Blackheart Ghosts

by Laure Eve

Genres: Arthurian

Synopsis

A half-drowned stranger turns up at the door of Garad Gaheris, retired King's Champion, with a hell of a story to tell. The ex-knight may have uncovered a conspiracy involving the very highest echelons of London's elite.

'A riveting tragedy of blood and desire. A masterwork of urban fantasy - and the coolest thing you'll read this year' -SAMANTHA SHANNON on Blackheart Knights

Current King's Champion Si Wyll, a master illusionist, still reeling from the betrayal of his lover and the death of his mentor, is poised to become the most dangerous man in London. Then a figure from his past surfaces, determined to blackmail him into a plot to change the balance of power for good.

'A brilliant, bloody wild' - JAY KRISTOFF on Blackheart Knights

And the city's godchildren, those born with illegal magical abilities, have had enough of being put down - but who must die to ensure their ascension?

Read more

Release date: March 30, 2023

Publisher: Jo Fletcher Books

Print pages: 427

Sample

Silent buildings watch the river give birth.

A watery figure emerges from its black-mirror depths, heaving and crawling up the scud bank of gritty mud some enterprising salesperson had, one time in the recent past, named a ‘beach’. There is a sign to this effect, unnoticed by the figure as it stumbles past, except as a convenient lever for one hand to grip in its desperate haul away.

The figure reaches the top, mud giving way to hard, packed dirt and a maze of rearing warehouses beyond. It takes trembling steps, dripping and leaking as it moves, its boots damp thumps. Weak moonlight picks out the drops clinging to the stubby hairs on its bowed head. Cross-strings of riotous city light on the river’s far bank bisect the horizon behind its stumbling form.

It trips, topples to a knee, and the defeated crumpling in its shoulders suggests it might not get up again. There it stays, one moment, two, and the riverland’s warehouses seem to nod to each other and themselves – just another victim.

Then the figure jerks, heaving upwards as if electrified by the sudden terror in giving up. Stumbling on, leaving dark footprints in its wake, it disappears down an opening as wide as a boulevard between unnamed storage facilities that rear far upwards.

The warehouses mark its departure in silence.

*

‘Your desire?’ asks the gargoyle in a flat, featureless voice.

The projection hovers a foot out from the building’s front wall, thrusting into the space of anyone who dares approach. The figure examines the gargoyle’s fixed, open mouth and wide stare. The projection flickers once and then holds steady, its light matrix sophisticated enough to vaguely mimic the appearance of stone.

Whimsy. Who’d have thought the Silver Angel capable?

‘I need to see Garad,’ the figure tells the gargoyle, and then gives a violent cough.

‘No one by that name lives here,’ the gargoyle states.

‘Garad, I know it’s you,’ the figure insists. ‘Let me in.’

‘I don’t know you.’

The gargoyle projection must conceal a capturer, pointed directly at the face of anyone on the approach.

‘Please,’ the figure whispers. ‘Please, I can’t—’

She gives a great shiver and then collapses. It goes too slowly to seem real, knees folding and toppling the body forwards, which rebounds off the panel and swings the opposite way, stumbling back down the steps and pitching down on to the hard concrete street below.

When the figure knows more again, she finds herself lying on her side wrapped in blankets, her back pressed against a long spread of delicious warmth. A heated wall. More blankets soften the hard ground underneath. The rest of the room is sparse, bare and clean and well lit. A weapons rack is pushed into the far corner. Contortionist poles cut the room’s right third, fixed into ceiling and ground.

The figure levers herself upright by increments, elbows to hands to sitting. She is in the training room of Garad ‘the Silver Angel’ Gaheris, which is just big enough for one. She remembers being hauled up in arms and carried, but theoretically, knowing it was happening, rather than feeling the press of it, as if it were all done an inch away from her skin. It has taken perhaps hours, perhaps a lifetime, to get to Garad’s from riverside, and her whole body had grown numb, leaving her trotting unsteadily on stump legs with feet she couldn’t feel.

Someone in the room speaks.

