A Crown of Broken Vows - The Rookhaven Covenant - Book One

The Black Hound

I had never been arrested for murder before. I disliked how quickly the evening began to feel crowded.

“No,” I said.

Kieran Voss looked at me as if refusals were a language he understood but seldom heard spoken aloud.

He was taller than he had appeared in the doorway. His wet black hair had come loose at the nape, and rain shone along the severe shoulders of his coat. The broadsheets usually drew him with fangs or blood on his gloves. In person, he wore neither. He also looked less like a monster and more like a man who had not slept properly in years.

That was not reassuring.

“No?” he repeated.

“I’m not leaving a dead woman on my floor while something that tried to kill us may still be in the building.”

“You are refusing arrest because of housekeeping?”

“You haven’t seen what blood does to that carpet.”

His eyes narrowed. They were gray rather than black, a pale iron color that made every shift in his attention obvious. He looked at the dark stain where the shadow had collapsed, then at the broken lamp and the roots rotting through the rug.

“What tried to kill you?”

“Her shadow.”

“Ysabet’s shadow never obeyed anyone, including Ysabet.”

The certainty in his voice held a history he did not intend to share.

He knelt beside her and stripped off one glove. Thin scars crossed his palm. The black writing beneath his skin grew denser near his wrist, line over line until the individual words looked like bars.

He touched two fingers to Ysabet’s throat.

Nothing happened. No grand flare of court magic, no final confession drawn from the corpse. His hand simply stayed there longer than hope required.

“How long?” he asked.

“Less than two minutes.”

“Were you holding her when she died?”

“Yes.”

“Did you use that knife on her?”

“No.”

“Did you write the vow?”

“No.”

He looked at me then, weighing answers without pretending he could see through my skull. Whatever powers the stories gave the Black Hound, mind-reading was not among them.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” he said.

The brass key lay somewhere under the counter.

I showed him my empty palms.

His gaze paused on the blood there. “Turn them over.”

“Do all princes give this much attention to shopkeepers’ hands?”

“Only when the shopkeeper is standing beside a murdered diplomat bearing her blood-mark.”

I turned them over.

The seam knife had left a shallow silver line across my left palm. My right wrist was bruised where the shadow had worn it. Nothing revealed the key or the memories I had paid to keep it.

Kieran bent over Ysabet’s wound. His jaw tightened when he saw the vow in full.

“That mark is exact,” he said.

“So I’ve been told.”

“A blood-mark cannot be copied.”

“Someone should inform the one on my carpet.”

“Do you find this amusing?”

“No. I find you irritating. They are different conditions.”

His mouth almost moved.

Then black writing rose above the collar of his coat, and every trace of expression left his face.

The words pushed under his skin as though an invisible hand were writing them from the inside.

DELIVER MARA ELLERY ALIVE.

IF SHE RESISTS, SILENCE HER.

The last two words tightened around his throat.

He swallowed once.

I forgot to breathe.

Kieran watched my eyes track the command.

“What do you see?” he asked.

The safest answer was nothing. Safety had become largely theoretical.

“An order,” I said. “Bring me in alive. Silence me if I resist.”

For the first time, I frightened him.

It was a small change: the stillness of his shoulders, the way his bare hand curled against his knee. But it was real.

“Only licensed royal oathwrights can read a command through cloth,” he said.

“Your collar is open.”

“The visible line is not the command.”

I said nothing.

“What are you?”

“Currently, under arrest.”

“Mara.”

My name sounded uncomfortably personal in his voice.

The ceiling groaned.

We both looked up.

Footsteps thudded above us. A door struck the wall, followed by language that made Kieran’s eyebrows rise.

Ione appeared at the top of the stairs wearing a violet dressing gown, one unlaced boot, and an expression usually reserved for people who mishandled loaded weapons. Her lavender-gray braid hung over one shoulder. The small brass crossbow in her hands was aimed directly at Kieran’s heart.

“Step away from my girl,” she said.

“Ione, don’t shoot him.”

“I wasn’t planning to shoot him. I was planning to kill him. Shooting is only the method.”

Kieran slowly raised his gloved hand. “Your distinction is appreciated.”

She came down three steps before she saw Ysabet.

The crossbow lowered an inch.

“Oh, Bet.”

The name was too familiar.

I looked from Ione to the woman on the floor. “You knew her.”

“I knew of her.”

Ione had taught me to lie better than that.

“Try again.”

“Later.”

“I have a dead fae in my shop and the Night Court’s dog at my door.”

“Hound,” Kieran said.

Ione pointed the crossbow at him again. “Would you like me to demonstrate how little the breed matters from this distance?”

He inclined his head. “No.”

Something about his answer bothered me. He did not posture. He did not threaten. He accepted the danger as if accepting danger was what he did in every room.

