Chapter Eight The Villainess Strikes a Bargain

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Villainess Strikes a Bargain

The sword slid home to his heart, giving him a cleaner death than he deserved. It was over quickly, but the memory of his expression in the last moment lingered like an obstinate ghost. In that instant he was simply young and caught off guard. The Golden Cobra, who knew every secret, looked very surprised to die.

Time of Iron , ANONYMOUS

W hen Rae turned back, the Cobra was placidly gleaming under the chandelier after throwing his bombshell. "You're kidding! You're real too?"

The Cobra's teeth flashed, smile less guarded now they were alone. "I wouldn't put it that way."

She waved that aside. "You're from the real world! I'm from Oklahoma."

"I won't hold it against you. When did you get here?"

Rae glared at him for insulting her homeland. "Last night."

He whistled. "Right before the execution. That must have been a nasty shock."

His tone was light, but Rae caught the sidelong concerned glance. She needn't conduct herself as a proper lady with a boy from New York. She hopped on the conversation sofa, hugging her knees to her chest with her scarlet skirt pouring off the seat, and eyed him with fascination.

"Are there many real people here?"

"I've never met anybody else like us. I've only heard of one."

That was a relief. Less competition for the flower.

"When did you wake up as the Golden Cobra?"

His laugh was warm and bubbling as a hot spring. "I didn't. I invented the Golden Cobra."

"Wait, how does that work?"

If Rae could escape being executed, it made sense someone else could change the story too. Still, creating a whole new character? She'd heard of being a self-made man, but this was absurd.

"I was near death. A strange woman offered me a chance to go into the story and save myself. I assume it was the same with you?"

Rae nodded. "I wish I'd got her name now. Do you think that woman wrote the books?"

Time of Iron 's author went by ‘Anonymous' to create an air of mystery, and presumably because everybody was onto writers who used initials to conceal their identity. Rae had always assumed Anonymous was a woman trying to avoid being pigeonholed. Sometimes women writers got discussed as if they ran a fictional vampire dating agency, while clearly men writing green bare-breasted tree women burned with pure literary inspiration.

She'd heard people often asked writers ‘Do you put real people in your books?' Rae had never thought anyone meant it literally.

The Cobra shrugged. "Nobody knows who wrote the books. Do writers have universe-travelling superpowers? I didn't have the chance to ask her any questions. I was in a bad way, and I woke up as a young thief on the street who never scored a name on the page." The Cobra made a face. "You know where that leads. Offed by starvation in the snow, or executed after pickpocketing a plot-relevant item. I didn't find either outcome acceptable."

So he'd written himself a different story. Now the Golden Cobra was the brightest part of a room that contained a chandelier.

"Are you telling me you read a totally different book than I did?"

"Oh no," the Cobra demurred. "I'm sure it was basically the same story, with perhaps a few minor adjustments. The Emperor rises, the lost gods are found and everybody loves Lia, right?"

Rae nodded, though she felt the Cobra had made more than a few adjustments. He was involved in crucial parts of the plot!

Light dawned on a particular plot point. "Everybody wonders how you know everything that happens in the palace. You don't have the most extensive spy network in the country. You read about it in the books!"

The Cobra had a suddenly sheepish air. "Actually, it's both. I needed to explain where I got my information, so I lied I had many spies. Real spies approached me. What could I do? Rejecting their hopeful little spy faces seemed cruel. And wasteful. One thing led to another, until I had the most extensive spy network in the country."

He sounded slightly embarrassed, but proud as well. He hadn't been able to show off all he'd accomplished before. He couldn't tell the truth to anybody in this world.

Rae, a big believer in positive reinforcement for the team, said sincerely, "You're amazing."

The Cobra shrugged, one-shouldered. "Go big or go home. I can't go home, so I go big every time. Am I really in the book now? Do readers like me okay?" he hoped. "Do they think the name is cool? I came up with it myself. The plan was to fit in and keep it low-key."

Rae considered the manor and the electronic dance music. "This is low-key?"

