Maeve
My back hits soft, cream-colored carpet as the sitting room in my private apartment in the palace materializes. Gloves’s hand is still wrapped around my neck, but his grip is loose. His body is a dead weight pressing mine into the carpet. My vision blurs as pain like I’ve never felt before cascades through me like a waterfall of pure fire. My ribs ache from multiple cracks. My cheeks, jaw, and nose are bruised. My head pounds where his fingers were tangled. I’m sure I’m missing chunks of hair… and I taste, and smell, blood. Lots of blood. Probably mine and his.
I suck in a painful breath and shove him off me. My arms tremble against his weight, but I manage to slide him to the side and kick out.
Gloves is completely unconscious lying face down on the carpet when I roll onto my hands and knees, gasping for breath he’d stolen from me. I spit blood and tooth fragments onto the carpet, wiping my mouth on the back of my swollen, bruised fingers.
I, of course, didn’t think my actions through. I’ve sparred enough in my life to know that punching someone in the face, especially along the jaw, is enough to bust open the skin along my knuckles, but I think my fingers on my right hand might actually be broken.
“Oh, gods,” I groan, rocking back into a kneeling position and cradling my hand. I glance at the man bleeding onto my favorite rug. He looks like hell–just as bruised, swollen, and bloody as I am.
I don’t have healing gifts like some of the people in my family. I didn’t even get a drop. If he’s dying, I can’t save his life. I can’t knit my own bones back together or heal the abrasions on my skin.
I sniffle, shaking my head to dry my tears and take a deep, restorative breath just as Jane, carrying my usual breakfast on a tray, enters the foyer. She’s humming a song, her footsteps light as she rounds the corner into the sitting room and sees me, then him.
“Don’t scream,” I croak.
She drops the breakfast tray, coffee spilling in a spray and strawberries bouncing around her feet as fine china shatters. She claps a hand over her mouth, and her eyes widen, but she chokes down that scream, turning it into a muffled, gargled moan.
“Go get one–no–three healing drafts,” I tell her shakily, sniffling again as blood drips from my nose. “Some rope, and the biggest bucket of ice water you can carry.”
“Are you all right?”
“Jane,” I grind out as she starts to tremble, losing what little nerve she has, but she’s my favorite maid, her timid, mousy personality aside. She’s trustworthy and loyal to a fault, which means I keep her in my corner. If I had real friends, she’d be the best one. “Don’t tell anyone. Don’t alert the guards. Do you understand?”
“Three healing drafts, rope, and a bucket of ice water.”
“Yes,” I tell her, watching as she slowly backs away, her shoes crunching shattered porcelain into dust. “Hurry.”
She turns and darts for the foyer, and to her credit, doesn’t slam the main door behind her like I would have done.
I look back at Gloves, watching his chest rise and fall. Normal people like him can’t jump, or spirit, from place to place like I can, especially not on a whim. Maybe I should have done that before, first thing, but…
I feel along my chest where my moonstone necklace should be and find nothing but fury instead.
I force myself to my feet, ignoring the sharp, throbbing ache in my hand as I use the toe of my boot to roll him onto his back. His shirt is shredded and bloodstained, but I finally get a good look at his face without the mask for once. He’s younger than I expected him to be. Mid-twenties, maybe. Maybe just a few years older than me. He’s clean shaven with clear skin, and his cheeks are a soft pink under the vicious bruising starting to spread across his cheekbones and his straight nose.
His hair is a chestnut brown and highlighted from the sun just like I remember, softly curling around his ears and forehead. He’s handsome, even with three deep scratch marks dribbling blood down his left cheek, swollen and angry. I look down at my broken nails. I just got them done, too, damnit.
I roll my tongue across my teeth, spitting out another chipped tooth fragment. Oh well. The healing drafts will fix me up just fine… and I don’t plan to share any of it with him.
Using what’s left of my strength, I pull him into an armchair. I rip off his leather jacket and dig through his pockets, finding a wallet and a few pocket knives but nothing else. No moonstone.
