Page 28 of A Promise of Lies (Shadows of the Tenebris Court #3)

27

Kat

W hen a pounding headache stopped me going to dinner the day of Kaliban’s revelations, Cyrus sent Elthea to my rooms. She frowned as she checked me over, noting things in her book. Cyrus had to make an appearance himself to remove my bracelet with his little key so she could use her magic to investigate what had happened inside my head and do what she could to ease the lingering pain.

In the days that followed, headaches continued to plague me, but they gradually faded, and Elthea left me medicine to take when they grew unbearable. Most nights I took it to help me escape the thoughts circling my mind.

Bastian was Braea’s grandson. Nyx’s son. Heir to Dusk Court.

There was no one I could speak to about this. Amandine accompanied me every time I left the palace and I wasn’t allowed to visit Dusk streets, so I hadn’t been able to visit Ariadne, Rose, or Ella. I had, however, left letters for my friends under the stone by the Great Trees—it had become my drop point with Ella and the only way I could communicate with her, aside from fake glares from a distance. One day, she’d even left a note there pointing me to a hidden spot in the gardens where I found a parcel of her beauty concoctions.

I took advantage of my freedom within Dawn to slip into the secret passages as often as I could, charting where I’d searched and where the dangers were as I looked for Krae.

In my mapping, I’d found another entrance in the library, and that was where I waited now. This hidden door was easier to access than the one Sepher had shown me—guards patrolled that corridor, whereas the library tended to be clear.

Except for today. Hence the wait. An older fae man sat near the fireplace, throwing me disapproving looks. If he found my presence so distasteful, why didn’t he just bugger off?

With an over the top sigh, I went back to reading a letter from Ella that I’d hidden inside the book. I considered using our drop point to get some information back to Bastian. I could never tell when Orpha was going to pop up—her visits were generally a matter of opportunity, and I hadn’t seen her since Celestine had managed to spot her.

During my time in Dusk, I’d worked my way through a fraction of the library, but I focused on the older section. I figured that would be the best place to find information about the Crown of Ashes. And so far I’d been rewarded with a brief mention.

One book referenced the translation of another book written in an early form of High Valens. Annoyingly, I couldn’t find a copy of the older book in the library, so I only had a few quotes to go on. “The Crown lies beyond the gauntlet.” Whatever that meant. There was an even more vague comment that the gauntlet “lies in the world beneath” and “can only be found after shedding skin.” In a cavern or dungeon, perhaps? An underground passageway?

As I screwed up my face, staring off into the distance, movement broke through my thought.

Slamming his book shut, the disapproving reader rose. He clicked his tongue and glared at me as he returned the book to its shelf and stomped out.

Apparently my thinking face was too offensive to him. Good .

As soon as the door shut, I leapt up and hurried to the secret passages. This one wasn’t opened by pulling out a certain book, as I’d read in dozens of stories, but instead by touching a volume called The Book of Ways , tucked at the bottom shelf of the bookcase opposite. The doorway swung silently open and I called for one of the fae lights to follow me into the gloom.

The dusty darkness had grown familiar, but it still made me jump whenever a spiderweb clung to my face as I entered an uncharted area. Before I set forth, I checked the book with the Crown reference was safely in its hiding spot just inside the entrance. If it wasn’t in the library, that meant Cyrus couldn’t read it—assuming he hadn’t found it already. It was a small thing, but any measures to keep the Crown and information about it out of his hands was worthwhile.

Grabbing the stick I’d left with the book, I pulled the map out of my pocket and held it under the dim fae light. I’d disguised my map as an embroidery design, just in case anyone found it on me. I’d checked a large area to the left of the library and had started along the right, but there was a central corridor I hadn’t ventured down yet.

This place was labyrinthine—not just easy to get lost in, but huge. I started to the right with the plan to extend my explorations that way. I’d tackle the central section once this side was mapped.

With the hand-drawn map, I could go confidently at first, but once I hit new territory, I had to slow. Anything that looked suspicious, I poked with the stick—it had already revealed another pit hidden beneath stone that fell away under the slightest pressure.