The Cobra's smile was guilty, but not even a little sorry. "I was a theatre kid. Aren't you? From what I heard, the scene where you claimed to be a holy prophet was high drama."

Judging by his tone, the Cobra thought she'd gone too far.

He hadn't seen anything yet.

"I'm a cheerleader, which is also a performance art. Listen, I had to escape being executed for crimes I didn't commit. Unlike you, I didn't decide to be a villain."

"Wait, what?" The Cobra's eyes went wide as gold-fringed lakes. "I'm a villain ?"

"You own a brothel."

The Cobra said mildly, "You have something against brothels?"

"Working in one, no. Owning one? That building is made of gold. Are you saying you made that much gold doing good ?"

The Cobra glanced at his hanging sleeves as if searching for something hidden up them. "No. I can't say that."

He started humming as if he required background music to reorient himself in the narrative. Rae remembered trying to find herself in her bronze mirror.

"You and I have a whole villain song together in the musical."

"There's a musical now?" A spotlight of sheer joy illuminated the Cobra's face, then dimmed. "I can't believe I'm a villain."

" I can't believe you thought you could have a snake theme and be a hero."

That was so naive. At least seventy per cent of villainy was the aesthetic.

The Cobra threw up his hands in protest, which due to his sleeves created a mini golden whirlwind. "I was going for ‘minor comedic character'. I'm not looking to make waves."

"Why not? Someone should organize things properly around here, and that someone is me. Securing the help of the Golden Cobra is number three on my list."

Rather than offering her aid, the Cobra gave Rae a funny look. "You're kind of Type A, aren't you?"

What of it? Whenever projects or events went wrong, Rae made a plan to fix them. Until something went wrong she couldn't remedy. Every thought had turned to formless mush, but now Rae's mind was clear. It felt so good she was almost giddy, as though she'd been trapped in a tiny airless room for years and finally escaped. She was dizzy and drunk on her own expanded abilities. She had come to conquer.

Rae eyed the Cobra censoriously. "This lax attitude is what made you accidentally become a villain."

He laughed as if it was a joke. "What can I say? I like improv."

Someone had to take control of this narrative. The Cobra was lucky she'd got here when she had. Things were about to go very wrong for him.

Rae bit her lip. "Sorry if this is tactless, but I have to ask. Are you and the Last Hope involved? Romantically?"

The Cobra's face went blank.

Rae made a delicate gesture in which both hands wound intricately together. The Cobra's mouth quirked. He repeated the gesture less delicately, as if wringing out an invisible bath towel.

"Or is it Lia?"

The Cobra had showered Lia with attention ever since she arrived at court. Some readers believed his intentions were nefarious. Others believed he was smitten. Lia was, after all, irresistible.

"Frankly, my dear," the Cobra drawled, "I'm insulted. What gave you the impression I'm the type of fool who romances a main character?"

Rae blinked. "Main characters do tend to be good-looking."

The Cobra lounged so hard he was almost horizontal. "Sure. Hot singles are in your narrative. They're so cute, and they're so much drama. The dating records of main characters are extremely cursed."

The man made sense. Rae conceded with a nod.

He sighed in disgust. "I like many people, but not protagonists. You know where that leads. High-speed chases, epic speeches, buildings collapsing, torment and betrayal. Possibly a dragon. No thanks! I'm not down to fight a dragon."

Rae felt misled by ambiguities in the text. "Why are you always hanging out with the Last Hope? People draw art! There are essays on the internet!"

"Whatever, I'm sure there are essays about Marius and his boyhood companions as well. The internet is full of overthinking perverts." The Cobra looked wistful. "Wow, I miss the internet. For your information, I'm keeping Marius company until he can be with Lia, his one true love."

The Cobra sounded almost shy. Rae scoffed. She'd crossed worlds to find somebody with the same terrible pairing preferences as her sister.

The Cobra's eyes narrowed. "The Emperor is a terrifying murderer."

Rae scoffed with increased conviction. "The people the Emperor murders aren't real. What is real is my belief he's awesome. The Last Hope? Not so much."

"I won't hear Marius slandered! He's my little cupcake who never does anything wrong."

