Prologue

PROLOGUE

An eerie quiet descended upon the chamber of the foundling home, hushing the soft snores and wheezy breaths from those sleeping on the cots in the chamber. Missing the warm beds found at the Priory of Mercy, I tightened my aching fingers around the scratchy, worn blanket. I never slept well on the floor, where the mice and rats usually scurried all night.

But tonight, there were no glimpses of their thin, slick tails, nor did I hear the rap of their claws upon the stone. That should be a welcome discovery, but something didn’t feel right. Not about the floor beneath me or the air I breathed.

I’d woken with tiny goose bumps all over my skin and a bad feeling in the pit of my belly. The Prioress had taught me to always trust my second sight, the pull of my intuition, and the urge of my instinct. They were gifts, she’d told me over and over, given by the gods because I was born from the stars.

I didn’t understand what she’d meant by the whole star part, but right now, my intuition was telling me something was very wrong.

I eyed the damp stone walls lit by the gas lanterns, searching for a sign of what made my belly feel like I’d eaten spoiled meat. By the door, a light flickered and went out. The lantern by the window sputtered, then ceased as another did the same. Across the chamber, the last lamp went dead.

No fingers had cut off the light. I would’ve seen anyone who dared risk inciting the Mister’s ire by messing with the lanterns.

My gaze darted back to the fireplace. The flames from the coals still burned, doing a poor job of heating the chamber, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. The fire . . . it made no sound. Not a crackle or a hiss.

A shiver of dread stirred the tiny hairs along the nape of my neck and spider-walked its way down my spine.

Beside me, a lump shifted beneath the blanket and rolled. Tufts of curly, messy brown hair appeared as Grady peered over the edge of the blanket. He blinked sleep-heavy eyes. “Whatcha doing, Lis?” he murmured, his voice cracking halfway through. It had been doing that more and more of late, starting around the same time he’d begun to grow like the weeds in the yard behind the home.

“Lis?” Grady rose slightly, holding the blanket to his chin as the flames in the fireplace began to weaken. “Was the Mister bothering you again?”

I gave a quick shake of my head, having not seen the Mister even though my arms were lined with evidence of other nights and his mean, pinching fingers.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he frowned. “Did you have a bad dream or something?”

“No,” I whispered. “The air doesn’t feel right.”

“The air . . . ?”

“Is it ghosts?” I croaked.

He snorted. “Ghosts aren’t real.”

I squinted. “How do you know?”

“Because I . . .” Grady trailed off, looking over his shoulder as the flames of the fireplace collapsed, leaving the room lit by slivers of moonlight. His head turned slowly as he scanned the chamber, noticing the dead lanterns then. His wide gaze shot to mine. “They’re here.”

My entire body jerked as an icy wave of terror swept over me. They’re here could mean only one thing.

The Hyhborn.

The scions of the gods looked like us— well, most of them did, but those who ruled the Kingdom of Caelum weren’t like us low-born. They weren’t mortal at all.

And they had no reason to be here.

It wasn’t the Feasts, when the Hyhborn interacted more openly with us lowborn, and this was the Rook. We weren’t in the pretty places with things and people of value. There was no pleasure in anything to be found here for them to feed upon.

“Why are they here?” I whispered.

Grady’s hand clamped down on my arm, the chill of his fingers bleeding through my sweater. “I don’t know, Lis.”

“Are they . . . Will they hurt us?”

“They have no reason to. We haven’t done a thing wrong.” He pulled us down so that our heads shared the same flat pillow. “Just close your eyes and pretend to be asleep. They’ll leave us be.”

I did what Grady said, like I’d done ever since he’d stopped shooing me away from him, but I couldn’t stay silent. I couldn’t stop the fear from building on top of itself, making me think the worst. “What if they . . . what if they are here for me?”

He tucked my head under his. “Why would they be?”

My lips quivered. “Because I . . . I’m not like you.”

“You got no good reason to worry about that,” he assured me, voice low so the others couldn’t hear us. “They aren’t going to care about that.”

But how could he be sure? Other people cared. Sometimes I made them nervous, because I couldn’t stop myself from saying something that I saw in my mind— an event yet to happen or a decision that hadn’t been made yet. Grady was used to it. The Mister? Others? Not so much. They looked at me like there was something wrong with me, and the Mister often stared like he thought I might be a conjurer and like he . . . he might be a little scared of me. Not scared enough to stop pinching me but scared enough to keep doing so.

