Wayfarer

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.