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“Every god in the Otherworld has fashioned their own set of rules for the Crow Games. As a result, the contestants know not how to win.” – Esther Weil, Renowned Folklorist

M osaics plastered the halls, depicting the rivalry of the divine brothers Alwin and Alrick. Alwin had always been the wisest of the gods, but Alrick’s gift of command brought deities to their knees. No god could easily resist an alluring suggestion from Alrick. His power of influence was legendary.

Every realm had its ruler, but Alrick remained the gods’ sole monarch, damning Alwin to live forever in his brother’s shadow. The images captured this plight, pushing the god of knowledge with his robes and scrolls and stoles to the background.

The tick of a clock overhead sent my pulse surging. We had to move quickly in order to carry out the plot and return to the Schatten before the thirteenth hour. The tea trolley was placed in an alcove exactly where Asher had predicted it would be. Asher made the gaslights flicker, and right on cue, Nola and Ruchel caused a ruckus, arguing loudly over prices and hassling the recruiter, pulling attention to the atrium at the front of the library.

I walked off with the tea trolley, and distracted coven members didn’t fuss with me. Asher moved between the shadows. I was growing accustomed to the way shade flickered and stretched when he joined with it.

According to Asher, Bram was in a back study replenishing his mind magic with reading. The locked door was manned by a warlock with a green witch’s fingerbone pinned high on his collar. To prevent interruption, earth magic cast upon the door kept it sealed shut.

“Oh?” the guard said as I pushed the cart near. “But the high warlock has already had his tea.”

“Perhaps he wants more tea?” I suggested.

“I don’t think so.” Then he opened the pot lid and showed me it was empty, the inside dusted with damp leaves.

Apparently, our timing wasn’t so perfect.

I had no skill for clever improvisation. Instead, I did what came naturally to me, pinning the warlock to the wall with my weight and shoving a dagger at his throat. Asher joined me in his shadow form, draping around me like a cloak made of night. His halo of intimidating darkness more than made up for the size difference between me and the guard.

The warlock’s eyes went wide, taking in the death aura all around, and a panicked yelp caught in his throat, my dagger a harsh reminder that he’d live longer silent.

“Open the door,” I said. The serrated teeth of the curved blade bit into his fawn flesh.

A grunt. He shook his head.

“Open the door,” I ground out. “I won’t kill you. I’ll do worse. I’ll cut out your tongue and carve my name into your cheeks. I’ll sever your limbs and rip out your nails and wear your broken bones on my clothing even though they’re worthless and . . .”

His eyes grew wider and wider. It was as I described the method I would use to extract his entrails that he stretched out his hand, palming the door. The grain of the wood shimmered green and groaned before falling open.

“It’s charming how frightening you are,” Asher cooed in my ear, and my stomach fluttered for reasons I didn’t have time to dwell on.

A tendril of reaper magic brushed over the guard’s cheek. His eyes rolled back in his head, a full body tremor wracked him, and the warlock spilled to the floor.

“Is he dead?” I asked.

“I don’t kill,” Asher reminded me.

I pulled off the fingerbone pinned to the warlock’s collar and pocketed it to dispose of respectfully later. Then I rolled the tea cart over his body to help conceal him.

“Don’t let anyone in,” I said to Asher.

He spread his shadows wide, blotting out the cart and the fallen guard.

I pushed inside. The study smelled of vellum and old books and lantern oil. Lost to his reading, Bram lounged in a wingback chair beside a leaning tower of volumes that threatened to topple.

I shut the door behind me with a snap, and the tower fell. Bram jumped to his feet, startled. His silk shirt was rolled to his elbows. The lapels of his brocade waistcoat hung open.

His brow smoothed, and his smile was breathtaking, evidence of his mind magic already hard at work. I holstered my dagger.

“Maven,” he breathed, closing his book and setting it aside on the arm of the chair. “I so hoped you’d find your way back to me.”

I charged across the room, shoved him down into his seat, and he put up no fight at all. My spirit stirred along my veins, pooling in my fingers to turn them gray. I pushed my hands into his chest.

He watched them disappearing into his body with a gasp and a breathy laugh. His heart pumped violently at the ethereal invasion and then calmed.

“I knew it,” he said, his hazel eyes intent on mine. “I knew you were so much more than you pretended to be.”

“Lisbeth is dead,” I said, and her name tasted like ash in my mouth. “You have seconds to tell me who killed her and why, or when I take my hands back out of your chest, I’m bringing your heart with it.”

