2. Leni

In that moment, I lose everything: what they’re saying, who they are, why I’m wearing tights and a knee-length parka. My name blinks black and shuffles out of reach. My fingers slip from the fabric. I recoil, a sickening dip in the pit of my stomach.

Run. When there’s trouble, run. Hide. Do not risk yourself. Yaya’s taught me how to survive.

I twist and a vision floods me, robs me of my escape. Silky curls in the softest shade of brown, intense eyes, the curve of a mouth falling, flattening, and firming.

Him.

The spymaster.

I shove off my hood as panic engulfs me. This is my only chance at freedom, I can’t lose it.

Ears roaring, I push inside the tent, blinking away the sudden prick of tears behind my eyelids. I stumble forward, dizzy from the shards of returning memories.

“Leave us.” The voice is black ice. A hard sheet of it stuck to a road, daring me to cross.

I’m panting, I’m sure of it, and my fingers are numb from fear, but I’ve played this game a thousand times over.

Laying awake in bed, hands squeezed together, heart racing, predicting moves, mounting countermoves.

Combatting the surge of frazzled energy, I imagine the two of us in my sitting room, cream carpet tickling my bare feet, a wide checkered table between us, game pieces waiting my command. A place where we’re equals, confined by rules and limits.

And it’s my turn.

“What gave me away?” I ask, slightly breathless, stroking a stack of colorful placemats on display as I put myself between Lev Mikhailov and the spymaster. “That I speak English?” I keep my tone light and my chin down. “Is it the hair? Or did you hope your tone would do enough to dissuade me, regardless of the language barrier?” I peek an eye at the dark silhouette. “Not very friendly.”

The Blackguard exchange a look, neither sure what’s happening or who’s spinning out between them. I can’t help but feel a little insulted when the spymaster’s gaze darts to the linens, silently unleashing his dog on me.

The Russian crosses bulky arms at me. “Shop elsewhere, lapochka. There’s nothing here for you.”

Lapochka? Is that another Christ-mass thing?

“It’s Leni,” I offer brightly, browsing tanned leather gloves as I take a deep breath to settle my racing heart. I pair two lefts and start a tidy stack of rights.

How will you procrastinate yourself out of this one? Buy mittens with the cookie crumbs in your pocket?

Ignoring the hairs standing on the nape of my neck, I deploy a gentle smile. “And you’re Lev Mikhailov, but I still haven’t caught his name.”

For a moment, all I hear is the rush of wind on the tent, and wet boots tripping over cobblestone.

Lev wipes a hand over his mouth, nods at his spymaster. “You have a name for her?”

“No.”

With his massive arms held high on his chest, Mikhailov returns to me. “You heard him. Run along.”

No one’s panting or sweating or bleeding. The nearest weapon is a stumped knitting needle, yet violence hangs in the air with tangible vibration. My pulse has gone supersonic and there’s a tightening rope encompassing my lungs, as if my body’s saving air for when I inevitably bust ass out of here.

The instinct to flee in the face of danger is not innate.

It’s trained.

Wired through me as well as the strung bulbs overhead. It’s a constant hum in my veins.

If you ever find yourself in danger: don’t. Run, escape, surrender. Beg, plead, cry, but do not let them get close and do not let anyone touch you.

I flinch, arms, head, legs, every part rears at the sudden snap of a frayed white thread in the spymaster’s hand.

I estimate it’d take one percent of his strength to overturn this table and bury me in it. Suffocation by scarf.

But he doesn’t. Hasn’t.

Neither one has done anything. All week.

The same males who bested the feral Keres Empire with a relentless twelve year siege, the males who stained the Cliffs of Dover blue with Atlantide blood, the sadists who dismembered their own Hydra advisor limb by regenerating limb their own are regulars at the cute cafe on Kopli. They order the usual. Extra hot Pekoe and a barrel of drip.

It hurts to raise my head, to grind my toes into the soles of my shoes, to stay, hurts the same way it does when I watch an addle-minded bunny in the gardens veer too near a foxhole, but I do it. “I guess I’ll have to call you spymaster then. Pity, since it drags on the tongue, and I’m sure your name is lovely.”

“It’s not.”

Guess the manners portion is over. “They told me you were scary, but you both look normal. Almost. If it weren’t for the …” I draw a finger across my throat, slow, insinuating. “The tattoos are a definite choice, yes, but not scary. More regrettable.”

“Are you saying we’re not scary … or pretty?” Lev’s accent softens the growl of his voice, the palatalized vowels and sharp Rs are so melodic, it takes me a moment to realize he’s taunting me.

“We’re not creatures,” adds the spymaster.