It wasn’t at the Fence. I followed him there. I lingered near the bar, using the hood of my cloak to shield my face from onlookers, while he sold my jewels. I bought the jewels back from the disgusting man who runs the Fence, not wanting to have to cause a scene. Grandpa Ryatt will notice the money missing from the family coffers, but a stern talking to about my spending habits is better than what he’d do if I’d killed every man in that tavern and then burned it to the ground, I suppose.
The man had given up Gloves’s address quickly and without hesitation, and from there I just… lost my ever-loving mind.
Jane appears carrying a bucket of ice water, the rope I asked for hanging around her neck, and the healing drafts stuffed in the pocket of her apron. She struggles with the weight of the bucket but manages to carry it across the room while I baby my broken fingers.
“Here,” she whispers. “I need to go back and lock the door.”
I nod, curling my good fingers around the three vials of medicine as she drops the bucket and hurries away again. I wrench each one open with my teeth, draining them. They’re not as powerful as my great-grandmother Isla’s tears, but Misty’s tears do help. I’ll heal over the next couple of hours and be fine by nightfall, I’m sure.
Jane returns. I don’t have to tell her what we’re doing. She has an uncanny ability to guess my next moves, and begins tying the man to the chair while I crouch, pulling everything out of his wallet.
“Do I want to know what happened?”
“No,” I reply, my voice like gravel.
“Did he–did he attack you?”
“Yes.”
“Here?”
“No, I went to his place.” I pull several identification cards from his wallet and a passport, which surprises me. The passport is old, but the IDs are all different while his picture remains the same on each one.
“Oh,” Jane murmurs, obviously struggling to maintain her composure. She’s a witch, like me. She went through years of training, years of schooling, like all witches do, but her skills have always been domestic in nature, and apparently knots strong enough to hold a grown ass man are included in that. She steps back to inspect her work while the healing drafts swim through my body, targeting the worst of my injuries. I stretch my broken fingers with effort but notice they’re no longer hanging from tendons, which is a good sign.
“Why–what happened?” Jane asks. “Who is he?”
“He stole from me.”
“Stole?”
“He broke into the castle last night and rummaged through my room, taking anything shiny he could find, including my–my necklace.” I touch my chest, curling my fingers around… nothing. “I followed him home.”
“Is he going to die, you think?”
“I don’t care,” I huff, rising and holding out the cards for her to see. “Look at this. These are fake, but well made.”
“He’s a criminal, then. He has to be.”
“Well, of course he is,” I murmur, eyeing him as his slumps forward. I open the passport, looking down at the picture of Gloves, and the name beside it. “I think this is his actual ID. This is real, for sure.”
“How do you know?”
“Because getting dual citizenship between Eastonia and Crescent Falls is damn near impossible. He would have been given this when he was born if his parents were from both places.”
“What’s his name, then?” Jane fans through the fake IDs.
I look at the man, then the passport, growling, “Soren.”
We both look at him as my fury rises, turning deadly again now that my pain is subsiding. I toss the passport on a coffee table and pick up the bucket.
Jane swallows a squeak when I dump the ice water over his head, soaking him to the bone. Water splashes over my boots and sinks into the carpet, but he gasps, jerking against his restraints.
“Good morning,” I grin wickedly.
He spits water tinged with blood, panting as he jerks, trying to free himself. I watch him try to clear his vision, blinking rapidly before squinting to scan his new surroundings. His eyes slowly inspect the room that I know he finds familiar because he was just here, in my space, stealing my things, but then his gaze lifts to my face, and I feel… odd.
I’ve never seen his eyes before. Even during our fight, I hadn’t had the chance to really look at him, not like this, not with space between us.
One of his eyes is a startling glacier blue, bordering on white. I’ve never seen a color like that before, never. It rocks me to my center almost as much as the fact that his eyes don’t match. His other eye is a perfect split between a dark, leather brown and pure steel gray.
