Songs of Love & Death

as her gas-powered machine. I saw no weapons, though—and was comforted by the sharp look she gave me. As though she, too, had no trust.

“Your name is Amanda,” she said.

I held steady. Made no reply. Watched, waited. The woman frowned, but only with her eyes; a faint smile quirked the corner of her mouth.

“I’m Maggie,” she added, and tapped her forehead. “I saw you coming.”

Steven jumped down from the wagon. I stepped in front of him, but he tried to push past me and choked out, “Are you like us?”

High in the sky, the crow cawed. Maggie glanced up at the bird, and her smile softened before she returned her gaze to me and the boy.

“No,” she said. “You’re new blood. I’m from something… older.”

“I don’t understand what that means,” I told her.

She shook her head, rubbing her jaw. “It’ll take time to explain, but there are others like you. Changed people. I’ve seen them in my dreams. I’m trying to find as many as I can, to bring them someplace safe.”

“Safe,” echoed Henry, from behind the wagon door. Maggie glanced sideways, but didn’t seem surprised to hear someone speaking. The crow swooped close and landed on her shoulder. Cats made broken chattering sounds. Golden eyes locked on the bird.

“Something is coming,” said Maggie, reaching around to place a cautious hand on the crow’s sleek back. “I don’t know what. But we need to be together. As many of us as possible.”

I stared, feeling the cut of her words. Cut, like truth. I knew it in my blood. But I held my ground and said, “You’re crazy.”

“Amanda,” Henry said, and I edged sideways to the back of the wagon. “Wife,” he said again, more softly, for my ears only. “What did we run from before, and what are we running toward now?”

“Possibilities,” I whispered, pressing my brow against the hammered fence rail, dotted with my blood. I touched the wooden heart hanging from a delicate chain around my neck. “All those frightening possibilities.”

“I was never scared of loving you,” he murmured. “But I was a coward with the rest. I don’t want to be that man again.”

And I didn’t want to be that woman. I scratched my fingers against the wagon door and turned back to look at Steven, who gave me a slow, solemn nod. I stared past him at the forest—silent and waiting, and full of power. Power it had given us—and maybe others. I leaned against the wagon, feeling Henry on the other side of the wall, strong in the darkness.

My blood hummed.

Jacqueline Carey

Jacqueline Carey is a New York Times bestselling fantasy/romance novelist best known for her Kushiel’s Legacy series. The first novel of this series, Kushiel’s Dart, won the Locus Award for best first novel in 2001 as well as the 2001 Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award, and was listed by both Amazon and Barnes & Noble as one of the top- ten fantasy novels of the year. Since then, there have five more books in the series, including Kushiel’s Chosen, Kushiel’s Avatar, Kushiel’s Scion, Kushiel’s Justice, Kushiel’s Mercy, and the start of a related series with Naamah’s Kiss. Carey has also written the Sundering books, Banewreaker and Godslayer, a stand-alone novel, Santa Olivia, and a nonfiction book, Angels: Celestial Spirits in Legend & Art. Her most recent book is Naamah’s Curse, the second book in the Naamah sequence. She lives in Michigan.

Here’s a compelling and intricate tale that follows the consequences of a promise between star- crossed lovers down through the generations—one with quite a high price in blood.

You, and You Alone

Dying is an ugly business.

I am dying; Anafiel Delaunay, born Anafiel de Montreve. When I am dead, they will call me the Whoremaster of Spies.

This I know.

And I deserve it.

There is blood, too much blood. I cannot count my wounds. I only know it flows without ceasing, and the world grows dark before my eyes. Pain is everywhere. I failed, and we have been betrayed, attacked in my own home. Gods, there were so many of them! While I honored my oath, honored the request the Dauphine Ysandre made of me and turned my attention to intrigue beyond the shores of Terre d’Ange so that she might wed her beloved Alban prince, I missed a dire threat closer to home.

My beautiful boy Alcuin is dead or dying; I cannot tell. My vision is fading, and I cannot hear him. I told myself I was honoring my oath when I raised him and made him a member of my own household, but I lied to myself. I trained him and used him for my own ends, he and Phedre both. Like a fool, I failed to see that the work didn’t suit him as it did her, that Alcuin took no pleasure in Naamah’s Service, in being an object of desire for the nobles of Terre d’Ange.

And yet he forgave me and loved me anyway—a love far greater than I deserved. I had forgotten that life could hold such sweetness.

Even so, I will fail him one last time here at the end. As the darkness grows thicker, there is only one man toward whom my thoughts turn—one man loved, lost, and eternally mourned.

My lips shape his name, and a faint whisper escapes me. “Rolande.”

I remember.

A DAY BEFORE I was to depart to begin my studies at the University of Tiberium, my foster-sister Edmee was nowhere to be found in the manor of Rocaille, but I knew her habits well enough to guess where she had gone, and I rode out in search of her.

Sure enough, a half hour’s ride from the manor, I spotted her mare tethered outside a lavender field, idly cropping grass. I tethered my own mount nearby and plunged into the field on foot.

The sun was high overhead, hot enough that sweat began to trickle down the back of my neck. I plaited my hair into a braid and persevered, trudging past fragrant rows of lavender humming with honeybees until I came upon Edmee lying on her back in the dusty soil, arms folded behind her head, eyes closed, her face turned to the sun.

“Good day, near-brother,” she murmured without opening her eyes.

I sat beside her. “How did you know it was me?”

She shaded her brow with one hand and peered at me. “No one else would have thought to look for me here. You pay attention to things no one else does.”

I studied her lovely face, trying to gauge her mood. “Are you angry with me?”

“For leaving me here?” she inquired. “Or for agreeing to serve as my panderer to Prince Rolande?”

A sharp comment from Edmee was a rarity, and I felt myself flush with anger. “If you don’t want—”

“No, no!” She sat up with alacrity, reaching out to take my hand. “I’m sorry, Anafiel. You’re doing a service to the family, and I’m grateful for it. It’s just… I don’t know how I feel about being used to advance my father’s ambition.” She squeezed my hand, searching my eyes. “I need you to be my advocate, too. I trust you. If you think Rolande de la Courcel is someone I could come to love, I will believe you. But if you don’t…” She shook her head. “I cannot wed a man I could never love, heir to the throne or no.”

“Never,” I assured her, all traces of resentment fled. I had known Edmee de Rocaille since we were children.