves as he assessed her. Oleander shook with fear, trapped inside Arwen’s bubble of lighte.

“Bring him here,” I said calmly, pointing to the craftsman’s chair. We had to play this very carefully.

Arwen did as I instructed, dragging a protesting Oleander to his desk in her luminous bubble of lighte. She deposited him in his seat and burst the orb around him.

“You’re crazy, you’re…witches!” he muttered, eyes wild, lunging from the seat.

I seized the old man by his shirtsleeve and tossed him back into the wooden chair easily, allowing twin wisps of my power to tether his arms and legs. They coiled, spindly and black, around the horrified man.

“Where were you?” I murmured to Arwen as the old man writhed and swore at us.

“Looking for you all. Mari and I got separated and then I heard the scuffle…”

We both looked back at Mari, still rubbing her neck. And then to Griffin, from his spot close beside her. Studying us—my stone-faced commander showed no remorse.

Disappointment soured my expression. He’d acted on impulse, and nearly killed the old man—the only one who could retrieve the false ledger for us.

“Take her outside,” I ordered him.

Not my friend, in that moment. Not my family. My commander. “But—”

“Now.”

Griffin frowned, but did as he was told. I drew in a steadying breath as both his and Mari’s footsteps sounded down the hallway.

“We’re here for the replicated ledger that was ordered days ago,” I said to Oleander, who had at least exhausted himself enough to halt his unflattering squirming. His nose was indented where spectacles usually sat. The wiry white hairs in his ears and nose long and unkempt. “The one with the false names.”

“I know that,” he spat.

Arwen’s brows creased. “You do?”

“I told your king here I knew what you sought. And that I’d never give it to any of you.”

“So you did craft it?”

“I never would have, if I’d known it was for him. The demon king of Onyx.” Oleander spat at my shoes, some white froth dribbling down his

chin.

Arwen sucked in a gasp.

My eyes fell to my dark boots, speckled with saliva, and my lips curved.

I guess I knew now why he’d refused to relocate to Willowridge.

“What has he ever done to you?” Arwen’s voice held more offense than I felt. Her ire on my behalf was quite endearing. But I’d had many lifetimes of people who barely knew me despising me regardless. Arwen herself had once looked at me that way.

“What kind of question is that? He’s slaughtered good men,” the old man spat, hatred in his eyes. “Sacked my lands. Raped and pillaged.”

Sacked his lands…I’d left all of Evendell alone since I came to the continent. Frankly, it was self-serving—I didn’t need anyone knowing too much about me, or putting together how slowly I aged. I’d only gone to war with Amber when they’d aligned with my father. And I’d certainly not sacked any Garnet land, even when they joined Amber’s forces. They were a mighty kingdom with a mercenary army and armada. But…I raised a brow. “You’re from Amber?”

Oleander’s glare confirmed my suspicion.

Arwen’s jaw slackened. The smell of leather and glue filled my nostrils as I attempted a steadying inhale.

“I am not a man of much patience, Oleander. I’ll give you one opportunity to tell us where the replica is. My procurer paid you handsomely for it, and I’d like what’s mine.”

“The procurer I spoke with said it was for a book-making museum in the Pearl Mountains.”

“Yes.” I lowered my brow at him. “I’m sure you can imagine that was by design.”

“You pompous ass,” Oleander swore. “You aren’t listening. I won’t let my work be purchased by a man who destroyed my homeland. Kill me, if you must, but you aren’t getting the ledger.”

“Well, aren’t you a saint?” I drawled, though my blood was beginning to simmer. “Last chance.”

“Sir,” Arwen pleaded. “I, too, am from Amber. I grew up in Abbington, a small town just outside of Rookvale. I never thought I’d align myself with King Ravenwood, either. In fact, I was raised to hate him. But trust me when I say he is not who he’s been made out to be.”

But the bookmaker only sneered at her and I ground my teeth nearly to dust. “Aren’t I, though?”

Arwen’s eyes slid to mine in warning. “Kane—”

Stretching my palm out to the desk beside him, all three sets of our eyes fell to the rows of paints there. Mauves and plums and mustard seed. They became dust in the air in a scattering of pitch-black night.

“No,” the historian uttered in horror. “Kill me. Do not punish the work.

This is all…It’s all I have in the world.”

I cracked my neck, lighte accelerating down my limbs. I spread my palms against the cluttered space in a show of violent power. Tendrils of shadow and diabolical thorns danced around my palms. “Then this will be quite unpleasant for you.”

“Kane—” Arwen snapped.

Oleander’s pale eyes cut around the room in dismay. The sewing frame. The rows of half-stitched books. The stained smock. Back to the sewing frame again…His life’s work. His entire existence. Everything that made him—here in this room, and soon to be annihilated.

He opened his mouth in anguish. Then closed it again, trying, fighting, straining to come up with something that might save his precious, irreplaceable work.

Arwen stepped closer and murmured, “Please, don’t do something you can’t take back.”

But I’d already gotten what I’d needed. I crossed the room toward the sewing frame and heaved it off the counter.

Underneath sat the tan ledger. Same golden embossed font as Niclas’s. Same printed “Southern Legion” across the front. Same pages and pages of names.

Except these ones weren’t real. Arwen took a step back. “How…”

“Thank you,” I said when I faced Oleander once more. With a flick of my wrist, his dark shackles misted.

He palmed his wrists and feet, thin lips clamped together in thinly veiled wrath. “Leave my home.”

“Of course.”

We walked out of the house into the cold, clear day and toward Griffin and Mari.

“You’re just going to leave him?” Arwen asked. “He’ll go straight to Ethera.”

“No,” I said coolly, brushing my hair back from my face. “He won’t.”

Not only had I spent centuries learning what terror could do to keep a man in check, but he was also an Amber Kingdom loyalist. A man who sided with the impoverished south that was so morally and visually similar

—and so geographically close—to his homeland. He hated me, but only as much as he likely hated the Scarlet Queen.

“You didn’t have to threaten the man,” Arwen huffed as her arms tightened around the ledger. “I could have gotten it out of him. I’m from Amber. I have empathy. That can be an incredibly powerful motivator.”

The winding street went on and on. Stark in some places under the unfiltered sunlight, but shadowed in others, lorded over by the looming faces of the vast, silent homes.

“As can fear,” I replied.