AS SHE MADE HER WAY up to the Belladonna, Etta squared her shoulders, the scrap of paper on which she’d written her offer, A secret about Ironwood’s desires, soft and damp in her hand. The candles’ flames shook in their stands, the dimly flickering light outlining each of the stalls as she passed them. It was the silence that was unleashing her anger, unbraiding the knot of fury she’d wrapped around herself. Her hands clenched by her side again, as if to keep the feel of Nicholas’s rough skin trapped there a moment longer.
May the best pirate win.
It wasn’t even that they were at odds; she understood his line of reasoning, even as she wanted to strangle him for simply accepting it. It was what he had so clearly withheld: the reason why the fire had left his heart. Why, when she kissed him that last time, had he shuddered, as if on the verge of shattering? Something’s wrong, something is so wrong, her mind had screamed as her hands skimmed over him, searching for a wound, a bandage that might explain the exhaustion, the weakness.
Pattern. She hated that word now, the lack of control it implied. The way it had hooked into what Henry had told her in Russia, grown through her like a winding, barbed vine. You will see the pattern, too.
They were both wrong. Etta didn’t have to accept that anything was meant to happen. She had been orphaned in Damascus, flung centuries away from Nicholas, but that was nothing compared to being trapped almost three hundred years ahead of him, locked away from her family, from the Thorns, from this hidden life. This wasn’t a pattern unless she let it become one.
We cannot possess the things and people not meant for us, we cannot control every outcome; we cannot cheat death. Etta hardened herself, straining to listen to the sound of her feet so she wouldn’t have to hear Henry’s words rising in her mind again, to see his bloodied face.
Etta stepped up to the table, feeling the icy pressure of the Belladonna’s gaze on her. When she was sure she’d released enough of her frustration in order to keep her expression neutral, Etta met her eyes and held out the offer. The woman plucked it out of her hand like a petal off a flower.
Standing near the table, Etta picked up the murmurs of the bidders, the debates they were having with themselves, as if all of their words had been funneled to that exact spot. But even those conversations were lost to the sound of the blood rushing in her ears.
If she reached out, she’d be able to brush the smooth, dark wood of the box that held the astrolabe. The candlelight caught all of the intricate detail, the etchings and marks of the device resting on the box’s velvet interior. Etta had held it for only a moment, but she recognized it all the same.
The flames flickered with her next step forward, and the sight gripped her, made her hold the next breath she drew in—because when the flames danced, so did the image of the burly guards.
A projection? An impressive one. How—?
Don’t do it, don’t do it— But she couldn’t help herself. She brushed her fingers against the edge of the astrolabe’s box.
The lid snapped down. The Belladonna’s long fingers, knotted at the joints, held it firmly in place.
“I see your heart,” the woman said. “It cannot be you.”
The scream set Etta’s pulse stuttering long before she saw the splash of dark blood against the curtain. A piercing laugh followed, an attack on her eardrums, and her legs were suddenly weak beneath her.
Them.
The Belladonna merely took a step back, crossed her arms over her chest, and watched as the same bidder’s body was tossed through the curtain, landing in a sickening, blood-soaked heap in the central aisle, his mask askew. The force of it blew out the candles at the table and the guards vanished like shadows meeting sunlight.
Etta barely swallowed her gasp of shock as she turned toward the Belladonna. But the woman’s face was impassive as she watched a new figure emerge at the entrance to the tent. It must have been a man, for he was broad in the shoulders and seemed almost inhumanly tall. He was draped in a shimmering cloak of gold and silver threads that made him look like a flickering flame. He reached up and slowly lowered the hood, never breaking eye contact with the Belladonna.
His shock of white hair was combed back neatly over his skull, and though Etta recognized his face as human, all of his features seemed to be exaggerated by the desperate way his skin clung to his pointed chin and prominent cheekbones. The arch of his brow was severe, and several veins bulged across his forehead. He looked as if he’d been carved from wax—patches of his skin seemed to gleam as golden as his cloak, while others were gray and flaking.
But even in decay, he seemed…
Radiant.