Ione reached the bottom step. A gray shimmer clung to the shoulders of her dressing gown.

“There was a hush over the upper floor,” she said. “I woke when it broke. What broke it?”

“I did.”

Her gaze snapped to me. “What did you spend?”

“Not now.”

“What did you spend, Mara?”

“A tune.”

Ione closed her eyes.

She knew which one. Her anger did not vanish, but it changed direction.

“You promised you would wake me before you cut anything stronger than a household charm.”

“I was occupied.”

“Promises are not optional merely because keeping them is inconvenient.”

Kieran’s command flared.

All three of us saw his body tighten.

He rose carefully. “This discussion must continue elsewhere. The Court will have felt Ysabet’s death. A recovery party is already coming.”

“Then you can meet them outside,” Ione said.

“They will dismantle this building one brick at a time.”

“They’ll find several surprises between the bricks.”

“They will also find Mara.”

The order under his skin pulled taut.

He took one step toward me.

I stepped back.

His face changed—not with anger, but warning.

“Do not make a sudden move.”

“Is that you speaking or the thing around your throat?”

“At the moment, both.”

“Comforting.”

“It was not intended to be.”

A faint scrape came from beneath the display case.

I turned my head.

The black stain on the carpet had disappeared.

“Ione,” I said. “Salt bolt.”

She knew better than to ask why. Her thumb flicked the selector beneath the crossbow stock.

The glass front of the display case exploded.

The shadow came through it on its feet.

This time it wore the rough shape of a man. Splinters of reflected light moved inside its body, and the red order I had cut burned crookedly across its chest. One of its arms ended in a long black blade.

Ione fired.

The bolt struck just below the red writing. Salt burst white across the shadow’s body. It slammed backward into the case, pinned for half a second.

Kieran moved.

He crossed the space between us so quickly I saw only the turn of his coat. One arm swept Ione behind the counter. His other hand produced a narrow black knife from somewhere inside his sleeve.

The shadow tore itself off the bolt.

Its blade came down where Ione’s throat had been.

Kieran caught the blow on his knife. The impact drove him to one knee. The shadow bent over him, silent and boneless.

“The red writing,” he said through his teeth. “Is that the order?”

“Yes.”

“Can it be cut again?”

I thought of my father whistling without sound.

“Yes.”

“That was not the question I should have asked.”

The shadow shoved. Kieran’s knife came within an inch of his own throat.

I dove for the seam knife.

The command around Kieran’s body mistook movement for escape.

His free hand shot out and caught my ankle.

I hit the floor. The seam knife slid beyond my fingers.

“Let go,” I said.

“I cannot.”

The words came out calm. His face was not. The black line at his throat dug deeper, spilling a thin thread of blood beneath his collar.

The shadow twisted its blade. Kieran blocked it, but his grip on my ankle tightened hard enough to grind bone.

“Stop resisting,” he said.

“You’re being attacked.”

“The command does not care.”

Ione rose behind the counter with another bolt loaded.

The shadow kicked Kieran in the chest. He struck the side of the workbench. His grip tore free of my ankle.

For one hopeful second, he was loose.

Then the command dragged him toward me.

He caught my wrist as I reached the knife. Momentum carried me against him. My palm struck his chest, directly over the knot of black words beneath his shirt.

The heat of them shocked me.

Kieran’s hand closed around my throat.

Not hard. Not yet.

He fought every inch. I could feel the tremor in his fingers and see the rigid cords in his forearm. His eyes stayed on mine, gray and furious—not with me, but with the hand he could not make release me.

“I’m going to reach for the knife,” I said.

“Do it slowly.”

“The murderous shadow may object to our pace.”

“It has been objectionable all evening.”

Behind him, the shadow pulled its arm back.

Ione fired.

The second bolt went through its shoulder. It staggered, but the black blade still came forward. Kieran turned his body, putting himself between it and me.

The blade entered his left side.

His breath left him against my cheek.

His grip on my throat tightened.

I saw what would happen next with terrible clarity. The command would make him finish taking me. The shadow would kill Ione while his body obeyed. Then it would take the brass key and leave the Night Court a perfect murderer standing over two more bodies.

The seam knife lay under my fingertips.

“Kieran.”

His eyes focused on me.

“If I cut this, the Crown will know.”

“Yes.”

“It may kill you.”

“Yes.”

“You are very irritating when concise.”

Blood touched the corner of his mouth. “Mara.”

“What?”

“Do not miss.”

I closed my hand around the knife.

The command did not run through his wrist. That was only where it showed. Its true center lay beneath my palm, twisted around his heart like wire.

I pushed the silver point through his shirt.

His pupils widened. The blade did not cut cloth or skin. It sank into the command.

The Crown pulled back.

For one impossible instant, the thing at the other end noticed me.