"Well, your little cupcake kills you," Rae snapped. "So there."

There was a puzzled silence, as though Rae had spoken in a language the Cobra didn't understand. Rae had intended to break this news more tactfully.

"My Marius," the Cobra said at last. "Murders an innocent person?"

"Executes an evildoer," Rae corrected. "No offence meant."

"He wouldn't do that."

"Main characters kill off minor villains all the time. Obviously, not great from your perspective, and I can see you're not finding this plot development believable—"

"That's not who I am," the Cobra announced with sudden startling intensity. "That's not how he thinks about me. I'll show you."

For a guy who relaxed into a lounge so fully, the Cobra could move fast. He knocked three times on the half-open door.

"Be a jewel, Sinad. Send a message asking Lord Marius to attend me at once."

The maid whisked off before Rae could protest.

She protested anyway. "Please reconsider! This man comes from a long line of frenzied spree killers."

"That's why he took vows to become a scholar," the Cobra argued. "At his age his grandfather had already collected five corpse brides in a secret chamber. His parents are basically Bluebeard and Ms Manners. Marius is doing great so far."

"I'm not throwing him a ‘no corpse brides' parade," Rae said flatly. "He's a ticking time bomb."

"He's my best friend!"

The Cobra was a fanatic like Alice, who wouldn't hear a word against their definitely-not-problematic fave. Rae had figured this attitude would collapse if the favourite character was in a position to actively murder you, but it seemed the Cobra was ride-or-die-mad-about-it.

She shook her head slowly. "Except you're not really friends, are you? We both know what you did."

Everyone in the palace believed the Golden Cobra was a minor noble the Last Hope had encountered on the journey back from his studies at the Ivory Tower. Despite the drastic difference in the two men's personalities, they'd hit it off. When the Cobra arrived in the capital, the Last Hope introduced him as his friend and the Marquis of Popenjoy launched his notorious career. The Last Hope, who coldly condemned men for far less, tolerated every excess. The Cobra was the only stain on the Last Hope's reputation.

Only readers were aware the Cobra knew the Last Hope's most scandalous secret, and the Cobra's silence had a price.

"I'm a supporting character ," the Cobra claimed. "I'm supporting him."

"You're blackmailing him!"

"In a supportive way!" The Cobra waved off Rae's accusation. "I'm not a villain! I'm someone whose thoughts and desires conflict with those of the main characters."

Rae snorted. "Same thing."

The Cobra's suddenly lost expression struck an unexpected chord with Rae. He'd believed he knew where the story was going, and now he'd hit a narrative dead end.

In a subdued tone at odds with everything else about him, the Cobra murmured, "I expected to part ways after the blackmail. When Marius kept showing up around me, I thought, here's a chance to truly be on a character's team. If you're lucky in the real world, people are real with you. Who gets to be fictional with someone, become part of their extraordinary world? Maybe I got it wrong. His mother and little sister came to court a couple of years ago. His mom gave me a friendship knife to thank me for showing them around, but Marius's sister barely spoke to me. I figured she was a shy kid. Maybe she was scared."

For a famous coward, the Cobra seemed oddly unconcerned about the threat to his own life. Instead he chose to be overly invested in fictional characters' feelings. Media was meant to be consumed, not consume you. The Cobra's priorities had got twisted.

Rae humoured him. "He's sorry he killed you."

"I'm touched," muttered the Cobra. "No, wait. I'm dead."

"In his death scene – you could interpret it different ways, but I read it as him regretting—"

The Cobra's head spun so fast a hair ornament struck the door with a sound like a bell tolling. "He dies ?"

"Yeah," said Rae, disconcerted. "Did he not die in your version?"

"No."

The Cobra's voice was hollow and distracted. She was surprised once again by how hard the Cobra was taking this. His gaze was absorbed in a book that didn't exist any more.

"You don't get it. I changed the story. So he dies because of me. What if when we change the story, we only make things worse?"

It should be good news that changing the story was so easy. They could shape the narrative to suit them.

