Chapter Four

Harrow was swimming in tranquil water. Fresh, not salty. Her eyes were open. Above, rays of glorious sunlight penetrated the crystalline waves like light striking diamonds. Below, the turquoise deepened into blackness. There was no sign of the bottom.

Perhaps she ought to surface and surround herself with a more familiar environment? The surface was where she belonged, after all. It wasn’t far. Just a couple of kicks and her head would break through the waves.

Then she glanced down at the deep where the light couldn’t penetrate.

What was down there? What secret knowledge lurked in those lightless depths? Surely it would be frightening to swim through the deep with no sunlight to guide her, yet she felt drawn to the darkness in a way she couldn’t describe. She craved to know the stillness of the indigo abyss, to be cradled by an unseen embrace.

But it was so dark. Dark enough to swallow her completely. Somehow, she knew that choosing to dive would force her to confront things she wasn’t ready to face. Things she might never be ready to face.

Indecision plagued her, churning her insides with increasing urgency. She struggled in the water, feeling as though her life depended on her choice, yet unable to make one.

But she had to, and quickly. She was running out of time. Up or down? Dark or light? Familiar or foreign? Why in the Goddess’s name was it so damned hard to just pick one?

Enough! Harrow screamed in her head.

Without thinking of the consequences or weighing the options any further, she folded at the waist and executed a perfect dive straight into the lightless depths.

As she swam, it grew darker. The deep turquoise became the navy blue of the night sky. And then darker. Until suddenly, it was utter blackness. A colorless chasm of emptiness.

Her heart would have been pounding if it had needed to beat. The pressure was so immense, it would surely have burst her lungs had they held any air. She swiveled around, searching the lightless void.

Which way was up? Which way had she come from?

Panic filled her. She wasn’t ready for this.

This was too intense, too exposing, too painful.

I made the wrong choice! I want to go back! But it was too late to go back. She had no choice but to be consumed entirely by shadows as her mouth opened in a silent scream—

She sat bolt upright in bed.

Chest heaving, she stared around the inside of her dark caravan and had never been happier to find herself there. With shaking fingers, she snatched up the matchbox from beside the bed and lit the candle. Light. She needed light to remind herself she wasn’t in that inky void any longer.

What was the Water trying to tell her? Was it even the Water, or just an ordinary dream? It certainly didn’t feel ordinary. It felt…loaded, somehow. Full of meaning she couldn’t decipher.

She had been sure in the dream she’d made the wrong decision. If so, what were the consequences? And if it was wrong, why had she been drawn to the darkness in the first place?

First, she’d seen flashes of her lost memories. And now this. There had to be a connection.

Though she hadn’t remembered anything from the night of her clan’s deaths until recently, such a traumatic event couldn’t help but shape a person forever, no matter how much love and care they received afterward. And Harrow had been cared for—by Malaikah and even by Salizar, who had taken her into his circus without question, feeding and sheltering her before she’d been able to work to pay for her keep.

And now? She’d thought she was all right. She slept soundly through the night, free from troubling dreams. Well, she had…until tonight.

Throwing off the covers, Harrow grabbed a silk robe from the wardrobe to put over her nightgown and then folded a patterned scarf into a band and tied it over her ears. A walk would help her regain calm.

Shutting the caravan door behind her, she crept down the steps on bare feet, through her fortune teller’s booth and out into the open. The moon was glowing brightly, at the phase in her cycle when she looked as though she’d been cut in half. What remained of her naked face cast the rounded sides of the caravans in a bluish glow.

Allegra’s fairgrounds had room enough to fit all their wagons and tents, yet they were still only steps away from the chaotic central market. Silhouettes of dark buildings surrounded them. Tonight, it felt like being trapped.

Harrow headed toward Malaikah’s caravan. She would wake Mal up and tell her about the dream. Mal would listen and offer advice. It was always what they did for each other.

Except something made her stop abruptly.

On a whim, she turned toward the big top and started walking. Why? Because she had a feeling that was the way she needed to go.

