The hall bent to the left before coming to a dead end. I stopped, frowning at the walls. They looked solid, but I’d stopped believing anything in the place was as solid as it seemed. The doors might be hidden, but they were there, and they didn’t seem to want to be found. “Connor? Which way?”
“Like I’d know?”
“Great,” I muttered, dropping Connor’s hand and leaning forward to touch the wall in front of me. It was dry. So was the left-hand wall. The wall to the right was damp, and my fingers came away sticky. I sniffed them. Blood and flowers. The traces were getting stronger, because I recognized them now: foxgloves, yarrow, and oleander.
How egotistical was it of Oleander to keep killing people with the flower she was named after? “Somebody didn’t get hugged enough as a kid,” I said.
“If we get out of here alive, you can have all the hugs you want.”
“Noted.” I pushed the wall, opening the hidden panel and stepping through into one of the knowe’s many libraries.
The trail of blood picked up right outside the door, standing out starkly against the gray carpet. It was so fresh that the smell was almost cloying; we were moving faster than the person we were following. We followed the blood out of the library and paused in near-unison as we realized that we were standing in front of the door to the Garden of Glass Roses. We’d followed the blood trail all the way through the knowe.
It didn’t make sense unless the person we were following was actively trying to avoid Sylvester’s guards. If they were, the best place to be was somewhere they thought was already clear. The blood trail didn’t enter the garden, streaking down the hall away from us instead. I sped up, grabbing Connor’s wrist to tug him along and around the corner.
The trail ended at another door. This one was mahogany, with a narrow sword carved in place of an eyehole. I recognized it more from rote memorization than actual familiarity; it led to the practice grounds, where members of the Court went for duels or sword-fighting lessons. I hadn’t been there in decades, not since Etienne declared that my training was over. I opened the door and stepped out onto the packed earth of the grounds, Connor close behind me.
I’m not sure what I expected to see: I’d followed the blood trail through the knowe without knowing who I was running to ground. I had a few ideas, but they were all vague, half-formed things … and as it turned out, none of them was even close to right.
Oleander and Rayseline circled each other at the center of the field, each of them holding a knife. Oleander had a hand clamped against her side, shivering with something that looked like it ran deeper and closer to the bone than simple cold as she glared at Raysel. A flask was shattered on the ground between them, its golden contents sinking into the dirt. Oleander came like a snake, bearing her own venomous gifts, and it looked like she’d also been the one to receive them. The illusion that masked her as Nerium was gone, burned away by pain or maybe just released when it wasn’t useful anymore.
Raysel glanced toward us as the door slammed shut. Oleander seized the opportunity, raising her knife and going into a lunge.
“Raysel! Look out!” shouted Connor.
Raysel whipped around, grabbing Oleander’s wrist and stopping the knife in mid-descent. She brought her own knife up at the same time, burying it in Oleander’s stomach. Oleander choked. Rayseline grinned, suddenly looking like the perfect predator—suddenly looking like Blind Michael’s granddaughter.
“Connor, get behind me,” I hissed, wishing desperately that I had my knives, or my baseball bat, or any sort of weapon that I actually knew how to
Raysel took a step back, yanking her knife free and watching with evident satisfaction as Oleander sank slowly to the ground. “Thanks for everything, Auntie,” she purred. Turning, she blew a kiss at Connor. “Thank you, too, lover-boy. Go ahead and fuck your slut for now. Just don’t get too attached. I’ll be back.”
She pulled a vial from inside her bodice, yanking the cork out with her teeth and spitting it at Oleander before downing the vial’s ice blue contents. The dust-andcobwebs scent of borrowed magic rose around her in an instant, carried on a bitterly cold wind. The air seemed to thicken, almost frosting over … and then she was gone, leaving the air to rush into the space she’d left behind.
“Did she just … ?” whispered Connor.
“She did.” I stared at the empty air. “Someone loaned her that spell. Someone—root and fucking
Oleander raised her head. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Blood had matted her hair to her forehead, and her dark eyes were narrowed, filled with fury.
“Yes,” I said, not moving. If we were going to save her, it needed to be now. But Oleander was like a snake in more ways than one. She might strike if either of us came into range, just because she could, and there was no way to take her knife away.
“It’s good to want things. Don’t worry, it’s safe; you can laugh all you want,” she hissed. “I brewed the poison on her blade myself, and this wound might have been fatal even without it. I trained her well. I shape my tools in more than just bottles.”
I motioned for Connor to stay where he was and stepped forward, keeping my hand on the pommel of my sword. I didn’t care
“No. No, I don’t think so.” She laughed, unwinding her arms from around her middle. The skin of her hands and forearms was dark and slippery with blood. “Look.”
There was a deep slash across the front of her tunic, lower than the wound we’d seen Raysel deliver. The edges parted as she moved, revealing a wound too long and deep to be anything but mortal. The last time I saw anyone cut that deeply it was January, Countess of Tamed Lightning, and she was already dead. Oleander’s black clothing kept the blood from showing until it hit the ground, but that didn’t matter. I could smell it.
“It could be healed if it were just a wound,” she said. “With the poison, all that’s left for me is dying. I’m good at what I do. Or I was. They’ll never forget my name. In a thousand years, they’ll still be whispering about me. The lives I took. The kingdoms I felled. I’m immortal.” And she smiled.
“Look out!” shouted Connor.
It was pure instinct—instinct, and long years spent walking the line between “impulsive” and “embalmed”— that caused me to respond to his cry by ducking, whirling around, and drawing my sword, holding it in front of my face the way I would normally hold my baseball bat. The real Oleander’s dagger glinted off the pommel, sending a spray of sparks into the air between us. She’d swapped herself for an illusion while we were distracted by Raysel’s disappearance. If her decoy had held my attention for just a few seconds longer …
Oleander pressed down, putting as much weight as she could onto the blade of her knife. “You’re coming with me,” she snarled. “I’m not leaving here without one last kill.” She pushed down a little harder with each word. Her eyes were glassy, the pupils huge. She was in shock and falling deeper as her body raced to see what would kill her: blood loss or the poison burning in the blood that remained. Only her age and the strength of her magic were still allowing her to throw illusions, and Maeve only knew how long that would last.
She was weak, and she was making one major, unavoidable mistake: she was applying the amount of pressure she’d need to knock down someone six inches shorter than I actually was. I gathered myself, tensing, and shoved her away as hard as I could. She staggered back about four feet, eyes widening with surprise, and disappeared.
“Oh, great,” I muttered, as I straightened and moved the sword into a defensive position. “It’s time for crazy bitch illusionary hide-and-go-seek.” The smell of her blood was still heavy in the air.
The smell of her blood. I closed my eyes, trying to relax. With as much as she was bleeding, she had to be the strongest blood marker in the area. Let her disappear. I’d still find her—there. I whirled, raising my sword back, and heard, again, the clank of metal on metal. She withdrew as quickly as she’d come, leaving me tense and waiting.
We repeated that pattern twice more—turn, parry, retreat. The fourth time, she came at me too fast for a simple block to stop. She’d been fighting for centuries, and I barely knew one end of a sword from the other. I didn’t know how else to stop her, and so I swung at the air as hard as I could, putting all my weight behind the blade.
