Alaan leapt to his feet, cutlass and swordbreaker in hand, before his eyes ever opened. The grafting shrieked within him.

  This was not the sleep-interrupting panic he had become used to. This was Death.

  Across the room, the embers in the grate showed the princess convulsing on the servant’s cot, the blanket tangled around her legs. She clamped her arms around her stomach.

  For once, Alaan felt no fear coming from her, only piercing starvation. Teeth gnashed at her from the inside, devouring her. Killing her.

  The grafting clawed at him, shrieking that his mistress was dying.

  She pitched and the cot spilled over, dropping her onto the bare stone floor.

  There was no enemy for him to fight, no attacker to kill, but the grafting dragged Alaan to her side.

  The princess caught hold of the leg of his uniform and pulled herself up. She clutched at him with shaking hands, wrapping her arms around his neck as if to brace herself against being swept away.

  “I tried not to,” she whimpered in his face, her breath rank with sleep. “I tried.”

  A heartbeat before she could sink her teeth into his throat, he blocked her with the cup hilt of his cutlass. Sharp human pearls clacked and scraped against steel.

  The ravenous beasts inside her shrieked, tearing at her and disorienting Alaan with a rage as boundless and insane as his own.

  The grafting roared. How dare he stop his mistress from feeding? She must feed or she would die.

  The princess threw him aside with a strength her frail, slender body could never have mustered. Alaan crashed into the tumbled cot. The wood frame splintered with the force of the impact, and a jagged plank scraped across his earlobe and down his jaw to his chin.

  Gasping with desperation, the princess tore the door open, the planks rebounding off the wall.

  Alaan scrambled up, blood welling from his chin, and sprinted into the corridor after her.

  Down the hall stood the open archway to the kitchens, and yellow firelight from newly kindled flames flickered from its mouth. The grafting dragged him forward, urging him on. He was already running at top speed, but it felt as if he were barely moving, as if he could never sprint fast enough to satisfy the enchantment’s panic at having the princess out of his sight.

  Someone screamed. An armload of firewood clattered on flagstones.

  Alaan rounded the archway into the kitchens.

  Beyond a huge table worn smooth with use, next to the flickering hearth, a woodcutter was frozen with both big, rough hands pressed to his mouth. Horror twisted the man’s face. Water trickled from his unblinking eyes.

  On the floor nearby, a serving boy gurgled in the princess’s embrace, his rag-wrapped feet thrashing. One filthy hand reached for the woodcutter as if begging for help.

  Horrible slurping sounds came from the princess. Her arms tightened around the boy, holding him close, burying her face in his ruined throat. Blood pooled on the floor beneath the dying boy. Dirty rushes swelled red where the drops hit, soaking up what the princess missed.

  From between his fingers, the terrified woodsman let out a thin whine.

  The boy’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he shuddered violently, then fell still.

  Panting, the princess let the corpse fall from her arms. Red painted the lower half of her face and dripped from her chin, almost black in the firelight. Her teeth were stained pink behind her wet lips.

  She fell onto her backside, then scrambled away from the boy’s body. Tears shined in her eyes, looking at the dead child. Terrible remorse swamped the grafting, but the starving beasts within were sated.

  Without impending death rampaging through her, the blind panic ebbed.

  Alaan came back to himself through the shock. He grabbed her by the arm and hauled her out of the kitchens, into the servant’s tiny bedchamber, and kicked the door shut behind him.

  “I’m so sorry.” She could not stand when he released her, sinking instead to her knees. Her bloody fingers left smears on her nightdress as she hugged herself. “I didn’t want to.”

  It required an effort of will for Alaan to return his face to the stern, changeless expression. His heart battered against the inside of his chest like storm waves on a hull, and his throat was dry as dirt. He could feel the princess’s guilt and distress as clearly as she must feel his disgust.

  She wiped a hand across her eyes, smearing the tears with blood. “I tried not to need it, but when they’re inside me, I don’t have control. It feels… it feels as if they’ll chew their way out—”

  “Stop,” Alaan said.

  “It didn’t used to happen so often.” She blinked rapidly, and saltwater made tracks through the gore on her cheeks. “I thought that feeding before Thornfield would be enough until we reached Lord Clarencio at Shamasa, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t enough. Mother would bring me bloodslaves and servants and sacrifices… And Lord Clarencio, he brought me the condemned… But that was just a boy, in the kitchens, he was just—”

  “Stop speaking.” Alaan couldn’t stand another word. Every syllable plunged a knife into his skull.