She ended up around the side, standing outside Salizar’s tent, of all places. She’d never been inside the area where the ringmaster conducted most of the circus business. No one had, except Loren and the kitchen staff. Salizar’s private workspace was of little interest to her. She had everything she needed, and risking falling out of her boss’s favor wasn’t worth it.

But suddenly, she was fighting an urge to go in so strong she had to clench her hands into fists.

The tent was tied shut by little strings hanging down the edges of the entrance flaps. There was a lantern on the ground with a box of matches beside it. She would just light the lantern. That should satisfy her strange compulsion.

She struck the match, lit the lamp, and then stood, facing the canvas. Unfortunately, candlelight shining upon those neat little ties didn’t quell the urge to enter in the least. Yes, a Seer listened to her urges, but she also needed to have a good sense of self-preservation.

So what did Harrow think she was doing?

She would just undo the ties and peek in. That would satisfy her. She was probably just bored, seeking a little rush of uncertainty.

Her fingers worked the knots until, soon enough, the tent was open. Immediately, she knew peeking in wouldn’t be enough. She needed to go inside. What could it hurt, really? She’d go in just for a split second, look around, and then leave and forget this entire incident ever happened.

Before she consciously made the decision, her hand was lifting the canvas and her head was ducking as she stepped inside.

It wasn’t at all what she expected. There was no work desk or papers. From what little she could see in the dark, the tent was empty save for a large board leaning against one wall and what appeared to be an enormous cage. From its base on a four-wheeled cart, thick steel bars ran vertically upward, nearly as tall as the ceiling.

Dear Goddess, a man could fit comfortably inside that monstrosity. What was Salizar doing with it?

Cautiously, Harrow approached, holding the lamp out to see better.

A pair of eyes suddenly reflected the light from the darkness.

She lurched back, nearly tripping on her own feet. Swallowing the scream that stuck in her throat, she froze and waited for whatever monster lay within to attack.

It didn’t attack. It just watched her.

The eyes were impossibly bright, like two rings of fire burning. A sudden urge struck Harrow from within. Go closer, it said. Investigate. She obeyed.

As she stepped forward, without warning, several lamps flared to life around her. The lanterns stationed throughout the tent seemed to have spontaneously lit themselves.

She jumped at the sudden illumination, but she quickly forgot all about that when she took in the scene before her.

Inside the cage…was a man. But he wasn’t like any man she had seen before.

Like a great cat, he crouched in the center of the cage as if ready to pounce, his lip curling in a silent snarl. He was naked save for a pair of faded, worn pants. Golden-bronze skin rippled over sinewy strength, every inch of his body corded with powerful muscle. The tips of his pointed ears parted strands of sleek black hair that fell to his broad shoulders.

And his eyes…

The whites of them were not white at all but utterly black. The same inky black as his pupils. Two rings of flame comprised his irises. It was the only way to describe the reddish orange glow that seemed to flicker and churn like living fire.

Looking at those eyes, some chord of familiarity was struck within her, but it faded too quickly to grasp.

It was replaced with trepidation.

Every self-preservation instinct she possessed screamed DANGER. He was an Elemental, that much was obvious, but beyond that, she didn’t have a clue what he was. But she didn’t need to know to see that he was deadly. It was plain as day in the way he held himself with the poise of a predator, the menacing glint in his eyes, and the long, sharp canines revealed by the lip peeling off his teeth.

Her heart tried to crawl up her throat. Her lantern shook with the trembling of her hands.

And yet, as if from far away, she heard herself say, “Hello.”

HELLO? a voice screamed inside her head. What do you mean, hello? Don’t stand around making small talk! Get out of there! Run for your life! It was probably the voice of her survival instincts.

She ignored it.

“I’m Harrow. What’s your name?”

The male blinked. Once. Twice. As if he was as confused by her sudden sociability as she was. His head tilted, sending silky hair sliding over one shoulder and shifting the shadows on his face.

That tiny movement was so menacing, she had to swallow the scream that rose in her throat.

Without a doubt, he could kill her as easily as breathing. She ought to be listening to that petrified voice in her head. She ought to be backing out of there slowly and running for her life.

