tight between her thighs, tongue flickering against his, the warmth of his skin filling her all the way to her bones.
She sighed as he pulled his lips away from hers, the rain falling between them as if the sky were crying, her heart beating louder than the thunder.
“I didn’t…” He blinked again, grinning for joy. “Really?”
“O, Daughters,” she laughed. “You’re going to be hard work.”
“I’ll try not to prove too burdensome,” he vowed.
“Stop talking, you idiot,” Bryn whispered, running her hand down his cheek. “There’s better things you could be doing with your mouth.”
“I’m not sure what you—”
The blade flashed silver, bright as the lightning above. Past the collar of Wavewaker’s breastplate and down into his chest, cleaving his heart and filling his lungs with blood in a blinking. He tried to speak but only managed a cough, spattering Bryn’s face with red. She drew breath to cry out just as thunder crashed overhead, the crisp ring of the second blade slipping up under her armpit lost in the rumble.
Bryn felt the steel pierce her chest. Felt herself falling. Hands caught her, slender but terribly strong, guiding her down onto the stone with all the gentleness of a mother holding her babe. She saw a figure above her as the sky kept crying. Dressed in a black doublet and britches. His lips were pursed as if he were sucking his teeth. He was one of the most beautiful boys she’d ever seen. Pale skin and sharp blue eyes.
He knelt over Wavewaker on the flagstones beside her, lifted a gleaming knife, and cut his throat, ear to ear. Simple and quick. Bryn tried to cry no, but her mouth was full of blood. Salty and thick and too much to breathe through. Let alone scream.
I’m cold.
Bubbling up over her lips.
The lips he’d been kissing just a moment before.
I’m so cold.
The beautiful boy turned to her.
I want you to warm me up.
And he raised a finger to his lips, as if wanting her to hush.
* * *
It happened in a heartbeat.
Mia was leaning back in Ash’s arms, head resting on the girl’s shoulders, eyelids heavy with sleep. Butcher was still instructing Jonnen, smiling encouragement as the boy ran through clumsy stances and strikes. ’Singer lay on the stone by the cooking pit and Sid stared into the flames as Mia heard the faintest of whispers upstairs.
A whisper of steel.
Mia looked up just as Sidonius did. Both of them exchanging a glance.
“…’Waker?” Sid called.
Mia pulled herself to her feet. “Bryn?”
A tiny object fell down among the raindrops, hit the flagstones a few feet away.
Small.
Round.
White.
“Wyrdglass!”
The globe exploded with a damp shooof, filling the tower’s lower level with a choking cloud of white vapor. Heavy, rolling thick, the arkemical tang on the tip of Mia’s tongue telling her instantly what it was.
Swoon.
A sedative, brewed by Spiderkiller in the Quiet Mountain. One good breath and—
Without thinking, without breathing, Mia felt for the shadows on the ruined ground outside the tower, and in the space of a blinking, she closed her eyes and
Stepped
from the
white
and into the black and rain beyond. She tore her gravebone blade from her scabbard and turned, down in a crouch, hair streaming out behind her in the storm. She saw a figure up on the tower’s broken top level, a dark-skinned arm hanging over the edge, a blond topknot, soaked in blood.
No …
Rage bubbling up inside her chest. The world slowing to beyond a crawl. Every second splintering into a million glittering fragments. Every raindrop falling through the gloom around her a single perfect jewel, tumbling slowly, sparkling with such sudden and astonishing clarity that each was like a diamond shot right into her mind.
More shapes, dark-clad, moving up through the scrub, stepping out from the shadows and broken stone. She recognized Remillo and Violetta from her time in the Galante chapel—they used to go drinking together with her at weeksend. Sly-faced Arturo coming around the wall—he’d borrowed her cigarillos when he was trying to quit his habit. Silent Hush atop the battlements—the boy who’d helped her pass Spiderkiller’s trial during their time together as acolytes. And there, finger-thin and swift, short brown hair plastered to her brow, moving through the scrub like a drake through bloody water, came Bishop Tenhands herself.
Blades, all.
The Falcons, Ashlinn, Jonnen, each of them had fallen in the swoon already.
Five to her one, then.
No, not one.
She looked to the dark at her feet.
Many.
A flash of lightning, a tempest roar, a flicker-black shadow moving swift through the bright. She