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“My poor girl. But don’t despair.” Mother’s lips whispered against my forehead. Tears dripped from her chin to join mine on cool cheeks.
But already my skin was warming, flushing hotter than anything I’d felt before.
“I know, my darling. I know it hurts, but it will be worth it. I promise.” She stroked my hair and wrapped me in her cloak to cover what I now understood was my nakedness. “You’ll save them. Every gentle soul, every woman and girl suffering on that cold, wretched rock. Thanks to you, no heart will break like this again.”
No heart…
What care had I for hearts? I had never strayed an inch from where I’d been planted. I was not human. I wasn’t even animal. I was night and hush, a vessel full of the universe. I was peace and presence and the reflection of the natural order in all its perfect mathematical cleverness, without understanding of right or wrong, good or bad, grace or wickedness so foul it can take any shape formed from the darkness.
I didn’t know what I was being bound to that night. Or how terribly it could all go wrong.
Please…if you believe nothing else, believe that.
Chapter One
Foxglove
I am a cat made of midnight, invisible in the darkness.
I am the cat’s shadow. I am the curled tail of the rat that flees into the sewer to escape claws and teeth. I am the rush of murky water along bricks, slimy with human waste. I am beetle eyes and black mold on damp walls. I am the gloom of the underground puddled against a sleeping boy’s belly. I am the smoke that rises from his father’s cook fire, oily and smelling of sausage.
I am every twilight-flavored thought that ever waltzed through a weary human mind and as inescapable as the coming of the night.
Inescapable.
That, most of all.
There are those who believe living below ground offers protection. Others assume the bulk of their mansions, or the lead in their walls, or their distance from the cities, or their gods or monsters or armed men or sacred symbols etched in blood will keep my curse away.
They’re wrong, of course.
But not even a nightmare can be everywhere at once.
My smoke-self rises through a rusted sewer grate and up, up into the air above this frozen northern city. Higher and higher, until I can see all the cobblestone streets of Old Town, where the ancient lanes form the spokes of a wheel as they stretch away from the city center.
Empty spokes.
There are no humans out tonight. The only things scurrying are the nocturnal creatures and the trash tumbled about by the winter wind. A soggy newspaper flaps hello from the gutter; a tin cup rolls over and over with a clink-clank that echoes like a dare through the alleyway. Even the chimney tops are quiet, holding their smoky breath.
I could be drifting above a ghost town…but I’m not.
I can hear it, the shush shush of human blood pumping through sleep-warmed bodies, the sighs and grumbles and the creaking of bed frames as the old try to find a comfortable place and the young try to sleep though they’d rather be out and about.
The very young could wander freely—I won’t mist through a boy’s mind until he comes of age, and never touch the dreams of women or girls—but this city is the superstitious sort. Its boundaries are marked with magic sigils; its laws forbid the growing of night flowers or witch medicines. Its people rush inside at sunset and paint their doors with more sigils drawn in blessed water and sealed with salt and prayer.
No one—male or female—will come out again until the sun has risen and gobbled up the night, banishing fear for another day.
But I don’t need them to come out. I only need the men to sleep.
And I can wait.
Nightmares may not always be kind, but we are certainly patient.
I rise until I’m level with one shuttered window and seep into the shadow of the eaves, thickening in the darkness. A moment later, two starlings alight on the rim of the cracked gutter below. One is black-dappled brown with an amber beak; the other has slick, blue-black feathers and a coppery head ruffled on top like a hedgehog’s back.
“Nice night for it, nice night for it,” Wig warbles, his mottled throat vibrating. “Nice night, nice night!”
“Shut it, worm.” Poke aims a clawed toe at Wig’s belly, but Wig hops away with time to spare.
He’s learned to anticipate Poke’s jibs and jabs. They aren’t friends, not exactly, but in the years since we became travelling companions, they’ve grown accustomed to one another.
Earworms and Skritches aren’t a natural match. Worms are aggressively cheery; Skritches are simply…aggressive. But these two were planted close together, near the gate in the garden of our birth. I stole them while Mother’s back was turned, snatched them with shaking hands and shoved them into the pockets of my borrowed cloak—one snug little Earworm in my left pocket, one prickly Skritch in my right because I was too new and terrified to go alone.