Cold flooded the shop. Every clock stopped. An enormous attention turned toward my hand, old and hungry and offended by the idea that anything it held might be taken away.

I cut.

Kieran screamed.

So did the Crown.

Black light tore out of his chest. It climbed my arm, searching for payment. I tried to throw it into the floor. The boards split. I tried to drive it through the seam knife. Silver ran molten over my fingers.

Then it reached for my memories.

My father’s face appeared before me.

Not a photograph. Him. Brown eyes creased at the corners. One eyebrow higher than the other. The scar on his chin from the time a clock spring broke loose when he was seventeen.

The magic began to pull him apart.

“No.”

I clung to the memory with everything I had. It stretched thin. His eyes went first. His mouth blurred.

Kieran caught my burning hand between both of his.

“Take it back,” I gasped.

He did not know what I meant. He held on anyway.

The broken command found him again. It could not return to the place I had cut, so it passed through his palms into mine and back, a black thread stitching us together.

Pain snapped around both our wrists.

My father’s face slammed back into memory so violently I sobbed.

The rest of the price went elsewhere.

Kieran’s wound opened in my side.

It was not as deep as his, but it was real. Heat spread beneath my dress. I folded against him, and his hand left my throat at last to catch me around the waist.

The shadow raised its blade over Ione.

Kieran saw it.

No command turned his body. No Crown tightened his hand. What he did next was entirely his.

He dragged the black blade from his own side, pivoted, and drove it through the red words on the shadow’s chest.

“Now,” he said.

Ione fired her third bolt.

Iron punched through the broken order. The shadow came apart with a sound like a hundred people drawing breath at once. Darkness splashed up the walls and vanished.

Silence followed.

Then Mr. Larkin’s watch began ticking on the bench.

Kieran and I were still holding each other.

His arm was firm around my waist. My left hand was trapped against his chest; his heartbeat struck my palm, hard and uneven. We were close enough that I could see a thin white scar beneath his lower lip and the darker rim around his irises.

Awareness arrived late and unwelcome.

He was beautiful. Not safely, not pleasantly. His face had the kind of hard symmetry that invited poor decisions and then watched you make them.

His gaze dropped to my mouth.

I stopped breathing for an entirely different reason.

Ione cleared her throat.

“If this is courtship,” she said, “standards have declined.”

Kieran let me go.

Pain ripped through both of us.

He caught my elbow before I fell. A black band had appeared around his right wrist. An answering line circled my left, black threaded with a narrow seam of silver.

“What did you do?” he asked.

“You told me not to miss.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the answer I have.”

He took one cautious step away.

The bands tightened.

A second step made the wound in my side burn. Kieran’s face drained of color at the same instant.

“Stop,” Ione said.

He stopped.

“Again, slowly,” she ordered.

Kieran moved toward the door while I counted the floor tiles between us. At six paces, the band drew taut. At seven, pain drove me to one knee.

Kieran was back beside me before Ione could move. The pressure vanished.

He crouched, one hand hovering near my shoulder without touching. “Can you breathe?”

“Better than you.”

Blood had soaked the left side of his coat.

“Your injury crossed to her,” Ione said. “And distance makes the binding punish both of you.”

“Binding?” I asked.

She pointed at our wrists. “What would you call it?”

“A mistake.”

Kieran looked at the severed command scar on his palm. The expression on his face was not relief. It was the stunned caution of a prisoner who had found his cell unlocked and suspected another trap outside.

“Can the Crown still command you?” I asked.

“Not through that line.”

“Can it make another?”

“If it gets close enough.”

A bell sounded under Wicklow Street.

The note was deep enough to tremble through my bones. Outside, the rain stopped in midair. Thousands of drops hung beyond the windows like beads on invisible strings.

Black thorns pushed up through the pavement at both ends of the street.

Men and women in gray coats appeared behind them.

Kieran went to the window. At the sixth pace, the bond tightened; he glanced back and waited until I moved nearer before he continued.

One of the officers raised a silver speaking horn.

“Prince Kieran Voss,” a pleasant male voice called. “Step away from Mara Ellery and surrender the accused.”

Kieran looked at the six paces between us.

The voice continued. “You are charged with breaking a royal command. Compliance will be considered at judgment.”

Ione muttered something inventive.

“How long before they come in?” I asked.

“Minutes.” Kieran’s gaze remained on the officers. “Possibly less.”

“Can you order them away?”

“I am an exiled prince, not a popular one.”

“What happens if I surrender?”

He turned from the glass.

“They take you beneath the Night Palace. At the seventh midnight, they execute you for Ysabet’s murder.”

“And if I don’t?”

His eyes went to the black-and-silver band around my wrist.

“Then you have freed the Crown’s Hound,” he said, “and made both of us fugitives.”