The Shadows

“Are you sure Trez isn’t in the house?”

“No, he’s gone. I checked the security camera feeds. He left his cell phone on the stone steps and disappeared about an hour ago.”

“Holy … shit. Okay, all right…” Except he wasn’t sure if that was true. Maybe there was no war … but what about the Shadows?

Their two Shadows?

“Let me go up and tell iAm,” he heard himself say as he glanced back at Mary.

“Do you want me to come with you?” she said.

“Yeah, I do.”

iAm came awake to two pairs of shoes at eye level. One was a set of shitkickers, big as recliners. The others were Coach sneakers, with the logo in gray and black, and Velcro straps instead of laces.

As he lifted his head, he looked up at Rhage and Mary. “What time is it?”

Mary knelt down, and that was his first clue that whatever message they were delivering was bad, bad news.

Rhage was the one who spoke up, though, “iAm … we got reason to believe your brother has turned himself in.”

The words filtered through his mind on a series of clunks and mis-hits, the combination of nouns and verbs and other things making no sense.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

As he sat up, the bottle he’d been nursing rolled away, knocking into Rhage’s boots.

“We received word from the Territory that the Queen is no longer going to attack because Trez has voluntarily returned to the s’Hisbe—”

“Jesus Christ!”

Jumping to his feet, he shoved through the pair of them and burst into his brother’s room. The bed was messy, and the closet doors were open … and there was absolutely, positively no sign of Trez.

“No—no, we’re supposed to leave!” he shouted at nothing and nobody. “I’m arranging everything! We’re going to leave!”

When he wheeled around, the two were standing in the doorway.

Mary’s voice grew strident, as if she knew damn well he was liable not to follow what she was saying otherwise: “We know you’re going to want to go after him, iAm. But before you do—”

He headed out of the room, prepared to mow them down if he had to, as much as he appreciated their concern.

But Rhage caught his arm and yanked him back. “Let me get you armed first. And Lassiter is going with you. He can be out in the sunshine.”

iAm was about to argue when he thought, Well, duh.

“We’re still prepared to back you up, my man,” the Brother said grimly. “You’re not in this alone.”

For a moment, iAm couldn’t figure out what the guy was saying—and then he realized, Shit. If he went back in there and got Trez out … the Queen was likely to attack Caldwell in retaliation.

And then these people would be under siege.

“Why did he do it?” iAm moaned. “Oh, God, why did he do it?”

Mary took his hand. “He must have found out about the threat. Somehow he must have heard something in the house.”

iAm closed his eyes. “This has to stop. This whole goddamn thing has to stop.”

Because assuming Trez had finally fallen on that sword he’d been cursed with? The guy was going to mate and have sex with the only female iAm had ever loved.

’Cuz he and his brother were lucky like that. Yup.

“Come on,” Rhage said. “Let’s get some weapons on you. Lassiter is already waiting.”

What happened next was all a dizzy haze. Down to the second floor. Holsters belted onto his hips, wrapped around his shoulders. Guns. Knives. A long black leather trench coat that covered the lot of it.

Then it was down to the foyer, where the fallen angel was similarly adorned, and not making jokes at all.

Just before the pair of them left, Rehvenge stepped up and embraced him. “I have to stay here. In case the Shadows attack Caldwell, I need to be able to command my sin-eaters to defend during the daylight hours.”

Fuck. He and his brother’s private misery had become so many’s.

“I’m so sorry,” iAm said, glancing around at the Brothers. Wrath. The rest of the household. “I can’t believe it’s coming to this.”

Rhage shook his head. “We gotchu. We do what we have to, to take care of our own.”

And then the talking was over and iAm and Lassiter were out through the vestibule and on the front steps of the mansion.

The fallen angel reached out and grabbed his arm. “Get ready to ride.”

Frowning, iAm looked over at the black-and-blond-haired male. “What are you talking about—”

In an instant, he was consumed by a sun ray, up and out of there without any control or thought or will of his own …

… heading for the home he hated and the destiny he was still fighting against.

EIGHTY-TWO

The gems were cold and heavy.

As the Chief Astrologer draped Catra with mesh after mesh of platinum-set diamonds and sapphires and emeralds and rubies, she was less and less able to breathe right.

Although that was probably more because the enormity of what was happening was sinking in, rather than the weight of the ceremonial robes.

The final part of the Queen’s dress was a thin veil that drifted down over her face like a breeze.

“It is done,” the Astrologer said.

In ordinary circumstances, the garb would have been delivered to the Queen’s quarters and cleaned and prepared for the wearer by a fleet of maids. But this was not ordinary.

Was the Queen dead now?

How would the death happen?

As those questions played through her head over and over again, she—

“…has arrived! He has arrived!”

Out in the hall, the sound of voices shouting the same thing permeated the dense quiet of the chamber.

Frowning, she picked up the skirting and walked forth—only to remember she couldn’t activate the door to the corridor.

“Will you please open this up?”

“At once, Your Highness.”

The Chief Astrologer rushed forward, placed his palm on the wall, and the panel obligingly retracted.

“…Anointed One has arrived!”

It was mad chaos outside, people running and jumping with joy, a celebration breaking out. For a split second, she stood in the doorway, taking it all in—before remembering there was carnage in the circular room behind her.

“Come out here,” she hissed to the Astrologer.

Just as he walked through, the door shut automatically, her presence registered to the multitudes racing up and down the corridor.

Everyone stopped. Dropped to the floor. Prostrated themselves.

As the citizens began to murmur the required greeting to royalty, they clearly assumed she was the current Queen.

While that dawned on her, so did another thought. “Cleansing…” She wrenched around and forced herself to keep her voice down. “Oh, stars above, they’re going to cleanse him—quick, we must go unto the high priest!”

The Astrologer didn’t ask any questions. He just followed her as she ran through the palace. Fortunately for them, her presence carried with it a wave of genuflections, what would have been a congested trip freed up by the fact that everybody, from courtier to Primary to servant, hit the floor as soon as they saw her.

AnsLai’s sacred chamber was not far from the ceremonial hall, and when she came to it, she went to put her hand on the wall—but the Astrologer ducked in first and found the spot with his palm.

As the panel slid back, she got a look at a large naked male form stretched out on a black slab of marble, his arms down at his sides, his feet together.

AnsLai was across the way, standing before a fire pit, both palms up to the heavens as he whispered an incantation.

“Stop!” she said. “I command you to stop!”

The high priest wrenched around—and promptly dropped to his knees. “Your Highness, I thought you were still in the ritual room?”

Catra rushed over to the male who was lying with his eyes closed. “Tell me you haven’t cleansed him—”

“I have just administered the solution unto his veins—”

“Oh, no, no, no,” she said. “No!”

“Whate’er do you speak of, Your Highness?” the high priest said, straightening. “He has been on the outside for decades. He is impure to mate with your daughter—”

“He’s not the Anointed One.”

At that, the male they were discussing turned his head slowly toward her.

And that was how she finally met, after all those years, TrezLath.

“I’m so sorry,” she breathed to him, bending down and clasping his hand. “I didn’t make it in time—I’m so sorry…”

As Trez lay on the table, he could feel a burning on the inside of his forearm from where they had injected him using a surprisingly modern, human-world needle.

He would have assumed, given how ancient the ritual was, that they would have preferred some kind of reed or hand-fashioned ancient metal syringe.

But no. It was actually precisely the same kind that his Selena had been injected with.