Yet the Cobra had seemed taken aback by the idea of his own demise, but not horror-struck the way he was now. Maybe the Last Hope would die because the Cobra changed the story, but the Cobra would die because the Last Hope stabbed him with a sword. Cause and effect were a lot more direct in the sword situation.

"Why did you blackmail him?"

In the books it seemed obvious. The Cobra was a social-climbing bad guy who deserved what he got. The pure and simple truth was pure and simple evil.

The Cobra's face went helpless as a pair of empty hands. "To enter the palace, you need a noble to speak for you. I was desperate to get to the Flower of Life and Death."

Before, Rae saw the blackmailing situation through the Last Hope's eyes. It was uncomfortable to consider how much heroism was based on point of view. Like Rae, the Cobra needed the flower. He was fighting for his life.

Rae hesitated. "Were you sick in the real world?"

"I was in an accident. Kids, look both ways before crossing the street. What can I say? It was dumb."

When he smiled this time, it didn't touch his eyes.

She'd faked so many smiles. Seeing his, Rae decided to risk trusting a fellow villain. "I have a plan to get the Flower of Life and Death."

The Cobra twinkled. "Thought you might."

Despite his lousy priorities, Rae believed the Cobra might be a kindred spirit. "Here's my evil scheme. At first I thought, let's off the henchmen guarding the royal greenhouse."

"Then you thought, that's murder?"

Rae said patiently, "It's okay to slaughter nameless henchmen."

"They have names! You could ask their names."

The Cobra seemed strangely agitated. Rae soothed, "I agree it could get messy. That's when the scheme came to me. The king will throw a ball to celebrate the arrival of Princess Vasilisa from – er – across the sea."

"Tagar?" said the Cobra.

"Okay, that name sounds made up."

"All names are made up," muttered the Cobra.

Rae focused on her goal. "Most of the palace is left unguarded when they need extra staff for official functions. The ball is a prime opportunity."

"The ball happens in my version of the book as well," the Cobra said enthusiastically. "At the ball, Octavian officially makes the princess and Lia ladies-in-waiting, then Marius and Lia share a dance, right?"

Probably? If there was a murder at the ball, Rae was certain she would remember the ball more clearly.

"Definitely," said Rae.

"I'm so glad I didn't wreck my favourite scene. Marius and Lia on the romantic balcony after their dance! Fate in the moonlight!"

Apparently distracted from the issue of his own demise, the Cobra's twinkle became a glow. This guy was a closet romantic. Surprising, for someone who owned a golden brothel.

Rae ignored fate in the moonlight. "Listen. There's a set of keys on the king's belt. One is the key to the greenhouse where the Flower of Life and Death blooms. You have thieves in your employ. Let's pay a thief to lift the keys at the ball."

There was no way her plan could fail.

The Cobra's voice usually meandered, easy as a slow-moving river under the sun. Now it froze. "If a commoner is caught coming at the king, they'll be killed."

Imagine getting this worked up about the wellbeing of book characters. Couldn't be Rae. She had real problems.

"You have another idea?"

The Cobra said, "I'll do it."

That didn't strike Rae as the best idea. "You're going to steal from the king? I wouldn't describe you as inconspicuous."

"I was a street thief. I can get the key. Then I'll get it copied."

"Why?"

The Cobra's brows drew sharply together as he considered their problem. Rae was glad he was finally focusing on reality. "The Flower of Life and Death doesn't bloom for a month. If you have a copy of the keys, you can stroll down to the greenhouse when the time comes."

A month. Rae had a timeline.

"That makes sense," she admitted. "Sometimes I miss the details."

"I'm not a big picture thinker," confessed the Cobra. "We're a perfect team. Let me suggest making a scene at the party. If you make yourself conspicuous, people never realize you're being sneaky."

"Any suggestions, theatre kid?"

"Just a few, cheerleader."

She'd come here expecting to manipulate a character to her side. Instead she'd found a friend. Rae beamed, and saw a cloud cross her new friend's face. His eyes wandered back to the door. She knew who he was thinking of.

