Page 43 of Witchshadow

“No.” She frowned. “Him.The Rook King.”

Aeduan’s vision sharpened. He had not thought the Rook King still alive. “He remembers who he is?”

“Yes.”

“Then you should have killed him.”

Evrane glared. “I would have, but I was weak. I had only just awoken.Besides, he would have simply been reborn again.” Her gaze flittered toward their prisoners. “Like Saria, like Midne.”

And like we should have been.Aeduan’s nostrils flared. Evrane was right, of course: there was only one way to kill a Paladin, and simple death was not it. Still, a Rook King newly reincarnated was better than one at peak power.

“What does he look like?” he asked. The Rook King of a thousand years ago, the Rook King who had killed Aeduan with his magicked blade, had been tall and dark. He’d worn thick furs and a silver crown—plain, simple, cold as the mountains on which he’d dwelled.

“I didn’t see his face,” Evrane admitted.

“Then how do you know it was the Rook King and not someone else?”

“Because he had that bird with him.” She shuddered—and Aeduan hated that he wanted to shudder too. He had never liked that bird. Death on glossy wings.

“On whose side is he? Does he serve the Exalted Ones or the Six?”

“I do not know.” Her eyes swiveled to Aeduan’s, two pools of black in the shadows. “He could have killed me, though, and he did not. He simply told me it was good to have me back again…” A pause. A twitch of a grim smile. Then: “And he asked me if I’d slept well.”

Of course he did.A thousand years the Rook King had lived. One life after the next. No danger, no Threads, no vengeful Old Ones to get in his way. Now he mocked Evrane. He mocked them all.

If Aeduan ever encountered him—if this new iteration of the Rook King had the audacity to ever cross Aeduan’s path—then Aeduan would end him. A blade in the heart, exactly as the Rook King had done to him. Then when the Paladin soul was reborn, he would track down that new body and kill it too. Over and over again, for a thousand years. Over and over again, for the rest of time.

He gulped back the remnants of his soup, scarcely noticing the taste, the oiliness, the temperature too cold. Then he stared into the darkness with unseeing eyes and imagined pain on glossy black wings.

The end of the night could not come soon enough. Safi had danced until she could dance no more, and though Henrick had not touched his chain of command again, cold had lingered. An aching too, like illness coming on.

Hell-gates, but she had never hated the Emperor more.

An attendant opened the door for Safi as soon as she and her Hell-Bards appeared in Leopold’s dedicated hall. He lived in the oldest part of the palace—even older than where Henrick resided. So old, it looked halfway to ruins despite the lush carpets and flickering sconces. As a girl, Safi had never understood why Leopold chose to live here, and she did not understand it now. There was no power to be played here as there was in Henrick’s quarters, and the crumbling black stones sucked up all warmth, all light.

In fact, the tower in which he lived was more fortress than living quarters. No dressing chamber, no sitting room, no space for guards or attendants to comfortably spend the night. Yet Leopold had chosen this rounded stretch of granite as his home for as long as Safi had known him.

The only advantage, Safi supposed as the door into Leopold’s room swung wide, was that no one ever traveled this way. It was secluded from the rest of the palace, and the number of hallways needed to reach it—not all of them even indoors—was an inconvenience no one ever willingly made.

Two steps in and she realized there was another advantage: the stone walls were too thick to allow for spying. The entrance into the room alone was a solid three paces deep, all of it contiguous black granite. Presumably every wall in the room was the same. There could be no hollow spaces here, no peepholes, no listening horns. Aside from the fireplace on the left and a single window on the right, the room was completely impermeable.

“Safiya,” Leopold said with a smile, rising from an armchair before a blazing fire. He opened his arms to her, and she hurried forward as if all she wanted was to be wrapped in his embrace.

Even after the door shut behind her, she allowed him to pull her tightly to him. He wore a blue dressing robe over what she assumed must be his nightwear, and he smelled fresh, as if he’d just bathed.

Safi pretended to melt into him, looping her arms around his waist and resting her head on his shoulder. “Can anyone see us?” she murmured.

“Yes.” He spoke at a normal volume. “There are a handful of spies with glasses trained on my window. No one canhearus, though. And as soon as I draw my curtains, they will not see us either.”

Safi lifted her face toward his and offered what she hoped was a suitablyin-lovesmile. “Then close it please because I have no desire to continue holding you.”

A bark of laughter, and Leopold withdrew. While Safi settled herself in the armchair he had just abandoned—there was no other chair—Leopold closed the curtains. They were thick velvet brocade, blood red like everythingelse in the room: the four-poster bed and its coverings, the rugs woven with golden double-headed eagles, and even the tapestries draped over most of the stone. It was almost overbearing in its masculinity, yet somehow thoroughly devoid of any personal touch. Safi could only assume that, like everything else about the prince, this space was cultivated and groomed, while Leopold’s true self stayed tucked away.

As Leopold strode back toward the fire, Safi withdrew her Truth-lens and pressed it to her eye. A shattered image of the prince crossed into view, and though she could not see him clearly, she could sense he leaned against the fireplace’s enormous oaken mantel.

“We are safe to speak?” she asked. “Aboutrealthings?”

“Indeed,” he replied, and the lens made no change. “I am sure you have a thousand questions—”