Page 59 of A Promise of Lies (Shadows of the Tenebris Court #3)

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Bastian

W hen the Wild Hunt rose from their bow, they spoke. Not any language I’d ever heard or could attempt to mimic or transcribe. It scraped over my bones, whispering that I should understand.

But I understood none of this. Did they bow before they took your soul? Some sort of twisted honour.

I pointed my sword at the leader. I didn’t remember having drawn it, but its dark blade was a comfort. “You must wait your turn. I have work to do tonight, but after that, you may have my soul. I’ll come willingly. Do we have a bargain?”

The hood twitched as though taken aback, and a low, rasping sound came from within. They spoke the oldest tongue, but their voice was broken like it had never been made for speaking any language of this world.

I had to replay the sounds in my head to make sense of the strange intonation, the cracked sounds.

“Our prince misunderstands our presence. Our prince requires no bargain with us.”

The rider at their side lowered their head, a tattered veil covering the opening of their hood. It wafted as a feminine voice came out. “What would our prince bid us do?”

I searched their shadowed faces. “Send this prince forward, then. If he won’t entertain a bargain, I will fight him for my soul.”

They watched me with an air of expectation.

“Our prince would… fight himself?”

“What?” My sword lowered. “Are you calling me your prince?” My stag spun on the spot, letting me take them all in. “You’re of Dusk Court and you… know who I am.”

“No. Yes.” The leader spread their gauntleted hands and it was only then I realised they hadn’t drawn any weapons.

“Neither and both,” the veiled one added.

“A prince twice over.” Thirteen voices rose, their discordant sound a pressure on my ears, a caress on my bones. “Here on the surface. And in the world beneath.”

“Speak some damn sense. I don’t have time for this.”

“He does not know who he is,” the leader said.

“Nor who we are.” The veiled one shook her head.

“We were the guard of the first unseelie king who ruled the Underworld. We stood with him when he and his people were banished many ages ago. We… transgressed in our hunting one night, choosing the wrong quarry, and for that we were cursed.”

“Never to live,” their voices rose in a shared chant. “Never to die. To serve our king and hunt evermore.”

“Just as we still hunt,” she went on, “we still serve the descendant of that king who rules in the Underworld. And you are his son.”

Everything went still. Every part of my body. Every thought in my mind.

Long moments passed. I wasn’t sure my heart even beat in that time.

Eventually, I choked in air as though my lungs had only just remembered how to work.

Nyx’s lover. My birth father. He wasn’t just any unseelie lord, but one of the Kings of Death.

I raked my hand through my hair, trying to wake up the rest of my body. “And what is it you want from me?”

“That is not the question. Our prince should ask what it is he wants from us.”

The leader bowed his head. “We are his to command.”

It wasn’t an army. But it might just help.

“I need to get to the palace as quickly as possible.”

“It will be done.” The leader and the veiled one flanked me, while the others fanned out behind. Their steeds pawed the ground but left no hoof prints.

I gave my stag a reassuring pat before urging him on. His eyes rolled as though he was trying to keep the strangers in sight, but he surged forward at my command, muscle and sinew as focused as an arrow.

“I always thought you were unseelie so you couldn’t cross the river’s enchantments, but I saw you in the palace’s stable yard. Are you… something else, then?”

The veiled one made a noise that made my teeth ache. I thought it was the Wild Hunt’s version of a laugh, but it was as though a dead creature had forgotten how to laugh and someone had described it to them. “We are unseelie. However your queen did not seek to block the unseelie. She only warded the river against our king. He may only enter your palace along a path paved in blood and death, as is his power.”

I huffed, breath steaming in the night air. “No wonder I’ve always found it so uncomfortable to cross.” His blood ran in my veins, so some shade of Braea’s enchantment acted upon me.

The shadows behind her veil tightened as she bent lower over her steed. “She killed your mother, and for that our king seeks her death. A life for a life. I would gladly deliver her, given the chance.”

Braea’s first words to me the night of Sura’s death suddenly made sense. You’ve come for me. At last. With shadows cloaking me, she’d thought I was my father come to kill her.

The reins creaked in my grasp, audible despite the thunderous hoofbeats. So many things made more sense now. “She wasn’t trying to protect her people, only herself.”

“Such is the way of tyrants. She could not be seen to lose control of her daughter, but she also refused to bear the consequences.”

Braea really had killed her own daughter for that—what might she do to Katherine?

I urged my stag faster.

I only hoped it would be enough.