darkness begets darkness
How does he stand it? The weight of decisions and their consequences? Even with my hands unbloodied, my heart feels heavy. Perhaps I’m not cut out for all this. Perhaps he should have prepared me better. Perhaps he should have prepared me at all.
A wall of shadow eclipsed the frame, dark wings appearing so very real for a moment before dispelling in the lamplight, revealing a looming figure at the door.
“Nightingale!” Esteria leapt to her feet, clutching her dressing gown to her chest. “What are you doing here?”
There was no reason for him to be in her rooms. Something was very wrong. Instead of answering her question, Dacre pushed inside without invitation and grabbed her by the arm.
“Hey!” she objected as he hauled her across the room, shoving her into the corner.
For a moment, he completely boxed her in, his chest a wall blocking everything from view except for him. His usual black clothing was a bit rumpled, the buttons of his shirt done up in haste. She should force him back—she’d never been manhandled like this before, let alone by Dacre Nightingale—but she was just so caught off guard; her temper hadn’t quite caught up yet.
The interaction lasted only a second, two at most, but then he grunted, “Stay here,” and pulled away.
Then, he was on the other side of the room, ripping open curtains and tearing sheets from the bed.
She stood in shocked silence as he ransacked her quarters, treating her things more roughly even than he’d handled her. “What are you doing?” She was afraid to move from the spot he’d placed her as she wasn’t certain he’d halt his warpath should she step into it. “Have you gone completely mad?”
He pulled open the washroom door, poking his head in before closing it again. His sword remained at his hip, though Esteria found little comfort in that. Whispers at court claimed the Raven didn’t need a physical weapon. It was a thought so chilling that she jumped when he barked, “There are intruders in the palace.”
“What?” She stepped forward. “How?”
Her desk crashed to the floor as he flung it out of the way. She flinched after the fact as he investigated the tapestry behind it. “Two excellent questions”—his eyes flashed to her—“but I didn’t put you in that corner for my own amusement. Don’t move.”
She bristled at being spoken to that way but stayed where she was, gripping her mother’s pendant until Dacre had positively destroyed her room in his effort to deem it safe. Tossing aside the rug he’d yanked from the floor, he crossed the room and grabbed her by the arm again. “I need to get you to the rendezvous point.”
“What about my father?” She offered no resistance as he tugged her from the room.
“Already taken care of. Besides…” They came to a halt.
“Besides what?” She tugged to break his grip, but his hold was iron.
Dacre’s head swiveled birdlike in both directions before he glanced back at her, eyeing her up and down. “We believe that you’re the target, not him.”
“Me?” she squeaked, but then he was dragging her down the corridor.
Why would anyone want her? Despite her title, she was practically useless and powerless to boot. She didn’t make important decisions, didn’t know classified information. Her meaningless title was the only thing that made her seem important—
Idiot. Of course she was the target. She was simultaneously the least replaceable and the most accessible, the perfect hostage. At this, her blood ran cold. Someone was after her.
Dacre charged down corridors heedless of her internal reeling, and she struggled to keep up. She tripped over her slippers, her nightgown tangling between her legs. The halls were eerily dark and quiet, most torches unlit. Only the moonlight illuminated their way.
“Is it the Raze?” she asked.
Dacre didn’t say anything.
“Nightingale, I’m asking you a question. Is it the—”
His hand clamped over her mouth, a harsh shushing noise whistling through his teeth. He’d pressed her body to the wall. She flailed, but his dark blue eyes flashed in warning. He was listening for something. They were pinned where the corridor came to a crossroads. He didn’t smell of alcohol anymore. Instead, the scent of sweat and something woody and fresh curled around her.
Acutely aware that the only thing separating them was this cursed excuse for a dressing gown—she was wearing wool from here on out—she held her breath until he released her, seemingly satisfied, and hustled them down the next corridor.
With every turn, she envisioned potential enemies; with every howl of wind, she imagined the patter of footsteps. Her fear was an amorphous urgency clouding around her, her head spinning with terrifying contingencies.
“Nightingale.” Her teeth chattered. “Are you certain we’re going the right way? What if—”
He rounded on her, his voice a low growl. “What don’t you understand about the palace being under attack? This is no time for questions, no time for slowing down. You will follow me silently until I get you to safety. Do I make myself clear?”
She bit back several cutting remarks because he was right. It was his job to protect the royal family. She needed to trust him. At least in this. Five. Six. Seven. Eight… She nodded once and was thankful when his only response was to take off down the corridor again, his pace even more brutal.
He didn’t have to drag her this time.
They moved swiftly and silently. The palace’s walls always dulled the roar of the waterfall upon which it was built, but this was a different sort of stillness. Every noise shocked the hush of night. The bang of a door slamming, the pounding of footsteps, a distant cry of panic. The palace was on high alert. Esteria’s heart raced faster.