  It had been nearly three years since he watched dirter soldiers gulp the lifeblood from his tribesmen while the sand and the surf around them turned pink with the spillage and the scavengers frenzied along the shore. Seeing it again should not have frozen him. He should have been able to intervene, to stop her.

  But he hadn’t. The invisible chains of the grafting had held him captive, forcing him to stand by and watch while the cringing princess who had become a monster drank the life from the boy.

  Alaan went to the servant’s chipped washstand and filled the basin with water. This he brought back to the princess and, without a word, set before her.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered again. Tears dripped from her lashes onto the shuddering surface of the water in the basin.

  Silently, he returned to the door and leaned against it. He shut his eyes and exhaled, wishing he could get the stench of slaughter from his sinuses.

  Water trickled and splashed on the other side of his eyelids—the blood-drinker princess washing away the evidence of a murder he had allowed.

  He could not even demand justice from her. No matter what she had done, and no matter what she did in the future, he could never lift a weapon or a hand to stop her. The grafting wouldn’t allow it. Nor would it let him answer for the death, because to pay for the boy’s life with his own would leave the princess unprotected, a thought the grafting could not abide.

  Alaan was already Cursed, Half a Man, of No Tribe, cut off from the God of the Waves, and nursing an abomination within his own blood. He had believed he could not sink lower. But now he was an accomplice in the blood-drinkers’ evil. He may as well have killed the boy himself.

  ***

  Izak loved his younger brother most of the time. When Etian’s customary early start to his night forced Izak to abandon the serving girls whose deliciously limber company he’d been enjoying, however, his goodwill was sorely strained.

  So far as Izak could see, there was no reason for anyone to rise before first dark, let alone the Crown Prince of Night.

  “Just because you’re Josean-blessed doesn’t mean you’ve got to spend your whole life with a sword in your hand,” he groused.

  Etian ducked under Dolo’s falchion and stunned Hare with a forearm.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “In an hour, I’ll trade the blade for the royal blood magic,” Etian said.

  That surprised Izak. “You brought a tutor?”

  The dying sunlight flashed off Etian’s smoked lenses. “Didn’t need to. I brought the man who surpassed all the royal blood magic tutors’ hopes and dreams years ago.”

  “Oh, plough me. That’s why you dragged me away from Shia and…whatever the other two said their names were?”

  The unscarred corner of Etian’s mouth smirked. “Did Thornfield teach you how to use that swordstaff or is it just for leaning on?”

  “I’m not going to fight you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t like to sweat or look foolish, and sparring with you will make me do both.”

  In any case, Etian was making enough work for himself out of Sketcher and the rest. While Izak watched the gatehouse, old watchtower, and outbuildings for threats, Etian’s Thorns attacked as a group. Whether by accident or on purpose, the Thorns grafted to Etian could never land a harmful blow on the crown prince. Initially, Etian had been annoyed by that, but he had since abandoned all hope of real sparring in favor of running sword drills at speeds no one but a Thorn could match, in numbers no one but Etian could defend.

  The drills were impressive, even to Izak’s less than enthusiastic attention. From childhood Etian had been a skilled swordsman, but now seven Thorns together couldn’t stalemate him. It was no wonder nobles and commoners alike believed he was the second coming of Josean.

  Smiling to himself, Izak resolved to put his little brother in his place when it came time to train with the royal blood magic.

  The sun was finally down when Etian decided he’d had enough of the sword. After dragging a linen across his face—the second coming of the warrior strong god was drenched in plenty of very human sweat, though all the mud seemed to have missed him in favor of his opponents—and getting a quick drink, he and Izak set aside their weapons and faced one another at the center of the courtyard.

  “I know the grafting won’t let you cast lethal attacks—” Etian’s glasses were fogging over despite having just cleaned them, but he grinned all the same. “—but don’t hold anything else back.”

  “Deal. Let’s see what those tutors have been teaching you.”

  Izak raised his hand, catching hold of the energies in Etian’s blood. Almost before he had a grip, Etian threw him off.

