Page 17 of The Shard and the Serpent (Shard Daughters #1)

Dark of the Woods

Warrick

“Get out,” I order, keeping my voice low but sharp.

Chains rattle as Skin climb from caged carts, the heavy downpour a thick veil of gray across the outer territory of The Storm. Several whimper against the onslaught as my cronies shove them toward the dark edges of a sprawling, overgrown forest.

“Keep your heads down. Don’t draw attention to yourselves,” I tell them and yank a girl from my cart. She yelps, and I force myself to more gently set her on the ground. “Sorry,” I mumble and nudge her toward the procession of Skin weaving into the forest.

She sways in the mud, shivering as she looks between the treeline and the massive dome encasing the City of Gronem. Its curved metal shell is glossed with rain, vents exhaling steam.

“I thought we were being sold to The Storm,” she says, her voice small and fragile. She looks at me with wide eyes, her hair plastered to her face by the rain.

“Change of plans,” is all I give her before I shift my focus to the smaller kids. I unlock the brass panel keeping them imprisoned and wave them forward. “Let’s go. You want food? Get a move on.”

They shift forward, clinging to each other in solidarity. I help them slide down into the mud, their small legs working overtime to march toward the woods. I go to close the cage and freeze, spying a small body curled in the far corner. I hesitate.

“Hey, kid. Come on.” I climb inside and lift my mask. My boots clunk, mud falling off with each step.

I kneel and grasp their shoulder. “Look, you don’t need to be so scared. I’m not taking you to The Storm.”

Slowly, a small boy lifts his head from its place tucked against his knees. He glares at me, his face gaunt enough I can make out the sharp hollows of his cheeks and eye sockets.

“How old are you?” I try.

He glares harder.

“I’ll put you on my shoulders.”

His brows draw together.

I clear my throat. “Not in a creepy way,” I amend.

His hazel eyes trace over my face, catching on my piercings and then on the scar that hooks against the upper left of my mouth.

“Battle wound,” I say with a shrug. “You got any?”

He uncurls further.

He has many.

“Mine looks cool as shit,” I tell him. “Maybe you’ll grow into yours, too.”

His lips wobble with the beginning of a smile.

“Alright, get the fuck up,” I tell him and snap my fingers. “I’m shivering my ass off.”

A half-cough, half-laugh accompanies his smile.

“Oh, you think my despair is funny?” I grin and move toward the cage door.

He stumbles, all legs and knobby knees, but he follows with another fit of giggling.

I hop down and lift my hands, my chest pulling tight when he immediately throws himself into me. I lower him to the mud and slick his hair out of his eyes, the storm beating against us. “Just through the trees and up the hill. You ever been to a castle?”

He shakes his head, eyes widening.

“It fucking sucks,” I explain. “Maybe it didn’t once, but this one was burned down at some point.”

The kid quickens his stride, eyes bright.

“What? You’re a pyromaniac, too? You twisted little fucker.”

He beams up at me.

Fucking hell.

“Alright. C’mon.” I drop to a knee, water squelching along mushy grass. “Pyros get shoulder rides as long as you don’t burn down the rest of Estal Palace. Promise?”

He scrambles for purchase, his muddy feet slicking over my vest as he climbs up my back. “Promise,” he huffs in my ear and throws his legs around my neck.

“Hold on.” I pull down my mask and wait for his little hands to scrunch into my hair. Then I lift and tread into the woods.

The thick canopy shields us from the worst of the rain, and I release an exhale, the tension in my shoulders easing.

Ahead, the procession of Skin trails, one of my most trusted snakes, Dacre Henson, at their lead.

A few other cronies walk, some of them holding the younger kids’ hands, carrying on conversations to keep the Skin from running.

It’s a risk, walking them uncaged and unchained with The Storm’s border so close, but we’ve taken the risk for three years now with only one runaway. Funny how basic fucking autonomy doesn’t immediately mean violence. It’s like people just want to be or something.

Everyone visibly relaxes. Masks are loose or clipped to waists. The Skin stop shaking so Godsdamn much. Some of them even look curious or excited. There’s an ease here in the dark of the woods, away from obligations and city lights.