The small boy, the Belladonna’s servant, had been sitting to one side of the table, his book open in his lap. Now he stood, calmly shutting the cover, and left through the rear of the tent.
“It’s been a lifetime,” the Belladonna called to him. “And now we find ourselves here again.”
“I might have known it was you. What an intriguing reinvention; and more intriguing still that you did not consume this one, this time.” The man walked with an eerie silence, the only sound was his long golden robe whispering against the stone ground.
“You know, I’ve been quite content with two lives, the second of which will keep me in comfort for many years yet.” The Belladonna’s eyes drifted down the length of the man, skimming over the worn edges of his form. “It seems the same cannot be said for you. I wonder, how long would you have without it? I could not have drawn you out if you were anything short of desperate. Unless, of course, you merely wished to see the flock. I admit, they are amusing. From time to time.”
“I am as impervious to your words as I am to your blades,” he said, the words chiming like a song.
“We shall see.” Etta almost jumped clear out of her skin. It sounded as though the Belladonna were standing directly beside her, whispering the words loudly to her for the man to overhear. “Why…it looks as though a single spark would set you aflame.”
A shadow passed over the man’s face. That strike, at least, had landed. “I felt your mark upon that child, that young man, and spared his life only to amuse myself by killing him in front of you. This game is at its end, sister.”
The Belladonna gazed back, as serene and still as the moon. “And so it is.”
The man’s eyes were like sunlight passing through glass, intensifying as they fixated on something. Etta felt the gaze burn through her skin, to her core, as his eyes flicked over to her. They narrowed, as if in recognition, and terror froze her in place.
She sucked in a sharp breath; at that moment, darkness broke loose from the closest stall and flooded the tent with night. Blood slapped the white canvas, the fabric rending, as a body was thrown through. It rolled over to them, limbs flapping, sucking wounds visible, until the stranger—a traveler Etta didn’t recognize—gazed up at her, unseeing.
She was pinned by that moment, unable to get her feet under her again. The screams of the other travelers tore through her ears, but she couldn’t work up one of her own, could barely breathe.
“Etta!”
Nicholas, Sophia, and Julian tore out of their stalls as she dove for the table, for the box, for the astrolabe. Her fingers closed around it, and she felt the familiar pulse of the astrolabe’s power inside. The air pulled around her—her only warning before she was blown off her feet by the impact of someone slamming into her. The ground rushed up to greet her.
No, no, no! The box flew out of her hands as she fell, her vision blanking out with the force of her impact on the stone. She heard the wood splinter; her knife, her sole weapon, clattered as it danced away; but before she could reach for either, a torrent of black fell over her. Hot spittle flew in her eyes; the attacker’s weight was oppressive, as if trying to force her deeper into the ground. Etta choked on her next breath as the man leaned low, coming close enough for her to smell the decay emanating from his rotting teeth. His clawlike dagger dug into her upper arm and twisted.
With a cry, Etta managed to unpin one hand long enough to catch his jaw, desperately reaching with the other for the knife she’d lost, muscles straining, fingers grasping—
A sword swung out, its dull edge catching the Shadow on the side of his head. The blow was enough to stun him, but not to knock him off her chest. Etta managed to wriggle that last inch to the left, latch on to her knife, and, without any thought but getting out from under his weight, slam the blade upward, into the only place she could find without armor: his neck. The spill of dark blood made her stomach riot as it bubbled from the man’s wound. The Shadow was shoved away from her, and she sucked the smoky air into her already burning lungs.
Etta scrambled to her feet, assisted by a hand that gripped her beneath one shoulder. She whirled—
“Are you hurt?”
Henry stood there, his white robe spattered with blood. A bruise covered his skin from his temple to his jaw, and he couldn’t seem to fully straighten to his full, powerful height. But it was him. Alive.
Etta felt the burn of tears in her eyes, and choked on her words. His face was so unusually soft as he looked at her that she had to wonder if he’d mistaken her shock for fear. She stumbled forward, surprising both of them as her arms wrapped around his center, and she buried her face in his shoulder.
Alive.
“Are you—are you all right?” he asked, one tentative hand touching the back of her head.