“Maybe the Hyhborn will sense something off about me,” I rasped. “And maybe they won’t like it or think I’m— ”

“They won’t sense anything. I swear.” He pulled the blanket over us as if that could somehow protect us.

But a blanket wouldn’t shield us from the Hyhborn. They could do whatever they wanted to whoever, and if they were angered? They could bring entire cities to ruin.

“Shh,” Grady urged. “Don’t cry. Just close your eyes. It’ll be okay.”

Chamber doors creaked open. Between us, Grady squeezed my arm until I could feel the bones in his fingers. The air suddenly became thin and strained, and the walls groaned as if the stone couldn’t contain what had slipped inside. A tremor rocked me. I felt as sick as I had the last time the Prioress had taken my hand, like she’d often done without any concern for what I might see or know, but that day had been different. I’d seen death coming for her.

I didn’t take big breaths, but a scent still snaked under the blanket and in between us, crowding out the smell of stale ale and too many bodies crammed into a too-small place. A minty scent that reminded me of the . . . the candies the Prioress used to carry in the pockets of her habit. Don’t move. Don’t make a sound, I chanted over and over. Don’t move. Don’t make a sound.

“How many are here?” a male asked in a low voice.

“The number ch-changes every night, Lord Samriel.” The Mister’s voice trembled, and I’d never heard him sound scared before. Usually, it was his voice scaring us, but there was a Hyhborn lord among us, one of the most powerful of Hyhborn. It would terrify even the meanest of bullies. “Usually th-there’s about thirty, but I don’t know any that have what you’re looking for.”

“We’ll see for ourselves,” Lord Samriel replied. “Check them all.”

The footfalls of the Hyhborn riders— the Rae— echoed in tandem with my heart. What felt like a thin layer of ice settled over us as the temperature of the chamber dropped.

The Rae were once great lowborn warriors who had fallen in battle to Hyhborn princes and princesses. Now they were little more than flesh and bone, their souls captured and held by the princes, the princesses, and King Euros. Did that mean one of them was here? I shuddered.

“Open your eyes,” Lord Samriel demanded from somewhere in the chamber.

Why were they making us open our eyes?

“Who are they?” Another spoke. A man. He did so quietly, but his voice bled shivery power into each word.

“Orphans. Castoffs, my lord,” the Mister croaked. “Some came from the Priory of Mercy,” he rambled on. “O-Others just show up. Don’t know where they come from or where they end up disappearing to. None of them is a seraph, I swear.”

They . . . they thought a seraph was here? That’s why they were checking the eyes, searching for the mark— a light in the eyes, or so I’d heard, but there was nothing like that here.

I trembled at the sound of startled gasps and quiet whimpers that continued for several moments, my eyes squeezed tight as I wished with everything in me that they would leave us alone. Just disappear—

The air stirred directly above us, carrying that minty scent. Grady went rigid against me.

“Eyes open,” Lord Samriel ordered from above us.

I was frozen solid as Grady rose halfway, shielding me with his body and the blanket. The hand around my arm shook, and that made me shake even harder because Grady . . . he stared down the older kids without fear and laughed as the lawmen chased him through the streets. He was never afraid.

But he was now.

“Nothing,” Lord Samriel announced with a heavy sigh. “And this is all of them?”

The Mister cleared his throat. “Yes, I’m as s-sure as I can be— Wait.” His steps were heavy and uneven against the floor. “He always got this smaller one with him. A girl, and an odd one to boot,” he said, nudging my covered legs, and I swallowed a squeak. “There.”

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Grady denied. “There isn’t no one but me.”

“Boy, ya better watch that mouth,” the Mister warned.

I bit down on my lip until I tasted blood.

“How about you watch your mouth?” Grady shot back, and another dose of fear punched me in the gut. The Mister wouldn’t take kindly to Grady talking back. If we got through this, the Mister would punish him. Real bad, too, like last time—

Without any warning, the blanket was ripped away, turning my blood to ice. Grady shifted so half his body covered mine, but it was no use. They knew I was here.

“It appears there are two instead of one, sharing a blanket. A girl.” The unnamed lord paused. “I think.”

“Move away from her,” Lord Samriel commanded.

“She ain’t nobody,” Grady gnashed out, his body trembling against mine.

“Everybody is somebody,” the other replied.

Grady didn’t move. There was a heavy, impatient sigh, and then Grady was gone—

Panic exploded inside me, moving all my limbs at once. I jackknifed up, reaching blindly for Grady in the sudden, too-bright lamplight flooding the chamber. I cried out as a Rae grabbed him by the waist. Thin, wispy gray shadows spilled out from the Rae’s robes and swirled around Grady’s legs.

