There are two types of fugitives, the Ghost once said: those who sleep so they can face the unknown well rested, and those who stay awake for fear of what might come. It turns out I’m a sleeper.
Having spent the better part of the last day and night alternately running and getting bruised and beaten, and well aware that Kol will come for me again, I need to get as much rest as I can. Any attempt to escape would be an exercise in futility. So, without further ado, I wrap myself in my borrowed cloak and lie down at the back of the cell. I move only to ascertain my improvised lockpick set is still safe in my pocket before drifting off to sleep.
I rouse a few times, rising to relieve myself or drink more water from the bucket left for me by the door. Unable to tell the time of day and still exhausted, I quickly slip back into slumber.
I wake finally to the sounds of a conversation echoing down the hall from the guardroom. It’s an argument about who has to go somewhere—with me, I suspect. While the soldiers bicker, I stretch out my muscles, pain rippling from the myriad bruises I’ve collected since Saira’s betrayal. Thankfully, as far as I can tell, all my ribs are still intact. The bruises are dark, but none are so deep that they make movement difficult. I can still run.
The quarrel winds down, and two soldiers start down the hall, their shadows long, the lantern light from the guardhouse bright at their backs. I don’t recognize either guard from the escort Kol had with him. One of the guards unlocks my door and jerks his chin at me. I don’t make them wait; I’d much rather stand on my own two feet and avoid more bruises.
As we walk, I keep careful watch, counting turns, glancing down halls and up stairwells, trying to map out the building so I can find my way to an exit if I manage to escape. But I needn’t have bothered.
We leave the castle proper and cross an open yard to the base of a tower built into the castle walls, its ramparts lit by torches. At one time it might have been a watchtower as well as a defensive point; now it’s nothing more than a prison with a view—one with dark windows. A cool night wind blows, bringing me once more the scent of pine, as well as wood smoke.
The sky is full dark, but I’d guess dawn is near, which means Kol has allowed me almost a full day’s rest. As much as I needed it, every one of these “kindnesses” unnerves me further.
The fang lord meets us at the foot of the tower. I keep my gaze averted, steadily watching the wall. I’m careful not to let my eyes drop. I’m not looking down; I’m looking away. He chuckles as if I’ve shown some endearing trait and unlocks the door with a key from his belt. Simple lock, I note.
Then he pulls back a bolt.
That will be a problem. There’s no lockpick that can slide open a bolt. And I can’t assume I’ll have the energy to expend any magic on it, not if there’s something upstairs I need to escape from first.
We start up the stairwell, Kol in front, then the soldier holding the lantern, followed by me and the second soldier. I count the steps to keep from thinking about what’s waiting above. What can be worse than Kol? Is anything worse than a sadistic fang? I concentrate on the stairs. I’ll have my answer soon enough.
Two hundred thirteen steps later, we reach the top. Kol unlocks a second door, then slides back another bolt. I swallow hard. Okay, I’ll have to use magic on this bolt. Then hide in my cloak, waiting for someone to enter the tower, and slip out behind their back … After I escape whatever waits within the room. My plan is beginning to sound more and more hopeless.
Kol pauses to survey the interior, then motions the soldier with the lantern forward first. He enters cautiously, his other hand on his sword hilt. Behind me, the second soldier tenses. As if I’m not worried enough already, even these two battle-hardened, fang-serving soldiers are afraid of what’s in there.
Kol reaches back to grab my shoulder, then shoves me through the door ahead of him, his grasp too firm for me to twist away.
“Good morning, Val.” Kol’s voice booms cheerfully through the tower room.
I risk a glance up. The lantern light is just bright enough to illuminate the circular room, the two windows dark holes to either side of us. A prisoner sits against the far wall, his legs crossed, back resting against the stones. He is tall and gaunt, so thin his face is but a skull stretched over with skin, his eyes so faintly colored that I can almost imagine they are not even there. His hair falls to his shoulders in a straggly fringe of white. His tunic and pants hang off his frame, and his hands resting upon his knees are little more than sinew and bone. If he were human, he would be dead.
“You’ve been looking a bit thin lately. I’ve brought you a treat.” Kol starts forward, dragging me along with him. The prisoner rises and steps toward us, his movements deliberately slow. Caught in Kol’s grip, my feet stumble over the stones. From what Kol has said, his prisoner must be another fang like himself. A starved one, weak enough that even if I do look at him, he might not be able to mesmerize me with his gaze. But dangerous enough that the soldiers fear him.