“Well, of course not, creatures are scary.” Lev tucks thumbs into his armpits, and wets his bottom lip, settling in to make a meal of this.

“You’re not mortals,” I bite. “And I know you’re not Gods, so—”

“How could we be?” Lev interrupts. “Gods are pretty.”

I consider pushing this unwelcome third wheel out of the tent until the question I have a hundred answers for drips out of the spymaster’s mouth, “What are you?”

My response is practiced and playful. “That is incredibly offensive. What’s next? My age? My weight? How many games of baccarat I’ve won?”

“As well as how many you’ve lost.” The spymaster is not in on the teasing vibe. “No mettle in the wins if the losses outweigh it.”

“I’ve never lost.” I’m not really sure if it’s played with cards or dice. Can’t out-rule jelly beans at this point.

“And the rest?”

“Might be only mildly offensive if I knew your name.”

The spymaster lifts a shoulder in a careless gesture that seems to say, I’ve been called much, much worse. “Better attempts have been made for the same information with far greater rewards, but as it stands, if I told you ...” He lets the threat trail and curl around us.

I cross my arms. “You’re not going to kill me.”

The spymaster’s gaze raises to the ceiling as if he truly cannot believe I’ve asked to be spared. “Contrary to how harmless we may appear, our penchant for carnage remains unparalleled.”

Goosebumps break down my arms. “Regardless, you won’t kill me. I have information you want.”

Lev, a pillar of hair and muscle I’d forgotten, leans forward, intrigued. The spymaster is not so enticed.

I drop the bait. “You’re being followed.”

“By pitchforks, by bolts, by the righteous and the wronged.” The deep tenor of the spymaster’s voice hovers in the air like smoke. “Do you have information, or are you the last creature breathing to suspect that traitors of the crown have enemies?”

“Traitors? Or executioners?”

He stiffens, utters something thick and Slavic over my shoulder that makes the saleswoman swat her husband and flee from the tent. “Tell me, if you are here by altruistic means, how, after centuries of evasion, our enemies have finally closed in? How tonight is the night that I end, and you alone are the one to warn me, all out of the good in your racing, terrified heart.”

“Tonight is the night.”

He strikes, lethally graceful, erasing the distance between us, maneuvering to block the exit while cornering me between the glove stacks and wood tent post.

Face to face, my lungs empty.

I’ve been gathering bits of information on the Blackguard since Yaya first spat the word, but no one has ever described the male glaring down at me.

Black.

Sun-abandoned, life devouring black. Streaks of it radiate from his pupils like shattered obsidian slashing through cold gray steel.

He is looming and intimidating. He’s—

Stunning.

Youthful features, sloped angular cheekbones, a nobly defined nose, and a sharp chin. Crimson lips cracked at the center. Beautiful. Undeniably.

And it’s heartbreaking.

How he seems to resent it. Bitten lips, unkempt hair, the purple half-moons under his eyes. He’s Orion, the huntsman banished to the night sky, eternally doomed to yearn for his beloved Merope, who floats just beyond his grasp. Driven mad with yearning and still forced by Zeus to glitter and shine, to dazzle the mortals toiling below.

He stands as if he’s seconds from ending me, shoulders rolled in annoyance, jaw locked, snarling down from his pedestal, but subtle wafts of soap lift from his skin, clean and crisp, and effectively crack the visage of horror he clings to. “How would you know I’m being followed, if you weren’t already in the hunt yourself, if you didn’t crave a certain bloody retribution?”

My lips press into a line. “I don’t want anyone hurt.”

“Yes, that’s why you mentioned our stalkers. Knowing we’d sit them down for tea. How do you suppose we survive?”

“You hide.”

“I eliminate threats.” He emphasizes each word deliberately, as if I mistook him for a turtle cowering in his shell.

“Good thing I’m not a threat to you, then.”

“That remains to be seen.” It’s sort of a threat itself. Sort of violent and spiked. Hits like metal clashing. It’s supposed to make me quake or tremble, or any of the things I personally excel at.

Except it doesn’t.

He’s not going to harm me.

He’s not even close to me. Neither towering nor looming. And air, more air than I’ve had in years, is bubbling in my blood, giving me heady, rapturous thoughts. New shimmering ideas that have little to do with survival.

I didn’t know mortals could be handsome. Symmetrical. Regal.

The spymaster is imposing and reserved, and the husky tenor of his voice is like soft sand dusting my skin. Had I ever had the option, if there was ever no risk, and I got to choose a male on my own terms, I might ask him what he was doing for the next century.

I clip the thought there, before it takes root. “You’re more likely to hurt me than I am you.”