Then branches pull apart and reveal Estal Palace.

The ruins sprawl across rolling hills, long abandoned by The Storm. They sit dark but for the far left wing—the only wing that remains intact. Firelight extinguishes as Dacre and the first Skin step from the shadows.

They know to stay quiet. To be ghosts among the ruins until my signal.

I lift two fingers to my lips and whistle the quick call.

Just as quickly as light was snuffed out, a torch flares back to life. Then others. They bob along the outer ridge as people leave the wing and head toward us.

“Hop down, kid.” I kneel and the boy shimmies off my back, feet slapping into the mud as he hurries along to join the other children racing toward the ruins. I fold my arms as he goes, spotting a familiar figure leaving the ruins and heading toward me.

“Want me to stay?” Dacre asks, his fingers skimming his Serpent blade.

“No. I can handle her.” I nod to the kids. “Go with them. Make sure they each get their own cots. Report back to me at Fang’s Edge if I need to pick up more supplies.”

Dacre nods behind his plain black mask and leaves me, the shadowed figure approaching pulling off a dark helmet.

“Tori,” I greet her.

The Storm Heir slides off her riding gloves, thrusting them into the back pocket of pin-striped pants.

Her stormrig is parked nearby, its engine a soft rumble among the trees.

The metal lining her open suit jacket and stitched across her muscled, tatted abdomen shines between flashes of lightning above.

“I see you survived Ruel,” she mutters. She hooks her helmet under an arm. Then with practiced movements, a lighter clinks open in her palm before its flame lights the end of a glass pipe in the other. “Can’t say the same about him, though.”

“He’ll be fine,” I mutter.

Satori’s gelled back line of blue hair weighs down against the rain, the sides of her head buzzed to show off her tatted skull. Lightning bolts stand out in thick, black ink on either side of her head before their tips fan over her neck and temples in smaller, vein-like zig-zags.

She blows out a puff of blue smoke, Volt sparking across her body, connecting from metal plate to metal plate. “You know Ezma wants you dead, too. She’s just more patient than the Trasks.”

My jaw ticks but I nod and take my mask off, clipping it at my waist and slicking my wet hair back. “Yeah. I saw the so-called peace offering. Russell bought it, but I think we both know your mother doesn’t give gifts without consequences.”

Satori exhales another cloud and tucks her lighter and pipe into the inner pockets of her suit jacket. Her eyes dip over my face and she grins. “You look like shit, Ivor.”

I scoff and gesture to her entirety. “You look like mommy played make-a-monster.”

A snort of laughter tears from her lips, and she shakes her head with a smile. “Fuck you.”

I exhale and throw an arm over her shoulder, tugging her into my side as we trudge through the mud toward her stormrig. “What lie do we feed Ezma and Russell this time?”

She leans her head into my shoulder. “I was thinking the Skin got free of their cages long enough to kill themselves.”

“Ah. Classic suicide. I like it.”

“We’ve also used it twice already.” She hesitates. “Warrick, we’re lucky Ezma lets me out of Gronem to accept your shipments. If you don’t deliver actual Skin and soon, she’ll figure out what’s going on.”

We stop at her stormrig, the bike’s headlight glaring across the treeline.

“Saving them—it only works with Russell’s Yield,” she continues, pulling from me with a worried look. “One of us needs to have enough control to keep Estal Palace as a sanctuary, and Ezma’s nowhere close to stepping down.”

“I know.” I look out over the ruins and shake my head. “I’m trying, Tori, but he’s got half a mind and Vandem is a leech just waiting for Russell to fall and to take me down, too.”

She slips her helmet on, visor lifted, and swings a leg over her stormrig. “Then we stall shipments,” she says, her Volt-ringed eyes sputtering. “I’m sorry, but we can’t risk it.”

I lift a hand to her shoulder and squeeze. “Thank you. For trying.”

Her lips twitch with a sad smile. “No more hiring assassins, either, Ivor.” Then she snaps down her visor and cranks the engine.

I frown. “Assassins?”

But she spins out from the mud, her stormrig drowning out my question as she waves a gloved hand in goodbye and drives into the trees.

