Their disregard made my bones ache with shame, because it meant they considered me essentially one of them: one of Midnight’s people, and a traitor to my own kind.
They were right.
Every time I returned to the Obsidian camp, I promised myself that was it. I threw myself fully and sincerely into life as a child of Obsidian. Months would pass, or even a year, but eventually contentment and the flush of freedom faded into restlessness, anxiety, and a feeling I could only describe as unraveling. Each time, I resisted as long as I could, but eventually a moment would come when no one was watching and judging me, and I would return to the stone halls of my birth like a carrier pigeon.
My weakness had cost my sister and brother their freedom. At the same time, my access to Midnight meant I was the only person who might be able to get them back.
After I waved down one of the guards to make my request, I waited in the library for hours before one of the trainers deigned to meet with me. The five trainers—Mistress Jeshickah, Gabriel, Jaguar, Taro, and Varick—ruled Midnight day to day and, more importantly, were the ones who controlled the slave trade. If Julian had sold my siblings, one of the trainers now owned them. There had to be a way to make a deal for their freedom.
I was startled when Mistress Jeshickah swept into the room with a look of contemplation on her face. I could have stood and made my request of any of the other trainers, but when I had been a child, this woman’s approval was quite literally the only thing I lived for.
I fought the instinct to kneel in her presence. I had done it so many times before, but a child of Obsidian kneels to no one, and I had sworn to myself when I left our camp that I would never again betray that creed.
“The guards say you have requested a meeting with one of us. I have to wonder what could possibly have made my Malachi so bold,” Jeshickah mused.
My throat had gone dry. It took me two tries to speak. “Julian Cobriana sold you two white vipers recently,” I finally managed to say. “I would like to discuss how much it would cost to buy their freedom.”
“Of course you would.” Her lips curled in a humorless smile. “White vipers, though not to my taste, have a certain value due to their rare and thus exotic nature. Your guild, on the other hand, has no wealth to speak of. I don’t see that you have anything with which to bargain.”
“You can have me,” I said desperately.
She lifted one black brow. “I didn’t want you twenty-two years ago. What makes you think I want you now?”
—
I lifted my face to the rain, remembering the day Shkei had been born, in the midst of a violent summer thunderstorm. His name came from the old language phrase sha’Kain, which meant “to dance with lightning.” He had been free and wild.
My little brother didn’t believe in vengeance, but I did. If Nathaniel could give me a chance, I would pull Midnight’s stones down with my bare hands. First though, I needed to convince Vance, Aika, and Kadee to trust a vampire and sacrifice a cobra.
I wasn’t sure which would be harder.
“The answer is no,” Vance said flatly, the instant I stepped into the birch grove.
This will go well, I thought.
“I said the same thing at first, but—”
“No,” Vance interrupted. “Kadee has an idea how we can—”
“No,” I said, my turn to cut him off. “This is—”
“The deal of a lifetime,” Vance quipped. “Too good to resist, or too simple to refuse, or—”
“Shut up!” I snapped, losing my patience with the paranoid—though justly so—quetzal. “Misha and Aaron have already made a deal regarding Hara’s sale. If we interfere, Midnight will take us all.”
Vance let out a barking caw. “Damn Midnight,” he said. “Can’t we ever just do what’s right?”
“And end up in a cell the next day?” Aika cut in. “Though at least you’d die there. Kadee and I would live, which would be worse.”
“There has to be some way we can work around the rules to get a warning to Hara,” Kadee insisted.
“This is bigger than Hara,” I said.
“Tell us what the vampire had to say,” Aika said.
“And then we’ll decide what to do,” Kadee added. Obviously, she didn’t intend to let me convince her.
“Nathaniel has been hired,” I began, “to destroy Midnight. He asked for my cooperation, and I have agreed to side with him.”
