With his deep brown skin and high cheekbones, he is also exceedingly handsome. The grizzled old Paters tease him for it, but he doesn’t seem to mind. His self-assurance makes me like him more. He’s a good ally. I would hate to lose his support.

“Keris seized Gens Mettia’s southern estates,” he says. “Declared me a traitor. Most of my family escaped—but those who did not were beheaded. She has offered my lands as a reward for the Emperor’s head. And an additional ten thousand marks for mine.”

Bleeding skies. Every assassin from Antium to Sadh will be on their way here for a bounty like that.

“I am deeply sorry for your family’s suffering, Pater,” Livia says. Perhaps I imagine it, but his face softens, ever so slightly.

“That is the cost of loyalty, Empress Regent.” Mettias glares at Pater Cassius. “I am willing to pay it, even if others are not.”

“Hear, hear,” Uncle Jans mutters, half of the Paters joining him.

“But”—Mettias fixes his flinty gaze on me—“we need a plan. Keris chips away at us bit by bit. An assassin was found on the castle grounds a week ago. And in every city she has visited, the people have proclaimed her Imperator Invictus.”

My fist tightens on my scim. Supreme Commander. It is an honorary title for an Empire’s ruler, but when bestowed by the people, it carries far more weight. Before Taius was named Emperor, the Martial clans dubbed him Imperator Invictus. When his sons vied for the throne after him, his second-born won the title—and the throne—because of his prowess on the battlefield.

“How?” Uncle Jans paces the room. “How, when she left our people to suffer and die?”

“Those in the south don’t know—or want to know—what really happened in Antium,” Livia says. “Not when she’s promising them wealth and slaves from the Tribal lands.”

A side door opens and I turn, expecting the aux with the wine. But it is Faris who hovers at the threshold.

“Shrike.” Faris is so pale that I wonder for a moment if he’s been injured. “A word.”

I step out into the hall, where Faris waits with half a platoon, three of whom are Masks.

“Something’s happened in the kitchens.” He gestures for the soldiers to stand guard and hurries down the corridor.

If an assassin has gotten in, I’ll bleeding break something. Even if the killer is dead—which he must be, or we’d be walking to the dungeons—another breach is not something the Paters will tolerate.

Four legionnaires flank the entrance to the scullery. With them is the aux Livia sent for the wine, his face an unsavory green.

“I have two more guards at the exits. Shrike . . .” Faris is at a loss, and I am suddenly unsure of what I am about to see. I shove through the doors and stop short.

For it is not a dead assassin I find, or even a live one. It is a bloodbath. A wretched stillness blights the air, and I do not need to look at the ravaged bodies to know everyone is dead. One of the faces is familiar. Merina—Livia’s lady-in-waiting and nurse to my nephew.

“Merina came down to get tea for the Empress Regent,” Faris says from behind me. “The aux you sent for wine found them.”

I clench my fists. Both Plebeians and Scholars worked in these kitchens. It was one of the places they got along just fine. All were survivors of Antium. All loyal to the Emperor.

And this is what they got for their loyalty.

“The assassin?”

“Killed himself.” Faris nods to the wall behind me. “But we know who sent him.”

I turn. Splashed across the stones in blood is a symbol that enrages and sickens me, all at once.

A K with a crown of spikes atop it.

XVII: Laia

Winter falls harsh on the Forest of Dusk. The thick evergreens protect me from the worst of the wind. They do not, however, protect me from Elias’s frosty countenance.

The first day after he finds me, I try walking beside him—talking to him. He bolts so far ahead I can barely see him. For the rest of the day, I walk alone, missing Darin, Musa, Tas—even the Blood Shrike. At one point, I call out to Rehmat, thinking I can finally ask it questions about its origin. But it does not respond.

Later that night, when I pull out a meal of desiccated dates and flatbread, Elias disappears, returning a quarter hour later with a steaming bun stuffed with minced fowl, raisins, and almonds.

“Did you steal this?”

At his shrug, I bristle. “This is someone’s hard-earned labor, Elias.”

“Soul Catcher, please.”

I ignore that. “I will not eat it if you stole it.”

