Nightborn

Gradually he saw that they were back at the tresoran safe house. Metal clattered as the weapons began to fall off the shelves around them, disappearing as soon as they touched the floor. The racks and shelving followed, melting into nothingness. When the furnishings shifted and grew brighter, he realized at last where they were.



“Simone, we are in the nightlands,” he said. “We’re having the same dream. Can you wake up?”



She picked up the storybook and opened it on her lap. “I don’t want to.”



“Try.”



Around them the flat began to fade, the colors and shapes flattening into an ashen gray. Just as suddenly it brightened and shifted around again, until all of the furnishings and carpet looked new.



Simone touched her neck. “I can feel myself out there, but I can’t find my body.”



Korvel closed his eyes, willing himself to wake, but a silver-blue haze drove him back from the void. “The drugs will wear off eventually. We will have to keep trying.”



“Do we have to?” When he looked at her, she picked up her book and held it against her breast. “We could stay. This is a good place now.”



“If we do not return to our bodies, you will die and I will go mad.” He focused on gaining control of his limbs, and when his body was steady he rose out of the chair. Since the dream was hers, everything around them would be governed by her subconscious. He knew little of the nightlands, except that they could be very dangerous. “Is this how the flat looked when you were a child?”



She nodded. “He needed a place to leave me, and he didn’t like hotels. At first I liked it because I was always warm here.” Simone smiled at the old radiator. “I didn’t really know what a home was. The château was always so cold and silent, and my brothers and I could talk only in whispers when they weren’t watching.”



He didn’t want her to shift the dream to the château and send them into a nightmare. “What did you do when your father left you here alone?”



“I would pretend that I was a grown-up lady who lived here with my husband, like the other ladies I saw from the windows.” She walked over to the table near the kitchen, and before Korvel’s eyes it set itself with plain white china and stainless-steel utensils. Three emergency candles in glass jars appeared in the center, and flames flickered from their wicks. “I would put on a pretty dress, set the table, and cook dinner. I’d always light the candles while I waited for him to come home from work.”



Korvel watched the glow of the flames chasing itself through the weave of her braids. The light loved her, gilding the tips of her eyelashes and gleaming along the curve of her bottom lip. “What was he like, this imaginary husband?”



“He was handsome and smiling.” She adjusted a fork and smoothed a napkin. “When it grew dark outside I pretended he was late because he stopped to buy flowers from the little stand at the corner. Sometimes tiger lilies, or hyacinth, or white roses with just a touch of orange on the tips of the petals.”



Korvel heard footsteps coming up the stairs. “What happened when he came home, Simone?”



“He would hide the bouquet behind his back and show them to me only after I kissed him.” She opened the door and stood there looking out at nothing before she closed it. “No one ever came, of course, but it seemed so real that I would fall asleep listening for him.”



The thought of Simone being touched by some mortal man—even one loneliness had conjured—sank like a copper dagger into Korvel’s belly. Yet even that stab of jealousy could not keep him from speaking the truth. “You can still have that life.”



“I’m scarred and barren.” She drifted past him to return to the window. “What decent man would have me?”



“You are right.” He saw her shoulders go rigid. “I forget what fools modern mortal men are in their desires.” He walked to stand behind her and began removing the pins holding her braids in their coil. “Among my kind, every warrior who set eyes on you would fight for the chance to claim you.”



A small shudder passed through her before she leaned back against him. “I am so tired of fighting, Korvel.”



“You can always choose another path.” As her braids fell out of the coil, he began unraveling each one. “When this is over, come with me on mine.”



The flat vanished, and Korvel found himself tumbling through the darkness, falling into an oval room with mirrored walls. The icy temperature of the air and the bleak expression on Simone’s face told him they were somewhere inside Château Niege.



“How would the high lord have me serve him?” she asked, her voice bleak. “As an assassin?” Her gown shrank onto her body, turning into a gray sparring uniform. “Or a housemaid?” The sparring uniform spilled out into her nun’s habit.



Frost began to swirl across the walls of mirrors, racing and curling into bizarre shapes as it crystallized on the glass. In each panel Korvel saw a ghostly silhouette of a little girl performing some task, but none of them made sense. In one she herded goats; in the next she crossed swords with a grown man. The ice child picked flowers, threw daggers, hung clothes on a line, and straddled a fallen opponent.