His face is stone, but his gaze peels up from my toes, to my tangled necklaces to the teal split ends curled messily at my temples. “If you’re as kind as you claim, share what you know as a gesture of peace.”

“I’d love to.”

The knot in his throat pulses beneath the circle of ink on his skin. It’s gruesome. The stabbing lines, the drenched coat of black.

I mean to check on Lev’s, to see if his is as punishing, wondering why I didn’t fixate the same, but he’s gone.

Hazily, I think he left when I mentioned their tails. Which means we’re alone.

A second bulb fizzles in the strand above our heads, trapping us in shadow.

“Ah. I see. You’d love to. But you won’t.” Humor edges his reply as if disappointment is what he’s prepared for, what he is comfortable with.

“I will,” I correct. “For a price. I’ll blab all about the vicious males chasing you, but first, I require a favor.”

He purses his lips, the only color on him anywhere, tugged and ripped to the surface. “No.”

No?“You have to.”

“Do I? Who’s going to force me? You?” His you floats in a silky laugh that scatters a tingling sensation across my ribs.

“No, I … “ I swallow. Gather myself. “They’re going to kill you. Highly trained soldiers. Dozens. You need my help.”

The right side of his mouth lifts slightly. “Dozens,” he echoes, and I curse myself for letting it slip. “Do you think that will be enough to quell the blood-thirst of Mikhailov? Or will he return here hungry for more when he’s finished and start in on you?”

“He won’t find them.”

The spymaster cants his head to deepen his study of me. “Either a dozen soldiers are chasing us, and he’ll rip out their hearts or you’re lying, and I’ll take yours.”

I smile at him, feeling oddly in control despite the uptick in threats. “He won’t find them because they don’t want him. They’re following you.”

He double blinks. “Impossible.”

“Evidently not, since I did it.” Is this what it feels like to be smug? I grin.

A muscle jumps in the spymaster’s jaw. “You.” He doesn’t mask the threat in his expression as he leans closer to me. “You split us up.”

“Did I?”

A cold, humorless laugh. “It’s a shame your boss will never know how well you executed his orders.”

Now that’s just rude. “One, I don’t obey commands, especially not from males. Two, you separated yourselves because you didn’t think I posed any sort of threat. And three, I come up with terrific plans all the time and they’re all winners.”

“You said you wished me no harm,” he reminds me, stepping closer. “Now you claim you’re a threat. Which is it?” He steps closer still. My heart thumps as heat leaks from him into me, sticky and wonderful. “I know which I believe. There’s nobody following us, is there?”

I ignore the press of his boot between my feet, the clean smell of his skin, and jut my chin upward to meet his gaze, refusing to appear intimidated. “Just because I won’t hurt you doesn’t mean I’m not a threat.”

We fall into silence like that. His body hovers over mine and I picture an image of us in one of Darwin’s species analysis books. Title: Predator and Prey. Caption: Cornering and trapping is second nature for the strong, a natural demonstration of ability. Footnote: Such effective cornering may spark prey to lie through their teeth.

“Cross,” he says curtly.

“What?”

“My name. Cross.” He points, as if overcoming a language barrier, toddler style. “Cross. Leni.”

My name doesn’t normally sound like that, like it’s swimming in syllables, like only a master linguist could do it justice.

“Cross.” I smile. Progress. Finally.

He stiffens again, bites his lip. I think he’s going to have me call him Mr. Blackguard until his terse, “Now. What are you?”

Didn’t I just swerve this one? “Again, I’d love to answer, but only after my favor.”

Instead of the expected rebuke, he nods, a short curl spilling into his forehead. “You have my word. Now tell me how they’ve tracked me, and what they want.”

“No.” I mimic his serious I-kill-people voice as best I can. Dominance and darkness. “My favor first. Then I share.”

It’s gratifying to see the slight flare of his nostrils. “My life is at stake.”

“Maybe mine is too.”

He nails me with a look. “Is it?”

“In a sense.”

He seems to consider it, as if my confession actually affects him. How lowly are the males in my life that it stirs a flutter in my chest?

Ignore.

“On my honor, you have your favor.” The silky rumble drifts over my skin. “The followers first, then the favor and we’ll part with you admitting what you are.”

“What honor?” I ask, not thinking. “The honor of the Kingsguard? The same Kingsguard that offed the king? I don’t want—”

Again he moves whip fast, eating the space between us, toe to toe, body arching over mine, crowding. The back of my thighs collide against the hard edge of the table. Power ripples off him in sheeting waves, lifting goosebumps from my skin.

I offer no resistance as he plants his palms on either side of me, bracketing me in place. There’s only the barest cushion of space between his wrists and my temples.