As she entertained these thoughts, the strange, lethal man rose from his crouch, the powerful muscles of his thighs levering him gracefully up. Heart thundering, she tensed, ready to flee, but his liquid movements were just slow enough not to startle her.

Like a predator stalking prey.

He took a step forward.

She lurched back but froze again as his face came more clearly into the lantern light. He was no longer snarling and looked more inquisitive than murderous—if any expression could be said to be on his face at all.

She stared at him, fear momentarily forgotten. High cheekbones, a strong jaw, and a sensual mouth somehow softened the intensity of his piercing stare, though only slightly. But it was enough for her to realize…he was striking. His features were arresting. Regal. Proud.

Connection, the Water whispered. Important.

As if he sensed it too, he took another step. Still mesmerized by his presence, this time, she didn’t have to fight the urge to flee.

This time, she took a step closer, too.

If he was a predator stalking prey, then she had been lured into his trap. Her palms were clammy, and her heart was trying to burst from her chest, yet she couldn’t have backed away to save her life.

“Can you understand me?” she whispered.

He blinked once. Somehow, it was answer enough.

She took another step toward the cage until she was close enough for him to reach her through the bars if he wanted to harm her. Yet fear for her safety was the furthest thing from her mind.

Who are you? she wanted to ask, half torn between terror and heartbreak. Where did you come from? The Water continued to whisper to her that this was important. Somehow, this moment mattered more than any other.

“What’s your name?” she asked again, because it had become crucial that she knew.

…

The woman on the other side of his cage was close enough to touch. From the height of the wagon, he positively loomed over her, but she didn’t shy away, which surprised him. He could practically smell her fear, it was so strong. She ought to be recoiling from the sight of him as others had done.

Instead, she’d asked what his name was. And suddenly, it mattered to him that he had one.

He cast about the room for inspiration, and his eyes landed upon Loren’s misspelled sign. A sense of rightness sparked inside him, and before he knew it, he was opening his mouth and speaking for the first time in his memory.

“Raith.”

His voice was hoarse and quiet from disuse, but the woman heard him anyway.

“Raith?” Her eyes huge in the dim light, she followed his gaze over to the sign before looking back at him. “That’s your name?”

Yes, he thought. He supposed it was.

He was no longer nameless, no longer just a “creature” or an unclassifiable abomination. He was Raith. Not a wraith, but something else. The misspelled version, the mistake with no past or future.

The woman continued to stare at him. She seemed torn between fear and intrigue. He wondered why she bothered fighting her instinct to flee, and he studied her, trying to understand.

She wore a loose white gown with a colorful robe on top. Bare feet poked out from beneath her dress. Her hair was a wild mess of black curls, tied back by a colorful band of silk. Her skin was deep tan, several shades lighter than his current color, her eyes a luminous silver reminiscent of the moon’s glow.

She was…beautiful.

It almost surprised him to be aware of this. Everyone he had come across since awakening in the desert had been ugly, of face or personality, but not her. He supposed he must’ve had some unconscious knowledge that beauty existed, but until he’d laid eyes upon her, he’d been unaware of what it looked like. Now, he knew.

He hadn’t verbalized his response to her question, but she seemed to understand anyway because she said, “Nice to meet you, Raith. I’m Harrow.”

Though he knew he hated to speak for some reason, he opened his mouth and used his voice once more.

“Harrow.” Her name.

To his great surprise, her silver eyes suddenly filled with tears.

As if shot from a bow, she sprang into action so quickly he instinctively retreated to the middle of the cage. She seized the steel bars and shook them violently, rattling the door and lock that held it shut. The sudden clanging of metal pierced his sensitive ears.

“We have to get you out of here.” She sounded so distraught, he found himself scanning for some unseen foe to save her from. But the tent remained empty save for the two of them, and he sensed no one else nearby. His brow furrowed as he fought to understand.

“Why are you in this cage? How do we open this door? The lock!” She seized the padlock and yanked on it. Her eyes shot back to his. “How did you light those lamps? Maybe you can open this, too.”

He stared at her. He hadn’t done anything to light the lamps. He’d just wanted them to be lit so he could see her better, and then they had been.

“You have to try. I can’t just leave you here.”