My words fell into the day, and were met at first by silence. Barely a breath. We had all seen how dangerous it was to stand up to Midnight. The Shantel had come the closest to success lately, when they had successfully infected all the trainers with what should have been a deadly plague. Unfortunately, the vampires had recovered, and Midnight’s wrath had cost them dearly. Could Nathaniel do better?
“That’s mighty vague,” Aika said at last. “What does he want us to do?”
“I don’t know all the details,” I admitted, “but his first task for us is to make sure Misha takes the throne. He knows about the prophecy.”
There it was again, that damn noose of words I had spun so many years ago and could not seem to free myself from now. But the truth I had been willing to give the vampire was more than I could share with the last scraps of my family. I could not bear to know what they would think.
“The Shantel say prophecy doesn’t work like that,” Kadee said. “A prophecy—a true prophecy, anyway—will come true one way or another.”
Aika came to my defense. “Maybe Shantel prophecy works that way, but falcon visions don’t. They show a possible future, not a certain one. Right, Malachi?”
I wondered when she had looked into the mechanics of falcon magic. Had she doubted, at some point? Had Farrell, or another member of our group, reassured her with that explanation?
“It’s true,” I said. “I’m not entirely convinced that everything the sakkri says is inevitable, either, but I know that my visions are not.” For how many years had I danced with the truth this way? “What I’ve seen is a possibility, though. I think the best chance we have to ensure it as a probability is to work with Nathaniel.”
“What about Misha?” Vance asked. “Your prophecy named her as the one who would destroy Midnight, didn’t it?”
Again, Aika answered, her voice not impaired by the qualms of conscience that made it so hard for me to speak on this subject. “It said she would rule at the time when Midnight fell, not that she personally would cause the fall.”
“Then it doesn’t matter if she rules,” Kadee insisted, “or if we save Hara.” Kadee had been raised in part by the royal house. Though she had left there cursing them, Hara and Aaron had been like siblings to her once. “If we cannot go to Hara to warn her, what if we go to Aaron? Malachi, can your magic break him away from Misha’s?”
“Maybe…But if Aaron is the one who stops the sale, he’s the one Midnight will take. I won’t sacrifice Farrell’s son to save Julian’s daughter,” I said bluntly. Not even to bring down Midnight, not when the boy Misha had ensorcelled was no more responsible for his actions than a slave in the vampires’ empire.
“I’m with Malachi,” Aika said. “Prophecy or no prophecy, I won’t endanger Aaron to protect the cobra who sent soldiers to murder us. I may not approve of slave-trading, but if I had Hara in my sights, I could kill her without losing any sleep. We still don’t even know how many we lost in her attack. If Torquil—” She set her jaw. “We don’t know how much Hara has to answer to, yet.”
Torquil had once been a swiftly rising star among the serpiente. I didn’t know the details of his falling-out with the dancers’ guild, except that it had been messy enough to send him rushing into the arms of the Obsidian guild. He and Aika had been inseparable since.
It was hard for me to imagine that Torquil had intentionally gone the opposite way as his mate, but everything had been so confusing during that fight. Had he run with Misha, assuming Aika would go the same way, or had he been cut down in the woods by the soldiers
chasing us?
When no one responded to argue or agree, Aika added, “Besides, letting Misha sell a cobra seems a small price to pay if it gives us a chance to destroy Midnight.”
“It’s not a small price,” Vance sighed. “But I don’t see any other choice.”
Kadee reached out and put a hand on top of Vance’s. “I hate this,” she said. She drew a shaky breath and let it out slowly. “Fine. It’s one more sin on our souls—don’t think it’s not—but I’ll risk explaining myself to God someday if it means I can help set Midnight aflame.”
Someday, my sister, you will be queen. When you and your king rule, you will bow to no one. And this place, this Midnight, will burn to ash.
I knew those words had been lies when I spoke them, but that lie had been powerful enough to bring a white viper nearly to the throne—something that had seemed impossible only a few days earlier. Now I could see faith in Kadee’s eyes. She believed, and so she was willing to stand with Nathaniel and fight.
