prior to arriving at Kerlan’s tonight. He’d gone to a courier’s cottage in the city and sent out a snowhawk, its feathers pure as freshly fallen snow.
Tonight, at the Kerlan Estate, by the First Snow.
He’d slipped a lock of black hair into the snowhawk’s beak. The animals had an impossibly keen sense of smell, capable of tracking the scent of their prey for miles in the cold, barren mountains of Cyrilia. Once trained, they made for the best type of courier birds.
The note was out, and his plans were in motion. And Ana—she would get as far away from this estate, this city, and his world of crime and darkness as possible. She was born for good. She was meant to fight for the light. And she would carry that faint possibility—the ghost of the man he might have been—on with her.
For Ramson, it was too late for that. The man he’d become believed that there was no good or bad; there were only various shades of gray.
Tonight, he would remember that—when he murdered Alaric Kerlan.
Ramson closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the world was sharper with clear-cut calculation, and he felt a wicked calmness settle into his chest. He was Ramson Quicktongue, future Head of the Order of the Lily. The ballroom lay beneath him, a theater of people in gaudy ball gowns and glittering jewels.
Ramson slipped his mask back on. The world was his stage; tonight was just another show.
The biggest show of his life.
The large clock suspended in the middle of the banquet hall showed seventeen minutes past nine. He had precisely forty-three minutes to find Kerlan, and to persuade him to reinstate Ramson as Deputy. He needed the words penned into the Order’s official mandate.
And then, as soon as Kerlan lifted his pen from the page, Ramson would kill him.
The hilt of his small dagger pressed into his sleeve, a perfect blade no longer than his forearm. A misericord, Bregonians called it, used to deliver the final blow of mercy to an opponent. At a single flick of his finger, the contraption that bound it to his arm would eject the blade into his palm.
For the first time tonight, he took in the hallways with a sweeping glance. Memories rose, unbidden, in his mind. He could still see, on the plush red carpets, the writhing bodies of people he’d disposed of simply because they were in his way—fishermen and weapons traders and business owners who tried to cheat them. He could still hear their muffled screams through the closed doors that led to the basements below. Bit by bit, he’d helped Kerlan clear Cyrilia of anyone who stood in their way, extending the Order’s underground reach like an invisible hand unfurling beneath the broken empire.
No more, Ramson thought as he strode down the halls, away from the music and dancing and light. The carpets were less worn, the walls decorated with gilded frames—paintings of far-off places, mysterious islands, and oceans that glimmered turquoise.
Ramson recognized these places. It had always haunted him that he shared a home kingdom with Alaric Kerlan, that he’d almost traced Kerlan’s exact steps many years past, fleeing from their wrongdoings to establish themselves in a foreign empire. It was as though, in a desperate attempt to free himself from becoming the demon that was his father, Ramson had run onto a path that had made him into a different kind of monster.
The chandeliers above burned brightly, almost jarringly. Kerlan always made his entrances at his parties after nine o’clock. Ramson was getting closer to Kerlan’s living quarters, and he was surprised there wasn’t a guard—
“Stop.”
A figure peeled from the shadows of the next corridor, regarding Ramson with cold eyes. Ramson recognized him. He had a name: Felyks.
“Guests are welcome in Lord Kerlan’s banquet hall,” Felyks said. “His personal quarters are private.”
Ramson smiled a hungry smile. “I’m no ordinary guest, Felyks,” he said, and pulled off his mask.
Felyks did a double take; his eyes went round. His hand twitched for his sword, even as he backed into the wall. “Qui-Qui-Quicktongue.”
Ramson gave a mock bow. “In corporeal form. You seem happy to see me.” His cheery tone dropped. “I want to see Alaric.”
Felyks struggled. “I—I can’t let you do that,” he said at last, and unsheathed his sword. “The Kerlan Estate has rules.”
“Rules that I set in place,” Ramson said, stepping closer to the guard. He relished the way Felyks cringed slightly. “Now let me past, or I’ll