The Shadows

“I don’t know.”

“I’m going to die out here. In a matter of minutes.”

Paradise fought the urge to put her head around the molding and see who it was. She didn’t recognize the voice, but the precise pronunciation and haughty accent suggested it was someone from the aristocracy. Which made sense, considering he was a “relative.”

“You are wearing the vestments of war,” her father countered. “I do not abide them across my threshold.”

“Is it my associations or my weapons that frighten you more?”

“I am not afeared of either. You were beaten, if you recall.”

“But not defeated, I’m sorry to say.” Clicking sounds suggested someone was handling things made of metal parts. And then there was a clattering, as if something hit the front stone stoop. “Here, then, I am naked before you. I am utterly unarmed, and my weapons are on your doorstep, not within your walls.”

“I am not your cousin.”

“You are my blood. We have many common ancestors—”

“Spare me. And whatever message your leader wishes to send to the King, have him do it through—”

“I am no longer affiliated with Xcor. In any way.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Ties have been cut.” There was an exhausted sigh. “I have spent these months since the election that returned Wrath to the throne trying to convince Xcor and the Band of Bastards to disengage from their treason. Even after such entreaty and reasoning, such extended pleading for a smarter course, I am saddened that I cannot dissuade them from their folly. Finally, I just had to leave. I sneaked away from where they stay, and I now fear for my life. I have nowhere else to go, and when I spoke with Salliah back in the Old Country, she suggested that I pay you a visit.”

Their distant cousin, Paradise thought. She recognized that name.

“Please,” the male said. “Lock me in a room if you have to—”

“I am a loyal servant of the King’s.”

“Then do not turn away a tactical advantage.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“In return for safety under your roof, I am prepared to tell you everything I know about the Band of Bastards. Where they spend the daylight hours. What their patterns are. Where they meet during the night. How they think and fight. Surely that is worth the use of a bed.”

Paradise couldn’t stand it. She had to see who it was.

Inching out, she curled her body around the archway and looked past her father’s stiff shoulders. Her first thought was that the male’s leathers and ragged button-down shirt did not match his intonation. Her second was that his eyes were bruised, they were so tired.

He did indeed appear to have come from the war’s front lines, something sickly sweet staining the air that brushed by his body as it entered the house.

The male noticed her immediately, and his face registered something that he quickly hid.

Her father glanced over his shoulder and shot her a glare. “Paradise,” he hissed.

“I can understand why you hesitate,” the male said, his eyes never leaving hers. “Indeed, she is precious.”

Her father turned back around. “You must go.”

The male dropped down to one knee and bowed his head, putting one hand over his heart and lifting the other, open palmed, up to the heavens.

In the Old Language, he said softly, “I hereby swear upon our common ancestry that I shall bring no harm to you, your blooded daughter, or any living thing within these walls—or may the Scribe Virgin cut my life off afore your very eyes.”

Her father looked back at her and slashed his arm through the air, an order for her to get out and stay gone.

She put her hands up and nodded, all, Okay, okay, okaaaaay.

Moving quickly, she went back into the library and across to the panels by the fireplace. Reaching under the third shelf from the floor to the hidden trigger point, she pressed the lever and was able to push the entire load of books out and over on the well-oiled track. With a quick slip, she emerged into the fully finished hallway that ran in a square around the first floor of the house, providing access, both visual and actual, to every room through hidden doors and viewpoints.

It was like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

Closing herself in, Paradise went to the shallow stairs that were all the way in the back, and as she ascended them, she wished she could hear what they were saying. As usual, though, she was in the dark; her father never told her anything about anything.