Chapter 29

  Days Remaining - 42

  Norvil’s gates stood before him once more. This time he returned as a wanted man.

  Calira had found him on the road; their reunion had been bright and brief, a match in the wind. Then the news hit.

  Whispers had sprinted ahead of them through the kingdom. The Dark Primordial, the new name they’d given him. A cursed soul who had corrupted even the King’s own blood. The Kings’ own half-sister’s daughter, they said, twisted into an ally of the Shadows. Even Virella and William were dragged into it, their house watched day and night, assets frozen, movements penned in by polite threats.

  The gallant King, so the story went, had uncovered the treachery just in time. He’d stopped the traitors before they could hurt innocent citizens in their lust for power. The phoenix, always a monster in other people’s tales, had fled to the Wastelands in fear of the great and merciful Leo.

  Tonight, he didn’t stand as River. He stood wearing a stranger’s face.

  The borrowed face bore light freckles. The eyes were soft caramel, nothing like his own. Deception was the only road left that still ran toward what mattered.

  He had a plan, it needed to go off without a hitch. One slip and the whole thing would implode.

  Calira stirred inside him, her voice coiled like a viper around a warm stone.

  We’ve got this. I’m going to murder that fucking King.

  The venom in it made him pause, but he didn’t doubt she meant every syllable.

  Night had fallen over Norvil, and the line at the gate was mercifully short. A lone guard slumped in a chair, eyelids half-mast, barely glancing up as River passed. “High alert,” the proclamations claimed. In practice, apathy and small bribes ran deeper than fear ever would here.

  The streets were as he remembered.

  Staggering drunks. The gutter stench of piss and rot. A slick of old vomit on uneven stones. The city breathing with its mouth open.

  But festival week had begun—the Founding Games. Ledger lines always warped during these days. Poor men got poorer. Rich men got louder. Ale on every breath, desire heavy as heat. When he’d lived out here, this was the one week he could disappear into the crowd and pretend to be equal. He used to count the days.

  Now the banners only tightened his gut.

  He slid into a narrow alley with his eyes pinned to the work ahead. Before long, the weathered steps of Lady Luck’s church rose up before him.

  A place he had once called home. A place he had spent years trying to forget and never quite did.

  He reached outward, brushing the city’s quiet hum of essence. Most signatures flickered like bad candles. Barely aware. Barely awake.

  But one pulsed with a cruel, unmistakable rhythm.

  Beatrix was here.

  He slipped into the old rhythm of his magic. Essence settled over him, light bent, and the air forgot he was there. Even the creak of the door was swallowed, sound going soft under his will. Footsteps muted. Breath hidden. He couldn’t risk being heard. Not yet.

  Inside, the noise hit like a hammer—shrieks, sobbing, the echo of both ricocheting off stained stone.

  River froze. Jaw clenched.

  There she was.

  Beatrix stood at the altar, face lit with joy—radiant, and it made him sick.

  At her feet, a boy no older than ten trembled. Blood trickled from the splintered halves of a broken switch clenched in Beatrix’s hand. Three fresh welts slashed from shoulder to hip. Tears streaked his cheeks, but it was the eyes that undid River.

  Empty, hollow in the way only a child beaten too many times learns to be.

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  Just like he had once been.

  Instinct screamed. He surged a step forward, magic coiling hot in his hands—

  You can’t, Calira snapped inside him. Not now. We need to go unnoticed—at least for a while.

  He growled under his breath, trying to shake her off. Anger is fuel; rage is a kind of momentum. Then her voice cracked across him like lightning:

  STOP. Idiot. Get a grip. The others might die if you lose control.

  He stopped. She was right. He forced the breath in; forced it out. Every fiber burned. He watched.

  Beatrix nudged the boy with her foot—hard—sending him sprawling. Her laughter rang thin and bright. “That was fun, wasn’t it? You can go now.”

  The boy didn’t answer. He tugged his torn shirt over bruised skin, gathered what dignity he could, and fled. Beatrix stood smiling, satisfied, a portrait of piety’s rot. From the far side of the church, another figure emerged.

  An old, round man, beard and hair completely gray. His back was bent with years, eyes gleaming with the easy pleasure of someone who enjoys other people’s pain.

  “Well,” he said, voice oozing satisfaction, “wasn’t that a good one?”

  River shivered. That voice. He remembered it. Every syllable was a ghost. He had never seen the face attached to it, but after his years in the church, he had heard the voice on repeat in his head for years.