  “Not bad, not bad.” Izak nodded, feigning thoughtfulness. “Why don’t you—”

  He threw out an attack, but Etian snapped up the energies like a rabid dyre catching its prey by the throat.

  Izak grinned as the trap he’d laid in the magic detonated, turning his brother’s blood into shards of glass and tearing through his muscle and skin.

  Immediately, Etian melted the shards and dragged them back into his veins, throwing out a shield to block Izak’s next spell.

  What he should have done was block Izak’s magical reserves. Helpfully, Izak demonstrated by imprisoning Etian’s magic just out of his grasp.

  Rather than try futilely to break through the lockdown, Etian stole blood magic from the next closest source—the Hare of West Crag. The bastard muttered an oath in surprise.

  “Try again,” Izak told his brother, locking away the energies of every man and creature in the courtyard.

  Deftly, Etian caught hold of Izak’s surge of power, redirecting the blocking spell and reshaping it into an attack.

  Izak turned the spell back on its caster, heating Etian’s blood and organs toward boiling. Etian was ready for that as well. He diffused the heat into the cool evening air, the steam rising from his skin and clothes and whisked away by the breeze.

  With fire, water, wind of knives, pestilence, and plague, Izak attacked, heightening the intensity of his spells to the very edge of what the grafting would allow. Every time Etian caught the spells and redirected them.

  Minutes crashed by without either brother gaining the advantage. Royal blood magic lit the courtyard and thundered through the growing night. A handful of nobles and off-duty Royal Thorns stopped to watch the match alongside Etian’s guard. The spectators gasped in awe and winced in sympathy with every new attack and deflection.

  As the sweat ran into his eyes, Izak began to wonder whether he actually could beat Etian if the grafting weren’t there to restrict him. The only opponent Izak had ever fought with an equal measure of creativity and strength of will was the pirate, and after three years training his friend to better use the blood magic, Izak could no longer defeat Alaan without actually killing him.

  The pirate had to be reached in other ways.

  Of course, why hadn’t he thought of that before? Etian lived to match strength and speed and cunning with his opponents. He would never suspect Izak to send him against himself.

  Chuckling breathlessly, Izak fell back on his Thornfield cheat—he projected the first obsession he found in Etian’s mind back on him.

  And immediately wished he hadn’t.

  Etian was caught completely unaware, transported from the handsome Siu Augine courtyard into a dark bedchamber, tangled in the mad queen’s impassioned embrace.

  As soon as he realized what he was seeing, Izak dispersed his own spell. “That’s it! Royal blood magic training is over!”

  Behind his smoked lenses, Etian blinked and looked around, quickly regaining his bearings. Shock and suspicion twisted his scarred expression. His dark eyes locked on Izak.

  “You saw nothing,” Etian snarled, stabbing a finger at him.

  “I wish to the strong gods I had.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Are you sick? Insane? Did she put some sort of curse on you? Did you lose your sense of smell?”

  “I said shut up!”

  Izak dropped his voice to a hiss. “Her?”

  “It’s none of your concern.”

  “Tell me you haven’t acted on this. Promise me it’s just a day terror you haven’t managed to shake yet.”

  The crown prince turned to stalk away. Izak grabbed his arm and yanked him back.

  “Etian…” Izak’s eyes leapt back and forth between his brother’s. He wished desperately that he knew how to voice to his rising dread and sinking heart, but the closest he could come was, “Once the mad queen sinks her diseased claws in you, you’ll never get free.”

  “Yes, I will.” Hatred blazed behind Etian’s smoked lenses and turned his reply into a growl. He shook Izak’s grip off. “Soon we’ll all be free of her.”

  ***

  As the sun set, Alaan followed the princess up from the servants’ quarters to the king’s door. She gave no explanation of her intent, but he could feel her shivering and knew it was from fear of telling her monster of a father what she had done in the day.

  A pair of Royal Thorns stood guard outside the king’s chambers. Alaan recognized one, but the other must have been grafted before his time.

  The king’s swordsmen bowed to the princess when she arrived, but she did not acknowledge them, so according to dirter custom they could say nothing to her. Neither did they speak to Alaan, though he saw them assessing his cutlass and swordbreaker, deciding on the most efficient way to kill him if he drew against the king.