We cross over a dark mess of a design drawn on the ground, and then Kol shoves me forward once again, harder this time. I half-fall, sprawling at the prisoner’s feet, my heart slamming against my ribs. No no no. I have to stop him before—
A bony hand wraps around the nape of my neck, the fingers cold and strong as iron. I brace my hands against the stone, trying desperately to pull away, and then, abruptly, I go still, sighting my salvation.
“I can pick that,” I whisper, barely loud enough to hear myself. The fingers convulse, tightening with bruising intensity. “I can pick that lock,” I repeat, my voice low enough that surely, surely Kol can’t hear.
“Barely more than a morsel,” a voice rasps, as dry and brittle as old bones. The hand releases me. I jerk back, scrambling away from both Kol and his prisoner until the wall brings me up short, a mere five paces away.
“A morsel? I bring you a girl fairly bursting with years, and you call her a morsel?” Kol demands, infuriated.
The creature laughs, a sound like dead grasses rustling. “Half-starved and nearly as cold as I am. You’ve leeched the years from her already.”
Kol takes a step toward us, eyes flashing. “I haven’t drunk from her yet, but if you’ve no use for her, I can easily take her.”
No. I press myself against the wall. The creature—Val, I remind myself—shrugs bony shoulders, the movement sickeningly clear beneath the thin fabric of his grimy tunic. “I’ve more use for your soldiers.”
“My—” Kol turns, but Val is fast, faster than a creature so gaunt has any right to be. He sweeps forward, sidestepping Kol at the same time that one of the soldiers drifts over the knot on the ground, his eyes wide and glazed beneath the rim of his helmet.
Val’s hand closes on the man’s shoulder. Kol roars, charging between them to shove them apart. Val laughs as he falls back, sprawling with casual disregard upon the floor. The other man stumbles, thumping against the far wall, his empty gaze still trained on Val.
“Get out, both of you,” Kol snarls. The remaining soldier dashes forward to grab his comrade’s arms and drag him from the room.
Terror squeezes my chest. However hunger-weakened this fang is, his ability to mesmerize is just as strong as Kol’s.
Now he tilts his face up, leveling a darkly amused look on Kol. “Your men run like startled rabbits. Their noses even twitch the same way.”
“You drink of what I give you,” Kol says, ignoring Val’s words. He lashes out with his foot. Val tries to roll away, but the boot catches him hard in the ribs.
Kol hunkers down as Val struggles to sit up. “If you will not have the girl, I’ll drain her myself.”
“Why bring her at all?” Val wheezes.
Kol’s nostrils flare. “I grant you a moment of mercy, and you throw it back in my face?”
He surges to his feet, turning toward me. I drop my gaze back to the stones. The window is too far—he’ll catch me before I get to it, and even if I manage to avoid him, it offers me only a fall to my death. There is no escape there. If I can gather enough magic—but I don’t know what I can do against Kol, and his prisoner, and two more guards waiting on the stairs.
I press myself against the wall as Kol stalks nearer, my gaze flitting back to Val. He’s on his feet, his expression hard, empty. He’ll help me. Surely he must, after I promised the ability to open his chains?
Kol halves the distance between us and keeps on coming. My gaze darts back to Val, then to the window, my back pressed hard against the wall. There’s no way out—
“I’ll take her,” Val says. Relief, however weak, slides through me. He’ll keep me alive, at least long enough for me to negotiate something better than the chance Kol would likely afford me.
Kol pauses, turns to regard Val. His voice drips false concern. “Oh, indeed? Are you sure? Perhaps you should know a little more about your meal.”
“I think not,” Val says, his voice quiet. His eyes have the hard coldness of metal.
I jerk my gaze down, my heart thundering. I can’t risk being caught by his gaze, can’t risk looking at either of them. I push myself to my feet, even though there’s nowhere to run.
“She’s a bit of a martyr. You do like the innocents, don’t you? They must taste sweeter.”
“They all taste the same,” Val says flatly.
I flinch, even though I know he must be playing a game now, to keep me out of Kol’s clutches. He may still mean every word he says. Maybe I am nothing more than a meal that happens to know how to pick locks.
“Ah, that’s a pity,” Kol says.
“Not really.”
Kol snorts, shifting his balance carefully. He’s on guard now, even though he clearly doesn’t fear his prisoner. “After all the trouble I went through for her, too,” he says with mock sorrow. “Would you believe, she helped a family fleeing a political execution? You know how things are in Karolene. She was working with some local hero called the Ghost, and she pretended to be him in order to ensure his freedom. She even managed to help the family escape after Blackflame caught them. Alas, she didn’t get away herself. If such selflessness doesn’t taste sweet to you, I can’t imagine what does.”