The Cobra warned, "My expert assistance doesn't come free."

Rae was prepared for that. She scrambled off the sofa and towards the window, reaching out. "Of course. We'll share the Flower of Life and Death. We'll both get out."

The Cobra shook his head. "Flower's all yours."

"No—" Rae faltered.

"How old are you in the real world?" the Cobra asked.

"Twenty," Rae whispered.

"I was fourteen, bleeding in the street," said the Cobra, his voice light as sun-warmed air. "Then suddenly I was eighteen, starving in the street. I needed to eat. I needed an identity to enter the palace. I needed to work out how to break into the greenhouse. It took a while. Someone I trusted got scared for me, and made a run at the flower. It didn't end well. Some stories don't. I missed my chance. I… I did try."

She felt as though someone had seized hold of her chin, forcing her to face what she didn't want to see. In Eyam, the Flower of Life and Death blooms once a year. You get one chance , the woman had said.

When the flower bloomed a month from now, if Rae didn't seize her chance, she would be trapped.

The Cobra was suddenly further away. It took Rae a moment to realize she'd moved back. She'd reached for him, but now both her hands were outstretched, trying to keep her own balance.

The gold paint had lost its lustre. All Rae could see were his eyes, dark and sad, but not self-pitying.

The Cobra was calm. "It's too late for me. It's been too late for years."

A neighbour had taken Rae aside when news of her diagnosis spread, counselling her to take a blanket to her first appointment. Rae didn't understand until she found herself on a reclined chair having chemo, every warm organ in her body turning to frozen grapes. She clutched her blanket as the last rope to a warmer world. When she got home, she plunged into a scalding hot bath, but once you knew such cold existed it was impossible to ever really be warm again.

Icy realization pierced through Rae as if she was in the hospital with her blanket stripped away, no illusions left to cling to.

Ruin came for the Cobra when he was only a boy. That boy had blackmailed the Last Hope and fought his way into the court. He'd built up the whole identity of the Golden Cobra, the character with bright treasure and dark secrets. He'd tried so hard.

It hadn't worked. He hadn't woken up. There was a word for people who closed their eyes and never woke up.

Desperation crushed Rae's voice. "What do you want in exchange for helping me?"

Did the dead want anything?

It seemed they did. The Cobra leaned forward, intent. "Let me tell you what I believe. This world is as real as ours, but those who walk into the story have an advantage because we know the rules."

"The real world doesn't have rules."

The Cobra scoffed. "Ever felt like someone else got the key to make the world work for them? Our world has rules. We just don't know them. Here, we have the manual! My manual is just out of date. Help me fix the story I broke. Tell me what happens in the book, so I can see where it goes wrong."

He wouldn't take her seriously if she confessed she'd only heard someone else read the first book, and she hadn't always been listening.

Rae faltered, "I don't remember the first book."

Lord Popenjoy jolted from his place by the window. "What do you mean?"

"I didn't read… all of it."

There was a silence. At last, the Cobra said carefully, "That is not great news. Which parts did you read?"

Rae tried to turn the question aside with a laugh. "Don't be the fan who requires a secret password to let people inside the gates of loving a story. Let people enjoy things."

Marble reflected his movement as a restless gleam. "Sure. Except in this specialized situation, where lives depend on you remembering key details!"

He didn't need to tell Rae that. Her life depended on her remembering. She still couldn't.

The Cobra's insistence made Rae think of the friends she'd had when she was seventeen. Her team. They teased her when she started forgetting things. At first affectionately. Then they got annoyed. She tried to pass off weakness with jokes, but everyone stopped laughing. Rae grew desperate, knowing she was losing facts, dates, stories, her friends, her family. Herself.

"I was so sick." The words came out like jagged metal from a wound. She slammed her mouth closed, slapping on a bandage so she wouldn't see how badly she might be hurt.

It was true she'd tuned out when Alice read her the first book, believing she knew exactly where the story was headed. Still, her mind should have retained more. The truth was, unless she concentrated with all her considerable force of will, her mind failed like her body. Terrifying gaps loomed in Rae's memory, plot holes becoming traps she could fall into. The story felt like a wild horse she was fighting to control. At any moment the reins might slip from her hands.