Twenty-two years ago, I had lied to save my life.
Now I was willing to die if I could make those words the truth.
I WALKED LISTLESSLY around the outskirts of our camp, reinforcing the magic that hid us from hostile outsiders…the magic I had allowed to weaken while I was in Midnight, enabling Julian Cobriana’s soldiers to find the people I loved most.
I slid down to sit with my back to the strong trunk of an aspen tree, and sucked in a heavy breath. One of its golden leaves quivered to the ground, another reminder that fall was here. Soon I would face my first winter alone.
Not alone, I tried to tell myself. You have Farrell, and the others.
It isn’t the same.
Though I was most familiar with the five trainers, I recognized the vampire who appeared before me immediately. Acise was one of Jeshickah’s two sisters. I had never actually seen Katama, though I had been told she was Jeshickah’s birth-twin; she preferred to deal with distant economic affairs instead of involving herself with the local slave trade. Acise likewise spent little time at Midnight, but when she did, she worked as a mercenary.
Without preamble, Acise announced, “I have a business proposal to discuss with your guild.”
“I don’t think our guild has any interest in any business you might propose,” I said in a shaking voice as I stood.
“What if I could offer you one of your white vipers back?”
My world reeled. In that moment, I would have agreed to just about anything.
“What’s the price?” I asked.
“Gabriel wants a hawk. Specifically, Alasdair Shardae, the avian queen’s younger daughter. She’s freeblood, so we can’t just pick her up, but if she happened to be offered to us by another shapeshifter…well, Gabriel would be certain to offer fair trade, a shifter for a shifter.”
I whispered, “There are two of them.”
Acise shrugged. “He’s only interested in one hawk,” she said flatly. “Choose. And act fast. The longer the trainer is bored, the less you will be able to salvage.”
—
From the darkness of the caves, I reached out magically for Misha. I had done so a thousand times when she had been in Midnight. I knew that the first trainer who had owned her and Shkei, Taro, had mostly neglected them—he had been busy tending to Vance, though I hadn’t known that at the time. The true abuse hadn’t begun until Gabriel had purchased them to use as currency for a deal my guild could not refuse.
Once, I could have reached my sister from across the globe just by closing my eyes. These days it was a struggle to determine where her group was camped. My magical connection to her now was like a rope that had spent too long on a ship at sea. It was tattered and torn, and would leave splinters in the hands of anyone who tried to climb it.
The sea analogy was not mine, or hers. It came from Gabriel, who had left so much of his will overlapping Misha’s that little bits of his mind sometimes came to me when I reached for her.
We traveled most of the night, and reached Misha’s camp while the dawn birds were still shouting as if to wake the distant sun.
The first person we saw wasn’t the would-be queen, but a slender man whose soft features and unassuming grace made him appear younger than he was: Torquil. He took one look at Aika and a grin lit up his face. They flung themselves into each other’s arms, the display of affection certainly more sincere than anything I was intending to say to Misha.
Vance and Kadee hung back, seeking each other’s hands as they followed me. While Aika and her mate reunited, I found my sister, who watched me approach with a cool gaze and a dagger in her hand.
“How do you come, Malachi?” she asked me.
“In peace,” I answered. I drew a deep breath, setting the stage mentally in a way that was more than self-preparation. I visualized the words around me, giving them power. Before now, I had only used my magic on Misha to calm her trembling when night terrors had savaged her sleep and woken her screaming and pale, but I knew she could not defend against it despite her own white-viper blood.
“You and I started this together.” I thought of leaving that cell as a child, with my hand not in my mother’s but in Farrell’s. “I do not like the plan you made with Aaron, but if you force me to choose you or one of the damn royals, I’ll choose you. You’re my sister, and you’re Obsidian.”
