Court of Shadows: (A Demons of Fire and Night Novel) (Institute of the Shadow Fae Book 1) Read online

  I cast a quick glance at myself in the mirror behind Rufus. Straight eyebrows, high cheekbones, amber eyes. The only thing that might have marked me as a supernatural was the pale lavender shade of my hair, but plenty of humans dyed their hair bright colors these days. My fae canines and pointed ears only emerged when I thought my life was in danger, which didn’t happen often. In other words, I could pass for human. Maybe he’d come for the vampires, instead?

  “Take these over to him,” whispered Rufus. “Tell him it’s our best wine. Tell him it’s on the house. Tell him we’ll give him money. Tell him—” His eyes suddenly narrowed. “You didn’t happen to see anything unusual tonight, did you?” He was still pouring the wine, and it spilled over the rim, pooling on the bar like blood.

  I loosed a long sigh. I often found Rufus staring at the blank walls in his office, listlessly licking his yogurt spoon over and over. I honestly had no idea how someone like him had survived the apocalypse at all.

  “Nothing unusual.” I gently took the bottle from his hand. Might as well not give the guy a complete heart attack.

  “Don’t look him in the eyes,” Rufus hissed, his eyes wide.

  My gaze flicked back to the spell-slayer, and my stomach leapt as I realized his eyes were still on me. My throat went dry. There was no way in hell I was bringing him wine.

  I was quickly realizing there was no way out of this situation without fighting a spell-slayer. And I knew only too well how vicious they could be.

  “Actually, Rufus … I’m not feeling so well.”

  “You what?” He sounded incredulous.

  “Lady stuff.”

  “Oh.” He fell silent. Apparently, that topic was more terrifying than the spell slayer.

  “Gotta run. I’ll see you tomorrow.” I cast a quick glance at Ciara as I headed for the door. She was the only one around who knew I was a demi-fae. Baleros—my former gladiator master—had once assigned her to tend to my wounds between matches in the arena. Ciara and I had slept in the same cage for years. She knew my dreams and my nightmares. She knew why the scent of roses made me sick. She knew almost everything about me.

  Almost.

  As soon as I’d slipped outside into the damp air, I shoved my hand into my bug-out bag, rummaging around until I found my iron knife, sheathed in leather. I hated having to use iron. It was poisonous to fae like me, but it was the only way to hurt a spell-slayer.

  Then, I pulled out my mobile and called Ciara.

  “Arianna,” she answered immediately, whispering into the phone. “He’s still here. And now there’s another one, with violet eyes. I’ve heard of him. He’s the one they call the Wraith. He moves like wind in the night and slaughters silently in the shadows. I think he’s the Devil himself.”

  “Very reassuring, thanks.” She was always saying weird shit about the Devil. Pretty sure it was an American thing. Whatever the case, this was not wonderful news. “Just tell me when they’re leaving.”

  “The Devil wears many faces,” she hissed.

  “I know. Just simmer down, friend. Look, I might have to fight them both. Just text me when they leave.”

  “Wait. Wait. If you make it home alive, put cat pee in front of your door, mixed with old cabbage.”

  “Is that supposed to ward off fae nobility?”

  “Dunno, but Aunt Starlene put it outside our trailer to keep the police away after she threw an alligator at someone in a McDonald’s parking lot. And she set bear traps.” She scratched her cheek. “Also, she might have shot them, so … that could have actually been the part that kept them out of our trailer.”

  “Thanks, Ciara. Gotta go.” I shoved my mobile back in my pocket.

  Dread bloomed in my chest.

  Baleros’s ninth law of power: Don’t attack unless you’re certain you can win.

  I’d been trained by a spell-slayer. I knew how they fought.

  As a gladiator, I’d often fought multiple opponents at once, taking them out within minutes. I had been the only female gladiator, and my stage name had been the Amazon Terror. The amount of blood I’d spilled had been more than enough to appease the crowds, and Baleros, because he was a complete prick, had fashioned special armor that emphasized my boobs. I’d been quite the attraction.