The last panel showed the little girl making a rosary out of her own frozen tears. She looked back at him with her snow white eyes and suddenly moved, crackling as she hurled the rosary at him.



Korvel brought up his arm to protect his face and felt the teardrop crystals stab into his flesh. As he lowered his arm, the panel began to crack, and the ice child knelt down, wrapping her arms around herself until, like the mirror, she fell into pieces on the floor.



“Look at this mess I’ve made.” Simone brought a broom and dustpan over and began to sweep up the child’s remains. “You should go now, Captain. Severance is about to begin.”



He took the broom from her and set it aside. “Simone, come with me. We’ll go back to the flat.”



Her face paled as she looked past him. “It’s too late.”



A faceless ice giant came into the room, his fists hefting two impossibly long swords. “Quatorze,” he whispered, his voice splintering like cracked glass. “You are worthy.”



Korvel tasted death in the air. “Who is that?”



“Helada.” Simone stepped in front of him and spoke to the monster. “You’ve taken everyone I loved from me, Father. You can’t have him.”



The giant flung one of the swords at them, but Korvel grabbed her and spun out of the way. It crashed into the mirrored wall, shattering the panel.



“He’s not real.” Korvel put his arms around Simone and turned her to face him as the giant came rushing at them, raising the ice blade over their heads. “He can’t hurt you unless you want him to.”



The sword stopped in midair and dropped out of the giant’s hand, splashing the floor as a wide swath of water.



“I never wanted this,” Simone whispered. “Any of this.”



“Then let it go.” Korvel removed her head veil and threaded his fingers through the bright tresses, drawing them over her shoulders. “Forget your father and this place. Be with me.”



“I’m not fit to serve you.”



Behind her the giant loomed, his body spreading and absorbing the room itself, stretching high above them as he became a towering mountain of ice and snow. He roared without words, and the world disappeared in a blizzard of fury.



Korvel held on to her. “I don’t need a servant,” he shouted over the screaming wind. “I need you. I want you, Simone.”



The giant bellowed, showering them with needles of ice, but his body shook as several sharp cracks pierced the air. One leg and then the other collapsed beneath the crumbling weight of his torso. One mighty hand reached out, clawing at Simone, only to fall short as the arm attached to it came apart. Dark water began to pour around them in a cold, rushing flood, and Korvel lifted Simone off her feet, holding her above the rising waters as he looked into her frightened eyes.



“I can’t stop it,” she said. “We’re going to die.”



“No, love.” Korvel put his lips to her brow. “We’re going to live.”



As the water closed over his head, he drew up the iron will that had never failed him, and reached for the void, dragging Simone with him, until the nightlands receded and he felt her limp body being moved away from his.



Korvel came back to consciousness in a complete killing rage, ripping out of the ropes binding him and grabbing the first throat within reach. As his eyes adjusted to the glaring light in his face, he inspected the mortal choking beneath his grip and the four other men flanking a metal hatch. “Where is she?”



“Are you looking for your little whore?” someone asked in a pleasant tenor. “She’s here.”



Korvel dropped the now-unconscious mortal and turned to see a smiling priest sitting beside a pallet to which Simone had been tied. The priest held a straight razor poised at Simone’s throat, and when Korvel took a step forward, he pressed the edge into her skin, causing a trickle of bright blood to stain the blade.



“Stay where you are,” the priest advised him, “and I won’t slice through the artery.” He studied Korvel for a moment. “I’m assuming you want her back in one piece. Or if you’d rather I relieve you of this burden—”



“Who are you, and what do you want?”



“You may call me Helada.”



Korvel sneered. “You are not Helada.”



“Oh, but I will be, as soon as you give me what I need. A translation of the Scroll of Falkonera.” The priest nodded to one side of Korvel. “It’s right there on the table, next to the notepad and pen.”



He glanced at the two gleaming gold cylinders of the scroll. “I am not a linguist.”



“The last man who said that to me killed himself. Shortly thereafter I tortured his assistant, who provided a surprising amount of information. I think his employer grossly underestimated the boy’s powers of observation.” The priest scratched the back of his head in a lazy gesture, frowning at some strands of dark hair it left on his fingers before shaking them off. “I know who and what you are, Captain, and how your kind used the night code to communicate with other Darkyn after the fall of the Templars. You will sit down and translate the contents of the scroll for me.”