She yelped at an owl’s hoot, and Dacre turned on her, growling. “What did I say about being quiet?”
She glared at him. “It was an accident! For once, could you not—”
Two dark figures emerged at the crossroads, turning and pointing in their direction. For a fleeting moment, they were just palace residents, fleeing in the night as they were, but then the men slowed, drawing weapons as they stalked toward them. Her stomach dropped. Dacre grabbed her arm to haul her away only to find two more men approaching from behind.
Dacre cursed and shoved her backward. “Stay back.” He unsheathed his sword, and the four attackers rushed at once.
The first two men narrowed the gap first, one bearing a short sword, the other a spear. Dacre parried the swordman’s attack and moved swiftly to block the spearman. Esteria frantically looked around for something, anything, to help while the clashes of combat echoed around her. Dacre met the other men blow for blow, but as the second group of attackers closed in, he was still on the defensive.
She had no idea if Dacre could handle four men at once. Rumors likened him to a living god, but she wasn’t about to bet her life on it. The only thing in reach was an unlit torch on the wall, but embers still glowed on its head.
Desperate, she lunged for it, hands closing around the wood, but it wouldn’t budge from the wall brackets. She was too short to get enough leverage. Esteria gave another tug, but she only accomplished throwing her body against the brick, her nightgown tearing at the hem with a loud rip.
The two other men were almost within striking distance, their features identifiable as they moved from the shadows and into the moonlight. One had a beard; the other was bald. Both drew their weapons, a longsword and an axe. Come on. She tugged frantically until the torch finally came loose, but it was too late.
The bearded man hefted the axe over his head, directly above her.
They came for my brothers. She closed her eyes, unable to watch. And now they’ve come for me.
The blow never landed. A grunt had her eyes shooting back open, and Dacre was there, shouldering aside the bearded man and swiping at the other with his sword. Esteria glanced back at the first two attackers. They were lying in a heap atop each other, the second man’s spear impaling them both through the chest. Their blood made a crimson carpet of the flagstone.
Esteria swallowed her horror. Would-be assassins or not, she’d never seen anyone die before. The other two men hesitated at the sight of their fallen comrades, second-guessing their odds. They shifted into the defensive, but Dacre moved like a storm. It was like he knew what the men were going to do before they did it, cutting them off at every angle. His motions were liquid, graceful, like a dance, and his overly large shadow followed him just as smoothly, wings folding and flaring as he moved, twin soldiers of darkness making it even harder for the remaining men to fight back.
She shook herself back to attention—she’d just been standing there, watching—and hefted the torch before her, but then two arms grabbed her from behind. She yelped, dropping the torch, and it clattered loudly to the ground. A fifth man had snuck up on them. “Nightingale!” she cried out before a hand clapped over her mouth.
Dacre turned, and something flashed in his eyes. In a split second, his hands dropped, sword falling to the floor. His shadow vanished from the wall, and his fingertips began to blacken. The darkness spread through his hands and up his exposed arms in a rapid, choppy wave, geometric shapes stacking atop each other until they charred every inch of skin. He threw a hand out, and a swarm of ravens streamed from his palm, hundreds of shadow birds silently barreling for their attackers. The ravens split to strike all three of them at once, a wing nearly grazing Esteria’s cheek as it flew past.
All three men cried out, and Esteria gaped. The ravens weren’t corporeal, but wherever they touched, skin disintegrated into ash, vaporizing into hovering, black clouds. Spreading and spoiling and corrupting and defiling.
Darkness begets darkness.
The rot spread like an infestation, tainting the bodies of the attackers with the deepest and purest black. Esteria looked back at Dacre, the center of this terrible storm. His pupils were fully expanded, the whites gone. Pure onyx. His white hair practically glowed in the moonlight. Even his veins, mapped across his forearms in tortuous hills and valleys, pulsed with obsidian blood.
The all-consuming void crawled over the three men, advancing up their throats while they yelled in panic as more and more ravens surrounded them. Their voices were strangled and hoarse until the cloud of shadow and wings swallowed them whole, and the last vestiges of their cries choked off.
The pulsing black nests hung in the air for one perilous moment, a moment where Esteria forgot how to breathe, before they dropped to the floor all at the same time, disintegrating into smoke. The fog mushroomed as it hit the ground, then faded away in wispy tendrils.
It had all happened in a matter of seconds.
Nothing of what the ravens touched was left behind when the dark mist cleared except for Dacre, standing in the center of the corridor with his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling with painful deliberation. The blackness of his limbs slowly bled away, leaving his ivory skin unblemished. His shadow reappeared on the wall behind him, disarmingly still. The first two attackers remained, untouched by ravens but still very much dead.
Dacre opened his eyes, now in their normal state of blue, and stared at her from several feet away. His expression was unreadable, but part of her suspected he was assessing her reaction to such destruction, her reaction to him…
His gaze darkened, and if it had been a test, she’d failed.
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