The Cobra's restless pacing stilled beside her. Rae felt the warmth of an almost touch. His hand hovered ready to cup her elbow in a silent offer of support.

Rae jerked back. She could stand on her own.

The Cobra fixed Rae with a meditative gaze. The book said the Cobra was cunning. That was villain speak for clever.

"I won't add to the confusion by talking about my version. Tell me everything you remember."

Relieved the Cobra had fallen in with her brilliant schemes, Rae felt she must prove he'd made the right decision. Retrieving memories was looking back with sharp vision at a fogged-over landscape. She might recover some details, but so much stayed lost in the mist. Still, Rae had concentrated ferociously on the second and third books, once she was following a character she loved through his world. She knew enough to put this together.

"Lia enters the palace, winning the hearts of the Emperor and the Last Hope."

The Cobra's nod encouraged her to continue.

"Much drama follows," Rae guessed. "Including my execution, until the abyss opens at the end of book one. The foreign princess falls for the king, but he prefers Lia, so that doesn't end well. In the first battle scene, a group of ice raiders invade the city to avenge the king's insult against their princess. To save the city, our heroine's true love enters the ravine and slays the ravine's divine guardian, the First Duke. Octavian unlocks his power, fulfilling the prophecy by becoming Emperor. That's the first book."

"Sorry, who does what now? Are you sure about this?"

She reassured, "I remember the other books much more clearly. Power over the living and the dead unbalances the Emperor's mind and the Last Hope becomes his deadliest enemy, but they must make peace when real war breaks out. The princess, now the Ice Queen, leads the whole army of raiders across the sea to destroy Eyam! That's about when the Last Hope stabs you."

The Cobra made a sad face.

"Lia comforts him. When the ice raiders attack, the Last Hope swears the blood oath to serve her."

The Cobra brightened. "The kiss scene!"

"Uh, no. They never kiss." Alice would definitely have mentioned that. "Didn't the Last Hope take vows of chastity?"

"It's hot because it's forbidden," the Cobra explained.

That checked out. Rae would have liked Lia and Marius together more if they did engage in sexy taboo behaviour. Relationships with no mistakes and no obstacles had no bite. Reading them was like consuming soggy salad for every meal and calling that healthy eating.

Sadly, Lia was too pure to be interested in taboo behaviour with any of her gentlemen friends. Other characters had sex scenes on the page, but even though Lia married, the wedding night remained unclear.

Rae dismissed forbidden love with a shrug. "The Last Hope battles a hundred ice raiders to protect Lia, wins but receives a mortal wound, and perishes beneath a tree. It's a hollow victory. Lia is stabbed in the back by a courtier she trusted. After Lia's death, the Emperor rains down destruction on the world."

The tale had flowed as she talked, the gaps of the story filled in by telling it. She thought all that hung together pretty well. Rae took a moment to preen.

The Cobra's expression was revolted. "I can't possibly have caused this freakshow. Lia what? Octavian what? My favourite character dies alone and unkissed under a random tree ? I hate nature! People should quit buying these books."

Rae remembered the desolate feeling of reading along and remembering the Cobra was dead. It was much worse now she'd met him.

The Cobra continued delivering his disgruntled book review. "Relentless tragedy is misery porn. The perfect form for a story is an exciting beginning, an angsty middle, and a happy ending."

"I agree," said Rae. "So you want to set up Marius and Lia?"

"No!" the Cobra snarled. "I want them to live ."

There was real distress in his voice, and he was a real person. It was sweet he cared so much, but ultimately misguided. If fictional characters had to die so Rae could get home, so be it. He might not be ready for villainy. She was.

It was clear what Rae must say to persuade him.

"Nobody gets a happy ending, unless we steal one. We can do it. We're villains. I'll put this story right. Deal?"

They stood framed by the window overlooking the city of many colours. She offered her hand, sunlight making her ruby rings gleam red as blood. The gold paint around the Cobra's eyes shone like the sun on a river as he shook.