‘How do you feel?’

It’s Garad, sat on a chair a little way away with a short sword laid across their knees, held there with one casual, gentle grip. The chair has been placed outside of the figure’s immediate range of motion. The Silver Angel has a reputation for caution.

The figure checks herself. Her nerves tingle and burn, revitalised from their slow freezing. She rubs her close-shaved head, relishing the feel of stubble and hard skull underneath.

‘More alive,’ she says. And then, as if it just occurred to her, ‘My thanks.’

‘How do they callian you?’

‘Ghost,’ she says.

‘Ghost,’ Garad echoes.

Ghost simply waits.

‘I don’t know anyone by the name of Ghost,’ Garad says.

Their expression is composed, even at ease, considering they have a half-drowned stranger in their secret apartment, the one no one is supposed to know about, because secret apartments are the sort of thing you make provision for when you’re as famous as Garad.

‘I’d be surprised,’ agrees Ghost.

‘We’ve never met.’

Ghost says, ‘No.’

This is not quite true, but there’s nothing to be done about it. Some things are necessary in the moment.

‘Why are you here and how did you find me?’ Garad asks, then pauses. ‘And why are you so wet?’

Ghost’s gaze settles briefly on the hand curled around the sword grip. Those long fingers held deceptively loose, fingers that had dealt crushing damage to their opponents over one of the most illustrious careers in the history of the Caballaria.

‘Someone just tried to kill me,’ Ghost says. ‘I’ll save you the bother of deductive reasoning – it involved a lot of water.’

‘How unfortunate. Had you made them angry?’

‘I think he mostly just enjoys it.’

That was to shock, and judging by the look on Garad’s face, it did its work.

‘As to why I’m here,’ continues Ghost, ‘I’ll get to that in a second. As to how I found you, well. How many people besides me know the location of this secret foxhole of yours?’

There is a heavy silence.

‘One,’ Garad says.

‘Neh.’ Ghost nods.

‘She told you.’ Garad leans forwards, and their fingers don’t look so loose any more. ‘Finnavair.’

Ghost swallows a sudden lick of fear. Nods again.

Garad sits back. ‘She’s dead,’ they say tonelessly.

‘I know.’

Silence.

‘You look a little like her.’

Ghost shrugs. ‘Neh, you’re not the first person to tell me that.’

‘How did you know her?’

‘I’m her sister.’

This hits.

‘I thought she didn’t have family,’ Garad says.

‘Not officially,’ Ghost agrees. ‘Anyway, not much of a family. There’s just me.’

‘What do you want from me?’

‘Fin sent me here.’

‘Why?’

Ghost holds up a hand. ‘First,’ she says, ‘I want to tell you my story. It explains everything, I promise you that. And at the end of it, you get to do whatever you want with me. ’Cord?’

‘I don’t like stories.’ There is definitely a grippy look about their hand. Their sword point nudges its way towards Ghost.

‘Funny, I thought you were a Caballaria knight,’ Ghost retorts. She is trembling – whether from fear, exhaustion, cold, or all three is hard to say – but her tone is resolute. ‘It’s past midnight, and you don’t strike me as the late-night bacchanal type, so I’m guessing you’ve nowhere else to be. You already know I’ve no surprises on me; you’d have searched me when you scraped me off your doorstep. Si Finnavair, though now she be through Marvol’s door, is the reason I’m here. And I have a story to tell you. A blow-this-city-wide-apart kind of story. And considering how London’s going these days, you might want to give it all a fair listen. ’Cord?’

Garad is a statue.

‘Do we have an accord?’ Ghost demands.

‘’Cord,’ Garad says. ‘Talk.’

At that, some of Ghost’s tension melts, enough to pull the blanket close and huddle into it.

‘Got any alcohol?’ she ventures.

The silence grows ominous.

Ghost sighs. The warm wall at her back steadies her enough to start it. Her eyes half close.

‘Showing up like a bad surprise at people’s doors is turning out to be a habit of mine,’ she admits. ‘Because it all began a lot like this.’

