Adalbrecht is standing at my bedside, a granite mountain glowering down at me.
His eyes burn the same blue, his blond hair hanging stringy and loose around his stone-hard face. He’s wearing only breeches and boots, his naked chest pale, twitching, glistening with sweat.
An iron horseshoe is nailed, points-down, over his heart. Icy light gasps from it with every beat.
I scream. My hands skid on the sheets as I try to push away. He just snatches my upper arm and drags me off the bed.
“Stop that noise,” he barks, dumping me on the ground still tangled in blankets. “No one in this castle will help you.”
The dinner. “You poisoned them.” But then—Emeric—
“Don’t be stupid. I’m not cleaning up such a mess.” He turns around and heads for the door. “They’ll sleep as long as I want them to.”
Angry black-threaded welts stitch a bleeding ring between his shoulder blades, around a patch of gray skin inked with complicated wheels of runes.
Bile surges in my throat. It’s Klemens’s tattoo. Adalbrecht has sewn it into his own back.
And suddenly I piece it together. The horseshoe, the skull, the vision of the horse head. He hasn’t used the mark to bind himself to all the Low Gods. He’s used it to bind himself to all thenachtmären. And there are as many as there are dreamers.
That’s how he’ll overrun the free states and any territory that resists. That’s why he wants the Göttermarkt for the wedding: to make sure that, for whatever he’s planning, the temple bells will be silent.
My eyes sweep around the bedroom as I struggle to my feet, looking for any way out. The pearls are with Gisele—I don’t know what he wants with me, I don’t have time to chase those threads—and Ragne’s not here either. The veranda—no, I can’t get down the trellis and to the Lovers’ Road fast enough. The windows are the same. He’s blocking the hallway door. The fireplace—
Is burning frosty blue.
I feel even sicker. “What did you do to Poldi?”
“I reminded thekoboldwho’s master of this castle,” Adalbrecht says. “Stop dragging your feet and come with me.”
I don’t have a way out. Yet. I follow him to the hallway.
Bodies are scattered up and down it, like they simply fell asleep where they stood. Lurching, gigglingnachtmärensquat on each one, stroking their ears, tying knots in their hair. Of course—one for every dreamer. And Adalbrecht can command sleep itself now.
This is beyond anything I could have planned for.
I glance toward the stairs. The hallway’s open, maybe I can make a break for it.
Then I realize Adalbrecht is leading me to Emeric.
I have no choice but to go along.
The same blue flames cast an uncanny pallor over Emeric’s room as Adalbrecht throws the door open. Emeric’s collapsed over his desk, head cushioned on his wrists; he didn’t even take his spectacles off, one wire arm digging into a temple.
A pale, grinningmahrhunches on his shoulders, hugging its knees and rocking back and forth.
Adalbrecht reaches over to thenachtmahrand grips its shoulder, closing his eyes as if listening to a distant song. A moment later, he sighs. “I see. I was right.” He thinks a moment. “I believe you’ve been informed how my father died. If you’d like to avoid Conrad bleeding out through his feet, you will listen very closely to me now. Am I understood?”
I nod.
“Am Iunderstood?” he repeats.
“Yes,” I say aloud. His eyes flare blue, and I realize what he’s waiting for. The word sticks like coal in my teeth. “M’lord.”
“I’ve known you were a fake for nearly two weeks,” he says shortly. “Thenachtmahrtold me everything it dug up in your head: the pearls, the curse, evenhis”—he gestures disdainfully at Emeric—“ridiculous façade. That was the real Gisele in your room the night of the ball, wasn’t it? I couldn’t recall where I’d seen her, until I remembered that filthy orphanage from your dreams.”
“You’re bluffing,” I say. “If you knew where she was, you could have exposed me days ago.”
“And let the empire know an embarrassing little parasite had burrowed into my castle? I think not. I meant to kill you as a gift to Gisele, and then come to her as a savior. She would have been delivered from her misery, aprinzessinreborn.”