His placid expression never changed. His eyes, verdant greens and browns like a forest floor, never dimmed. “I didn’t hurt your precious Lisbeth. I liked her. I wanted to recruit you both for my cause, but you were a difficult case, so frightfully resistant. You wouldn’t let me close. I thought I was finally getting somewhere with you and then—well, you know the rest.”

His heart in my palm didn’t falter. It beat on in a steady patter.

Like he was telling the truth.

“Fuck you and your cause,” I rumbled. “Who killed my sister?”

Bram had the audacity to study the backs of his hands instead of responding. He glanced forlornly at the books that had fallen open, their pages bent.

“Am I boring you?” I demanded, giving his heart a pinch.

His hazel eyes flickered back to mine, and his mouth curled at the corners wolfishly. “Never that, darling. But I know you won’t kill me.”

“Watch me.”

“You won’t, because I have everything you need right up here.” He tapped his temple. “You want to know who killed her, but you can’t have that if I’m dead. And I’m not giving that away for free. If you want something, you’ve got to give me something in return.”

“I’m giving you the chance to keep breathing,” I said, dropping my hands to his lungs and squeezing until he wheezed.

Bram’s smile went crooked. He let his long legs fall open, his posture loose in his cushioned seat. “As much as I love a bit of rough play, if I don’t let you go soon, you’ll miss your train. I hate to see you leave. This is the most I’ve gotten you to talk to me in months, and it’s so much better than I ever imagined. I never could have guessed how wonderfully spirited you are. You hid yourself and Lisbeth very well.”

Anger and grief caught me by the throat, and suddenly it was like someone had their hands in my lungs, not the other way around. “Stop acting like you care about her,” I hissed.

“But I do care.” His eyes softened and his hands cupped my jaw, his touch satiny smooth. Too flawless. He swiped his thumb across my cheek, chasing away a tear that broke free. “I care very much for you and that vibrant little sister of yours, more than I ever wanted to. Caring this much about anyone is a perilous risk in the Otherworld. I’d give my concern away if I could.”

It was too tempting thinking there was someone out there in the world other than me who missed Lisbeth. Someone who understood even just a little bit how lovely she was and didn’t want her dead for being dangerous. I wanted someone else to want the wrong of it all made right. I didn’t want to be alone in that anymore.

Bram couldn’t be that someone else. He may not have murdered Lisbeth, but that hardly made him innocent.

“You’re lying,” I bit out. “Your circlet is making me want to believe it, but I won’t be tricked. This is all just more god games. Do you know you’re just a pawn to them, or have they got you fooled that you’re a king?”

Bram pulled the circlet off his head and tossed it onto the messy pile of books on the floor, ruffling the part in his chestnut hair. “I didn’t kill your sweet sister. I’m sorry she’s dead. I know exactly where I stand with the damn gods. Help me, and together I swear to you we’ll make them pay.”

“Make who pay?” I begged.

“All of them,” he whispered. “All of the gods.”

His words were a seductive purr. It was exactly what I wanted to hear and more. But I’d been alive much too long to be fooled by any of it. Words so wonderful were never what they seemed.

“What do you want in exchange?” He wasn’t going to be upfront with me, but I could learn a lot from hearing what he was after at least.

He smiled at me the way a patient teacher might at a particularly stubborn pupil. “There’s a secret lower level to the library here. The god Alwin hosts a trial of his own, and only the worthy win. I seek the prize, but I am ineligible.”

“Why?”

He pointed down at the bronze circlet. “I’ve already won a prize from Alwin. He never awards a second, but I need the book he’s holding. It’s a relic so powerful it can end the games for good. Maven, there is no one in any realm more worthy than you. Get me this boon. I’ll tell you everything and grant you your freedom from the Otherworld. How could you say no to that?”

My nose wrinkled. “Free me how?”

“Bring me the relic, and I’ll show you.”

He knew exactly what would motivate me best. I pulled my hands out of his chest and stepped back, certain that keeping my distance from him while negotiating, given his gifts, was more pertinent than threatening him with gray magic. “Is it a hexen relic?”

“Yes, but the witch it’s made out of is quite dead,” he drawled. “I don’t think she’ll mind now how we use it.”

My nostrils flared. “Let me just make a book out of your flesh and blood, then we’ll see if you mind.”