“Vengeance,” Val says and leaps for Kol.
But Kol is waiting, and the fight is over before it even begins, a flurry of movements I can barely follow—a punch blocked, a kick, a snarl, and then Kol hurls Val away, half-flying over the stones to slam into the wall. He doesn’t, however, take into account the chain still attached to Val’s leg. It snaps tight around Kol’s legs and sends him thumping to the floor.
Val lies against the wall and laughs that same brittle laugh, filled with the rustling sound of dead things, as if the pain in his voice is of no account. The soldier looking in from the doorway stares, eyes wide. I glance back at Val with sudden understanding—he didn’t expect to beat Kol. But he did manage to embarrass the fang lord before his own soldiers, and that is a victory of its own.
Kol spits a curse, struggling to his feet and kicking the chain away. “I’ll take her myself, then.”
“Take her,” Val says. “Leave me one of your soldiers instead. They’re a bit more of an armful than your martyr will ever be.”
“I’ll leave you nothing.”
“So predictable,” Val says, leaning against the wall, his lips stretched wide in ghastly amusement. There’s something odd about his smile, something that doesn’t quite add up, but I can’t think what.
Kol’s hands curl into fists, his face white with rage.
“You’ll have to come get her, though,” Val says affably. “There’s the chain to watch out for.” He rises, crossing the few paces between us in a heartbeat, his hand closing on my shoulder before I can think to run.
I swallow a whimper as he yanks me around to face Kol, my back pressed against his rib cage. I try to twist free, but his grip tightens, his hand catching my wrists and pulling them against my chest. I keep my eyes focused on Kol’s chest, not daring to look up any farther. It’s a game for them, and I am nothing more than a pawn. I have to believe my offer meant something to the creature holding me captive now—that his aim is to keep me alive long enough to help him without appearing to care about me one way or the other.
“I’ll hold her for you,” he says, lowering his face to brush mine, his gaze on Kol. And then he goes still, his fingers tightening as I tremble against him.
“Will you?” Kol grins, baring his fangs. “I think you haven’t half the willpower you pretend to, Val, my boy. Even as weak as you are, you can scent her now, can’t you? Sweet and young and so very tasty. Why not have a little sip?”
Val growls, the sound reverberating through me and turning my blood to ice. Twisting, he shoves me against the wall, his back to Kol.
I scream, kicking at his legs, trying to yank my hands free, but there isn’t enough space to move anymore. He’s too close, his chest crowding me in, one bony arm shoving up against my throat to pin me to the wall, the smell of him filling my lungs with the scent of decay—and hunger.
“Easy,” Val mutters, his gray gaze trying to draw me in. I clench my eyes shut, turning my face away, but I can feel his gaze tearing at me, and my face turns back toward him despite myself. I let out a ragged cry, my traitorous eyelids beginning to open. No. With a jerk, I smack my head back against the stone, the pain giving me something to focus on other than him and the pull of his gaze. But I can’t fight him much longer. I’ll have to use my magic, come what may.
Something cool and papery dry brushes my ear, and I hear one whispered word: “Pretend.”
Abruptly, his gaze releases me, the change so sudden I would fall were he not still pinning me to the wall. My breath comes in great, trembling lungfuls. I don’t know what he wants of me, what I should pretend. He takes my chin in his grasp. I try to pull back, but my head is already pressed hard against the wall, my eyes still clenched shut. There’s nowhere to go … and then he’s letting me go.
“Fall,” he murmurs.
I do, my legs giving out as he steps back so that I sprawl on the ground, my cloak’s hood falling sideways to obscure my face from Kol. I crouch there, trying to hold my breath, breathe as slowly as I can, but I’m shaking and I know Kol will see it. He’ll know I’m not dead. He’ll know—
“Is that all?” Kol asks. “You stupid girl! You let yourself be caught.” He’s disappointed—because to all appearances I didn’t fight Val’s gaze as successfully as I did Kol’s. He wanted Val to feed from me while I screamed, the pain bright and burning without his gaze to take it from me.
Val snarls a stream of curses at Kol, shoving away from the wall above me to glare at his captor. As if the act of feeding when starved is a victory for Kol over him.
Kol laughs. “She’s still got some life left in her. It’s rude to leave a meal half-eaten.”
“I’ll finish her when I want.”
