Jay Kristoff - Nevernight

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

Published by Harper Voyager

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 2016

Copyright © Jay Kristoff 2016

Cover design by Cherie Chapman © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2017

Cover illustration © Kerby Rosanes

All other images © Shutterstock.com(sun texture)

Jay Kristoff asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008179991

Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008180010

Version: 2019-10-21

for my sisters

light and dark and all that is beautiful between

No shadow without light,

Ever day follows night,

Between black and white,

There is gray.

—ANCIENT ASHKAHI PROVERB

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Maps

Caveat Emptor

Book 1: When All Is Blood

Chapter 1: Firsts

Chapter 2: Music

Chapter 3: Hopeless

Chapter 4: Kindness

Chapter 5: Compliments

Chapter 6: Dust

Chapter 7: Introductions

Chapter 8: Salvation

Chapter 9: Dark

Book 2: Iron Or Glass

Chapter 10: Song

Chapter 11: Remade

Chapter 12: Questions

Chapter 13: Lesson

Chapter 14: Masks

Chapter 15: Truth

Chapter 16: Walk

Chapter 17: Steel

Chapter 18: Scourge

Chapter 19: Masquerade

Chapter 20: Faces

Chapter 21: Words

Chapter 22: Power

Chapter 23: Switch

Chapter 24: Friction

Chapter 25: Skin

Chapter 26: Hundred

Chapter 27: Truedark

Book 3: Black Runs Red

Chapter 28: Venom

Chapter 29: Severance

Chapter 30: Favors

Chapter 31: Becoming

Chapter 32: Blood

Chapter 33: Steps

Chapter 34: Pursuit

Chapter 35: Karma

Chapter 36: Sunsset

Epilogue

Dicta Ultima

An extract from GODSGRAVE

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Also by Jay Kristoff

About the Author

About the Publisher

People often shit themselves when they die.

Their muscles slack and their souls flutter free and everything else just … slips out. For all their audience’s love of death, the playwrights seldom mention it. When our hero breathes his last in his heroine’s arms, they call no attention to the stain leaking across his tights, or how the stink makes her eyes water as she leans in for her farewell kiss.

I mention this by way of warning, O, my gentlefriends, that your narrator shares no such restraint. And if the unpleasant realities of bloodshed turn your insides to water, be advised now that the pages in your hands speak of a girl who was to murder as maestros are to music. Who did to happy ever afters what a sawblade does to skin.

She’s dead herself, now – words both the wicked and the just would give an eyeteeth smile to hear. A republic in ashes behind her. A city of bridges and bones laid at the bottom of the sea by her hand. And yet I’m sure she’d still find a way to kill me if she knew I put these words to paper. Open me up and leave me for the hungry Dark. But I think someone should at least try to separate her from the lies told about her. Through her. By her.

Someone who knew her true.

A girl some called Pale Daughter. Or Kingmaker. Or Crow. But most often, nothing at all. A killer of killers, whose tally of endings only the goddess and I truly know. And was she famous or infamous for it at the end? All this death? I confess I could never see the difference. But then, I’ve never seen things the way you have.

Never truly lived in the world you call your own.

Nor did she, really.

I think that’s why I loved her.

The boy was beautiful.

Caramel-smooth skin, honeydew-sweet smile. Black curls on the right side of unruly. Strong hands and hard muscle and his eyes, O, Daughters, his eyes. Five thousand fathoms deep. Pulling you in to laugh even as he drowned you.

His lips brushed hers, warm and curling soft. They’d stood entwined on the Bridge of Whispers, a purple blush pressing against the curves of the sky. His hands had roamed her back, current tingling on her skin. The feather-light brush of his tongue against hers set her shivering, heart racing, insides aching with want.

They’d drifted apart like dancers before the music stopped, vibration still thrumming along their strings. She’d opened her eyes, found him staring back in the smoky light. A canal murmured beneath them, its sluggish flow bleeding out into the ocean. Just as she wished to. Just as she must. Praying she wouldn’t drown.

Her last nevernight in this city. A part of her didn’t want to say goodbye. But before she left, she’d wanted to know. She owed herself that, at least.

‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

She’d looked up into his eyes, then.

Took him by the hand.

‘I’m sure,’ she whispered.

The man was repugnant.

Sclerosis skin, a shallow chin lost in folds of stubbled fat. A sheen of spittle at his mouth, whisky’s kiss scrawled across cheeks and nose, and his eyes, O, Daughters, his eyes. Blue as the sunsburned sky. Glittering like stars in the still of truedark.

His lips were on the tankard, draining the dregs as the music and laughter swelled about him. He swayed in the taverna’s heart a moment longer, then tossed a coin on the ironwood bar and stumbled into the sunslight. His eyes roamed the cobbles ahead, bleary with drink. The streets were growing crowded, and he forced his way through the crush, intent only on home and a dreamless sleep. He didn’t look up. Didn’t spy the figure crouched atop a stone gargoyle on a roof opposite, clothed in plaster white and mortar grey.