Finally understanding the source of her distress, though scarcely believing concern for him was the cause, he crouched again to her eye level. Slowly so as not to startle her, he reached out and touched the back of her hand, still gripping the bars tightly. She froze, silver eyes fixed on the point of contact.

He didn’t try to cut her, strangle her, or rip her arms off as he would have done to anyone else who got this close. He just…touched her.

She had no idea the level of trust such an action showed, but he didn’t mind. Every soul he’d encountered since waking had used him in some way—imprisoning him, selling him, forcing him to be a circus act.

But not her. She had asked for his name. She had fought her fear instinct to speak to him.

He wasn’t sure he trusted her—wasn’t sure he even understood the concept—but he did know he didn’t want to kill her. He wanted to kill everyone he’d met so far, but not her. That had to mean something, right?

To express his conflicting feelings, he did freely for her what others would torture him into doing. Perhaps it was in some vain attempt to connect, or perhaps it was so he could understand her better. He wasn’t sure which. He didn’t think too hard about it.

Still touching the back of her soft hand, he changed his skin once again. This time, he studied the subtleties and shades of Harrow’s skin and matched his own to it. He could have reverted to his original colorless void, but for some reason, he didn’t want her to see him that way.

The change trickled over his body, starting from the point of contact at their hands and spreading down his arm to his torso until their skin matched exactly.

“Sweet Goddess,” she breathed, staring at him with shock. “You— What are you?”

He glanced at the sign again.

She followed his gaze. “Raith… I don’t understand—” She gasped. “Wraith? Does Salizar think you’re a wraith? But that—”

Suddenly, she froze. As still as if she had been transformed into stone.

It seemed a counterproductive survival instinct, he thought distantly. If any part of her could have been said to move at all, it was her eyes. They grew wider and wider until they were tiny circles staring at him with horror.

A strange ache clenched his chest, not dissimilar to how it felt to be stabbed with Salizar’s lightning stick. He didn’t like the idea of her being afraid of him, which was strange, because it was much easier to protect himself when others feared him.

He changed his skin back to the darker golden brown, wishing he hadn’t shown her his trick. It was foolish to think she wouldn’t recoil from him as everyone else had—

“That’s ridiculous,” Harrow announced suddenly, and he watched in fascination as, one by one, her muscles relaxed and she regained normalcy. The fear melted from her eyes, and she shook away any remaining vestiges of it with a jerk of her head. “There’s no way you’re a wraith.”

He cocked his head. Why not? he wanted to ask. How do you know? But the sound of his voice disturbed him, and he preferred not to speak unless he had to.

Luckily, she seemed to interpret his body language. “Because wraiths, if they even exist, are supposed to be incorporeal, like ghosts, and they can’t be imprisoned. They’re shadows of death, mindless killers that serve the Fire Queen. They’re terrible, evil monsters.”

Raith wondered again why wraiths were automatically considered evil, but he was also glad Harrow didn’t think he was one.

“So why would Salizar make this sign? It’ll be obvious to everyone you’re not a wraith by the very fact that you’re stuck in that cage. Unless…maybe he’s going to lie? But how to convince people? You don’t seem very wraithlike to me. I mean, sure, your eyes are…well, they’re very unusual, but that doesn’t mean—”

The sudden murmur of voices outside the tent caught their attention. Their gazes locked in mutual panic at the approaching visitor.

For the third time in his new existence, he overrode his aversion to speech and used his voice. “Go.”

“But what about you?”

He wasn’t going anywhere—the enchantments on the cage were done well. There was no way he could break out.

Harrow seemed to understand this. “I’ll come back. Tomorrow, after the circus shuts for the night.”

He shook his head. It wasn’t safe for her. She could be inadvertently harmed by her association with him, and he had already decided he didn’t like the thought of that happening.

The voices were louder now. He pointed at the tent entrance, urging her to go.

Giving him one last look, she hurried toward the exit but stopped suddenly, realizing it was too late to leave that way. The voices were right outside now.

“Why are the lamps lit?” he heard Salizar demand.

Raith clutched the edges of the bars so tightly, the steel groaned under his strength. His inability to act threatened to send him into a mindless rage.

