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(This book begins three months before the end of Trickster’s Treachery.)
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“YOU WILL MEET A TALL, dark and handsome stranger who will sweep you off your feet,” Madam Quilla Astrid predicted as she studied the tarot cards. They were arranged in a pattern on the small round table that sat in the center of the room. Not much over five feet tall, the gypsy was slender, had a bold nose, olive skin and long, curly, dark brown hair. She was one of the few Night Cursed beings who hadn’t been completely drained of her energy. Like all of her kind, a black tattoo was branded onto her skin. Her tattoo was on the back of her left hand.
Eden mentally rolled her eyes at the cheesy, predictable fortune. “I was hoping for something a little more original than that,” she said.
Madam Quilla’s style was eccentric to say the least. She wore a multilayered, multicolored dress and a black shawl that kept slipping off her shoulders. A headband with silver discs attached to it encircled her forehead. Her fingers were covered in rings and multiple bracelets on both wrists jingled with her every movement. Half a dozen necklaces adorned her neck. Frankly, it was an outfit that no uncursed fortune teller would be caught dead in.
The seer looked at her and her gaze seemed far too sharp for one of her kind. Night Cursed beings were usually little more than vapid, brainless morons. Their memories were wiped clean each night, so they lived in a perpetual rut. “The cards don’t lie,” Madam Quilla said, then pointed at one of them. It depicted a man wearing a black cloak with the hood forward to hide his face. “I see danger hovering around you both,” the gypsy went on as she concentrated on the cards again. “You have mutual enemies and you could become a powerful match. You don’t trust easily, so it will be difficult for him to woo you.”
Eden gave the fortune teller a humorless smile. “I highly doubt that could ever happen. I don’t have the capacity to fall in love.”
Madam Quilla peered at her and Eden almost flinched at the pity she saw in her eyes. “Everyone has the capacity to love,” she said gravely. “Even someone with a past as dark as yours.”
For a moment, Eden felt as if the gypsy was looking deep into her soul. If she was, all she would see was a void. If she had a soul, it was stained beyond recognition after all the evil things she’d done. “No one could love me if they really knew me,” she said, struggling to get the words out through the lump that had formed in her throat.
“You will be given a choice,” the mystic said as her gaze became unfocused and distant. She looked past her client at something only she could see. “You can continue to live your life as it is, or you can trust someone who should be your enemy. It will be dangerous and it could end with your death, but it could also give you the freedom you crave.” Her gaze shifted back to her client’s face and their eyes locked. “I sense you have an important destiny, Eden. It will be up to you whether you choose good, or if you choose evil.”
Eden looked away to break herself from her spell, not that the gypsy was actually using magic on her. The walls of the boutique were covered in purple cloth. The table was covered in a purple cloth as well and the carpet was also purple. Fairy lights were strung from the ceiling. A few chairs were lined up against the walls. “So, I’ll meet a tall, dark and handsome stranger and he’ll give me the choice between being good and evil?” Eden said to sum it up.
“Yep,” Madam Quilla said in a cheerful tone that sounded slightly forced. “You might want to keep this reading to yourself,” she added as she began gathering her cards together. “I doubt it’s something you’ll want anyone else to know about.”
“I won’t mention it to another soul,” Eden agreed wryly as she stood up. She wondered who she would tell anyway. The only beings she had any contact with were her two housemates, the men who held her leash and the targets she was sent out to assassinate.
Picking up the black umbrella that she’d propped up against a leg of the table, Eden smoothed the wrinkles out of her formfitting black dress. Her stilettos sank into the thick purple carpet as she crossed to the door. When she opened it, she came face to face with Xiara Evora, otherwise known as the Guardian of Nox.
As always, Ms. Evora wore ripped black jeans, a long, lacy black shirt and a cropped black jacket with fake black and green feathers around the collar. Her platinum blonde hair was up in a ponytail. A silver sword was belted to her waist and her deadly staff called Wrath was slung over her shoulder.
Fear leaped into Eden’s throat when their eyes met. Xiara’s eyes were blue and were ringed with way too much black eyeliner. They pierced Eden just like the gypsy’s gaze had, but the huntress made no move to attack her. Maybe she’d come to have her fortune told. Whatever the reason for her presence at the boutique, she hadn’t come there for Eden.
Keeping her expression neutral, the assassin opened her umbrella to shield herself from the driving rain and strode away. She had to resist the urge to look over her shoulder at the legendary killer.
The Guardian of Nox was the public executioner for the Immortal Triumvirate, but she wasn’t the only killer they controlled. There were others who hid in the shadows, creatures like Eden who had been bred to act as the Triumvirate’s private murderers. The three lords owned the half breeds, mind, body and soul, just like they owned the Night Cursed abominations that were housed in compounds in their District.
Eden wasn’t sure what had possessed her to visit the fortune teller she’d heard so many whispers about. Rumor had it that her tarot card readings were eerily accurate despite the fact that she was a cursed being. Her kind had become shunned after the undead apocalypse that had happened twenty-four years ago, shortly before Eden had been born. The Immortal Triumvirate had drained most of the Night Cursed of their energy, which had rendered them harmless. Apparently, the cursed had been created to act as batteries that ran the city. The Drain, as it had been named, had simultaneously saved the uncursed civilians from being attacked by the Night Cursed again, but it had also doomed them to increasing poverty and hardship.
An annual Energy Tax had been implemented to keep Nox running. Every uncursed citizen had to give up some of their magic or lifeforce each year on Halloween in order for the Districts to continue to function. Most of the population were weak from the yearly tax and had become malnourished due to the shortage of food. For a being like Eden, there would never be a lack of sustenance. While she ate normal food, she craved something else. Something that she could only get from other living beings.
She’d walked a few blocks away from the mystic’s boutique near the City Square by now. A thought occurred to her and her hand clenched around the handle of the umbrella. “I didn’t tell the gypsy my name,” she murmured. Maybe the seer was the real deal after all rather than a charlatan as she’d figured.
Eden’s feet had carried her close to a bridge that led to the Shifter District as she pondered about the city she’d been born in and had no chance of ever leaving. One thing that hadn’t been diminished after the Drain was the spell that kept everyone imprisoned here.
The assassin sensed the lifeforce of a shapeshifter just ahead, then a low growl emanated from the mouth of an alley, breaking her from her thoughts. It took a lot of energy for shifters to transform into their wereforms and back again on the three nights of the full moon. Some opted to remain in their bestial forms indefinitely. Doing so caused them to become more animal than human over time. Their minds became warped and their instincts to hunt and kill took over.
Eden’s heels clicked to a stop and she peered into the dark alley. While she appeared to be weak and delicate, she was far from it. She was a monster wrapped up in a beautiful package. The werewolf that was staring at her so hungrily thought she was the prey, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. Eden wasn’t going to be the one who would end up as dinner tonight. He was.