He pants out a breath, the corners of his busted lips twitching into a smile, his teeth tinged with blood.
“Where is my necklace? I followed you to the Fence. It wasn’t there when I took back what you stole.”
“What necklace? I took several.” He spits blood onto the carpet at his feet.
My lips curl into a sneer. “The moonstone necklace.”
“The cat collar?” he laughs. “It was worthless.”
“It wasn’t worthless to me.”
“Maybe if you’d given me a chance to explain instead of attacking me in my own home–”
“You broke into my home first.”
“And you beat the shit out of me,” he sneers. “We’re even.”
I laugh hotly, taking a step in his direction while Jane trembles behind me, her arms hugged tight around her chest. “I could have killed you, but I chose to take the high road, which is something you know nothing about.”
“You want to talk about the high road with me, Princess? You left those jewels out like they meant nothing–”
“I don’t care about the rest of it. I want my necklace back. I need it back, and you’re going to tell me where it is!”
“Well, apparently it was worth something,” he says wryly, his voice low as his eyes hold on mine. No wonder he wears a mask to somewhat obscure them. I’ve never seen eyes like his before and it’s totally unnerving. I would recognize him anywhere now with just a glance.
He glances at Jane and notices her holding his wallet. He rolls his eyes back to mine, arching a brow. “So, Princess, are you going to kill me? If so, I’d love for you to just get it over with. If not, I have things I had to do today and this… this is wasting my time,” he drawls in a patronizing voice that makes my blood boil.
I lean down so we’re eye to eye. “I need to make one thing clear,” I hiss. “I’m not someone to fuck with, Soren. You took something important from me. Something I cannot replace. Where is it?”
“I don’t fucking know,” he snaps, and the sound of my palm hitting his cheek reverberates around the room.
“If you ever use that tone with me again,” I growl, nose to nose, “you’ll be wearing your spinal cord as a belt. Have I made myself clear?”
He smiles. He fucking grins like a cat with cream. “Crystal.”
“Fuck you,” I growl, shoving him back. I can feel that smile sinking into my skin as I turn to Jane, waving a hand in dismissal. “No one enters this room. Do you understand? No guards, no warriors, not until I’m done. Go down and fetch another bucket of water and a few… butcher knives, and something to sop up this blood. There will be more.”
She nods and turns but glances wearily at Soren before setting his wallet on the coffee table. I pace, debating my next moves. I suppose I could kill him. The moonstone wasn’t at the Fence. I didn’t get a good look at his apartment during our battle, and I know for a fact my powers would have reached for it, had it been there. If he sold it somewhere else… I need him alive to retrieve it.
But while Soren spits blood, trying to wriggle out of the tight knots binding him to the chair, I look out the windows bleeding morning light into the room, and see the fading outline of a new moon.
This couldn’t have happened at a worse time. My powers are tied to the moon cycle, and they’re naturally at their weakest now, but more so than usual, because a month from now, the next full moon will come with an eclipse, and the first Rite in over two decades will take place the same night as my coronation.
Until then, I’m pretty much powerless, especially without the moonstone.
My bloody clothing starts to dry and stick to my skin. I hate it. It’s a gross feeling that makes me want to crawl out of my own body. I want a shower. I want to change.
“You’re fucked, you know that?” I tell him, growling the words.
“I’ve been in worse situations,” he replies with a shrug.
I lick my lips, looking at his arm where that gnarly scar breaks through his strange tattoos. The silver band is gone, nothing but scar tissue and a red, swollen wound left behind. I need to ask him about that. He’s too skilled to just be a random criminal–a street rat, a thief.
“Who do you work for?”
“Who do you think I work for?” he asks, his mouth tugging into another smirk.
I can’t think past the sensation of my bloody clothing any longer. He won’t be able to free himself from those knots.
Jane might be timid and shy, but she has her qualities.
“I’ll kill you for this,” I tell him, and turn toward the hallway leading to my bathroom.
“I can’t wait to see you try, Princess,” he replies under his breath.