“They say it’s made from the remains of Fria after the goddess relinquished her divinity and broke it into pieces for her priestesses.”

I shook my head so vehemently my braid slipped out of its coil and spilled over my shoulder. “Lies.”

“You sound so certain.” His gaze fell to the delicate chain around my neck and the torch amulet dangling from it, and I realized too late that he’d been goading me—a trick I hadn’t seen coming. In a few minutes, I’d given him more than I ever had in months of his spying, and he didn’t even have the circlet on his head. “But how could you possibly know it isn’t the goddess of magic, Maven? You haven’t even seen it.”

I wasn’t foolish enough to answer that question, but I sensed the damage was done. I’d revealed something I hadn’t meant to. Bram truly was several steps ahead in every match.

“You knew I would come for you,” I said.

“How could I? I’m not a prophet,” was his coy response. “I couldn’t know, but I hoped you yet lived. I hoped you’d find me, or I’d never have you. All that time chasing after you proved that. Coming to you never works, does it, Maven? The harder I tried, the further you retreated and the thicker you built walls around yourself and your sister.”

“Stay away from me, and my coven,” I growled, “or I’ll do more than just threaten harm next time.”

I hated that he was right and my threat was an empty one. The information in his head was too precious to me to kill him. I couldn’t have the name of the guilty god if he was dead, and he knew it. He may not have been a prophet, but his ability to understand the people he interacted with and read their motivations put me at an instant disadvantage in any negotiation with him.

Bram showed me his palms like I’d pulled a pistol on him. “I have no desire to hurt you or yours. You don’t have to sneak about when you come and see me. My Guardians won’t harm you.”

I caught myself staring at his mouth, watching him form each word. I needed to get out of here. I didn’t like what his talents were doing to me, how they made me want to sit close, hang on his words, and admire his beauty.

And he was beautiful in a fearsomely unnatural way. The way Nott was beautiful. The way the Otherworld was beautiful; Too perfect. Too clean. Too divine.

Too deadly.

He’d changed somehow, was something more down here than he had been in the Upper Realm all covered in soot. He’d seemed so harmless then. But perhaps we were all different down here.

I marched for the exit and made it as far as the door before he spoke again.

“See you soon, Maven.”

* * *

That night after the feast, my coven took over the lounge car, and we included Blue and the sisters in our deliberations over drinks. Things were becoming too serious to make another move without them. We caught them up on the day’s events, leaving out any mention of gray magic or my brand of peculiarities.

I was beginning to feel guilty for the deception.

“When we arrived to barter for ammunition,” Nola said, dropping four fresh rounds in front of me beside a mixed drink that smelled like juniper berries, “the quartermaster already knew to expect us, and he gave us these. Gifts from their high warlock. No trade.”

“A recruitment tactic?” Emma guessed.

“They say he’s god-born,” Blue warned. Her flinty eyes flickered toward me. The gesture was subtle but as accusing as always. “It’s like I keep warning Talia: you can’t trust god blood, no matter how little they have. Mortals aren’t meant to wield such power. It corrupts them.”

“Power has corrupted the gods just as readily,” I said.

Ruchel saluted me with her cocktail in agreement, and I wondered, not for the first time, what had been done to this once devoted scribe of Alrick to make her abandon all the gods.

I tipped my drink back into my throat, letting the gin burn its way down before I continued. “I take your point, though, Blue. We can’t trust him.”

“But Bram is promising freedom from the games,” Emma said. She took her sister’s hand from beside her in the cushioned chair they were sharing, and she squeezed it. “How could we turn that down?”

“He’s offering Maven freedom. Who knows what he’d do to the rest of us? And even if that promise wasn’t a lie, it’s a hexen relic we’re talking about,” Nola said, grimacing. “I want my freedom as much as the next witch—but at what cost?”

“Ruchel,” I said, “you’ve been uncharacteristically quiet.”

She swirled her short glass. Gaslight danced along the rim.

“Ruchel?” I asked after the silence grew long.

Nola hushed me. “Let her think it through. It’s best not to interrupt her when she’s like this.”

So we waited.

“We can’t trust him,” Ruchel said finally. “When we saw him at the market, he felt trustworthy—too trustworthy. No one is that true. Everyone holds something back. But if we don’t try for the hexen book, he’ll get it another way. It’s only a matter of time with people like him. Best way to ensure he doesn’t have it is we secure it ourselves. For us.”