Fuck . I tilt my head back to the storm, squeezing my eyes shut and letting the rain sting against my face.

A twig snaps at my back.

I thrust around, my spine stiff as I scan the dark treeline. Without another thought, I lift my fingers to my lips and blow in two short successions. A pause. Then again.

Torches snuff along the far wing of the ruins, the signal repeated back from crony to crony until the night is nothing but dark and storm.

I drag my gaze over the woods, prowling beneath the canopy. Mulch crunches underfoot, my head pivoting as I search the shadows.

Snap .

I halt. Then I rip my Serpent blade from its sheathe.

“Are you saving them?” a feminine voice stretches from the dark.

I swivel in its direction and stop cold.

A woman crouches between branches, her face hidden behind a drawn bow.

Its arrow aims at my head.

“Answer me. Did you and The Storm Heir bring those kids here to fuck them, kill them, or save them?” she snarls.

I take a challenging step closer. Something flutters around her as rain patters down from the canopy and glistens over the silver of her bow.

My gut twists, and my breath hitches. “If you’re going to shoot me, then shoot me,” I murmur.

The bow lowers—one, two, then three inches. Green eyes peer from the dark. “Very well,” she answers, and her elbow cocks in a swift, precise movement.

My eyes widen. I take a single step back— thunk. Pain spirals out from where an arrow digs into my thigh. “Motherfucker,” I growl.

“Yes, I am.” She drops down from the branches, and moonlight streams through the canopy casting her in a stark, vicious glow.

Short dark hair sticks to her cheeks, black makeup smeared around her eyes and mouth. A trench coat fans around her, her body beneath clad in a leather skirt and a matching top. “A daddyfucker, sometimes, as well.” Her eyes slate to narrow slits. “But never a Godsdamn kidfucker. That’s just you.”

I stumble a step, ripping her arrow out of my thigh with a grunt. “I don’t fuck kids,” I growl and toss the metal to the wet mulch between us.

She plucks a new arrow from within her coat.

I lift my blade. “Who are you?”

She smirks and circles me.

Fuck, she’s stunning. Piercings glitter along her ears, nose, and lips. Necklaces hang around her neck in large chunks, all of them barbed. Weapons are strapped along her legs against torn, sheer tights. “Don’t tell me you don’t feel it,” she says, her smirk disappearing with the words.

My gut tugs again, and I study her. I know this feeling. I know her .

She prowls closer, her arrow twirling between her fingers. “Answer my earlier question, Serpent prince. Why are you here?”

A hush runs through the forest as wind moves through the leaves. Rain splashes down from the canopy, soaking us both.

She doesn’t falter. She barely blinks, that intense gaze locked on my face.

“How do I know I can trust you?” I ask.

“You just know.”

It’s so simple of an answer, and she’s right. Somehow, I do know.

My heart pounds in my throat. “It’s a training point,” I say, careful with the words I choose.

“You aren’t saving them then?”

“In some ways, maybe. In others, no.” It’s the truth. The bitter, horrible truth.

She must sense my discomfort because she stops at my back and presses the tip of her arrow against my neck. “What are you training them for?”

I grit my teeth. “My regime.”

“You plan to sell them.”

I tense as the arrow digs into my skin. “I plan to give them the opportunity to make a profit.”

She whips around me, her glare hard within the dark rings of her makeup. “ Profit ?”

“My Bossdom is Skin,” I breathe. “It falls if I eliminate the trade in its entirety, but that’s a different story if it’s a way of life. Not imprisonment.”

Her gaze flicks over my face. Searches for lies. “But you’re still selling them.”

“If they choose to be sold. Most of the kids will want out. We rehabilitate them, but the others are too far gone. They’d rather turn their tragedy into gold.”

She lowers her arrow. For a moment, the green of her eyes dims. Something bright sparkles over her knuckles, gone too quick to make sense of. “You’re not lying,” she murmurs as her gaze returns to normal. She takes a step back from me.

My adrenaline kicks into hyper drive.

She’s going to run. Leave me. Again.

The thought scorches through my mind. My brows pull together as I try to make sense of it, but then she spins and sprints.