When Leon Manus Dei Pendegast o’Launitown opens his door to her, it takes him a moment to understand what he’s seeing, which he can hardly be blamed for.

‘Who are you?’ he says suspiciously.

‘Good eventide, Si,’ Ghost courteously begins.

‘Ehn? Si? I en’t a knight, and I don’t want any of whatever yer selling.’

‘You were a knight, a Rhyfentown guard captain, and I’m not selling anything.’

That gets his attention, as she’d hoped it would.

He peers at her. ‘How the fuck would you know about that?’

‘We’ve a friend in common,’ says Ghost.

‘Who?’

‘Finnavair Caballarias o’Rhyfentown.’

‘You think I’m friends with famous people? Besides, she’s upped and disappeared on everyone.’

‘She’s not disappeared,’ says Ghost. ‘She’s dead.’

Leon goes still. Then he gives a short sigh. ‘Thought so.’

Ghost holds tight. She’s already given him two shocks, and if she pushes him, he may well shut the door in her face just because. The light spilling around his frame has the weak, low-set quality of poor accommodation, and the man himself is hard to read. He has a craggy, rocklike face amid the outline of a hopefully benevolent troll.

Finally he remembers that she’s there. ‘Well?’ he asks. ‘What do you want, then?’

Ghost is careful. ‘She gave me your name, said you help people in trouble.’

Leon doesn’t move. ‘Come to call in the debt, have we?’ he says.

‘If that’s what gets me through the door.’

He suppresses a snort, turns it into a sniff. ‘I see.’

His eyes roam over her, taking in the white and grey allegiance charms that hang from her collar chain, and the tattoo on her hand of a small, ornate key, marking her as Marvoltown-born. There’s little fashion about her – she’s dressed to move – but maybe he notices that her clothes are well cut, good quality, marking her out from these surroundings with subtle notes.

Then he moves ponderously backwards, inviting her in.

Ghost suppresses the urge to collapse on him in relief as she follows him through the narrow hallway and into his apartment beyond. It’s as shabby as she suspected, a one-room clutter, void of any prettying features that might at least denote a home, rather than just shelter.

It took her a while to track Leon down. He left Rhyfentown and came here to Alaunitown years ago, and Fin hadn’t known exactly where he lived now. Even these days, moving districts isn’t quite as easy as a song. Leon’s fall, if Ghost is any judge, was a high one. Guard knights might not get paid as much as Caballaria knights, but it’s still a trickly career if you can get it, and he was a captain, no less. Now he’s in a one-room in a shit-streaked part of a totally different dis’.

‘Go and sit over there, warm up,’ he orders Ghost, pointing to the far wall. A large square of it has been painted a different colour of drab than its surroundings to denote the heated section, and underneath the square sits a sagging, open-backed divan.

‘I’m fine,’ Ghost says.

‘You’re shivering.’

Ghost reconnoitres herself. ‘So I am. It’s cold out.’

She settles on the divan, but Leon continues to stand.

She appraises his physical appearance. One of his eye sockets is devoid of an eyeball, sporting instead a stretch of puckered skin over jutting rims of skull bone. He lost it in his youth, in one of London’s many inter-district clashes, and has apparently always refused to wear a face overlay, eyepatch or anything that would conceal it, sporting his wound like a badge of pride.

She can’t help it. She probes the more recent wound. ‘How’s life after knighthood?’

‘I barely remember the before,’ he says, the short words speaking loud of long-nurtured hurt. ‘That’s all over, long time now.’

Nothing much harder than being an ex-knight. Ghost should know.

Now she’s one, too.

‘So what happened to Fin, then?’ Leon asks. ‘Whole of Rhyfentown dis’ has been in an uproar looking for her, so the glows say.’

‘I don’t know,’ Ghost says. ‘I just know that she didn’t come home.’

‘Maybe she’s hiding out at the palace with the King. They are lovers, after all,’ says Leon, his gruff voice curdled with disdain.

‘No, she’s not there.’ This doesn’t feel like enough, so she adds, ‘I’d know.’

