Shadowbane

The Dragon was too busy staring at Myrin to notice Kalen. Kasi bowed slightly to him. “Confer,” she said.

“My thanks.” He turned to Rhett and Myrin, drawing them close in a circle.

“Kalen!” Myrin hissed. “What are you about-?”

“Berate me later,” Kalen said. “Do you remember meeting this man before?”

“I’ll berate you right now, if it’s not too much trouble.”

Kalen’s pale eyes would brook no argument. “Just answer.”

Myrin sighed. “No,” she said. “I don’t remember ever meeting a doppelganger, much less this one. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t met him.”

“He seems to know you,” Kalen said.

“Or he’s just mad,” Rhett said.

Myrin shrugged. “Well, no more mad than I.”

Kalen shook his head. Rhett cleared his throat.

“Oh, very nice,” Myrin said. “He does seem to be damaged in some way. I don’t think he can control the faces he takes.”

“And the way he speaks,” Rhett pointed out.

Myrin furrowed her brow. “What’s wrong with the way he speaks?”

“Oh come now. Riddles? Gibberish?” He traced a circle near his ear with his finger.

Myrin put her hands on her hips. “Just because you lack the mental prowess to understand doesn’t mean he doesn’t make sense,” she said. “He asked for tribute. Then he said it was well and good. That bit about the game? He approves of treachery.”

Rhett shivered.

“Very well,” Kalen said. “You talk to him. We’ll get this done faster that way.”

“We?” Myrin stepped up to him and thrust her face into his. “You just betrayed Sithe to her death. Do you think either of us apt to trust you?”

“Give it a moment,” Kalen said. “We have perhaps a fifty-count. Talk to him.”

“You don’t give me orders,” Myrin said. “Especially not when you turn traitor-”

“Wait,” Rhett said. “No, I think I get it. Just-just talk to him, Myrin. It’ll be well.”

She recognized the understanding that passed between the two. “This is one of those schemes I wouldn’t understand, is it?” Myrin asked. “Because I wasn’t in the Guard, or because I’m just-?”

“Nothing like that.” Kalen laid his hand on her wrist. “You want me to trust you? Trust me.”

Myrin wanted to argue the point, but ultimately she sighed. “Very well. But after this, there will be words.”

“Of that,” Kalen said, “I’ve no doubt.”

The three turned back to the leader of the Dragonbloods. “Lord Dragon,” Myrin said.

“Umbra,” he said.

“Umbra?” Myrin lost that one. “Apologies, is that your name?”

By a palpable effort of will, the doppelganger shifted his face into a nearly featureless white oval with dark eyes and a rise for a nose-much like a man wearing an unadorned mask.

“It is a good name for that face,” Myrin said.

A mouth appeared in his face, seemingly for the express purpose of smiling ingratiatingly. “Umbra, I,” he said. “Lady Darkdance, you.”

That name cemented it in Myrin’s mind. Somehow, this doppelganger knew her- had known her, perhaps around the same time Methrammar had known her. But how did he know her? And what did he know of her?

“Have we met, Lord Umbra?”

His mouth curled as though at a jest. “A man and a woman walking in the woods,” Umbra said. “Then shadow. Flame and death.”

“Hmm.” That wasn’t encouraging, but at least it was interesting. She had no idea what it meant. “Do you know anything about the plague-about the skeletons?”

Umbra’s brow furrowed … or it might have grown bushier. “The priest,” he said. “The turncoat priest-the turncloak is the one who knows all. No other.”

“You mean the Coin-Spinners?” Kalen asked. “Their Coin Priest?”

“A man fails.” Umbra glared at him, as if rebuking him with his eyes for interrupting. “Stallion and mare- nevermore!”

That one seemed obvious, even if she wasn’t sure what he meant. Myrin blushed slightly. “My lord, I don’t understand-”

“Nevermore!” Umbra snarled and lunged from the throne. Kalen and Rhett were too slow to stop him. Myrin started to draw back, but Umbra caught her with a grip as strong as iron. “Nevermore, mare! Nevermore!”

“What do you-?”

Umbra pressed his lips to hers.

She felt burning heat as runes rippled across her skin.

He kissed her then, and she sputtered and pulled away. “Umbra,” she said, her tone curious and questioning at once. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Answering your wish,” he said. “Or was all that flirting a game?”

“Oh, oh.” The lass with the sweeping blue hair and the inked tattoos on her skin gave him an uncertain smile that he found entirely too alluring. “But what will the others say?” she asked. “Aren’t we on guard?”

“Galen will handle it-he ever does.” Umbra slipped a hand onto her leg.

Any other woman might have shivered at his touch-shivered just to look at him-but she did not. When she looked at him, there was only affection in her eyes, not fear or pity. No one else had looked at him like that for years.

Gods. How he wanted her, as he had wanted none other in his long, strange life. Not his wife, not all his lovers, and not even his dead goddess-the one he sought at all turns to avenge. “I don’t know,” she said, but she didn’t back away. “Not that I’m afraid, mind-”

“I know,” he said. “You’re the bravest lass of nineteen winters I’ve ever met.”

“Twenty!” she protested, but he was smiling.

He leaned in and kissed her.

“I love you, M-” he started.

Myrin was wrenched back into the world in the midst of chaos. Kalen shoved Umbra away, breaking the kiss, then dealt him a sharp right hook to the face. Umbra screeched incoherently and tumbled to the floor. His body was shifting, his limbs expanding and straining at his robe. His face roiled, half a dozen mouths screaming. The cry was like nothing human, but more like a dragon’s roar.

“Uh!” Myrin cried as she fell to her knees. The heat inside her was so intense-the desire and need that had been his-theirs-in her vision.

Kalen caught her wrists in his hands. He was saying something, but she couldn’t hear him over the roar in her ears and the fire racing through her body. Gods! She had no idea what was happening to her, but she never wanted it to end.

“What happened?” Kalen demanded, shaking her.

Myrin wrapped her hands around Kalen’s face and pressed her body into his. She needed his strong body and weak soul-every inch of it-and she needed it now.

“Helm’s name,” Kalen said, his eyes wide.

“Kalen,” she begged, crushing her breasts into his chest. “Kalen-please!”

But he shoved her to the ground so he could catch an oncoming Dragonblood and throw the man backward. The maneuver got him stabbed him through the leg with one of the eastern blades, but Kalen balled up a fist and sent the attacker to the floor. He pulled the short sword out and, now armed, parried yet another attack.

Myrin clutched herself into a ball, crazily riding the maelstrom of her own ecstasy. The world shook, her