Behind him, around him, men and women burst through the entrance of the tent, in clothing that ranged in style from the twentieth century to the first, weapons in hand. Leading the charge was Li Min, shrouded in black silk. The young woman shot forward, skimming through the carnage, seemingly searching. Nicholas and Sophia were locked in the middle of a blood-soaked circle, the bodies piling around them, choking them off from the rest of the room—from the attackers, the victims, the men and women who clutched their dead, screaming, until they too were silenced. With the smoke filling the space, it was nearly impossible to tell a shadow from a Shadow.
Nicholas stumbled, taking a blow to his back that brought him to his knees. Li Min drew herself back, just like an arrow notched on a bow, and then she was flying again, straight for him. She pulled a small dagger from her boot, launching it at the neck of the Shadow who’d cornered them at the table. The range of emotions that exploded across Sophia’s face at the sight of the other girl was indescribable.
“You are not forgiven!” she shouted.
Li Min kicked a silver serving platter up off the wreckage of canvas and wood on the floor. A man—an Ironwood—had taken up a gun and aimed, but she used the heavy platter to deflect the shot away from Nicholas and Sophia, and then to knock the man clear off his feet. In her next move, she seemed to produce a sword out of thin air, driving it through the back of the Shadow who had recovered enough to swing her claw and sword at Sophia’s face. Nicholas, his face fixed in determination, ripped the blade out from between her shoulders and proceeded to slash her with the cold dispassion of someone who’d fought, and thrived, in many more battles than his opponent could ever imagine.
Sophia gripped the front of Li Min’s cloak, drew her in, and kissed her soundly as the flames from the nearby candles caught the tent and set it ablaze.
“Thorns!” someone shouted above the shrieks, the vibrations of the dark one’s speech, the screams of agony and fear as the travelers tried to flee.
Another voice. “Hemlock!”
Henry spun Etta away; she heard, rather than saw, the explosion of a gunshot that ripped through the din of clanging metal. He jerked, but didn’t fall—Etta reached up, trying to pull back to see where he’d been hit, only to find that a man in a trim suit behind him was already slumping to the ground, shot clean through the skull.
The smoke from the burning stall began to fill the air, but it lifted as her mother stepped forward without a mask, her rifle still raised—pointed now at Henry, who calmly brought up his sword, bringing it to rest at the spot where Rose’s long, pale neck met her shoulder. She, too, was wearing the white auction robes, though now she had painted herself red and black with blood and smoke.
Etta pulled back from Henry with a jerk of alarm.
Rose’s cool expression slipped at the sight of them, cracking enough for her relief to bleed through.
“Can you get her out of here?” Henry asked.
Rose said nothing, only nodded.
“No—!” Etta ripped herself out of his grip. “You don’t understand, the astrolabe—you can’t destroy it—”
A familiar cry had Etta spinning back around. Nicholas had taken cover behind the overturned table with Sophia and Li Min. As one, they lifted it and used it as a battering ram, charging into the two Shadows who’d begun taking turns driving their claws through the body of one of the Thorns on the ground, trying to crawl over to another wounded young man.
When she looked toward her mother, Rose was nearly unrecognizable in her bone-pale terror.
Etta turned slowly.
It was the quiet, the way he absorbed the sounds around him like a vacuum, that was so deeply disturbing. The walls seemed to kneel to him, leaning forward, as if with each step he quietly devoured more of the world. The man in gold glided forward through the wreckage. The fighting fell away from him, the shadowed attackers drawing their prey into the stalls like predators wanting to feast on their kills. The hem of his robe was soaked up to the knee with blood.
Henry reached for her, but it was her mother who seized her. Etta found herself tucked between her mother’s back and the wall of the tent as the glittering man passed by. This close, his face had the consistency of rice paper. For a terrifying moment, Etta imagined she could see the dark blood throbbing through his rootlike veins.
But she wasn’t shaking—her mother was. Rose Linden, who had hunted tigers, betrayed Ironwoods, conquered an unfamiliar future, was shaking. As if that same raw fear carried vibrations through the air, the radiant man stopped suddenly, turning toward them, his eyes seeking. Recognition flared as he found Rose, his lips curving into a horrifying imitation of a smile.