‘Some people think he’s done something to her,’ Leon muses, ‘and Cair Lleon’s covering it up.’

‘Why would he, after risking so much by publicly announcing their relationship? No, something else happened.’

Leon folds his arms. ‘So you live with her.’

‘Lived.’

‘Lover?’

‘Sister.’

‘Fin was a war orphan; she never grew up with no sister.’

Ghost shrugs. ‘I came along later.’

‘I thought she never knew who her family was.’

‘She didn’t. I found her.’

‘Hm,’ Leon says with satisfaction, ‘after she got rich and famous, I war’nt. Why’d she keep you secret?’

‘Fifty questions and a throat smile if I get any of them wrong?’ Ghost replies pleasantly.

‘You showed up at my door,’ Leon points out. ‘And I still don’t know who you are.’

‘I’m Ghost,’ says Ghost, ‘and that’s all I can give you. Will you help me or not? You told Fin she could send anyone your way.’

‘That was a long time ago,’ says Leon.

‘Debts still need to get paid.’

He tips his head in acknowledgement. Evidently it was a deep one, the debt between them.

Leon rubs his face. ‘So what do you want? Trick? En’t got any.’ He gestures wryly to their surroundings.

‘No.’ Ghost pauses. ‘I need work.’

‘Work?’ Leon echoes, astonished. Then he breaks into a stuttering laugh. ‘Saints. You keep them surprises coming. That why you’re asking about my old life, is it? Well, I can’t get you into the guard. Those bridges were burned.’ He turns momentarily reflective. ‘Incinerated, really.’ Then he looks her up and down. ‘Anyway, they’d never let someone as tiny as you in. You look like you can barely hold a sword up.’

‘I’m not talking about the guard,’ says Ghost. ‘I’m talking about what you do now.’

‘And what do I do now, Lady Stranger?’

Moment of truth.

‘You hunt godchildren,’ she says, smooth as cream, though her heart, stuttering through a few sudden bumps, disagrees with her voice.

Leon cocks his head.

It seems to be the least favourite of all the surprises she’s thrown him so far.

‘Very knowledgeable, our Fin, for someone I hadn’t seen in ten years,’ he says, after a dangerous pause.

Ghost nods. ‘She kept track of you.’ Softer: ‘She cared about you. She said you were a bit of a pere to her, when she didn’t have one.’

Leon grunts. ‘Very talky, wasn’t she.’ But Ghost can see her carefully chosen words have landed a hit – the crags of his face seem softer in turn. ‘What do you want to be a God’s Gun for?’ He eyes her. ‘It en’t a good choice.’

‘I don’t have another.’

‘’Course you do. Pretty thing like you.’

Ghost laughs. ‘If I didn’t need you so much right now, I’d give your face a kiss of my fist for that.’

‘Just a joke. Saints. Fin had a sense of humour, at least.’

‘I’m not Fin,’ says Ghost.

‘No,’ says Leon sourly. ‘But whoever you are and whatever you’ve done that you’re running from, you still got choices, and I’m not the best of them. I don’t work well with others.’

‘Couldn’t you just introduce me to whoever hires you, so I can at least—’

‘Don’t work like that. It’s shadier than a well’s end, this business. You got one lot of people thinking we’re little better than bounty hunters, the other lot thinking we’re worse than that, and if anything goes wrong, no one’s coming to rescue you. The ones hired you deny all knowledge, and then you’re fucked. Add to that, it’s badly paid, hard on the body, worse on the mind and you spend all yer time on yer own.’ He folds his arms. ‘Which suits me fine, I don’t like people. So you can already see how this en’t going to work out.’

This last part rings untrue – from what she’s seen so far, Leon strikes Ghost as someone profoundly lonely – but the rest sounds about right.

Still. No choice. Not for Ghost. This is the only avenue she’s got left.

‘Well, you’re not a pere to me,’ she says, ‘so how about a cock rub as a token of my gratitude?’