Despite my light, the darkness pressed in, making time feel strange. I couldn’t say if it had been twenty minutes or two hours since I’d left the library. Each minute merged together in stone and shadow and measured steps.

With a pencil, I catalogued the turns and junctions. Sometimes short, steep flights of steps led up or down—passing over or under a corridor in the main part of the palace, I suspected. A few times, I came across ladders that were so slender, I feared placing my weight on them. But they were fae-worked, so I needn’t have worried—they held me without so much as a creak.

Despite the chill air, sweat built on my brow as I climbed my second ladder of the day, cursing whoever had designed this place. Still, when I stopped to draw in the section I’d just walked, I smiled when I spotted just how much I’d added to my map today.

This labyrinth would reveal its secrets to me whether it liked it or not.

I grinned to myself, tucking the pencil behind my ear and calling for the fae light to follow. As I turned the corner, still smug, a shadow reared from the darkness and slammed into me.

Bones jolting, I hit the wall.

I tried to push away, to swing the stick at the figure looming over me, but then the steel kissed my throat and I froze.

“I told you, I didn’t owe you anything anymore,” my assailant hissed.

The fae light drifted to my side, and it was only then I saw the coppery hair and the pointed features. My skin tingled as I realised who it was. Krae.

“You should’ve brought better equipment to hunt me with.” Their nose wrinkled in a snarl as they knocked the stick from my hands. It clattered to the stone floor. “No one would know if I killed you now. You’d just disappear.”

I caught my breath, trying to gather my scattered wits. But my hands were quicker than my mind, already working on the bracelet.

Sepher had threatened me in the garden room, but I’d never felt in real danger. He was a boisterous sabrecat who needed to be taught not to throw his weight around. But Krae?

The steel they held at my throat felt like real danger.

Slowly, I swallowed, the knife pressing harder against my skin. When the bracelet clanged to the floor, though, I smiled. Magic hummed through me, and I pulled on the most delicate strand of its melody. “Do you think I’m completely defenceless?” Poison wafted through my words, not powerful enough to kill, merely a warning.

Eyes wide, Krae darted back, the steel gone from my throat.

It was a small triumph to see someone else afraid of me, rather than being the one who was afraid. For a moment, I was powerful.

But they soon mastered their shock, replacing it with a glower. “I still don’t owe you.”

There was that transactional reference again. Everything was owing and deals with them. That could be my route to getting their help.

“And I don’t owe you,” I countered. “I can hand you over. Or you can help me and I’ll help you.”

Their eyes narrowed, glinting in the gloom.

“That’s how you operate, isn’t it? Transactions. Give and take. What’s owed and by whom. What about Cyrus? What do you owe him?”

They drew a sharp hiss like I’d burned them. “Watch yourself, human.”

“I’m not the one who’s put a price on your head. You must know what he’s saying about you.”

Grumbling, their shoulders sank and they slid the dagger back in its sheath. A plain dagger this time—the one with a bronze hilt that matched their sword had been left in Cyrus’s gut. The vital evidence pointing to them.

Their eyes narrowed as they watched me for several seconds. Eventually, they snorted. “And you’re just going to help me out of the goodness of your heart? You’ll prove my innocence, just because?”

“No. I’ll do it because you’re going to help me. And you’ll do that because I’ll help you.” This felt like a safe path, one they could follow me along. “I know you didn’t do it, but I can’t work out what really happened. I need the full story.”

They made a sound of derision and turned away, starting off down the corridor.

I had to give something before they would. It was risky, but letting them get away without helping was riskier. I steeled myself. “I know you didn’t betray Cyrus. That he’s the one behind the attack.”

Just on the edge of the light, they stopped. The silence rang on, thick with tension as I willed them to stay and talk rather than slipping away into the shadows again.

“He killed the king,” they said at last. “The plan was that I would stab him to cover it up, and he’d blame me initially. With that injury and me in the frame, he’d be above suspicion. Then it would ‘emerge’ that it wasn’t me but a changeling all along. I’d be pardoned and come out of hiding and receive my reward.” Their shoulders rose and fell. “He could safely say something like ‘a changeling was involved in the royal plot’ since it was technically true.”

