vampire’s, but all I could smell was her perfume-orange and cinnamon. Then they hauled me up. I vomited, and they swore but didn’t let go. I was screaming and choking. I tried to fight but they were both too strong.”
Forsythia shook now, a deep bone-wracking shudder; Isyllt shook too, from shared horror and chill. Mekaran leaned close, his painted mask cracking with grief, but either fear or sense kept him from interrupting.
“They bent me over a table. Hands on my arms and hands in my hair, and I couldn’t tell who held me and who held the knife. The blade was cold for an instant, and then hot-the blood was hot and then cold where it soaked my dress. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream, couldn’t get the stink of blood and bile out of my nose. Everything grew colder and colder-”
As she spoke, the white skin of her throat parted and tenebrous black blood spooled down her chest. Her mouth worked but her voice faded to a wet hiccupping gasp. Panic twisted her face and the darkness in her eyes spilled free as well. The temperature plummeted as terror and pain gave her strength.
The last of her restraint broke and Isyllt pulled the dead woman into her arms, held her as she shook and whispered to her low and fast. “It’s all right. It’s over. They can’t hurt you anymore. You’re free of them, and you don’t have to wear their shackles.” She wrapped a hand over the wound, pressing icy flesh together. Her ring blazed so fiercely the shadow of her bones showed through.
“Rest,” she murmured, each breath a frosted plume. “Rest, Forsythia, Ilora. Stay with me. I’ll keep you safe. I’ll find them, I swear. I’ll stop them.” Madness, to make vows to the dead, madness and folly, but the woman wept like a child in her lap and the words tumbled past her lips before she could stop them. “I’ll stop them.”
With one last sob, Forsythia faded. The diamond flared once as a new soul entered, then dimmed. The room was black without its light.
Isyllt’s pulse roared in her ears, drowning the song and voices below, dulling the closer sounds of weeping. She tried to move, but her limbs were frozen and useless. She tumbled off the edge of the bed, landed hard on one hand and hip. Her wounded hand-the pain of that cut through pins-and-needles numbness.
Something scratched and chattered in the darkness; glass rattled against wood. A tiny opportunistic spirit trying to slip through an unguarded mirror. Isyllt pressed her bleeding hand to the cold surface and banished it with a word. She fumbled the silk cover over the glass and shoved it back into her kit as the lamp glowed to life again.
Mekaran and Dahlia both wept. The thorn had fallen to his knees, while the girl pressed a fist against her mouth hard enough to split skin.
“What happened?” he asked, stopping before he scrubbed his cheeks. “Where is she?”
“Safe,” Isyllt rasped. The cold had stolen her voice. “Resting.” Her teeth began to chatter. She stumbled twice as she stood. She needed to rest, to get warm, but she couldn’t stay in this narrow coffin of a room any longer. Mekaran called her back as she fumbled with the door, but she only shook her head.
The warmer air of the hall dizzied her, the smells of beer and food and sweat. She tripped on an uneven floorboard, staggered into the wall hard enough to send a sharp shock down her right arm, and fell to her knees in a tangle of skirts.
A worn pair of boots stopped in front of her and a familiar voice spoke her name.
“C–Ciaran?” She could hardly raise her head. The chill in her bones curved her spine into a fetal hunch.
“Saints and shadows,” he whispered. “What have you done to yourself this time?”
Footsteps shivered through the floor as Mekaran and Dahlia followed. Ciaran cut off Mekaran’s stammered explanation. “Later. I’ll take care of her.”
He crouched beside her and wound an arm under hers; his flesh burned. She barely kept her legs from buckling as he hauled her to her feet. “You have to walk,” he told her. “My room is another flight up and you’re too tall to carry up these stairs.”
“I’m not staying.”
“You’re not leaving-there’s rioting outside the Garden. Besides, you’d stay in this hall all night if I dropped you. I’d like to think my bed is the more pleasant option.”