“Hello, child.”
A whisper.
A curse.
Knowledge flooded Etta, filling the cracks in the picture she had begun to assemble of her mother’s life. Henry stepped in front of them both, but the man had no interest in him. As the man passed by, her father recoiled, as if the man had brushed his soul. There was something about the way the air itself seemed to curl and vibrate around the man, bowing to him, that made Etta’s stomach clench again.
“My God, my God, Rosie—” Henry said, turning toward her.
“You…believe me?” The vulnerability in her mother’s words was shattering.
“I’m sorry,” Henry said, so softly that Etta wasn’t sure her mother could hear him over the swarm of fighting. It felt as if she were standing in the path of two hurricanes finally on the verge of collision, the winds of clashing blades and blood whipping around them.
“Etta!”
Etta pulled herself free from her mother at Sophia’s bellow. Sophia was standing back to back with Li Min now, staving off two Thorns who had blades of their own. “Ironwood’s got it!”
Etta searched through the blazing fire and darkness until she found the place where the flames had eaten a hole in the side of the tent. There she saw an older man, his mask still on, rushing out into the courtyard, dodging the Shinto priests as they attempted to throw buckets of water onto the flames to stifle the fire before it jumped to the temple.
Between her and that opening, however, was Nicholas, with a Shadow clinging to his back; one clawed hand was on the verge of raking across his throat, no matter how hard Nicholas tried to buck his attacker off. His palm came up to block the next swipe of the claws, and blood instantly pooled where they cut deep into his flesh. Etta rushed toward him, but then Julian seemed to materialize out of thin air, shooting the man with what she thought must have been Sophia’s flintlock. The bullet wasn’t enough to deter the Shadow for long, but it was long enough for Nicholas to reclaim his sword from the ground.
The Shadow lunged again, but as Nicholas moved, the small leather cord he wore around his neck escaped his robe, and a large bead swung out from beneath his shirt. Etta might have imagined it—smoke was gathering heavily around them, masking them in silver—but when the Shadow stabbed at his heart, the bead caught the tip of the blade. The Shadow seemed almost enraptured by the unexpected sight, and, seizing his chance, Nicholas swung the blade back with as much strength as he had in him, bringing it down on the Shadow.
Astrolabe—Ironwood, she reminded herself.
The last sight Etta had before rushing out into the courtyard was of the Belladonna, standing where she had stood the entire night, watching the blood creep across the stones and absorb the ashes at Julian’s and Nicholas’s feet. She surveyed the fighting with the long-suffering look of a mother. Then she turned and left through a wall of fire and smoke, disappearing into the star-encrusted belly of the night.
THE MOON WAS HIGH AND BRIGHT ABOVE HER AS SHE RAN, searching for Ironwood’s figure down the path, among the trees, in any crevice the snake could have slithered into. The passage at the base of the mountain would have closed up with the first traveler’s death, but he had the astrolabe—he could create his own escape, and then seal the entrance and prevent anyone from following behind.
The air was clean and sweet in her lungs, but Etta couldn’t stop coughing, hacking up the smoke and spit and bile from deep inside her chest as she ran, her feet struggling in the soft earth.
Damn it, she thought. He couldn’t take the astrolabe now, not after everything—
“Etta! Etta, where are you?” Nicholas’s frantic voice carried down from above, but she didn’t stop—she had caught another voice on the wind.
“—face me! Face me once and for all! Let us end this!”
Etta stumbled down the weathered path, stopping just long enough to keep herself upright before picking up her pace again. Ironwood’s shouts sent birds launching from the safety of their branches.
The man had torn away his mask and robe, revealing a fine suit beneath. He was pacing up and down the path, his breathing ragged; his hand clenched at what remained of his hair, twisting it. Rivulets of sweat poured off him, along with the stench of blood.
“I know you’re out there!” he shouted—to the trees, to the darkness. “It’s mine, do you hear me? Come for it again and I’ll tear you apart, limb from limb!”