“Let me go!” Grady shrieked, kicking out as he was dragged back. “We haven’t done anything wrong. Let me— ”

“Quiet,” Lord Samriel snapped, stepping between Grady and me. His long hair was so pale it was nearly white. He placed his hand on Grady’s shoulder.

Grady went quiet.

His normally warm brown skin took on a chalky gray cast as he just . . . he just stared back at me, his eyes wide and empty. He didn’t speak. Didn’t move.

“Grady?” I whispered, trembling until my teeth chattered.

There was no answer. He always answered me, but it was like he wasn’t even there anymore. Like he was just a shell that looked like him.

Fingers curled around my chin. At the touch it felt like a jolt of electricity shot through my body. I could feel the hairs on my arms stand as my skin prickled with awareness.

“It’s okay,” the other lord said, his voice almost soft, almost gentle as he turned my head toward him. “He will not be harmed.”

“We’ll see about that,” Lord Samriel replied.

I jerked but didn’t make it far. The unnamed lord’s hold wouldn’t allow it.

Through clumps of matted dark hair, I stared up at the Lord. He . . . he looked younger than I thought he would, as if he were only in the third decade of life. His hair was a golden brown, brushing shoulders encased in black, and his cheeks were the color of the sand found along the bank of Curser’s Bay. His face was an interesting mix of angles and straight lines, but his eyes . . .

They tilted at the outer corners, but it . . . it was the color of the irises that held my attention. I’d never seen anything like the colors. Each eye contained blots of blue, green, and brown.

The longer I stared at him, the more I realized he . . . he reminded me of the faded figures painted on the vaulted ceiling of the Priory. What had the Prioress called them? Angels. That’s what I had once heard her call the Hyhborn, saying they were guardians of mortals and the very realm itself, but what had entered the foundling home didn’t feel like protectors.

They felt like predators.

Except for this one, with the strange eyes. He felt . . .

“What about her?” Lord Samriel’s voice cracked the silence.

The young Hyhborn lord holding my chin said nothing as he stared at me. Slowly, I realized I’d stopped trembling. My heart had calmed.

I . . . I wasn’t afraid of him.

Just like I hadn’t been when I first met Grady, but that was because I saw what kind of person Grady was. My intuition had told me that Grady was as good as any of us could be. I saw nothing as I stared into the Lord’s eyes, but I knew I was safe, even as those pupils expanded. Tiny bursts of white appeared in his eyes. They were like stars, and they brightened until they were all I could see. My pulse began to pound like a runaway horse. Then it finally happened. My senses opened to him. I saw nothing in his eyes or in my mind.

But I felt something.

A warning.

A reckoning.

A promise of what was to come.

And I knew.

The Lord drew back, the pupils shrinking to a normal size and the white specks disappearing. “No,” he said, his gaze flicking to my arms, exposed by the too-big sweater I wore. “She is clear.”

He dropped my chin.

I scooted back across the blanket, twisting to Grady. He was still suspended there, motionless and empty. “P-Please,” I whispered.

“Release him,” the Lord said.

Lord Samriel did so with a sigh, and life returned to Grady that very second. The pallor faded from his skin as I scrabbled across the twisted blankets, throwing my arms around him. As I held on to his trembling body, my gaze inched back to the Hyhborn lord who had stars in his eyes.

He remained where he was, still crouched and staring at me— staring at my arms as Lord Samriel stalked past him, heading to the entrance. My fingers dug into the thin sweater along Grady’s back.

“Your arms,” he asked, his voice so low this time I wasn’t sure I saw his lips move. “How did that happen?”

I didn’t know why he asked or cared, and I knew better than to say who had done it, but I looked at the Mister and nodded.

The Lord eyed me for a moment longer, lifted his fingers to lips that had curved into a faint half smile, and then rose to an impossible height.

The chamber went dark once more, and the heavy silence returned, but I wasn’t afraid this time.

A sharp, swift cry tore through the darkness, ending abruptly in a wet, crunching sound. I jerked as something heavy hit the floor.

The quiet came again, and all at once, the heaviness seeped out of the room as the very air itself seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. The lanterns along the wall flickered to life, one after the other. The fire surged in the hearth, spitting and hissing.

By the door, the Mister was lying in a puddle of his own blood, his body broken and twisted. Someone screamed. Cots creaked as the others clambered from them, but I didn’t move. I stared at the empty doorway, knowing I would see the Hyhborn lord again.