“Will you? Do you really think you can hold out? Come now, it’s been what, six weeks?” Kol pauses as if thinking. “Why, I believe it’s been at least eight.”
“Then I had best make her last.”
Kol smiles coldly, baring his fangs. “If she isn’t done by dusk, I will help you with her.”
Val takes a step forward, hands clenched tight. But Kol merely chuckles and turns toward the door. My mind races, searching for a way out.
I push myself up slowly, painfully, until I’m teetering on all fours. It doesn’t even take any pretending.
“What about me?” My voice rings out, rasping only slightly. I try not to flinch from the sound of it.
Startled, Kol swings around to stare at me.
I glare at his boots. “Dusk is a long time away. I’ll need lunch.”
“Lunch?” Kol repeats, as if he can barely believe his ears.
“Your soldiers hardly fed me. You don’t want me fainting from hunger, do you?” I ask, a trace of mockery creeping into my voice.
Even without looking at his face, I can hear the answering sneer in his voice. “Indeed, no. We’ll see if your meal grants you any further strength.”
He swivels back toward Val. “James will bring up her lunch. Perhaps, if you haven’t finished her yet, he’ll find another use for her.”
Val makes no answer. I stay hunched where I am, savoring the gift Kol has unintentionally granted me: the promise of a way out during the daylight hours, when most fangs will have taken shelter. Now all I have to do is make a friend of Kol’s enemy here, make sure he doesn’t kill me, and … I hesitate.
What is it about simple plans always backfiring on me? This one begins with the starving creature locked in the same room as me sparing my life.
Kol turns, pacing to the far wall beside the door. A chain lies in loops upon the floor. He lifts the cuff at its end and tosses it across the room toward us, the chain clinking behind it.
The rusted iron cuff comes to a stop a few paces away. My eyes skim over it—it’s hard to tell from here, but surely the lock won’t be any more complicated than the others I’ve seen here.
“Chain her,” Kol says into the quiet.
“There is no need,” Val replies.
“There are windows,” Kol says lightly. “If she jumps, you won’t get a replacement.”
“She won’t jump. She’s already mine.”
I bite my lip hard, hating them both fiercely.
Kol grunts. “Then see that you finish her.”
He walks to the door, collects the lantern, and a moment later is gone, the click of the lock overloud in the silence.
In the darkness left behind, Val moves slowly to the wall, easing himself down to sit. The only sound is the faint clink of his chain as he shifts his legs. The windows allow in the first faint rays of dawn, but it is not yet light enough to see him clearly.
The windows.
“You’re not a fang,” I whisper. There’s no way he could be. The sunlight through the windows, day after day for as long as he must have been here, would have slowly burned his skin, leaving him blistered and covered in lesions.
“No.” The sound of his voice, like nails scraping stone, makes me shudder.
“Then what are you?”
He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to, because in the ensuing quiet I go through the list of every race I’ve heard of, every race that feeds off humans and uses its gaze to incapacitate us, and come up with only two possibilities. I’ve already ruled out one….
“You’re a breather.”
Silence falls again, but this is a tight, dangerous one. A breather. I swallow hard, my palms damp. They suck their victims dry, like fangs do, only it isn’t blood they take. It’s breath. It’s life. Some say, it’s souls.
I have to get out. Now.
Kol and his men will have reached the base of the tower by now. I can pick the lock on the door, and … then what? If I can force the first bolt open with my magic, I will still have to contend with the second bolt below. If I manage both, it will be a repeat of the flight from Blackflame’s house, only at night. With a fang on the loose. Or rather, with a fang lord on the loose, along with however many fangs work for him. Even with the food and rest I’ve had, I’m still not strong enough for much magic working; the bolts will drain what energy I have.
I glance out the window again, pulse racing. Soon the sun will rise. In daylight, I’ll be able to navigate my way out, Kol will likely be resting, and my chances of survival improve immensely. Not that fangs can’t come out in daylight; they just prefer not to—and I’d prefer not to meet any on my way out. I might be able to outrun a human guard, but fangs are another matter entirely.
All I have to do is keep the breather from attacking me. In point of fact, as far as I can tell, he hasn’t even shifted in my direction. Despite his hunger and my initial, desperate promise to open his shackles. My eyes track back toward him. He must be nearly mad with hunger. He’s an emaciated husk of a creature.
“How long have you been here?” It’s not until the words sound in my ears that I realize I have spoken.
I don’t expect him to answer, but just as my attention moves back to the bolts I must contend with, he says, “Perhaps a year.”
