Moria awoke to darkness. Complete black, as if she hadn’t opened her eyes. It was bitterly cold, too, like stumbling from the house on a winter’s night, forgetting to pull on her cloak, that first step a shock that sent sleep scattering. She leaped up, only to fall face-first to the dirt as something around her leg stopped her short.
I’m bound. I’m in the dark, and I’m bound. Why—?
She remembered and lunged again with Tyrus’s name on her lips. Then she realized she was alone. Completely alone, that chill coming not only from the air, but from deep inside her.
“Daigo?”
She scrambled onto all fours and frantically patted the ground.
“Daigo!”
Even as she felt about wildly, she knew in her gut he wasn’t there.
“Is anyone . . . ?” She choked on the word, on her panic, and had to restart. “Is anyone here?”
Her voice echoed in the silence. She squeezed her eyes shut and remembered the warlord swinging his sword at Tyrus, Daigo leaping in, and the last thing she saw . . .
That was the last thing she saw. Not a moment more. She lay there, straining and searching her memory, as if by concentrating harder she could catch a glimpse of what happened next. When her memory failed, her imagination filled in the hole, sending images of the sword cutting through Tyrus or deflecting at the last moment to cut down Daigo instead. Of the warlord’s men turning on them both, Daigo and Tyrus dead on a blood-soaked field and—
Bile filled her mouth, and she spat. The movement made her head pound as if it were about to crack open, and she fell to the dirt floor, heaving breath.
Tyrus. Daigo.
And Ashyn. Where was Ashyn? Safe. Moria had to trust in that. Whatever she thought of Ronan, he was clever and he was cautious. He would not have let Ashyn come to danger.
Ashyn would be safe.
And Tyrus? Daigo?
Her stomach lurched again as her fingers dug into the cold dirt.
She closed her eyes and tried to speak to the spirits. Any spirits. She tried and she tried and she tried. Not so much as a whisper answered.
She gave up then, shivering and instinctively reaching to pull her cloak tighter. Like her armor, it was gone, and at that, her throat tightened. After everything she’d lost, the cloak should seem inconsequential. It was not. Her father’s last gifts to the girls were Ashyn’s ring and Moria’s cloak. Now it was gone forever, and in her despair, it felt like losing him again.
When the cold ground beneath her vibrated, she prayed it was a sign from the spirits. But as she pressed her hands against the floor, she heard footsteps. She scrambled up and raked her fingers through her hair and wiped her sleeve over her mouth. She’d not be found lying in the dirt, broken and crying. She would not.
She heard the clang of a bolt being swung free. Then the creak of a wooden door. Light rushed in and the suddenness of it made her head throb. She lifted a hand to shield her eyes.
A man walked in, temporarily blocking the light, so that all she saw was a figure. Tall. Dark-skinned. His hair cut so short the light reflected off his scalp. She could make out nothing more, as hard as she blinked. Then he moved aside, and the light hit again, blinding her.
“I do not see what purpose it serves to show me wretches in the dungeon,” a voice said. “I know they’re here. I do not enjoy their plight. Nor am I particularly unnerved by it, if that’s what you fear. I am supposed to be meeting an ambassador from Umeweil, and I do not think keeping him waiting is wise.”
That voice. I know that . . .
The second man appeared. She saw his braids, his bright green eyes, the black-inked sleeves tattooed on his dark forearms, and suddenly she was lying by a campfire, studying those tattoos.
“It’s beautiful work.”
“I’ll remember that when they’re doing the inking, and I’m trying very hard not to cry out.”
She laughed. “If you fell from a thunder hawk without so much as a gasp, I think you can handle inked needles.”
She rolled onto her back, staring up at the dark sky. He reached over and moved her hair away from the fire.
“Before it catches alight,” he said.
She’d told herself that if she ever saw Gavril Kitsune again, she’d kill him. Without hesitation. She’d leap up and strangle him with her bare hands if need be. But here he was, standing close enough that she might indeed be able to grab him, yet she did nothing.
Tyrus was right. She remembered the boy who’d fought by her side, the boy who’d confided in her, the boy who’d lain by the fire with her, and no matter what he seemed to have done since, she could not truly believe it.
As she moved, the chain on her leg whispered across the dirt, and Gavril looked her way for the first time. He stopped mid-step and stared, and in his eyes, she saw . . . She couldn’t name what she saw. She was afraid to.
“Moria?”
The other man chuckled. “You don’t even consider for a moment that it might be her sister? You do know her well.”
Moria looked at the man. He was wide-shouldered, shorter and broader than Gavril. His skin tone was lighter. His features were rougher, coarser. But there was no doubt who he was.
Alvar Kitsune. Gavril’s father.
The man who killed my father.
Just the other day, she had told Ashyn that she blamed the emperor for their mother’s death. That conviction paled against this one. Emperor Tatsu had failed to amend old traditions that had caused their mother to take her life. Yet Alvar Kitsune had murdered their father as surely as if he’d wielded the blade himself. No, worse than that, because he hadn’t wielded any blade. He’d hidden in the shadows and let monsters do it for him.
Rage boiled up in Moria, and if she’d been close enough to spring, she would have. For Alvar Kitsune, she would have.
“I lived in Edgewood for nearly two summers,” Gavril said. “Of course I can tell them apart.”