She gave up arguing and concentrated on moving her feet. And, when she finally collapsed on to Ciaran’s bed and breathed in the musk and spices that lingered in his pillow, she was forced to agree. He piled blankets on top of her and kindled the brazier. Light glowed through cut brass, tracing filigree patterns across the walls and ceiling. Isyllt closed her eyes and curled tighter. Feeling returned to her extremities, but the ice settled thick and deep in her core.
The bed creaked as Ciaran wedged himself between her and the wall and held her close. It wasn’t wide enough for two, but that had never stopped them before.
“You push yourself too hard.” His beard tickled her neck, but she couldn’t pull away. “You’ll die if you don’t stop this.”
“Maybe not even then.”
“What do you mean?”
It was not the sort of thing to be spoken of, but she was too numb to care. “You know the old stories of necromancers being beheaded and burned when they die? They aren’t just superstition. We have the choice, at the end-or so I’m told. We can let our souls depart for the other side of the mirror, or we can stay. Either as powerful specters, or as the undead.” Necrophants, the risen mages were called, and even the Arcanostoi said the word softly or not at all.
This must be what it felt like to die, Isyllt thought, cold and aching and hollow. She couldn’t imagine an eternity of this, no matter how powerful it might make her.
Ciaran stilled, his breath rough. Then he squeezed her and kissed her neck. “I prefer living women.”
She laughed, and the ice began to crack. As it melted, she began to sob. For Forsythia, for all the dead flowers whom no one mourned, for all the cold and hollow dead. Tears scalded her cheeks and soaked the pillow until, finally warm again, she slept.
She woke later to stuffy heat and the fire died to embers. Blankets tangled around her legs and sweat stuck her dress to her back. She grimaced at the taste of salt thick in her mouth.
Ciaran sat on a chest by the window, rolling a wine bottle between his palms and frowning at the night-black glass. A draft rolled over the cracked-open casement, and the single candle flame danced with it. The earlier ruckus had faded, and from the depth of the silence she guessed it must be the final terce. Release, Selafains called this hour, for all the deaths and births that it witnessed. Her mother had called it the wolf’s hour. The night smelled faintly of smoke.
“The riots have stopped,” Ciaran said, not turning from the window. “The Vigils finally came, after a few shop windows were broken and fires started.” He glanced back at her. “Feeling better?”
“Mostly. I think that wine might help the rest.”
He uncoiled from his perch and hopped lightly from chest to bed without touching the floor or spilling the bottle. He’d been a wire-thin sneak thief when they’d met fifteen years ago-food and wine and less sneaking had thickened his waist since, and put more flesh over his ribs, but he still had a tumbler’s grace.
Isyllt took the offered bottle as he settled beside her. Syrah, thick and sweet and well-fortified; she rolled a mouthful over her tongue to wash away the taste of sleep and tears. She handed it back after another long pull. “Thank you.” She trusted him to know she meant for more than the wine.
The liquor brought a flush to her cheeks, which worsened the discomfort of her clinging dress. She rose to undo the laces, kicking the gown away when it puddled around her feet. It reminded her too much of Forsythia’s pale fragility. Gooseflesh crawled over her limbs as she moved in front of the draft. She expected Ciaran to flirt or tease, but he stayed quiet, still frowning at his wine. She waited, lifting her hair to let the breeze cool her sticky neck.
“Azarne came to watch me play tonight,” he said at last.
“Oh,” she said, and marveled at her own wit. “I thought you preferred living women.”
His mouth quirked. “I do.” Finally he looked at her and set the wine aside. She took the invitation and sat beside him again. “Even ones half-starved and pale as you.” He dropped a kiss on her shoulder, but his heart wasn’t in it. “But-”
“But she’s beautiful anyway,” she finished. “Do mice find cats beautiful, before the kill? Or owls?”
“If mice have poets, I think they must. I understand how Forsythia could have been seduced.”
Isyllt thought of the lure of Whisper’s eyes, the shiver Spider’s touch gave her. “Yes.” She ran her fingers