Harrow proved she could take care of herself, however. Spinning around, she ran toward the back wall of the tent, dropped to the ground, and rolled forward on her side. A second roll took her under the bottom of the canvas at the exact moment that the tent flap was ripped open and Salizar ducked inside.

“Who lit the lamps?” he demanded of Raith, who, of course, said nothing.

Loren rushed in behind him. Salizar turned to him. “Did you leave the lamps lit?”

“No, sir.”

Salizar glared at the human. “Someone’s been in here.” He transferred that glare to Raith. “Who was it?”

Raith just stared at him.

“Still being silent, I see.” He approached the wagon, brandishing his lightning stick, hatred for his caged monstrosity shining clear in his blue eyes. Raith glared back, unafraid of pain, unafraid of any wound the lightning stick could inflict.

Without breaking eye contact, Salizar said, “Loren, post a guard on the tent at night.” He turned to go. “I don’t have time to monitor him myself, and— What the fuck is that?”

His eyes had landed on the unfinished sign. Raith almost laughed.

“Sir?”

“‘Raith’? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Sir, I don’t—”

“There’s a W. Wraith. W-R-A-I-T-H.”

Loren spat a low curse.

Salizar briefly pinched the bridge of his nose. “Start a new sign first thing tomorrow. And by the Goddess, spell it correctly this time.”

Loren bowed out of the tent. Salizar shot a look at his prisoner and then followed him out without another word.

…

Harrow sat on the ground, her arms wrapped around herself, breathing hard. That had been way too close. If her boss had caught her snooping… Not good. But now that she had snooped, there was no way she could forget Raith was in there.

Because of Salizar. He was supposed to be a protector of Elementals, as Malaikah saw him. How could he treat an innocent man that way?

Okay, so maybe Raith wasn’t innocent. She wasn’t that naive. Who knew what sorts of things he’d done? If she wasn’t mistaken, he’d come up with his name on the spot, and he didn’t appear to have any more idea about what he was than she did.

He certainly wasn’t a wraith, however.

No one knew the true origin of wraiths, or if they existed at all. The rumors about them ranged from horrifying to downright ridiculous. Some thought they were evil spirits from the Shades that Queen Furie had found a way to summon. Some said they were actually mythical dragons that breathed fire, while others claimed they were nothing but Enchanter illusionists or Hybrid assassins. Others believed Furie had created them with Fire magic and the bottomless hatred that had consumed her since the death of her mate.

Whatever their origins, Furie had sent the wraiths on the most notorious killing spree in known history. A genocide that had wiped out an entire group of once-thriving people, whose worst offense against the Fire Queen was their connection to her enemy and sister, Queen Darya.

Despite the name he’d chosen, Raith was not a wraith. Harrow almost wished he’d picked a different name, but it suited him somehow, and when she thought of it now, it didn’t bring the same fear as the word spelled with a W did.

Perhaps it was because of that unguarded surprise in his eyes when he’d opened his mouth and spoken it aloud. As if he hadn’t realized until that moment that he was worthy of a name.

Harrow had looked into those eyes and had not seen evil. She was a Seer. A Seer knew how to read people. A Seer trusted her instincts. Her other, baser, instincts had told her loud and clear that she was in the presence of something deadly, and she wasn’t fool enough to forget that. But the Water said otherwise.

Important. Connection.

Why? She didn’t know, but she had a feeling she was going to find out. Now that she knew Raith was in there, there was no way she was abandoning him to whatever cruel plan Salizar had to earn money off his misfortune.

Her eyes stung with regretful tears. How could she have been so oblivious to Salizar’s true nature? Sure, she had good reason to be grateful to him. As an orphaned Elemental female, she likely would’ve ended up somewhere far worse if not for him, but she still ought to have seen the cruelty he was capable of.

Harrow waited until she heard Salizar leave. She longed to go back inside and make sure Raith was okay but didn’t dare. Not tonight, at least.

Nothing could keep her away tomorrow.

The urging of the Water was never without reason, and she intended to find out exactly what the mysterious Elemental had to do with her.