“You wouldn’t, would you?” His glance is fleeting and I cannot tell if he is mocking me or making an observation. “I always leave a gold mark,” he says flatly. “Bakers are less likely to lock their doors that way.”

I am about to respond when I notice the stiffness of his shoulders. How he clenches his fists.

When Elias and I traveled through the Serran Range after escaping Raider’s Roost, I did not wish to talk, for I had taken my first life—a Tribesman who tried to kill us both.

Elias was so careful with me then. He spoke to me—but he did not rush me. He gave me time. Perhaps, with his mind so deeply entwined with Mauth, I must do the same.

The next day, I do not speak and he relaxes a touch. In the evening, when we’ve stopped, I break my silence.

“I saw your mother, you know,” I tell him. “She’s as charming as ever.”

He pokes at the fire with a stick.

“She tried to kill me,” I go on. “But then her master and my former lover showed up. The Nightbringer—you remember him. He was in full Keenan regalia. Red hair, brown eyes, those freckles . . .”

I sneak a look at Elias. But other than a slight tightening of his infuriatingly square jaw, he does not react.

“Do you ever think of Keris as your mother?” I ask him. “Or will she always be the Commandant? Some days, I cannot believe Cook and my mother were the same person. I miss her. Father and Lis too.”

I yearn to speak of my family, I realize. To share my sadness with someone.

“I dream of them,” I say. “Always the same nightmare. Mother singing that song and the sound of their necks br-breaking—”

He says nothing, only rises and melts into the night. The space he leaves is vast, that gnawing loneliness of showing your heart to someone only to find they never wanted to see it. The next day, he is silent. And the next. Until three days have passed. Then ten.

I talk about everything under the sun—even Rehmat—and still he says nothing. Skies, but I have never known a man so stubborn.

After a fortnight, we make camp early, and Elias disappears. Usually when he leaves, he windwalks and I cannot follow. But this time, he stalks into the forest and I find him in a clearing, lifting a small boulder above his head—then slamming it down. Lifting it, slamming it down.

“Easy,” I say. “What did that poor rock do to you?”

He does not appear surprised by my presence, even though he was engrossed in his strange ritual.

“It helps when—” He gestures to his head and lifts the rock again. This time, when he drops it, I sit on it.

“You need a pet, Elias,” I say, “if you are turning to rocks for company.”

“I don’t need a pet.” He leans down, grabs me by the waist, and throws me over his shoulder.

I yelp. “Elias Veturius, you—you put me down—”

He drops me at the edge of the clearing—not ungently—and goes back to his boulder.

“You do need a pet.” I settle my breath, which has gone a bit shallow, and circle him, considering. “Not a cat. Too solitary. Maybe a horse, though with your windwalking you would not have much use for one. An Ankanese jumping spider, perhaps? Or a ferret?”

“Ferret?” He looks almost offended. “A dog. A dog would be fine.”

“A small one.” I nod. “One that barks incessantly so that you have to pay attention to it.”

“No, no, a big one,” he says, “Strong. Loyal. A Tiborum shepherd dog, maybe, or a—”

He stops short, realizing that he is engaging in actual conversation. I smile at him. But he makes me pay for my victory, stepping into a windwalk and vanishing, muttering about seeing to the ghosts.

“Why?” I mutter to the trees hours later, unable to sleep. “Why did I have to fall in love first with a vengeance-obsessed fire creature, and then with a noble idiot who, who—”

Who gave up his freedom and future so Darin and I could live. Who chained himself to an eternity alone because of a vow he made.

“What do I do?” I mutter. “Darin—what would you do?”

“Why do you ask the night, child? The night will not answer.”

Rehmat’s voice is a whisper, its form a scant shadow limned in gold.

“I thought I’d imagined you.” I offer it a smile, for imperious as the creature is, its presence leavens my loneliness. “Where have you been?”

“Unimportant. You wish to speak to your brother. Yet you do not. Why?”

“He is hundreds of miles away.”

“You are kedim jadu. He is kedim jadu. And he is your blood. If you wish to speak to him, speak to him. Still your mind. Reach.”