“What could you possibly know about me?” he snarls. “Of my promises? Of my past? Nothing. Nothing of the lengths I will endure to see my enemy’s slain. Now allow me to present you with a deal you cannot refuse. Speak or submit all of your loved ones to my brutal hand.”

I try to reply. Fail. There’s green in his eyes, buried next to the obsidian, like dark vines clinging to steel.

I didn’t imagine it like this.

That I could be challenged fiercely and not entirely fear what’s to come.

“I’m sorry,” I say, not sounding it at all, as I stare up at him. “Really, I am, but your threats don’t work on me. This …” I wave a hand in the inches between our chest. “This doesn’t scare me. There will be death if you do not agree to my terms. No amount of posturing will change my mind.”

He offers no comment, but his pupils expand and a trickle of warm, dry air splashes onto my cheek, makes me want to close my eyes and fall backward into bed, makes me want to relax and dream.

Black shadows turn Cross’s whisper into mist. His words, spoken right against my ear are nearly too low to hear. “You never saw me. You’ve heard of the Kingsguard but don’t dare speak the name, for they have rotted and become beasts who kill without remorse. You fear us, and you don’t dare approach. Last you learned, the dreaded Blackguard were in Cairo, spreading blood and chaos.”

I fight to keep my eyes open, nearly moan as I say, “No.”

More heat strokes me. A third, flickering bulb goes dark, filaments imploding in a tiny burst of flame. “You never saw me,” Cross repeats. “You’ve—”

I choke on a laugh, struggling to sound stern when I’m so relaxed. “I did not come this far for parlor tricks. Come on, Cross. I can count your eyelashes. I saw you.”

Disbelief wipes years off his face. He mutters something, but it’s lost in the inches from his mouth to mine. His stare grazes my necklaces, a mismatched set from Heathrow. A last resort, strung on in a particular order. Pendants. L N and I.

Emotions streak across his face, too complex, too fast for me to decipher. “Leni?” he whispers.

The arms caging me droop, elbows going slack, but his fingers dig into the post, the canvas.

Ture darkness sinks into the shop, thick and heavy, and for a good minute, I’m able to hold back from saying anything. But I can’t help it, can’t hang in this space, unsure whose turn it is, who has the power. “It’s hot in here,” I say at last.

Everything breaks.

His arms drop, his boots trip backwards, his head shakes in denial. “It’s not.” He’s backing up from me.

Isn’t it? My face is on fire, sweat sticks between my fingers. “Has the wind stopped?”

“It hasn’t.” He stares at me out from beneath soft brown lashes, tense. Blinking slowly.

“Really? I can barely hear it.” I take a step forward and he stumbles back, hits the edge of the table and rears further.

The last light explodes, throwing sharp glass at the ground. Heat scrapes me again. I can’t hear a thing save for my thundering heartbeats and his low, thick voice. “Who are you?”

Is he scared?

Of me?

The flaw in my plan. The everything’s-perfect-really-but has imploded. One hiccup and now it’s a wrench, dislodging gears and making smoke, spelling catastrophe.

Disappointment seeps into my bones. “None of it’s true, is it?” I ask, stepping out of my corner. “The Blackguard. It’s not real. There’s no curse, you’re not killers.” I gesture to the market, the proof of unharmed mortals. “You threaten and wear leather and have stupid matching tattoos, but they might as well be friendship bracelets, am I right?”

I step towards him and he jerks back. The tent yaws.

Cross inhales sharply through the nose, impulsively searching for openings in the fabric at his back. “What do you want from me?”

He’s trying to run.

I don’t immediately speak this time, but I do step closer, fascinated as he retreats further, pushes his large body into the wall.

Nothing.

I want absolutely nothing from him.

Before? When I thought he was violent, when I believed the stories, I had wanted. Craved.

For him to ruin me. To fuck me and wreck me, unravel me completely, and leave me in a puddle on the pavement when he was finished. To free me from Draven’s claim in the most archaic, depraved manner.

But if he’s fearful of me, then he won’t survive an hour in Draven’s war path. And I want to be rid of my fiancé, but I won’t kill to do it. I won’t stoop to his level.

“Nothing,” I mutter, touching my knuckles to my cheek to cool it. “Nothing at all.”

I need to get out of here. I need to run. This plan, it’s failed, I have to scrap it. I glance up to warn him.

He’s gone. Slipped through my fingers like smoke, like he was never here, like he never threatened me or feared me.

And for the first time since landing in this sun forsaken place, I feel bad. Guilty for how reckless, how stupid, how ridiculously assured I was about his ability.

I promised not to hurt anyone, but now I’ve sent Cross to his death.