Leon’s one good eye narrows. He strides across the room and takes her roughly by the arm. For a minute she wonders if he’s marching her into a back room for a rough game – and frankly, she’s in admiration at the sudden, bold show of energy – until she sees that he’s hauling her to the front door.

Bad play.

He unlocks it, shoves her through.

Bad, bad play.

‘Wait,’ she protests, ‘I’m sorry, I just thought—’

‘You thought wrong. Get out.’

Saints, he’s furious.

Ghost turns quickly, searching for another in.

‘There’s no need to take things so damn serious, it was just a suggestion,’ she tries. ‘Wait, you can’t do this, you’re in debt to Fin!’

‘Can’t be in debt to the dead,’ he says.

‘Yes, you can, it’s called moldra lagha!’

Leon shuts the door in her face.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

‘I’ll just keep coming back!’ Ghost yells desperately into the door.

Leon’s muffled voice gruffs its way through the metal. ‘And I’ll just keep ignoring you!’

‘Neh? Forever? I don’t have any work, remember? I’ve got nothing better to do!’

Silence.

He’s gone. Gone into his cave and left her all alone.

Then she hears it. A short, annoyed sigh on the other side of the door.

Ghost grins in relief.

This is the communications hall of Cair Lleon, in the palace of London’s King.

It is a cavernous space, bereft of furniture, brightly lit with nowhere to hide. The sizeable herd of glows interviewers and their capturers are corralled by belly-level gates of iron that bisect the room, keeping them back from the King’s dais by a good few metres. They’d have to take a mighty leap to get over them, Wyll reassures himself, with an impossible run-up among the tangle of glows machinery and the knots of people manning it all. He is far enough away to be safe.

Wyll sits on the King’s chair, flanked by the King’s Saith, that inner circle of most trusted advisors who are, by now, almost as famous as he. His appearance this morning was greeted by a rising tide of applause, whistles and calls from the knot of glows people. Some are eager to approve recent events, some notably less so, Lucan tells him – but it’s hard to tell which is which in the noise, because when it’s loud enough, it all sounds the same.

Some commentators see the King’s recent public declaration of his lover, the fighter knight Finnavair ‘the Fair Fae’ Caballarias o’Rhyfentown, as a step towards stability and solidification, and a hint towards new progeny to strengthen the weakened line of Rhyfen. Some see it as a pointed unification between societal tribes. Opinion is loudly divided on whether this is a positive or a negative, but there is one thing everyone agrees on – the story is a decently sensational one. The once scandal-touched bastard-turned-King has chosen a once dirt-poor street rat-turned-celebrated knight to be his official mate. You don’t get much better than that on the glow shows.

The first thing commentators will later pick up on is that the King appeared a little preoccupied, perhaps even subdued, for such a happy occasion. Then again, Artorias Dracones has always been unusually shy about this area of his life. The second thing is that the lover herself was notably absent.

‘Our timing was poor,’ Wyll says to the interviewer who asks where she is. ‘The Lady Finnavair has had to go into immediate sequestering for her next fight. She takes her duties to the Caballaria as seriously as I take mine.’

‘Did you get time to, ah, say goodbye before she went?’ asks the interviewer, amid a roll of laughter.

‘Next question,’ Wyll answers, and the laughter swells.

The next question duly comes – ‘How did you first meet the Fair Fae?’ – and is easily answered, as are the next few. Lucan has prepared him well for them, and particularly the one they’ve been waiting for, which comes from a well-presented interviewer with a sour frown.

‘Sire, our watchers dearly want to know this most of all – why choose a Rhyfentown street rat as the King’s official lover? Just what message are you intending to send with this choice?’

‘It wasn’t a choice,’ Wyll says. ‘No one consciously chooses who they fall in love with. I think her background gives her strength of character, as mine did me. Those who get easy beginnings are in more danger of complacency, which can so often lead, in my personal opinion, to weakness.’

The well-presented interviewer says no more, but many around him whistle at the blow.

‘What do your family think of the match, Sire?’ another interviewer calls.