Etta had only had one real interaction with the man, but the frantic quality of his speech, the way he paced and screamed as if the words were being torn from him, made her feel like she was meeting him for the first time. His control over himself, his family, the machinations of the world, had been so tight and refined; she couldn’t reconcile that man with the knotted mess of anxiety and desperation in front of her. This was the same person who had bent time to his will? Who had subjected whole families to his cruelty?
“Do you hear me, you devil?” he shouted.
She came up short, a few feet away, but Cyrus Ironwood didn’t seem to notice. The empty box lay overturned nearby, and he was waving the astrolabe in the air, holding it up for the moon to witness, as if expecting something to swoop down and snatch it. A torch in his hand nestled him in the center of a shallow pool of light.
“Ironwood,” Etta said, walking toward him slowly. She kept the knife in her hand pressed to her side.
He spun toward her, eyes flashing. It was like looking in the face of a child, one who’d been struck once and knew he was about to be hit again. His rage was nearly choking him, polluting the cool mountain air.
She had a knife on her. He had only the torch.
And the astrolabe.
“Give it to me,” she said, holding out her hand. “It’s over.”
Ironwood swung around toward her, his gaze clouding. “Over? The Ancient One is dead?”
Ancient One?
Etta swallowed. Nodded. She reached out her free hand, repeating, “Give me the astrolabe….”
“It’s mine,” he told her, the rough lines of his face painted with blood and soot. His mouth twisted up in glee. “Years…years…it’s mine, finally, and mine alone—”
Her fingers curled more tightly around the knife.
She was close enough to smell his sweat now.
Without giving him a second to prepare, Etta lunged forward, grabbing for the astrolabe. With a speed she didn’t expect, his arm flew out, backhanding her sharply across the face. And suddenly, his rage had a target—a focus. Etta stumbled back, swinging her knife between them to try and keep him back. The torch dropped from his hand, but didn’t go out as it struck the path.
Ironwood swung the astrolabe toward her temple, heavy and unyielding, and it narrowly missed crushing her skull. But she was off-balance, and Ironwood seized the advantage and dropped his head, charging her with a rough yell, throwing her down onto her back. Etta’s breath left her in a rush as she rolled to avoid his next blow, but not quickly enough. Ironwood caught her by the hair and yanked her back down, hard enough to tear a clump of it out at the roots. The knife was out of her hand and in his, the blade flashing in the moonlight.
“You want this?” he cried, holding the astrolabe in front of her face. Etta reached for it, but Ironwood drew it back so sharply, so suddenly, that it went flying from his sweat-slick fingers. With a cry, he dove for it, but Etta yanked his leg back and dragged herself forward, snatching it just long enough to throw it as hard as she could into the dark forest, out of his reach.
Etta couldn’t hear the words he screamed at her over her thundering pulse, she only felt him slam her back to the ground, flipping her over again, his spittle flying in her face. She kicked, trying to claw at his face, but the knife was back in his hand and suddenly at her cheek, dragging the blade down against it. He closed his other hand over her throat.
“You did this, all of you, you did this—”
Etta reached up, trying to drive her fingers into his eyes, her broken nails clawing at his face.
“Rose,” he howled down at her, his eyes unfocused, “Rose Linden! Are you satisfied? Are you satisfied?”
The sound the blade made as it pierced him from behind, the sickeningly wet thump and the spray of blood across her face, would never leave Etta as long as she lived. Then the blade was torn back through his body, and she was forced to watch as he choked on his own hot blood, his hand pressed to the gaping wound in his chest. His head turned as he slumped to the side, his fingers finally becoming lax enough for Etta to scramble out from underneath him.
“No,” Rose said, wiping her blade against the side of her tattered white robe. “Now I have my satisfaction.”
Etta stared up at her from the ground, willing the feeling back into her limbs. Her mother stared down at her, her skin tight over delicate bones.
“Rose!”
Henry’s voice echoed down from the top of the mountain path. Rose turned—not toward the sound, but behind her, just as the man in the golden robe slashed a clawlike blade over her throat.