Page 69 of Ballad of Nightmares

“It must be a lonely existence,” he said.

“You’ve never met him?” she asked.

“Once,” he lied. “When I was turned… but that was during the last war, and I was so far from gone that I barely remember more than the relief of that end and the breath of the new beginning.“

And for some reason, the lie wrenched his stomach.

“Is there a book where all this information is written?” she asked.

He paused to meet her eyes, considering the date and what he could tell her. “There is,” he said. “I can show you, soon.”

“Why not today?”

He smiled, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. “Always so eager, wicked girl—“

Before Sam could kiss her, a hundred voices shouted into his head at once.

Terror struck him all the way to the bend of his knees. He staggered, hand landing on the iron rail to keep himself upright. Vomit rose in his throat. Ana’s voice was a distant echo as she grabbed his arm and tried to help him. But the voices…

Voices of people from the Spine dying at his border.

“Sam—Sam!” Ana pleaded in front of him, her hands on his face, tapping his cheeks lightly. “Sam—what’s wrong?”

His eyes rolled as he caught his breath, but he pushed the noise out. He couldn’t do this right then. He couldn’t shadow to his home and call them all right then. Not with Ana—

Catching his breath, he straightened and softly took Ana’s hand. “It’s nothing,” he lied. “Maybe just something we ate. Or the adrenaline of tonight. Are you feeling okay?”

The lie was a poor one, but Ana didn’t call him out on it. “Yeah, I’m okay,” she said. “Do you need to lie down?”

“I should be going, actually,” he said through a strained tone. His bike wasn’t far away. They’d just walked across the street and down a quarter of a mile. He leaned in and kissed Ana’s temple, giving her an apologetic look.

“I’ll make it up to you,” he promised.

But she shook her head. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m used to you leaving around this time anyway.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

BY THE TIME Sam made it to his castle, he’d vomited twice.

He hadn’t heard so many screaming since the last war, and it had been so long that he’d forgotten how terrifying it even made him.

Rolfe was waiting for him on the steps, his hands in his pockets as lightning began to crack wildly around them. He stretched an offering of whiskey out to Sam as he met him. Sam kicked it back with one gulp.

“How did the date go?” Rolfe asked, and Sam knew it was simply to get him thinking about anything except what they were about to find inside the cathedral.

“Fantastic,” Sam managed, holding his stomach a moment as another voice shouted and screeched inside his head. “Tell you about it when there aren’t a hundred people shouting at us.” He rubbed his temple as Rolfe poured another whiskey and slumped on the steps.

Rolfe sat with him, and together the pair simply took in a moment to look at the sky. The stars and nebulas and galaxies that stared back.

“We don’t do this enough anymore,” Sam said as he sipped the whiskey this time.

“That’s because the last time we spent the entire night outside was the night before you shadowed this place, and I think all three of us thought that meant we’d never see the stars again,” Rolfe replied.

Sam almost laughed. “I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing,” he admitted.

“I don’t think any of us did,” Rolfe agreed. “But it was a fuck of an idea. And a shit load of people liked it.”

“Who doesn’t like the idea of revenge?” Sam asked, and his friend clanked his glass against his own before both took long swigs.