Nothing but masks. I’d seen how the others had died—astonished their entitlement to life had finally run out.
Stop playing games, part of me thought, though it was difficult, through a haze. My brain was fogging up. I had come here to find the woman. I needed to speak with her. Games of power, forcing others to acknowledge power—that was a waste. I had no time to waste though I couldn’t remember why. I could barely remember the anger that had been so fresh only moments before.
I turned from the man and walked down the hill. I barely felt the ground beneath me—floating inside my own skin, floating on the edges of another world. A hand grabbed the back of my neck, fisting my hair—a touch I barely felt. A man’s scream filled the air, abruptly lapsing into silence. Ash floated past me.
I was facing the robed men when it happened, witnessed the widening of their eyes, the splash of color in their cheeks. One of them reached down for the woman on the ground—who rolled swiftly away to her feet. Chains dragged from her ankles; her attackers had not finished binding her.
I started running. Faster than I’d ever run before, nearly flying with each step. The men froze, staring at me—careful masks finally breaking into fear.
Just before I reached them, they disappeared. Blinked out. I was so close I felt the air suck inward to fill the space where they’d been standing. I should have been surprised, but I felt nothing at losing them. I kept moving toward the woman I’d come for and tore away the leather gag.
She spat on the ground, eyes bloodshot. “Hunter.”
Her name was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t reach for it through the haze. It didn’t seem important, either.
“Hunter,” said the woman again, but I ignored her. Something was still wrong.
I looked down at my arms, saw movement across my skin; obsidian muscles slithering in tight coils, veins of quicksilver pulsing, threading beneath shifting claws and glinting eyes.
My boys.
My head cleared a little, but that only made the uneasiness deepen. My boys rarely moved during the day, and only out of necessity. This was . . . pained. As if they were writhing in their sleep.
And as soon as I thought it, I felt it—that agonized pull against my body, the boys struggling against my skin. I stared at them, lost. My mind, still trapped in death, hunger, anger—part of me a million miles removed from my own body—as if I didn’t really exist. All of this, just a dream.
It is a dream, whispered the darkness, so close inside my mind that for a moment I thought I’d spoken those words out loud.
Whose dream? I asked, trying to remember why I was so angry, what had happened to bring me here to this moment. It shouldn’t have been difficult. I had to remember—
—my daughter.
Cold dread washed from my chest into my stomach, with such force my knees buckled. I didn’t fall down, but I might as well have; giant bears could have been kickboxing each other in the nuts, and I wouldn’t have noticed.
My daughter.
I yanked up my shirt, found my stomach covered in tattoos: a slow whirling churn of dark, gleaming bodies, spiraling around my navel like a demonic galaxy. I stared, running my hands over my stomach. My fingers lingered over my abdomen, a spot just to the left of my hip. I couldn’t see an injury beneath the boys—but I felt the tenderness of that spot, a soft deliberate ache.
“Fuck,” I muttered, and then again, louder. “Fuck.”
My back was still sore—and now that I was paying attention to my body, so was my neck from the sword attack. My waist, as well, from that damn whip. I wasn’t really injured, not that I was aware. But I could feel pain.
Impossible.
I wasn’t as invulnerable as I should have been. Something was wrong with the boys. The disease, perhaps. Zee had said they could heal me once they were on my skin. But if it made them sick, too . . . if it hurt them . . .
I took a deep breath, but it didn’t calm the torment. Worse, the darkness was awake. The darkness had been awake for some time, but this was different: Its presence hummed through me like a current of black lightning. It didn’t hurt, but it made me feel . . . altered.
Alive, whispered the darkness. You are coming alive, Hunter.
I was alive before, I replied, troubled and afraid at how easily I had reached for that power, how little remorse I felt using it. Not the first time that had happened, but never had it felt so seamless . . . as if I didn’t know where I began and the darkness ended. I couldn’t see the line. I couldn’t feel it.
And if I couldn’t feel it, I couldn’t tear it apart.
You would break yourself, came that soft hiss, coiling around my heart and squeezing, gently. For nothing more than a mask. You cling to masks of who you think you should be. Who you believe is safe. But that is not being alive.