PROLOGUE

The Assassin in the Storm

XAVIER

“This must be a mistake?” a voice rippled in the darkness. “A farce… yes, that must be it. They mock us. I should hope they wouldn’t choose one so young as our contender?”

I stirred out of my numbness, my temples pounding. Silver flares shimmered over my vision like trails of tumbling glitter as consciousness returned.

Where am I…? I was sure my sight had returned, yet I was surrounded by blackness, the world cloaked in shadow.

“No,” that same voice hushed, wafting like smoke from the emptiness. “No, it is a mistake. The Gods wouldn’t be so cruel. Surely, they’d meant to place such a burden on someone older? Someone more deserving of death…?”

A string of light split from above, and the canyons finally dripped into view. Water sprayed from the warring clouds like a vengeful waterfall, drenching my silken, ivory doublet and sticking my hair to my soaked cheeks. I was on my back, lying on rocks, the incessant water splashing my eyes.

What in Death is this water? Dazed, I watched the silver dots fade, and the canyons solidified. Is there a leak in the ceiling?

No, I wasn’t in the caves anymore. I was on the surface… and the surface didn’t have a ceiling, did it?

What had my textbooks called this? I pushed up to sit, groaning at the scrapes and cuts I fostered. Ra… ‘Rain’?

I tried to stand, but my leg screamed with pain and I flopped onto the rocks again, panting. Broken. Death, of all things, my BONES betray me. Alex would think it humorous, were he here.

I paused, blinking away this ‘rain’.

Alex! Where was my brother? And what in Bloods was I doing on the surface in the first place?

My head burst with an ache, and I rubbed it tenderly. My fingers came back red, the rain washing them clean. I must have hit my head and fallen unconscious. I concluded. What had happened?

I remembered attending a ball for Death’s Festival. There had been dancing guests in the palace, a glorious banquet, lively music…

There had also been a fire. Yes, that’s right! A fire had raged the ballroom. The littered bodies were branded into my memory, their skin melted away from their cheekbones. Though, that hadn’t been the fire’s doing. A man had poisoned them, slaughtered the guards, the guests, the staff… They were all dead.

We had escaped, I remembered. We’d fled to the surface and ran through these canyons. The man had followed us and chased us to a cliff and…

I lifted my gaze. A flash of light illuminated that very cliffside. I remembered toeing the edge, the rock crumbling under my boots.

We’d fallen down to this ledge. My head throbbed again, and I sucked in a wince. Blast it, I’m sure Willow is not happy about—

I stopped, horror splintering.

“Willow!” I screamed and scuttled over the rocks, my broken leg dragging behind me. The rain hissed and splattered in the wind, but her voice didn’t ride the breeze. “Willow—!”

Icy fingers wrapped round my neck, crushing my windpipe.

“You’ll have to forgive her,” that same, gnarled voice from before rumbled. “Young Death is a tad… preoccupied.”

A flash of light burst from the clouds, and a man’s face brightened before my nose.

Memory raced back at that face. Damn it all, the assassin!

The man’s broadened jaw was littered with black stubble, his yellow eyes so shocking, they were burned into my retinas.

His grip tightened on my throat, and he hoisted me over the ledge.

Beneath my dangling feet, ocean waves sloshed and churned like a feral animal, swirling and lapping in a nauseating rhythm.

A new light flashed—

I caught a glimpse of a girl, slumped on the rocks behind the yellow-eyed man. Her ashen hair stretched past her feet in a tangled mess over the rough stones, her azure eyes glazed as she laid unstirred, her face caked with dirt and blood. The once beautiful white dress was now ripped to tatters and stained crimson.

“Will… Willow…!” I wheezed under the man’s grip. Thank Bloods! She must have fallen with me when the ledge gave way up top. If anyone could pry this maniac off of me, it’d be she! I clutched the man’s slippery wrists, trying to free my breath. “Willow…! H-help…!”

She remained as still as the stones beneath her. Her lips were parted yet nothing sounded from her tongue. Her bright, azure eyes, however, were pried open.

“No…” I heard my soul shatter, a grueling, hollow sound. “No…! NO!” I kicked wildly, my claws grown and reaching for the man’s face in hopes of scratching those savage eyes out of their damned sockets…! “What have you done to her?!” I screamed. “I’ll kill you! The Seamstress can Cleanse me all She likes, I’ll kill you—!”

A new pain made me gasp, my claws retracting.

The man’s fingers slithered with blackened worms around my neck, the gooey strings pouring into my throat. They crawled up my skin and branched to my face, bulging over bones, licking past teeth and gums, slinking into my nasal cavity like oozing slugs. I screamed when the veins thrust their way to my eyes. Splotches blocked my vision, pressure balling behind the sockets.

—Sqrlch!

I shrieked in pain, a sluggish root jamming into my brain. The root squirmed and writhed like a viper rummaging for a meal.

Where… am I…? My mind blanked, like waking from a forgotten dream. What was I… doing here?

—Sqrlch!

Another serpent sank its fangs into my brain.

I… I can’t breathe… My eyes bulged, seeing a strange man was strangling me. Who was he? How had I gotten here…?

Water splashed from the clouds like a terrible leak in the cavern’s ceiling, my legs dangling over a cliffside, my vision spotted and patched.

What in Death is happening?

A squeal cut through the gale suddenly. I strained to look past the man, finding an ashen-haired girl lying on the rock. Why does she look familiar?

“Such a disappointment.” The man crushed his thumbs over my voice box, his claws digging trenches. “And here I had looked forward to seeing the Shadowblood in all his glory.”

He heaved and thrust me off the cliff, my stomach lurching sickly as I dropped. My screams faded as the sloshing waves below were sucked away, along with everything else as the world went black.