  But spell-slayers were different than anyone I’d fought in the arena. They were ancient, disciplined, with centuries of exquisite training far beyond my own. My chances of winning in a fight against two of them were a little lower than my chances of sprouting wings and flying off to freedom. Before I flung my knife at them, I’d wait to see if they attacked first.

  My phone buzzed, and I pulled it out to read the text.

  They’re leaving.

  Adrenaline raced through my blood, and I dodged into an alleyway. It’s not like I could really hide, though. Fae trackers like them would be able to smell me.

  I quickened my pace, but I’d only gone a few steps before the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I could feel them watching me, and my pulse started racing out of control. A cold sweat dampened my brow.

  How had they gotten here so fast?

  I gripped the hilt of the knife hard, and I whirled.

  A pit opened in my stomach at the sight of two cloaked spell-slayers standing just behind me. Frigid panic rippled up my spine.

  Chapter 3

  The green-eyed one from the bar stepped closer, his gaze flicking up and down my body, as if he were assessing my worth. I felt goosebumps rise on my skin.

  But it was the other one who stopped my heart. Menacing shadows curled off him, like smoke from a funeral pyre. He was taller than the other, his shoulders broad and no doubt thickly muscled under his cloak. He gripped a dagger, red with blood that dripped onto the pavement. Drops of blood glistened on his cloak. Darkness breathed around him like a living thing, and I held my breath.

  It was hard to look at him—the more I focused my eyes, the less distinct he seemed. The most salient thing about him was his piercing, violet eyes, which raised the hair on the back of my neck.

  I took a step back. His magic was powerful—and unusual for a fae.

  As they stared at me, I was mentally calculating the chances of taking them both on. It wasn’t good, and worse, even if I managed to survive, it would mean the end of my life as I knew it. A fugitive permanently on the run from the spell-slayers.

  “Hello, gents.” I aimed for a casual tone, but it came out sounding strained.

  “Hello, Arianna,” said the one with green eyes.

  My heart skipped a beat. He knew my name.

  I licked my lips. “And to whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

  “Aengus, Knight of the Shadow Fae.”

  The other one—the Wraith—said nothing.

  Don’t attack unless you’re certain you can win.

  The Wraith shifted, and I lost sight of him until he reappeared on the opposite side of Aengus. For a moment, the wind picked up his cowl, and I caught a better view of his eyes. His gaze held no emotion, just a cold detachment. And yet somehow, his glare slid through my bones. I felt like a pinned butterfly under his stare, completely helpless.

  He shifted again, appearing on the other side of Aengus once more, before going completely still. Eerily still.

  Whoever he was, he moved with a lethal, otherworldly grace. A shiver danced up my spine. He’d come out tonight for one reason and one reason only: to kill.

  The Wraith’s unnerving stillness ignited the most ancient parts of my brain with primal fear. Even if I couldn’t see his face, his lethality was apparent. For the first time in years, real terror clenched my chest. I gripped my iron knife tighter.

  I didn’t see him coming, didn’t catch the tensing of muscles that normally signaled an oncoming attack. Just the whoosh of wind, a blur of black, and the Wraith slammed my wrist against the brick wall behind me. The force felt like he’d cracked my bones, and I dropped the knife. He kicked it away, and it spun off down the alleyway.

  So.
This was going well so far.

  The Wraith flickered away from me again, now behind Aengus.

  Bollocks. The other knives were packed deep within my bug-out bag, and now all I had access to were the hawthorn stakes in my hair. Hawthorn wouldn’t kill them, but jammed in the right places, it would certainly slow them down. In the future, I’d be strapping iron knives all over myself.

  Assuming I got out of here alive.

  Aengus stared at me. “Arianna,” he said. “You’re a demi-fae. You’re supposed to be in a fae realm, but you’re not. You should have submitted to our laws long ago. Do you know what we do to outlaws like you?”

  My blood ran cold. “What makes you say that I’m fae?” I asked.

  “We can smell our kind.” Aengus’s brow furrowed. “If you can be considered our kind at all. Your fae scent isn’t noble, even if it is alluring.”