Except that you want to be queen, even though the Obsidian guild has no king or queen. I tried to keep my doubts far away from the rope of magic I was weaving around Misha. Instead, I thought things like, Trust me. I am your brother. I am your blood. Remember, I sold a woman of royal blood in order to rescue you. Forget that I have hated myself for it ever since.
Kadee, Vance, Aika, and Torquil all watched and waited as Misha evaluated my words. The rest of our guild numbered less than a half dozen, and I was sure they would follow Misha when she decided, as they had this far.
If Misha rejected us, we would need to run again. I did not want to know if she would or could stir the others to deadly violence against us. The fear that she might try was sufficient.
At last she stood, and with what might have become a smile in better times she reached out her empty hand to clasp mine. She pulled me close, and I hugged her, daydreaming for a moment that she was still the powerful, proud woman I had been so certain she would be forever.
For you, I thought.
I would betray this woman if I had to, but I would do it for the woman she had been, the woman that Midnight had shattered and put together in a new and vicious form.
“You are the one who brought us this far, Malachi,” she whispered to me. “You and Farrell. I thought that losing both of you so quickly might kill me, but you of all people know we need to do this. It was your vision first, after all.
“Hara deserves what she will get,” she added, stepping back from the embrace but never dropping her gaze from mine. “She preaches peace while selling her unwanted dissenters into slavery. She cannot remain, not if we want the serpiente as a people to remember who they are, what they are. We are supposed to be a people who worship freedom as our highest divinity.
“Isn’t that right, Vance?” she asked, looking up at the quetzal. “You were not born a serpent, but you were born a breed that cannot physically live in a cage. You know what it is like to be willing to batter yourself against the bars until you bleed and break, rather than die a prisoner. Serpents have lost that.
“And you, Kadee. You have told me that the people of your birth, the humans, fought a war so they could be the masters of their own fate. They risked their lives. Many of them lost their lives. You told me about your mother, who walked among the sick and wounded as a nurse, and your father—your true father, not the serpent who abandoned your mother and you—who fought in the war and later taught you the words of their Declaration of Independence so you would always know what your parents believed.
“Aika, you lost your first family to terrible violence. You and Torquil are so courageous to be willing to try again,
and I know my actions must seem reckless to you when safety is so crucial, but do you really want your children to be born into a world where their freedom is seen as a commodity? Or would you rather they live knowing their parents fought to make this world better for them?
“We cannot let ourselves be slaves,” she said firmly. “If we do, then we are not serpiente. We certainly are not children of Obsidian. If we do not stand up against Midnight, then we are no better than the bloodtraitors that the other shapeshifter nations call us.”
Her words were lovely and logical, spoken with passion and intensity, and I wished with all my heart that I could accept them. I wished I could only see her pale green eyes, and not the coil of pain in her soul that was looking for a place to strike. I wished I could rejoice in her bond to her recently declared mate, without seeing the magic she had wrapped like a noose around his throat. Most of all, I wished I could trust her passionate words about Midnight versus the Obsidian guild. But how could I believe anything from a woman who had committed us all to slave-trading without our consent?
To be a child of Obsidian didn’t just mean refusing to bow to a king. It meant acknowledging that you had no right to rule anyone else either. Misha had violated the second half of that philosophy.
I swallowed twice and let Misha’s words wash over me, using my own power to keep her magic from snagging in my flesh, and doing my best to shield the others. Only when I was sure I could speak with no judgment or anger did I ask, “What is the plan now?”
“The plan…” Misha paused, her eyes going distant as she debated whether to trust me. “I purchased a drug from the Azteka that will take down even a cobra. One of Hara’s guards will give it to her, and then bring her to us once she is unconscious. I have arranged to meet Nathaniel at a spot in the woods—” She broke off and shook her head. “I’m sorry. It’s habit to keep names and details to myself these days. You know the place—where the old hitching posts are. We’ll meet Nathaniel there in six days, at sundown. We’ve arranged for another conspirator to go to the palace with a grievance, so we can be sure that Hara will be where we need her.”