“I’m glad you did,” Malachi lied. “At least now I know the truth of things.”

So why did he feel hollow to his very marrow?

Even bloodied and blind, the knight battered at Apara with a gauntleted fist. Tightening her grip about his head, she rammed a knee into his back and drove his throat onto her claws. The lightest of pressures, the softest of tugs. His defiant bellow gasped into a stuttering gurgle.

She let the twitching body fall and slumped to one knee in the thinning mists, barely able to breathe for the hot scent of fresh blood. Her cloak, her garb – even her skin was thick with it. Her stomach spasmed, held in check only by the tatters of her fading will.

She stared at Kaleo Tassandra’s corpse, lying in a dark pool strewn with papers scattered from the office desk. She didn’t even remember killing the Mistress of Essamere. There was only the rush of wings, the exhilaration of slaughter. She recalled scant else of the others. Five knights, trained warriors all, and she – Apara Rann, who’d never taken a life until a week prior – had slain them all as naturally as drawing breath.

They’d not even landed a blow.

The younger her, the one who’d struggled to thrive mired in Dregmeet’s myriad rivalries, would have rejoiced. The older, more seasoned woman knew better. What was she becoming? What was the cloak making of her?

Urgent voices stirred her from misery. The cloak whispered hungrily, urging her to stay. Worse, a piece of her wanted to.

Apara reached trembling fingers to the wall. A bloody hand-print smeared across whitewashed plaster and fell away into Otherworld’s mists.

As she stumbled into the ghost-crowded streets beyond, she felt a presence at her shoulder.

“Impressive, my dear,” whispered the Raven. “Very impressive. You might have a knack for this.”

Apara yelped and spun around, ghosts parting before her. But the Raven – if indeed he’d ever been more than a figment conjured from a mind sick with terror and disgust – had gone.

Head swimming with nausea, she fled into the mists.

Fifty-One

Fifty-One

“Halvor!”

Kurkas shot bolt upright, hand flailing for support at the bedside. He bided a moment, feeling ridiculous at his outburst. Fortunately, the room was empty. And what a room it was. Faded grandeur was grandeur nonetheless, and Kurkas reckoned the furniture alone had cost more than he’d earned in thirty years.

Branghall. He had to be in Branghall. But where was Halvor? What in Queen’s Ashes had gotten into her? And that voice . . . Like the spaces between the slivers of the soul.