  My entire body had gone rigid with tension, and I reviewed all my combat lessons in hyper-speed. “Two on one isn’t really a fair fight, is it?”

  A half-smile curled Aengus’s beautiful lips. “Who said anything about fairness?”

  That was all the warning I got before he lunged for me. In the next moment, his hand was around my neck, but I slammed my forearm into his, knocking his hand off my throat.

  Baleros’s fourth law of power: Always anticipate your enemy’s actions.

  My gaze darted to the Wraith, and I realized I had absolutely no idea how to predict his actions, because what the hell?

  But Aengus was clearer. By the tensing of his muscles, I knew he was about to strike again.

  He swung for me. Despite his speed, I managed to catch his fist in my palm. I twisted his arm, then gripped him by the back of his hair, driving his face down hard into my knee. Crack.

  Crush your enemies completely.

  I yanked out a stake, ready to plunge it into his back, but he was up again within moments.

  Unusually strong, even for a fae.

  His fist slammed me hard in the jaw, dizzying me. It had been a long time since I’d taken a hard hit, and I was out of practice.

  Still, I recovered fast enough. Before he got the chance to hit me again, I thrust my stake hard into his neck. Blood spurted. It wasn’t iron, so it wouldn’t kill him, but he wouldn’t be getting up any time soon.

  I pulled the second stake from my hair, ready to take on the Wraith.

  Except—he wasn’t there anymore. I didn’t even see him moving for me, I just felt the force of his body twisting my arm, spinning me in the other direction. He slammed me into the wall of the alley. The cold stone bit into my cheek. He had me completely pinned, his powerful body pressing against mine. Before, I’d sensed something like indifference from him. Now, given the ferocity of his grip, it was a little more like cold-blooded wrath. Firm muscles pressed against me, completely rooting me in place.

  I wasn’t used to anyone being able to dominate me, and hot fury—mixed with fear—gripped me. Maybe the Wraith really was the Devil himself.

  This was it. Baleros had no rule to describe this situation, because I was never supposed to let myself get pinned like this in the first place. My mind raced wildly as I waited for the pain that would usher me into the afterlife.

  But instead of an iron blade severing my jugular, I felt the searing pain of magic at the nape of my neck.

  Then, the force of his body disappeared.

  When I whirled around again, both fae were gone. I stared only at the shadowy, cobbled street. I put my hand to my heart, catching my breath. And as I did, I realized I was clutching a piece of paper. I wasn’t even clear how I’d gotten the paper, but as I unfolded it—with shaking hands—I found a note inscribed in unexpectedly feminine looping letters.

  We will return for you. You will join the Shadow Fae, or you will die on the execution block.

  What in the name of seven hells?

  Exhaustion burned through me. They’d left me alive, and I’d survived the fight—but I had no idea why. Fear scratched at the back of my mind. Somehow, the mystery of whatever they had planned for me was more unnerving than the idea of death itself.

  I crossed out of the alleyway, shaking all over.

  The sight of the Institute’s blazing spires sent a shiver of admiration up my spine. I hated my reaction to the place. It was a symbol of oppression, of domination and conquest, and I couldn’t help but be awed by the vibrant display of magic.

  And now—for reasons I couldn’t fathom—they wanted me to join them behind its walls.

  Chapter 4

  I woke curled in a ball on top of a pile of laundry and lollipop wrappers, certain I’d just snapped out of a terrible nightmare. It was still night, and a quick glance at my phone told me I’d only been asleep for a half hour. In fact, I was still wearing my rumpled miniskirt.

  I rubbed my eyes, flicking on my phone’s light.

  It took me nearly a full minute to remember what had happened earlier, and then it all came crashing down on me like a storm wave. The vampires, the spell-slayers. The disturbing and unfamiliar feeling of being helpless, my body pinned against a wall. The threat that I could either join them or die.

  Something about the night—maybe the magical spell they’d applied to my neck—had exhausted me so much that I’d just collapsed as soon as I’d returned home to my East London shithole, completely disoriented.

  I scurried over to my bug-out bag, rifling through my last medical supplies and road flares until I found an iron knife with a leather sheath. I strapped the sheath around my thigh.