His tone was clipped and cool, as it’d been when he’d objected to this excursion into the dungeons. An odd tone for a son to use with his father, but that was Gavril. Blunt-spoken. Ill-tempered. Coldly polite to everyone except those he honored with the sharp side of his tongue. Good humor with Gavril was a droll comment, a quick-witted exchange, a teasing insult, a half smile. He was as mercurial and unpredictable as a summer storm. And as invigorating. To weather the storm and catch the flashes of sunlight no one else saw had made her feel . . .
She inhaled softly, air hissing through her teeth.
“What’s she doing here?” Gavril said.
“A gift,” his father said. “For you.”
Confusion crinkled Gavril’s forehead. Then something flitted through his gaze. A moment of unguarded expression, as when he’d first seen her. He hid it just as quickly.
“I don’t understand,” he said, his words brittle. “Why would I want—?”
“I’m asking myself the same thing,” his father cut in. “It’s not as if there are a lack of women here. Beautiful women, eager to catch the eye of my son. But you pay them no heed.”
“Because I have no time for such frivolities. We are preparing for war.”
“All the more reason to indulge in pretty distractions. Yet you snap and you snarl and you send the poor girls scattering. That’s hardly the behavior of a healthy young man.”
Gavril’s eyes flashed. “Whatever you are implying—”
“I’m implying that they do not distract you because you are already distracted. By thoughts of a girl you left behind.”
“Moria?” Gavril looked at her as one might gaze on a pile of offal. “I ignore the women in camp because I am focused on my goal—on our goal. To decide I’m mooning over some mewling chit of a Keeper? Believe me, Father, after our five days in the Wastes together, I’d be quite happy if I never saw her again.”
“Is that right?” His father’s voice was deceptively soft.
Gavril looked his father in the eye. “Yes. Now, if you’ll excuse me. I have an appointment with—”
“You reject my gift?”
Gavril went still then. When he spoke, a veneer of courtesy coated his words. “I apologize if you thought I wished such a gift, though I am at a loss to understand why you would. However, I concede that you no longer know me as well as we’d both like. Perhaps you presume that, after my many days alone with the Keeper, something transpired between us. I can assure you, it did not. I have little patience for such distractions, but even if I made an exception, my tastes would run . . .” A curl of his lip as he looked at Moria. “Elsewhere. She’s uncultured and headstrong. Not terribly bright either. The empire should exempt Northerners from holding such high positions.”
His father laughed. “Agreed. But a lack of intelligence isn’t a bad thing in a bedmate, my son. Your mother may be one of the loveliest women in the empire, but she’s as empty-headed as her dolls.”
Gavril stiffened.
His father patted him on the back. “Don’t take offense, boy. You may have gotten your handsome face from her, but the mind behind it comes from me, ancestors be praised. As for the girl, she’s your responsibility now. Take her to your bedchamber. You cannot have spent all those nights in her company and never wondered what it would be like to have her.”
“No,” Gavril said sharply. “Perhaps we do not share the same opinions on such matters, but I’ll not soil myself in such a way.”
“Oh-ho.” His father laughed and turned to Moria. “Did you hear that, child? Are you not offended?”
She was too shocked to take offense. Not shocked by the insults, but by Alvar’s words. She wasn’t Ashyn, blushing at any mention of relations between men and women. That was a natural part of life. But telling Gavril to bed her as if . . . Well, as if to say, “You’re hungry; here’s food.” She’d grown up in a garrisoned village where girls were raised to understand that no man should lay a hand on you without your permission and the penalties for transgressions were severe.
As a captive, she lost her rights and privileges. She understood that. But to treat her as spoils of war . . . ? Was that something men did?
But Alvar Kitsune was no mere man. He had set shadow stalkers on two villages to slaughter every woman and enslave every man. He was a monster. Did she truly need more proof of that?
She’d still hoped . . . She did not know what she’d hoped. To learn that Alvar Kitsune had been . . . duped? Enslaved? Betrayed by someone he trusted and forced to raise shadow stalkers against his will?
Moria and Ashyn had thought they’d been spared because whoever raised those shadow stalkers was a pious man who didn’t dare harm a Seeker and Keeper. She saw their mistake now. They’d been spared because they’d been useful.
You are a child and a fool, Keeper.
As she looked at Gavril’s face, she swore she could hear those words. She turned her face away so he wouldn’t catch the pain and the grief there.
“What shall I do with your gift, then?” Alvar asked his son. “Kill her?”
Gavril’s face remained blank, his eyes empty. “You could, but I can’t see how that would help our cause. She’s a Keeper and little more than a child. The people would be outraged.”
“True. But since I brought her here for you, she is your responsibility. If you don’t take her, then she stays here. In the dungeon.”
“All right.”
A moment of silence. Then, Alvar said, “You’ll leave her here, in the dark and the cold?”
“Certainly.” Gavril turned to go.
“Daigo?” Moria said. The name came unbidden, and she hated herself for her weakness. Yet that did not stop her from following with, “My wildcat. Is he . . . ?”
Gavril did not turn. He kept his back to her, stiff and still.
“Well?” Alvar said. “The girl asks after her bond-beast.”
“Then tell her,” Gavril said.
“She’s your responsibility. Any question she asks is for you.”
“I don’t have time to chase down answers, so she’ll have to do without.”
Gavril walked out without a backward glance. His father paused there, watching him go, studying him with that hawkish stare Moria knew well from his son. Then he turned it on Moria.
“You don’t look surprised, girl.”
“I’m not. If you were expecting anything different from your son, then I’d suggest that you do not know him very well.”
“Oh, we’ll see about that.”
He gave a humorless smile and the door clanged shut behind him, pitching her into darkness.