I grinned, extending my hand. “Call me Aleksander. There are enough people around to call meprince.”
He pressed his lips together in a fine line, as if contemplating the request. Finally, he shook my hand. “I couldn’t possibly deny a request from the royal family. Shall we?”
“No, you couldn’t,” I joked. I gripped his shoulder, and he stiffened beneath me. I instantly let my hand fall away, but stayed by his side as we strode across the marsh, casting him the occasional curious glance.
A man born of shadows. A man born of death. The gods only knew what kind of life he led—but I was eager to discover that for myself.
Two
Noc
Present Day
Thin, grasping clouds stretched across the darkening sky outside Cruor. With the descent of the sun over the spired treetops, the bone-scraping calls of monsters began to erupt in earnest. Yet even they weren’t as unsettling as the lifeless bodies lying before me. Raising the dead wasn’t something I enjoyed, but it had to be done. Beside me, Calem, Kost, and Ozias stood at attention, their faces stoic.
Letting loose a breath, I gripped the back of my neck. “This it?” I couldn’t help but feel reluctant to see this grim task through.
Kost gave a tight nod. “We could certainly find more, but—”
“No. It’s fine.”
He shifted weight from his left foot to his right. “Darrien’s renouncement has everyone on edge—not to mention the number of people who left with him. Our remaining members are scared. We should consider searching for more.”
I shot him an icy glare. “There are rules, Kost. And I refuse to break those rules simply to bolster our ranks.”
“We’ll be fine.” Ozias placed a thick hand on my shoulder, chasing away the frustration building in me. “Even if they don’t want to take on bounties, we can teach our new family how to use the shadows for protection.”
“He’s right.” Calem offered a lax smile. “We’ve got this.”
Nodding once, I brought my gaze back to the dead at my feet. Mouths agape, eyes wild and lost. The stench of iron and rotting flesh hit my nostrils, and I clenched my jaw. We had three days’ time to raise a corpse before our magic would no longer work. These bodies were pushing their final hours.
Kneeling beside the first man, I willed the power of Zane, the first of our kind, to flow from my core and streak to my fingertips. The nails along my right hand honed to fine points, fashioning blades sharper than swords. I sliced open the man’s chest straight through to the bone. His unmoving heart dominated my vision.
I carved open my palm and poured blood over the wound. My power, Zane’s power, to restore life seeped into the man. The heart pumped once. One achingly slow and shuddering beat.
Then the heart beat again, this time with more fervor and less strain. Once the cadence was steady, I placed my palm flat against the man’s open chest and willed the wound to reseal. When I pulled my hand away, nothing but smeared blood and smooth skin remained. Fatigue hit hard and fast, and my shoulders rolled forward.
Three more to go.
Kost, Calem, and Ozias waited in silence until I finished. Until the four bodies before me were breathing on their own. With their closed eyes, they could’ve been sleeping. But I remembered what this moment had been like for me. How the darkness of death had started to shift to something unfamiliar and gray, until Talmage had woken me from it all.
Just as the moon crested over the dark wood of Kitska Forest, I cleared my throat. “Rise.”
It was such a quiet, simple command, and yet it rolled through us, over us, with an electric wave of energy. Behind us, Calem sucked in a sharp breath, and I jerked my chin in his direction. The line of silver threading around his muted-red irises flared, and his body tensed. Kost and Ozias shifted closer, worry clearly visible in the subtle tensing of their muscles.
“Calem?” My gaze darted between him and the new assassins waking at my feet.
A full-body tremor raced through him, and then he shook his head as if chasing away a bad memory. The mercury hue of his gaze vanished with the abrupt coughing and sputtering of our newly raised brothers and sisters.
Shoulders tight, I dragged my gaze back to them. For now, Calem could wait. “Welcome back.”
The people before us were all so vastly different, and yet I’d just handed them the same fate: life as an assassin of Cruor. The first man was a Wilheimian trader who’d gained the reputation of a swindler. He’d cheated the wrong person out of a valuable rug woven by a particularly skilled mage, and so his bounty had been handed to us.
He pushed himself off the ground, straightening his now-ripped midnight-blue tunic. Shaky fingers attempted to fasten the silver toggles in a bizarre show of modesty. He gave up halfway through and instead let his fingers tremble by his sides.
The woman beside him followed suit, standing with wary eyes. Short, spiked hair stood perfectly on end, and she folded her arms to her chest, hiding the exposed skin with a look of sheer defiance. In tattered tunics and bland breeches, the remaining two were dressed for function, not appearance. They clung to each other, too scared to move or do anything more than seek comfort in each other’s touch.
Slipping my hands into the pockets of my loose trousers, I gave them a nod. “You’ve been given a second chance at life as a member of Cruor.”