"Deal." He let out a steadying breath. "Let's save Marius and Lia. And you."

Rae nudged him. "Don't get too upset. What happens to the characters doesn't actually matter. They're not real."

He gave her a look that made her shiver in sunshine. "They seem real when they die."

The Golden Cobra stood by the window. Storybook sunlight poured over his gilded ornaments and faraway dark eyes.

The boy who wanted a happy ending, and wouldn't get one.

If Rae were a good person she would have asked his real name and told him she would be his friend. She didn't. The hospital had taught her a cruel truth. Pain is the place where we're alone. We wish we weren't. But we always are.

Rae couldn't save him. She could only save herself.

The sound of footsteps rattled the windows like an approaching storm, and Rae remembered the future victim had summoned his murderer to his parlour. The book said the Last Hope was the good guy even though he did bad things. With a murderous character safely on the page, you could decide he was driven to it.

Now Rae was vividly aware they were defenceless, the Last Hope was dangerous, and he was upon them. Worse still, Lady Rahela's mother had seduced Lord Marius when he was seventeen. He'd spilled state secrets to her. It was the shame of Lord Marius's life, and the Cobra had used that shame to blackmail him.

Seeing the Cobra and Rahela together would incite the Last Hope's murderous fury.

"Just checking. In every version of the story, Marius is descended from a god and has divine might that no human can withstand?" On the Cobra's nod, Rae murmured: "Oh, good."

The echo of his steps was thunder. She knew what Lord Marius himself did not. She knew the truth of his heritage and the terrible extent of his power. She should run.

The maid opened the door, and it was too late.

"Announcing Lord Marius."

Framed in the grand doorway stood Lord Marius Valerius, the descendant of the First Duke, the scholarly Last Hope of his family, and the man who wanted them both dead.

Lord Marius made the bright room nothing but background. He seemed a statue made by a sculptor who knew any flaw in his creation would be punished by death. The only sign of life was his eyes, blue bleached into snowy pallor. The eyes of a watchful white wolf.

When reading, the Last Hope seemed noble because of his restrained capacity for violence. Actually being in a room with Marius Valerius was standing at the foot of a snowy mountain, fearing the landslide. She tasted frost and steel in the air.

"I know," the Cobra murmured. "It's awful at parties. Nobody notices me."

Rae raised her eyebrows. "But you look like a beautiful Christmas tree."

"We don't all wake up with a costume. I'm trying to be visually arresting over here!"

Rae mimed taking a photo. "You're doing amazing."

Her strained smile died at Lord Marius's approach, feeling caught in a snowstorm indoors. The simple white uniform of an Ivory Tower scholar had long sleeves Lord Marius wore knotted tight around his brawny arms, as if to tie himself down. His only adornment was a black leather belt with an ostentatiously empty scabbard where his sword should be. His ancestral blade hung over the hearth in the library. He'd sworn never to take the great sword down, but soon he would break that vow.

Rae reached for the Cobra's sleeve. "This is a killing machine on the verge of losing control. Employ tact and caution."

The Cobra twisted from her grasp like a snake. "Marius, you absolute bastard. Lady Rahela says you're going to kill me."

"Oh shit." Rae retreated hastily to the sofa.

The Last Hope stalked forward. Rae used to believe the hospital had prepared her for anything. She'd walked into elevators and seen bodies lying under sheets, headed for the morgue. Once a man collapsed in front of her. She'd learned that day the phrase ‘the light went out of his eyes' was true. The movement of a mind behind a face lent the countenance all its brightness. Animation registered as illumination. Rae watched light bleed from a dying man's eyes, leaving them dark and empty, and knew the lost light was his life.

She'd never seen death by violence. Her life had been insulated from that, until she saw the promise in the way the Last Hope moved. Ice-water chill seeping into her bones, Rae felt she saw the future. It was red as blood.

The Cobra didn't flinch. She watched the shining dead boy face down the man fated to kill him again.

Quiet as the roar of a distant avalanche, the Last Hope said: "Don't tempt me."