  Alaan had done the same unconsciously the moment he saw them, planning to slip between them and the princess, punch the swordbreaker into the throat of the closer, and lay open the belly of the farther with the cutlass’s longer reach if either Thorn made a threatening move.

  The minutes dragged on in tense silence. For her part, the princess seemed entirely unaware of the unspoken threats passing between the grafted swordsmen. She wrung corpse-white hands and stared at the door.

  Finally, it opened.

  “Your Majesty.” The princess fell to her knees and bowed her head, shaking so hard now that the fabric of her dress rustled. “Last night, I… I fed. It was one of his lordship’s serving boys, and…”

  Hazerial’s frozen mud eyes scraped over his daughter, then to Alaan. As if the king could feel the sudden lance of hatred bleeding the breath from Alaan’s lungs, his dark gaze glittered with amusement.

  “Did your Thorn procure the serving boy for you?”

  “No, Your Majesty.” The princess’s head ducked lower and shame flowed through the grafting. “I-I did not inform him of my needs.”

  “Indeed.” The dirter king smiled, his eyes never leaving Alaan’s face. “The boy’s death is merely a minor inconvenience for our host, child. Do not distress yourself. There are always more servants, as your Thorn will learn. It is no longer our responsibility to see to your health, but his—whether that be to provide protection or to obtain suitable meals to prevent your starvation. From now on, you will keep him apprised of your needs.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. Thank you, Your Majesty.”

  “Rise and break the fast with us, Kelena.” The king offered the princess a hand as pale as her own. “We have so little time left with you before you leave us for Lord Clarencio that we must not squander a single moment.”

  The king’s invitation caused the princess to shudder inwardly. She was no more consoled or convinced by her father’s razor-toothed smile than Alaan, but obediently she took the king’s hand and followed.

  ***

  Across the wide entryway of the Lord of Siu Augine’s castle, the lord, his wife, and several courtiers fawned over the dirter king, saying their goodbyes and claiming to have been honored by his presence.

  The princess and her Thorn stood apart, watching and waiting to leave.

  Etian and his Thorns had ridden out before the midnight meal. According to Izak, his brother was growing sick of waiting on carriages. They would spend the night hunting and meet up again with the king’s escort at dayfall. Alaan did not care for horses any more than he did for dirter carriages, but he would have given much to have ridden out with them rather than await the king.

  “You’re not as angry today,” the princess said in a low voice.

  When Alaan looked sidelong at her, she pressed her lips into a thin line and returned her gaze to the floor.

  “Anger no longer serves me,” he told her.

  While at Thornfield, rage had sharpened him as a grindstone sharpened steel. After the grafting, that same rage had pushed him forward when he would have sunk with despair. The previous day, however, rage had distracted him from the deadly hunger growing in the princess. It had dulled his awareness to the dangers around him and cost the serving boy his life.

  “And so you let it go, just like that?” the princess asked.

  He thought of his long-ago fever dream of Mehet, and her insistence that he must leave behind his pain and grief if he would redeem the blood debt.

  Boundless rage had become a luxury he could no longer afford. Through the long, tense hours after the slaughter, Alaan had jettisoned what he could, filling himself instead with the alaan darkness he was named for. A single burning coal he allowed to remain, glowing in the heart of the abomination in his blood, keeping the monster alive.

  In his peripheral, the princess’s dark eyes studied him.

  Izak could look into a man’s mind with blood magic. Could his little sister do the same? Had the princess seen the memory of Mehet, or was it only the twinge of fathoms-deep loss that she had sensed through the grafting?

  Anger tried to resurface at the intrusion, but Alaan pushed it back into the depths. When the time came, he would wield that storm of fury. Not before.

  “It’s hard to set things down sometimes,” the princess said quietly. “Not everything likes to stay down.”

  Like the bloodthirst she had tried to hide from him.

  A wave of the king’s corpse-white hand summoned them, forcing Alaan to admit that the princess was right. Some things did not like to stay down.

  Three weeks had passed since the failed assassination. Three weeks wasted to blind fury, when he should have been charting the impossible course ahead of him, studying his prey and the waters, preparing to attack.

  Alaan let the abyssal waters of the Deep Chasm fill him until only a concentrated gem of burning hatred sparkled in the endless crushing fathoms, down where it would await its chance to strike.