‘Such as they are?’ Wyll drily replies, which earns him fresh laughter. ‘Anyone who isn’t in favour of my happiness would surely have only shameful reasons for not being so.’

An adroit play – tamer questions now follow, citing a general lack of desire to be counted among the shameful, and just a few minutes later, the session is well concluded by the King’s charismatic communications advisor, Lucan Vastos Fenestris o’Senzatown.

*

‘You can take it off now,’ Lucan says. ‘It’s just us.’

He stands in front of Wyll, all business. They are in Art’s private palace apartments, together with the rest of Art’s Saith. Scattered behind Lucan are the others – Brune, her bladed legs sheathed in appropriately sharp-cut black trousers. Fortigo, the King’s personal vastos since the day he took the Sword nineteen years ago. Garad, the Silver Angel themself, and now retired King’s champion. Finally Lillath, the King’s Spider, leans against the nearest wall with her face set to neutral.

With an effort, Wyll lets go of his illusion. He sees his transformation reflected in the faces around him. Between blinks, their warm and beloved Art disappears, replaced by the Sorcerer Knight’s cold, hard lines.

‘Saints,’ murmurs Fortigo. ‘I—’ He checks himself, and says no more.

‘Terrifying, isn’t it?’ Lillath cheerfully replies.

Wyll ignores them both. The usual post-illusion fatigue is beginning to set in, not to mention the dip from the adrenalin rush that carried him through those interviews, and he needs to sit down. He fumbles his way to an armchair, a comfortable high-backed affair that is rapidly becoming his favourite spot, and sinks into it.

‘I think congratulations are in order,’ Brune says. ‘That was quite convincing.’

‘There were some errors in deportment,’ ponders Lucan. ‘We need to practise more.’

Lucan’s approach to practice can best be described as painfully anal. Another round of that and Wyll might break.

‘This subterfuge won’t hold for long,’ Fortigo says quietly. ‘There’s already talk around the palace about why the King missed all his appointments for a week. Granted, the assumption is that the Lady Fin was the cause, but if he keeps missing them—’

‘We need more time,’ Lucan argues, ‘until we have a better plan in place. Just a few more days.’

‘What do you want to do then?’ mutters Wyll. ‘Go on and announce that the best ruler in a century has been assassinated by his own secret godchild daughter?’

The ache that chases a complex illusion is starting up in his bones and it’s making him peevish. He can hear it, but he doesn’t care.

‘It wasn’t an assassination,’ says Lillath. ‘It was moldra lagha.’

‘Oh, good,’ Lucan retorts. ‘You and the rest of the commentators can spend days quibbling semantics while London descends into chaos.’

‘She was working alone, Lux.’

‘There’s no way to know that for sure.’

‘There’s no way to know anything for sure,’ Lillath evenly replies. ‘But the interrogations have been pretty thorough.’

Wyll resists the urge to scoff. He’d lay a ton of trick down that he’s the only one who knows what ‘thorough’ really means in the hands of someone like Lillath.

‘That’s no guarantee,’ Lucan says. ‘Red has been knight-trained in mental-strength tactics as well as the physical, thanks to his beneficence.’ He nods to Wyll.

‘Lux, come on—’

Wyll stirs. ‘He’s right. She’s been trained by the best. We can’t guarantee that she didn’t have help,’ Lillath’s mouth opens to argue but Wyll rides on, ‘even if she was unaware of it herself.’

‘Well, obviously whoever is behind it wants the Sword,’ Brune observes. ‘And obviously they’re absolutely fine with killing whoever stands in their way.’

A heavy silence follows this. Wyll can practically feel the fear rising off them all and beginning to stink up the room.

‘She was yours, Wyll,’ comes a low voice. ‘You found her. You nursed her, you made her into a knight. And then you brought her into the palace.’

Garad is a darkened, towering presence at the back of them all. An angel indeed, wings protectively spread. Saints know they’ve never been on the best of terms. It was at Art’s request that Garad took on a younger Wyll and trained him up as the next King’s champion, with all the diligence their imperious piety required. Always done in service to their first master, the Caballaria, and their second, the King, and all against their own personal judgement.

