Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,8

chest. Heavier than the memory of the sweetboy’s smooth hardness, the sweat he’d left drying on her skin. Though this sapling would bloom into a killer whom other killers rightly feared, right now she was a maid fresh-plucked, and memories of the hangman’s expression as she cut his throat left her … conflicted. It’s quite a thing, to watch a person slip from the potential of life into the finality of death. It’s another thing entirely to be the one who pushed. And for all Mercurio’s teachings, she was still a sixteen-year-old girl who’d just committed her first act of murder.

Her first premeditated act, at any rate.

“Hello, pretty.”

The voice pulled her from her reverie, and she cursed herself for a novice. What had Mercurio taught her? Never leave your back to the room. And though she might’ve protested her recent bloodlettings constituted worthy distraction, or that a ship’s deck wasn’t even a room, she could almost hear the willow switch the old assassin would have raised in answer.

“Twice up the stairs!” he’d have barked. “There and back again!”

She turned and saw the young sailor with his peacock-feather cap and his bednotch smile. Beside him stood another man, broad as bridges, muscles stretching his shirtsleeves like walnuts stuffed into poorly tailored bags. An Itreyan also by the look, tanned and blue-eyed, the dull gleam of Godsgrave streets etched in his gaze.

“I was hoping I’d see you again,” Peacock said.

“The ship isn’t large enough for me to hope otherwise, sir.”

“Sir, is it? Last we spoke, you voiced threat of removing parts most treasured and feeding them to the fish.”

She was looking at the boy. Watching the stuffed walnut bag from beneath her lashes.

“No threat, sir.”

“Just boasting, then? Thin talk for which apology is owed, I’d wager.”

“And you’d accept apology, sir?”

“Below decks, doubtless.”

Her shadow rippled, like millpond water as rain kissed the surface. But the peacock was intent on his indignity, and the walnut thug on the lovely hurtings he might bestow if given a few minutes with her in a cabin without windows.

“I only need to scream, you realize,” she said.

“And how much scream could you give voice,” Peacock smiled, “before we tossed your scrawny arse over the side?”

She glanced to the pilot’s deck. To the crow’s nests. A tumble into the ocean would be a death sentence—even if the Beau came about, she could swim only a trifle better than its anchor, and the Sea of Swords teemed with drakes like a dockside sweetboy crawled with crabs.

“Not much of a scream at all,” she agreed.

“… pardon me, gentlefriends…”

The thugs started at the voice—they’d heard nobody approach. Both turned, Peacock puffing up and scowling to hide his sudden fright. And there on the deck behind them, they saw the cat made of shadows, licking at its paw.

It was thin as old vellum. A shape cut from a ribbon of darkness, not quite solid enough that they couldn’t see the deck behind it. Its voice was the murmur of satin sheets on cold skin.

“… i fear you picked the wrong girl to dance with…,” it said.

A chill stole over them, whisper-light and shivering. Movement drew Peacock’s eyes to the deck, and he realized with growing horror that the girl’s shadow was much larger than it should, or indeed could have been. And worse, it was moving.

Peacock’s mouth opened as she introduced her boot to his partner’s groin, kicking him hard enough to cripple his unborn children. She seized the walnut thug’s arm as he doubled up, flipping him over the railing and into the sea. Peacock cursed as she moved behind him, but he found he couldn’t shift footing to match her—as if his boots were glued in the girl’s shadow on the deck. She kicked him hard in his backside and he toppled face-first into the rails, spreading his nose across his cheeks like bloodberry jam. The girl spun him, knife to throat, pushing him against the railing with his spine cruelly bent.

“I beg pardon, miss,” he gasped. “Aa’s truth, I meant no offense.”

“What is your name, sir?”

“Maxinius,” he whispered. “Maxinius, if it please you.”

“Do you know what I am, Maxinius-If-It-Please-You?”

“… D—da…”

His voice trembled. His gaze flickering to shadows shifting at her feet.

“Darkin.”

In his next breath, Peacock saw his little life stacked before his eyes. All the wrongs and the rights. All the failures and triumphs and in-betweens. The girl felt a familiar shape at her shoulder—a flicker of sadness. The cat who was not a cat, perched now on her clavicle,