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ALSO BY JANET FOX

The Charmed Children of Rookskill Castle

Dedication

For all children who are thrust into difficult circumstances, and for Jeff and Kevin, always and forever

CHAPTER 1

Guardian and Hunter

1942

At well past midnight, in the deep cold of winter, a man moved like a shadow through the snowy streets of Prague. He kept his head down and walked with a quick pace, finding his route over the slick cobbles of Josefov through old habit, trying not to stumble. Once, a cat startled him as it darted across the street—a black cat, of course, he noted with a brief, grim smile—and he paused for an instant.

Somewhere above him a window slid shut. Somewhere behind him his family slept.

His son slept, still oblivious.

The man passed the baroque facade of the church of Saint Nicholas, the stone statues of saints casting cold eyes downward. The great astronomical clock was silent at this hour, the apostles with their grave countenances hidden, the broad Old Town Square deserted. He crossed the space as quickly as he could, keeping to the edges, making for the House of the Stone Bell—a carved bell that was as silent as the saints and the clock—and the alley that ran between it and Our Lady Before Týn. He stopped only where he couldn’t be seen from any direction and then faced the wall that was crowned by the arch of a filled-in remnant of a door, the plaster just inches from his nose. On that wall was a faint painted symbol. It looked like a looping vine.

He had to tug open the top button of his overcoat—it was frigid and the sudden chill penetrated to his bones—to draw out what he required. He placed his hand against the plaster and the air shimmered, the wall fading behind a watery veil, until a door appeared, a great carved oak door with no handle or lock, which swung open into darkness. He was through the door and gone, fading, as always, to nothing.

The prowling cat and the saints, had they been looking an instant later, would have seen no door, only the great blank wall and the cobbles of the empty alley glistening with icy snow.

*   *   *

In the dark, silent, frigid city, a hunter is looking, but not, in this moment, toward the square. This hunter, an Unseelie fae, perches on the pinnacle of the Charles Bridge’s eastern tower, peering this way and that but missing what it wants by a breath. It can only sense the magic that whispers through the air, then vanishes.

If such a creature could feel disappointment, it would. Instead, it feels only anger and centuries-old resentment. It has been bidden by its master—Moloch, leader of a small band of miserable outcasts—to seek and find, and the hunter has missed its prey yet again.