I shuddered. UnCavendish. Cyrus had used him.

“But.” I could hear their teeth in that word, a crisp, sharp sentence in its own right. They turned, eyes dark beneath their frown. “That was supposed to happen weeks ago. He killed his own father; I was a fool to think family ties would keep me safe.”

Family ties . I blinked at them, replaying that casual phrase. “You’re part of the royal family.” Sepher was a shapechanger. Someone had mentioned the first Day King had been one, too. “Shapechanging runs in the bloodline, doesn’t it?”

They grunted with dark amusement. “Why do you think Cyrus hates me and Sepher so much? We’re a reminder of that blot on our family line.”

“A secret… prinze ?” I supposed that was the ungendered version.

Another chuckle made their face as sharp as when they were a fox. “Hardly. A bastard half-sibling. Lucius enjoyed taking all sorts of lovers, but didn’t like to deal with the consequences. He was trying for a child with his queen, and so Sepher exists, but he didn’t count on getting one on his plaything, too. Though I think he felt like a stud for having two fae pregnant at once.”

“Who knows?”

“Lucius did, of course. He sent my mother away while she was pregnant so no one else at Court would find out. A bastard makes the line of succession messy. But I came back as soon as I was old enough to choose for myself.” They lifted their chin, daring me to judge them. “I wanted to meet my father. Turned out he wasn’t interested. But city life suited me, and I was a useful kind of person. Do you know how many bargains you can rack up in a city compared to a sleepy little village?

“One of those bargains took me back into the palace and though a wrong turning, I found myself face-to-face with my brother. Cyrus knew who and what I was at once. I think he’d found our father’s papers a long time ago and I had the right scent.”

Cyrus had complained he could smell shapechangers—he had a stronger sense of smell than most fae. “He recognised you.”

“In more ways than one. He knew our father had rejected me, and he confided that he hadn’t fared much better. I’m sure you’ve heard how Lucius treated Sepher, exiling him from the city for his gift. But Lucius was cruel to Cyrus too, only in more subtle ways. Mocking his interests as frivolous, but locking him out of any diplomatic discussions. He sent away any lovers he grew attached to, and the ones who refused to leave mysteriously disappeared. So, we worked together.”

My stomach twisted for Krae. They thought they were on even ground with Cyrus, but no way would the prince see his bastard half-sibling as an equal. He looked down on everyone.

“Cyrus owed him that death,” they bit out. “And I did too. But how do I deserve this? Living behind walls in the dark. I’m starting to forget what the sun looks like.”

“You don’t. All you did was trust the wrong person. But now you have a chance to trust the right person.”

They laughed outright at that, something of the fox’s sharpness in the sound. “And, don’t tell me, that’s you.”

“Maybe you can’t trust a human who lies. But you can trust me to want Cyrus brought to justice. He’s arrested someone I care about, blaming them for the assassination. You know the truth. If we can prove it, you’ll be free and so will they.”

“Hmm.” They ran a hand through their long hair and twiddled the ends. “I help you. You help me.”

“Exactly. A deal. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Deals I understand.”

It was progress, but I couldn’t shake off the sadness of that sentence and all the things lingering behind it. They didn’t understand trust, friendship, family, only the cold, hard transaction of a deal and debt and owing.

I cleared my throat of the sudden tightness. “So you’ll come forward and speak against Cyrus? Dusk Court will protect you.”

“Ha! You’re joking right?” Their lopsided grin showed off sharp canines, making them handsome in an odd way. “No one will trust a shapechanger. Cyrus has made sure of it. No, I’ll gather my evidence and bring it to you. I’ve heard my treacherous big brother has a masked ball coming up to celebrate, of all things, himself . It will keep him occupied and the palace will be busy—I’ll be able to blend into the crowd more easily. You’ll be there and so will your Shadow.”

“We can meet at?—”

“You want me to come to a place and time you set, so you or anyone who intercepts your plans can set up an ambush?” They rolled their eyes. “I’ll name the place. You’ll receive a message at the party with that information. No nasty surprises for me, that way.”

“You have a deal, Krae.” I held out my hand, poison smothered. “Give us that evidence, and you’ll get your life back.”