Lenore Coldriver knelt to light a candle on Saint Eskala’s altar. All around the room, red and green glass cupped tenuous flickering lights. Candles for prayers, for wishes, for desperate dreams. She would never be like those people who lit their candles and went back to their everyday lives. Nor would Emrhys. Not even the soldier in black had a chance of blending in, of being one of the many.
She bowed her head and mouthed the words of the Prayer of Eskala, the patron saint of boons, subtlety, and getting the upper hand in impossible situations. It was a tricky prayer, too, asking that all who speak it may know what they deserve. Her father had always said to show one face to the world and hide one’s true visage. To protect one’s wiles behind comely smiles.
Lenore stood again and gazed around her. She was apparently not dangerous enough to send to Stonechasm, and not clever enough to have been any part of the mess that landed Emrhys where she was now. It was punishment all the same, and an insurance policy to bind her to a life of service. This priory was Lenore’s prison. She also knew that she was the lucky one. That it could have been far worse.
Emrhys must endure Stonechasm, and I’m here, out of her reach. I won’t remain here for long, though. I’ll get her out. They sent him to watch me and will send him to kill me. He will be how I help us all.
She understood now. She knew what she had to do.
Lenore sighed, slipping her chilled hands into her pockets. Something rasped against her gloved fingers, Emrhys’ most recent letter. Lenore slid the paper from her pocket, fastidiously folded as Emrhys always did. The pathos of it all upset Lenore, the coarse paper and blunt pencil smudging Emrhys’ normally precise script. The unfocused wordiness, the sense of reason slipping, fading from her normally calm and logical sister.
Something had to be done.
There was one unexpected development that gave her hope. Emrhys spoke of Sevens almost as if she favored him. Admired him. That was an unexpected turn of events, and perhaps the best news of all. The way things were going, Emrhys needed a loyal and capable friend, and Sevens was as loyal as they came.
Lenore stood in a swish of Priory robes.
You’ll work this to your advantage, Lenore. You always do.
She dropped the letter into the fire burning low at the foot of Saint Eskala’s image—a purifying fire in which transgressors could burn away their ill intentions toward others, their pain reduced to ash for the silent Sisters to brush away each morning.
Lenore watched until Emrhys’ words ceased to exist, then bowed and left the chapel, humming to herself.
—
“Highguard Sevens?” Madame Felsin said as she stepped into the garrison’s lone receiving room, expression hard.
“Yes, Ma’am?”
“Half an hour remains.” The woman did not salute. She was no soldier. Just that awful leymage who had threatened Emrhys in front of him. Just a toady for General Acton, and assuredly not acting on the Dominar’s orders. If Her Eminence were to discover their treachery, she would execute both. Maybe it was time she found out.
“Understood.” Corvus sat back down, glancing at the four fingers of special reserve whiskey waiting for him on the side table. Rare reward, though any of them knew the liquor would not affect him. Nothing affected him.
Until now.
Corvus thought of Emrhys in her cell, perched on the edge of her bed, scribbling notes and letters or watching him by turns, waiting for him to speak to her over the maddening noise of the wards. Those wards were breaking him, too. Twisted leymagic that, because of what he now knew that he was, hurt him. Yesterday, Lenore had told him more about what she and Emrhys were.
Corvus reached into his coat, taking out a folded sheet of parchment. He remembered how Emrhys’ fingers had shaken as she wrote the letter he now held, reverent and delicate, in his own hands. How those same fingers had felt skimming his cheek or pressed to his lips. The sensation was intoxicating, burned in his memory like a firebrand. This was to be her last letter, and he knew he was about to deliver it this very night to Lenore before killing her.
This was to be the end of everything.
Corvus imagined how Emrhys’ fingers would feel curled against his when he dragged her out of Stonechasm. He recalled how she had looked at him earlier—the moment he suspected what it was he felt for her. She had never dropped her gaze, watching him with curiosity, concern and something else. He did not have the words for these things he had never felt until now.
Even if he knew them, he’d be afraid to say them aloud.
Just the thought of her set off a sky-full of fireworks in his belly. He couldn’t shake the thrill of her gaze even now. Felsin had ordered him to kill Lenore, then to return and die by Emrhys’ side, a casualty to supposedly malfunctioning magical wards—not knowing any of what he did and why, not knowing he could fight back if only he understood what was happening to him.
It was horrific. It could not happen to anyone again. He had to succeed. Nobody could be allowed to tinker with his mind, especially now that he knew what was at stake.
Sevens looked at the whiskey, frowning. These were not just anyday women he was planning to rescue, especially Emrhys, and he was no anyday soldier. They were all related by a common horror. The elegant and confident sister, Lenore, with her charming smile that reeked of magic—he’d be seeing her later tonight to hold up his end of their bargain. And Emrhys, even more powerful a leymage than Lenore but like him. And, he finally admitted to himself, more dear to him than his heart could bear. He needed her gentleness toward him. Her strength.
He and Emrhys both were going to die in days if nothing changed. Against all odds, though, Lenore had explained how she could help, thanks to a succinct but damning letter she’d slipped him the last time he delivered Emrhys’ missive to her.
The images of Emrhys’ haunted eyes, of Lenore’s winning smile flashed in his mind. Corvus stood. He knew why Felsin and the Experimental Lab were part of all of this, and why Acton gave him the orders he had. Why it was all such a mess. Now he could at least try to fix it. Being an elite assassin with a wealth of contacts at least had some benefits. If he used the contacts they had given him for far less honorable purposes, making something good of his sins…
Sevens looked down at his hands, hands he had used to commit terrible acts. He had heard of one Tanahr captain, a man named Brennan Hawke, who himself had a complicated past and was receptive to defectors from other lands. Would this Captain Hawke offer haven to one of the Dominion’s most notorious assassins?
Sevens thought about the world that existed outside the winter and cruelty of The Dominion. The land of Tanahr, full of changing seasons and sunlight, of fen and forests, every kind of elf, even cities with magical portals and a hundred different joyful holidays, not just days of ice or less ice. Could there be a home for him in such places? Broken humans from a hostile world—would they find refuge? The clock chimed out the half-past mark. Time to go work a miracle. Sevens downed the whiskey then stood, ready to make things right.
Lizzie Sinclaire 