The shadow king.

He scanned the air around her, could see the shadows tangling in the green light of her power. It looked like a storm was trapped in the unlit room, the air flickering with mottled light as her magic fought against the intruder.

“It hurts,” she whispered, curling in on herself. “Don’t leave me. Please. Don’t leave me alone with him.”

“It’s all right,” he said, lifting his little sister into his arms. “I’m not going anywhere, not without you.”

The house groaned around them as he carried Anisa through the hall.

The walls fissured, and the stairs began to splinter beneath his feet. Some deep damage had been done to the house, a mortal wound he couldn’t see but felt with every tremor.

The Emery Estate had stood for centuries.

And now it was coming down.

Alucard had ruined it, after all.

It took all his strength to hold the structure up around them, and by the time they crossed the threshold, he was dizzy from the effort.

Anisa’s head lolled against his chest.

“Stay with me, Nis,” he said. “Stay with me.”

He mounted his horse with the aid of a low wall, and kicked the beast into motion, riding through the gate as the rest of the estate came tumbling down.

I

WHITE LONDON

Nasi stood before the platform and did not cry.

She was nine winters old, for crow’s sake, and had long ago learned to look composed, even if it was fake. Sometimes you had to pretend, everyone knew that. Pretend to be happy. Pretend to be brave. Pretend to be strong. If you pretended long enough, it eventually came true.

Pretending not to be sad was the hardest, but looking sad made people think you were weak, and when you were already a foot too short and a measure too small, and a girl on top of that, you had to work twice as hard to convince them it wasn’t true.

So even though the room was empty, save for Nasi and the corpse, she didn’t let the sadness show. Nasi worked in the castle, doing whatever needed to be done, but she knew she wasn’t supposed to be in here. Knew the northern hall was off limits, the private quarters of the king. But the king was missing, and Nasi had always been good at sneaking, and anyway, she hadn’t come to snoop, or steal.

She’d only come to see.

And to make sure the woman wasn’t lonely.

Which Nasi knew was ridiculous, because dead people probably didn’t feel things like cold, or sad, or lonely. But she couldn’t be sure, and if it was her, she would have wanted someone there.

Besides, this was the only quiet room left in the castle.

The rest of the place was plunging into chaos, everyone shouting and searching for the king, but not in here. In here, candles burned, and the heavy doors and walls held in all the quiet. In here, at the center of the chamber, on a platform of beautiful black granite, lay Ojka.

Ojka, laid out in black, hands open at her sides, a blade resting in each palm. Vines, the first things to bloom in the castle gardens, were wound around the platform’s edge, a dish of water at Ojka’s head and a basin of earth at her feet, places for the magic to go when it left her body. A black cloth was draped over her eyes, and her short red hair made a pool around her head. A piece of white linen had been wrapped tight around her neck, but even in death a line of blackish-red stained through where someone had cut her throat.

Nobody knew what had happened. Only that the king was missing, and the king’s chosen knight was dead. Nasi had seen the king’s prisoner, the red-haired man with his own black eye, and she wondered if it was his fault, since he was missing, too.

Nasi clenched her hands into fists, and felt the sudden bite of thorns. She’d forgotten about the flowers, wild things plucked from the edge of the castle yard. The prettiest ones hadn’t blossomed yet, so she’d been forced to dig up a handful of pale buds studded with vicious thorns.

“Nijk shöst,” she murmured, setting the bundle of flowers on the platform, the tail of her braid brushing Ojka’s arm as she leaned forward.

Nasi used to wear her hair loose so it covered the scars on her face. It didn’t matter that she could barely see through the pale curtain, that she was always tripping and stumbling. It was a shield against the world.

And then one day Ojka passed her in the corridor, and stopped her, and told her to pull the hair off her face.

She hadn’t wanted to, but the king’s knight stood there, arms crossed, waiting for her to obey, and so she had, cringing as she tied back the strands. Ojka surveyed her face, but didn’t ask her what had happened, if she’d been born that way (she hadn’t) or caught off-turn in the Kosik (she had). Instead, the woman had cocked her head and said, “Why do you hide?”

Nasi could not bring herself to answer Ojka, to tell the king’s knight that she hated her scars when Ojka had darkness spilling down one side of her face and a silver line carving its way from eye to lip on the other. When she didn’t speak, the woman crouched in front of her and took her firmly by the shoulders.

“Scars are not shameful,” said Ojka, “not unless you let them be.” The knight straightened. “If you do not wear them, they will wear you.” And with that, she’d walked away.

Nasi had worn her hair back ever since.

And every time Ojka had passed her in the halls, her eyes, one yellow, the other black, had flicked to the braid, and she’d nodded in approval, and everything in Nasi had grown stronger, like a starving plant fed water drop by drop.