“But we can’t use relics,” Nola pointed out.

“We can’t.” Ruchel tipped her glass toward the corner of the room, where Asher leaned against the wall so still and silent he’d been forgotten. “But he can. Is that what you were thinking about, Asher? The more you’re around, the easier it’s becoming to read you.”

All eyes fell on him at once. His spine pulled up straight as a post.

“Can reapers use relics?” I asked him. He could sense them. He’d identified the divinity in Bram’s circlet. If he could detect them, it stood to reason that he could use them just as warlocks could.

“I’m worried I shouldn’t,” he said, his words measured. “If I tried, I might simply smother the magic and kill the relic.”

Blue spoke up next. “There is one warlock I trust.”

“You trust someone?” Nola teased.

Blue pointed her middle finger up at her fondly. Instead of gin, she drank tea flavored with lemon, her favorite for replenishing her energy. “She would meet with us if I asked, but this warlock is a survivor. We would need to make it worth her while to help us.”

“Freedom isn’t enough?” Liesel chimed in. “We could get out of here if we’re successful. She could come with us.”

“She’ll want assurance that we’ll make it worth her while even if it doesn’t work out,” Blue explained.

My hand dropped to my chest where my amulet hung beneath my shirtwaist, a powerful god-made relic no warlock could say no to. I fingered the engraving through the linen. “I can make it worth her while. If you set up the meeting, I’ll help convince her. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We don’t even have the book yet.”

Drink won the night. Even Blue was seduced into partaking. Nola kept our glasses full and potent. Grudges and worries were forgotten, and laughter came easily. Even mousy Liesel spoke unabashedly at Asher, telling detailed stories about the pet serpents she kept in her gardens in the Upper Realm.

Emma took the empty chair beside me then, and her stern expression was immediate confirmation that not all worries were forgotten. “Have I told you yet,” she said, “how Liesel and I came to be on the train?”

“No,” I said cautiously. Emma did her best to avoid me, but I bit my tongue instead of pointing that out.

Her blue eyes were glassy from drink, and her neck was flushed. “Liesel stole a cow from a neighboring blacksmith. The family was devoted to the god Hilt. It was his hammer on the ceiling of our sleeper car when we arrived.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” I said, uncertain where this conversation was headed.

“I wasn’t looking for sympathy.” Emma crossed one leg over the other. The knees of her trousers were heavily stained. “You see, Liesel is so sweet she couldn’t stand watching an animal be poorly cared for, even if they were only being raised to be eaten. She stole the cow to treat the beast better.”

“She’s sweet,” I said, though I still couldn’t see why Emma was telling me all of this. Perhaps the gin had made her chatty.

Emma cast a glance behind her at her sister, who continued to jabber at a bemused Asher. “The blacksmith learned of it and came to our house. He found her in the garden and confronted her. He shouted and raised his fist at her, and I stopped him.”

“I had a little sister too who was sweet.” I hoped on this point we might finally find common ground. Were our roles reversed, I would have treated me with the same suspicion. I would have kept me at a distance, far away from Lisbeth. “We share a father. I met my sister when she was five, and I raised her. I still remember the way she grinned at me that first day, so trusting and small. Her front teeth were missing, and she had a smile that made me feel like a queen. I knew in an instant that I would never let anyone hurt her. I never wanted to see her frown.”

“Then you do understand,” Emma said, jaw firm. “I won’t see Liesel harmed. Our father was like that blacksmith. He’d shout until he was red in the face, and he was quick to raise his fist, especially at Liesel, who struggles to do her best when she’s nervous. When we got out of his house, I vowed I’d never let that happen to her again. The blacksmith raised his hand at her, and I shot him. Twice.”

Such brutality from the healer surprised me, but I didn’t let my shock give way to judgment. This was precisely why it was so unwise to discount green witches. Their skillset was broad, their capabilities as wild and untamable as nature itself. You never could know what you were really going to get.

“I don’t blame you. I would have done the same, even if I knew it would land us here.” I had done the same, in fact, multiple times.

“And then I shot him a third time. For spite,” she confessed, her tone full of warning. Her lashes lifted, and her blue eyes were ice-cold. “I blasted him right in his face just to ruin his funeral. I’d do it again, Maven.”

Emma was threatening me. Emma, the kind midwife, the crafty green witch who never had a cruel thing to say to anyone.

And I liked her very much for it.