  They left together, their pace quickening, hands all over each other as they walked. The sight turned his stomach. For them, the children’s suffering was an aphrodisiac. Sick didn’t begin to cover it.

  Time folded. Questions chased one another in tight circles. In the end only anger and fear remained.

  They stopped in front of a large manor just down the street from Amalia’s. His breath hitched; he’d never realized how close it was. If he had—maybe—he would have done something. Anything.

  The house loomed tall, roofline like a knife. Twisted iron fenced the yard. Thick ivy choked the stone fa?ade, climbing like veins across a rotting skin. Dark oak shutters framed each window like closed eyes. From the cellar vents drifted a faint mix of burnt wood and mildew.

  River stared a beat too long, rage rising again.

  Come on, River, Calira hissed. Fix your shit. We have things to do.

  He nodded and moved. She was right. Still, the thoughts spiraled and wouldn’t quite obey.

  Inside, the air was stale, the kind of stillness that means something is wrong and has been for a while. Faint laughter flicked down the hall, carefree and ugly in the hush that came before it. He dropped the veil; for this, he wanted her to know who had come. The fluorescent glow in his eyes returned. His veins thrummed with the phoenix again.

  The chase had drained him—his essence dimmer, quieter than he liked. It would have to be enough.

  He stepped into the room.

  They hadn’t made the bed yet, though most of their clothes already carpeted the floor. Beatrix’s face moved from confusion to recognition to terror, quick as a heartbeat.

  Too late.

  He loosed his power. Twin bolts, fire braided with lightning, screetched across the room. The blast struck true; the pair flew backward and hit the far wall with bone-deep force. Plaster blew out in jagged moons; splinters of lath rained over the floor.

  River surged after, essence still flaring around his fists. He reached for the next strike and paused. There was no pulse. No release—no satisfaction. It didn’t fix anything. River only felt empty.

  “Calira. Come out,” he said, low.

  From the shadows, she slipped forward, not wearing her own face. She wore the old man’s beard, bent shoulders—the whole foul outline. For a second, River didn’t move; the sight reminded him of where he was, who he had to become.

  “Like it?” she asked, cheer stitched into her tone like broken glass into bread.

  River recoiled, jaw tightening. “No.”

  He didn’t have time to dwell. His turn had come.

  He closed his eyes and reached down, to that place behind his ribs where he had pushed his past: the pain, the sorrow, the loneliness. His mind tried to retreat, fearing what it would see, but he clenched his teeth and pushed on. He pulled up every memory of Beatrix. The pleased little smile, the too-bright gaze, the syrupy voice that made cruelty sound like care—and wrapped those shapes around himself. Essence molded and settled.

  When he opened his eyes, the air felt heavier.

  The person standing there was no longer River.

  He looked down at unfamiliar hands, at skin that wasn’t his, and the cold along his spine wasn’t the night. The corset bit; his lungs fought for space. It felt wrong. It needed to.

  Holding her form bled his essence faster; the glamour tugged at his control. Each minute felt like an hour. But it wouldn’t do any good dwelling on it. They had to disappear. Torching the bodies was the only path that didn’t point back.

  He worked quickly, dragging them out to the rear garden beneath a screen of hedges. His disguise held, but every use of essence scraped him thin. Heat bled into his palms; blue fire licked up, hotter and cleaner than red, a low, hungry roar riding its edge.

  In moments the bodies gave up their shapes. Ash. No bones, no slick trace, no tale to tell. It was only dust lifting into the night.

  He watched the last ember drift upward, flicker once, then surrender its light. One heartbeat. Then another. The heat faded from his palms, replaced by that familiar tingle—essence spent. No rush of feeling came. Just stillness. He stood there, eyes on the night sky, blank as ash. And then, without a word, he turned away. Back inside, the room hit him like a fist. Sweat. Cheap perfume. Iron in the air. Beatrix’s scent clung to the plaster, the sheets, even the curtains. Their scattered clothes made his skin crawl.

  He stepped back without a word.

  Room by room, he swept the manor. Hinges complained. Most spaces were dead or dust-choked, long unused. Finally he found what he needed: a clean bed in a plain room.

  It would do. He shut the door quietly and fell onto the mattress. Every part of him wanted to scream, to cry, to burn the house down to a clean black line. None of that would help.

  He needed essence.

  He needed focus.

  He needed tomorrow to come sooner rather than later.

  He closed his eyes.

  And, for a while, tried to forget.