Page 62 of Pride: Kneel Before None

Worse.

Breath. The exhale of an invisible beast lying in wait for its next meal to fall into its jowls.

Near the ledge, sitting with his back against the wall, was a shell of a man.

He didn’t stir, just sat there with his head bowed. Overgrown locks of hair, a shade brighter than Eve’s with more orange highlights and less of the blond cutting through the copper hid his face. A forearm draped over the top of a bent knee, the hand hanging limp while the other rested on top of his thigh. He was the very picture of a man without purpose.

Recognition registered on my Little Spade’s face, her hand already hovering over her lips parted in disbelief.

“Tighe?” she whispered, her hand falling to her side as she stepped closer to the bars.

At first, the man didn’t move. Didn’t even speak.

Then, with a slowness that mimicked a fly drowning in a tar pit, his head turned. Eyes opened to reveal a color rivaling permafrost, a stark contrast to the fiery locks that framed his face.

When he spoke, his voice came out hoarse and almost too low to catch. “Did she send you?”

I shifted my gaze to Eve, who was already pressed up against the bars, trying to close the distance between her and her sibling.

“Did who send me?” she asked, confusion and desperation for understanding filling her voice.

No response. Only the sound of whatever beast lay breathing beyond the steep drop-off that Tighe sat near—a bit too near.

“Tighe, tell me. Tell me who⁠—”

A bitter laugh escaped him, cutting off Eve’s plea for clarity. He forced himself upright, and his joints audibly creaked as he did. His steps were weighted by pain, stiff and uneven.

Up close, you could see the filth caking his skin, fingernails broken and packed with dirt, and a beard left unkempt. Nothing like the man my Little Spade had described to me.

Blackscale made its inmates pay their penance in more ways than one.

“She came here first, you know. Said you’d be by. Said you’d be different.”

He may as well have been talking in riddles. The expression on Eve’s face reflected her struggle to connect her brother’s cryptic words, leaving her at a loss to find any of her own.

The tension between the siblings grew with only a few feet and unforgiving bars between them. Tighe stared at his sister like she held the order for his execution, and Eve met his gaze with one that held the grief of a pardon delivered too late.

Breaking the standstill, her brother leaned forward. His eyes no longer hid the suspicion in his gaze.

“Mother sends her regards.”

CHAPTER 20

“Mother?” I repeated.

I hadn’t heard from her since the summer Superbia had been struck by an aggressive ash storm. The memory of it was blurred by time and youth’s amnesia.

The little I recalled was that everything had been coated in grey and black flakes, the result of an incident the Concord declared an “unfortunate mishap.” The official story broadcast across the media suggested a disgruntled employee at the central power station had disposed of bodies bound for the mortuary.

On its face, it had seemed harmless. However, given the variety of supernatural entities in the city, one mishandled corpse easily exploded into an entire fucking weather disaster.

If you’d ever seen phoenix shit tossed into a bonfire, you’d know just how quickly one goes from roasting marshmallows to celebrating with a light show for a month.

During the unprecedented ash storm, Mother had taken off without looking back. As the door had been closing behind her, she’d pitched some lame excuse about the storm being detrimental to her work.

Whatever life calling she possessed, she never spoke of it. When pressed on the topic, she went out of her way to evade straightforward responses. Instead, Mother preferred to speak in riddles. A touch of this. A touch of that.

I could only assume she spent her time chasing clouds and attempting to capture dreams. Glamorous, but pointless. She probably sold her so-called inventory as though she was spinning straw into gold. Who was to say she hadn’t woven a nimbus into a nightmare and sold it as a prophecy?