It must be hard, Wyll can admit, to like your usurper. It must be even harder when your usurper is a godchild. But that doesn’t mean he has to take bigoted shit from them.

‘I know what it looks like, Garad,’ he retorts. ‘But I loved him. I served him. Same as the rest of you. Do I need to prove it with my fists?’

‘I’m not too old for it, Sorcerer Knight.’

‘Stop it,’ Brune cuts in. ‘Fighting like this solves none of our problems. I think we can all agree that saving Art’s life at Mafelon may just negate the probability that Wyll would want to conspire assassination now, don’t you?’

Garad’s silence says a lot. It says, for example, that Mafelon was three years ago. It says that things change, as all things must.

‘What about Fin? Excuse me, the Lady Finnavair?’ Garad asks instead.

Lillath stirs. ‘She’s still missing. Her trainers haven’t seen her since that last bout. You know, the one where Art—’

‘—made a fool of himself?’ Garad says frostily. ‘How could we forget?’

Garad the Monk, they are known, their romantic life so opaque it’s been speculated not to exist. It might just be that famed disdain for public love, or it might be something more. From its inception, Garad had struggled to hide an animosity towards the relationship between Fin and Art. Wyll has occasionally wondered if their steadfast adoration of their oldest friend ever had the tinge of romantic love. Has Garad hated every girl Art ever turned his head for because of it?

Lucan shrugs. ‘Maybe she’s in hiding? It must have been rather overwhelming, having the King of London invade the end of your fight and declare his love for you in front of the entire world.’

‘What about her friends?’ Garad asks. ‘Don’t they know where she is?’ Silence greets this. ‘For the love of the saints, she must have some.’

‘She does,’ Lillath says, nodding. ‘She’s friends with Red. They’ve become quite close since Red moved to Blackheart.’

The news drops like a trick bomb.

The group exchange glances.

‘Are we saying,’ Lucan puzzles it out slowly, ‘that Art’s illegitimate daughter and his recently acknowledged lover conspired to murder him, or . . .?’

Garad abruptly pushes off from their slouch against the wall. ‘This is ridiculous. Why are we wasting time playing idle speculation games? What does it solve? Art is dead, and we’re sitting around play-acting, lying to everyone, and using a godchild to do it. It’s disgusting. It’s immoral.’

By all means, thinks Wyll, say what you really feel about me.

‘Garad,’ Lucan’s light voice holds a warning tone, ‘we need to stick together on this. If any of us give even a hint of wrong, to anyone, everything comes tumbling down. You see that, don’t you?’

Garad steams.

‘Garad? Are you with us?’

Even with the eyes of the room on them, the eyes of their oldest friends, there is no crumbling. It deserves a begrudging amount of respect. It’s hard not to respect Garad, even as it is easy to mock them.

‘I won’t lie like this for much longer,’ they say.

And suddenly Wyll can almost see it – the effort it has been costing them to do it, like a heavy, mottled grey demon that squats on their shoulders, weighing them down, claws sunk into their back.

Lucan poorly conceals the look of bafflement engendered by someone to whom lying comes as second nature.

‘A few more weeks,’ he repeats.

Garad gives a stiff nod, pushes off from the wall, and leaves the room.

The door closes with a quiet click.

Lucan twitches.

‘Let it go,’ Brune says to him. ‘They’re in pain. Let it go.’

‘Well, who here isn’t in pain, Brune?’ Lucan’s smile is furiously brittle. ‘Who here isn’t having to go on and pretend that their heart hasn’t just been ripped right out of their chest? But you lick your wounds on your own time. Here and now, we stay and we fix this, together. If anyone else disagrees, by all means, head for the door.’

No one moves.

Lucan nods. ‘Good. Now let’s make some plans.’

And then he looks at Wyll.

‘What?’ Wyll says warily.

‘The Fair Fae’s disappearance is worrying. If she was a part of this, that gives us a lead. We need more from the . . . daughter’ – Lucan hesi