Jay Kristoff - Darkdawn

Could she still love a woman like that?

And if not, could she hate the man who’d killed her?

Why did she hate Julius Scaeva? When all she’d based her life on was a lie? Was he so different from Alinne and Darius Corvere, save in that he’d emerged the victor? He was a killer, remorseless and cold, that much was certain. A man who’d drenched himself in the blood of dozens, perhaps hundreds, to get his way.

But wasn’t that true of everyone who played this game?

Even me?

Eclipse’s hackles rippled as Scaeva’s serpent slithered closer. The shadowwolf’s growl dragged Mia out of the darkness within, back into the burning light in that study, glinting on the black pawn in Scaeva’s upturned palm.

‘… STAY BACK … ’ Eclipse warned.

‘… Nothing to fear, pup … ’ the serpent hissed in reply.

‘… STAY BACK …’

Eclipse took a swipe at the shadowviper with her paw, and Mia’s eyes widened as she saw a fine mist of black spatter on the floor, evaporate to nothingness. The serpent reared back, hissing in cold fury.

‘… You will regret that insult, little dog …’

‘… I DO NOT FEAR YOU, WORM …’

The shadowviper opened its black maw, hissing again.

‘Whisper,’ Scaeva said. ‘Enough.’

The serpent hissed again, but held still.

‘Mia means us no harm,’ Scaeva said, staring at his daughter. ‘She’s intelligent enough to know where she stands. And pragmatic enough to realize that, if anything unpleasant were to happen to us, her dear Old Mercurio would be treated to the most gruesome of tortures before he was sent to meet his dear dark Goddess.’

Mia’s stomach rolled at the threat against Mercurio, but she tried to keep her face like stone. The serpent turned to regard her darkin counterpart, swaying as if to music only it could hear.

‘… She fears, Julius …’

Scaeva gifted Mia a smile that never reached his eyes.

‘So. Itreya’s most infamous murderer is capable of love. How touching.’

Mia bristled at that. Felt a soft ripple in the air, glanced towards their shadows on the wall. Where once Scaeva’s had reached out as if to embrace her own, it was now poised, crook-backed and claw-fingered. Reaching towards her own shadow’s throat.

‘Where is your brother, Mia?’

‘Safe,’ she replied.

Scaeva stood slowly, hand drifting to the Trinity hidden at his throat.

‘You will bring him to me.’

‘I take no orders from you.’

‘You will bring him to me, or your mentor dies.’

Mia’s voice turned soft with menace. ‘If you hurt Mercurio, I swear by the Goddess you will never see your son again.’

She saw fury boiling in his eyes then. A fury born of fear. Even with all his control, his much-vaunted will, Scaeva still couldn’t quite keep it from her. She could sense it on him, sure as she could sense the suns above.

Her mind was working. Probing at the cracks in his façade, the tiny glimpses he’d given her behind his mask. He’d spoken of building a dynasty that would last a thousand years. And granted, that would be hard to do without his only son. But still, he was imperator now. He could cast off his barren wife, have any woman he wanted. Black Mother, he could take a dozen wives. Sire a hundred sons.

So why is he afraid?

Mia tossed her hair over her shoulder, glancing again at the silhouettes on the wall. Scaeva’s shadow was moving now, its motion violent and sudden. Her own was responding in kind, elongating, distorting, dark shapes unfurling at its back.

‘You seem awfully concerned about Jonnen, Father,’ she said. ‘And I can’t bring myself to believe it’s out of sentimentality. Could it be your dear wife Liviana isn’t the one who can’t have any more children?’

Dark eyes glanced below his waist.

‘Getting soft in your old age?’

Scaeva took a step towards her, hand snaking beneath his robes. In a flash, their shadows struck each other, tangled and twisting and curling like smoke. Twice as dark as they should have been alone. Scaeva’s serpent reared up as if to strike, and Eclipse bared her fangs with a black growl. Mia felt her clothes and hair moving, as if a breeze were blowing behind her. As if the world were moving beneath her feet.

‘You cannot know the stakes you toy with,’ Scaeva said. ‘Do not make yourself my enemy, Mia. Not when I offer you peace. All who have stood against me now rot in the ground. All of them. Bring me your brother, and take your place at my side.’

‘You are afraid,’ she realized.

‘Fear has its uses,’ he replied. ‘Fear is what keeps the dark from devouring you. Fear is what stops you joining a game you cannot hope to win.’

He tossed the pawn towards her, and she caught it in her fist.

‘If you start down this road, daughter mine, you are going to die.’

She knew she couldn’t touch him. Couldn’t even get close. Not with that Trinity about his throat. Not with Mercurio’s neck on the block. She could hear tromping feet, soft shouts in the distance – she guessed someone had found the bodies in her wake.

No more time to chat.

And so, she began to back away from him.

A single step. Then another. Farther and farther from the throat she’d sought for almost eight years. Their shadows were still entwined on the wall, strangling and seething, a knot of black rage. With effort, Mia dragged her shade back, Scaeva’s clinging on.

‘Bring me my son, Mia,’ he said, his voice soft and deadly.

She tore her shadow free, the dark about her shivering.

‘I’ll consider it,’ she said. ‘Father.’

A rippling in the darkness.

The whispered song of running feet.

And she was gone.

He stood there for long moments afterwards, still as stone and just as silent. The shadowserpent wove its way across the vast map of the Republic he now ruled, coiled in a black ribbon about his ankles.

‘… Do you think she will listen … ? ’ Whisper asked.

The imperator looked to the burning light outside.

‘I think she is as much her mother’s daughter as mine,’ he replied.

The serpent sighed. ‘ … A pity …’

Scaeva walked to the chessboard. He stood above the frozen battleground, the pieces arrayed in fractured rows, looking down with those cool black eyes. In one swift motion, he sat, sweeping aside the pieces with his hand. Reaching to his throat, he grasped a leather thong, snapped it free. A silver phial hung upon it, stoppered with dark wax and engraved with runes in the tongue of Old Ashkah.

Scaeva broke the seal, pouring the contents upon the board, thick and ruby red.

And, using his fingertip like a brush, he began writing in the blood.

If the entry under ‘scoundrel’ in Don Fiorlini’s bestselling Itreyan Diction: The Definitive Guide had an illustration, it probably would have looked a lot like Cloud Corleone.[fn1] But Cloud himself preferred the term ‘entrepreneur’.

The Liisian was clad all in black: a leather vest over a finely cut shirt (unlaced perhaps a touch too far) and a pair of what could only be described as conspicuously tight pants. Emerald-green eyes gleamed beneath the brim of his feathered tricorn hat, and a perpetual three-turn growth of beard dusted a jaw you could break a shovel on. He was standing in the harbourmaster’s office in the Nethers docks. And he was haggling with a nun.

It had been a strange turn all told, really. It had begun eight hours earlier, when Cloud had placed a sizeable and very drunken wager on the outcome of the Venatus Magni . In hindsight, the bet proved a less-than-sound investment of his meagre funds.