“You’ve … fed?” I know he has, at least once, probably more.
“Yes.”
Terror coils in my stomach. But Kol mocked him for being kind, taunted him with my perceived innocence. Which means that this creature, Val, may not be half so evil as Kol himself.
I look away, toward the window, trying to reconcile this with all I’ve heard of his kind. Breathers cannot be trusted, my father told me, years ago, before I lost him to illness and my mother to Blackflame. Breathers are death and darkness and all things dangerous.
The first rays of sunlight, bright and clear, break over the window sill, illuminating the far end of the room. It doesn’t seem possible that sunlight could share the same space as this starved being. “Why does Kol keep you?”
“It is a longer story than you want to know.”
“They give you innocents to feed on,” I say slowly, anger warming my chest.
“When they run out of other victims.” He smiles, a ghastly stretch of parched lips over yellowed teeth. “You are only the second true innocent to be chained with me.”
My skin crawls. How many has he murdered in his time here? His only sustenance would be other lives. He would have to kill more than once to survive a full year. Kol starved him two months this time, but there’s no telling what happened before that. “Have you tried to escape?”
“I am bound, as Kol would have bound you, but my chains bear every protective charm and sigil on them our captor could buy. I cannot break them.”
My gaze shifts to the cuff lying empty and open upon the stone floor. I force myself to cross the short distance to study the manacle and the chain soldered to it. They are made of iron, a material by its very nature heavy and at odds with magic. They are, as the breather implied, void of protective symbols. “What is your chain made of?” I ask curiously.
“Silver,” he says.
From where I crouch, the metal shows dark, but perhaps it’s only tarnished. Silver is soft, something that the creature, once fed, might untwist with his bare hands, unless it has been ensorcelled. What he needs is a key—or a thief with a lockpick.
He and I both know it. But how can I think of trying to free a breather? He is a thing of darkness. Should I help him, I have no surety he won’t kill me before moving on to Kol.
I purse my lips. Our captor, he said. Kol has abused him almost past bearing. As long as the breather spares me, what does it matter if he attacks Kol?
“If I can find a way to free us,” I say, raising my gaze to his chest, “will you swear not to harm me?”
“You cannot free me, little one,” he says. His voice would be gentle were it not so harshly rasping.
“I might,” I say. Why else did he spare my life and keep Kol from killing me if not to help him escape?
“There is a sigil in the stone there. I cannot pass it even if my chains are released.”
I blink in sudden understanding. That was why he waited for the soldier he mesmerized to come to him. My eyes scan the stone. A sigil. What are the chances that I’ll recognize it? And be able to change it? And how can I trust this breather not to attack when he learns what I am?
I can’t. Not only will he despise me for my magic, but he’ll drain me in order to gain enough strength to effect his own escape. For whatever reason, he left me my life and I’m not going to sacrifice it back to him. I don’t let myself think about it any further.
I can feel the breather’s milky-gray gaze on me as I scramble across the room to the door. Sliding my improvised tools from my pocket, I set to work on the lock. It’s surprising, really, what simple locks rich people use—but then I guess the possibility of escape never occurred to either Blackflame or Kol.
Behind me, Val makes no sound. By his own admission, he can’t reach me. The only dangerous thing about him is his breather’s gaze. Between his own weakness, this distance between us, and my turned back, I should be able to fight it.
My hands slow. I stare blindly at the door. He is weak, just like the fang I left behind in Blackflame’s dungeon. And, just like the fang, he will die in his prison. As much as I tell myself that it will not be I who have killed them—that the blame lies with Kol, or Blackflame, or someone else entirely—the truth is that this is my choice, now: to leave him behind.
And he is letting me go. He has made no attempt to stop me. He hasn’t tried to trick me into turning around so he can catch my gaze and keep his meal from leaving. In truth, he made sure I wasn’t even chained. I’ve been hungry. I know what it feels like when your stomach is so empty it gnaws at itself. I’ve tied a strap around my waist and cinched it tight, because the pressure gives some small relief. Such hunger consumes your awareness, nibbles at the edges of your mind.
I’ve begged, pleaded, stolen—and been beaten—all for a half-rotted fruit. But I’ve never, ever been as hungry as the creature behind me.
I rest my forehead against the door and close my eyes, wishing I could make a cocoon in the darkness behind my eyelids, spin a tiny shelter to keep myself safe from my thoughts. But it’s no use. I’ve already damned one fang to his death because I feared him. I cannot leave this creature behind as well.