  Now, adrenaline pumped in my veins, and I yanked open the door, heading for the communal bathroom. Rufus didn’t pay me much, and until I saved up, I was squatting with ten other people in an abandoned apartment.

  I shared the bathroom with all my house-mates, including a fifty-year-old man who called himself Uncle Darrell and a woman who permanently wore a bathing cap and asked anyone within earshot if she could borrow hand lotion. I donated a bottle to her at least once a week, though I’d rather pull out my own teeth than learn what she did with it.

  At the end of the hall, I slammed through the door into the bathroom. I tried to ignore Uncle Darrell, who was hanging out in a towel and flip-flops on the edge of the bathtub. I often found him here in the middle of the night.

  “Have I ever told you what I do on the weekends?” he began.

  Please don’t.

  “I connect to the power of the earth,” he went on. “Bury my manhood in the fresh forest soil.”

  Vomit. “How about we don’t have this discussion?”

  “My shaman says it’s gotta be the whole ballsack and not just the shaft. It’s quite the commitment, going out into nature.”

  “Could you not just use a potted plant in the comfort of your own living room?” No idea why I was prolonging this conversation.

  He scratched his chin. “I’m not sure that would work, but I’ll try it.”

  Again—how had these people survived an apocalypse?

  I rummaged around in the cabinet below the sink, while Uncle Darrell relayed the mild embarrassment he’d felt when a badger caught him balls-deep in Mother Earth. At last, I found a hand mirror, and I pulled it out.

  I turned around, using it to look at the back of my neck. And there, glowing on my spine, was a faint, golden rune—a fae mark that I couldn’t read.

  My hands shook as I dropped the mirror on the side of the sink. I didn’t know exactly what it meant, but if I had to guess, the spell-slayers would use it to track me, and it might explain my weird fatigue. So, the Wraith hadn’t been kidding when he’d said I’d have to join them or die.

  I wouldn’t give them the chance.

  “You ain’t listening, are ya’?” yelled Uncle Darrell.

  “Scrotum. Dirt. Got it.”

  I raced back to my dark room. My heart thumping, I slammed through the door.

  My emergency backpack lay by the door, and I frantically unzipped it. I retrieved the headlamp, clamping it on my
head.

  Then, I found my sharpest knife. I was quickly developing a plan. I’d cut off the tracking mark, then I’d escape London. Maybe I’d go to Edinburgh, take on a new identity, dye my hair black or something.

  Kneeling on the floor, I pulled the silver dagger from my bag, and I brought it to the skin on the back of my neck, pressing the blade into my nape.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Cold fear shot through my blood. I knew that voice—the lilting aristocratic fae accent. A voice from my most violent nightmares. And the sweet sent of rosewater—a smell from my nightmares.

  I didn’t think this day could actually get any worse.

  I turned, and the light from my headlamp beamed over a man I’d hoped never to see again. Already, I was shaking at the sight of him. How had he even gotten in here?

  Of course, he’d once been a spell-slayer, too. He knew how to move in the shadows.

  Even though he was a member of the fae nobility, he’d cultivated a scruffy look. Baggy woolen trousers with thick navy and white stripes, a handlebar mustache, a bit of stubble. Pink cheeks, and eyes a deep copper, flecked with gold. He looked like an impoverished Victorian clown, but I knew the truth. He was actually a noble fae who viewed himself as king of the miscreants. Lord of the monsters. He’d created a world for himself where he was treated like an emperor. Like a god, even.

  It was all part of his act. He wanted everyone outside the arena to underestimate him. I’d never make that mistake—which is why I didn’t try to jam my knife into his eye socket right then and there.

  “What are you doing here?” I spat out. The bastard already haunted my thoughts. Now he’d invaded my room?

  He shrugged. “I’ve been watching you, of course. I’d never let anyone as valuable as you out of my sight. A delicate beauty and a ruthless killer in one perfect package. The Amazon Terror. I’ve missed you terribly.”

  My jaw clenched. He was already getting to me. “I’m not a ruthless killer anymore. Those days ended when the spell-slayers shut down your arena.”