He picked his way across the room, stepping over the beast’s slender tail. Its six legs splayed out on either side of its black, scaled body; its long, chapped tongue unfurled from its mouth like a tired flag.

“This one’s called a viper,” he said. “See how its body is long and thin, like a serpent’s? Vulnerable spots are here, under its chin, and here.” He pointed. “Where its back legs meet its belly. Besides that, their hides are nearly as tough as stone. Very hard to kill. But I’d rather face one of these any day than a raptor. At least vipers can’t fly.”

Eliana crouched, slow and wary. She stared at the creature’s clouded yellow eye. Its thin pupil shifted slowly, watching her.

“Where did it come from?”

Patrik raised his eyebrow. “Well, that’s the wild part. I’ll tell you what Simon told me. That’s how we met, actually. He saved me from a viper attack. It was a little one, only half the size of this one. But big enough. Most of them are across the ocean on the eastern continent. They came through the Gate. But every now and then, one of them makes it over here. They’re clever. Hard to catch. Soon, I imagine, they’ll be everywhere.”

“They came through the Gate.” A shiver tapped merrily down her spine. “They’re from the Deep?”

A sad smile softened Patrik’s face. “Hob would do a better job of telling the story. He’s like your Remy, you know. Fascinated with these stories, with the Old World, with all the legends I’d long thought were nonsense. But it turns out the world is just as outrageous as those stories say it is.”

“So I’ve discovered,” Eliana said hollowly, forcing her thoughts thin and slippery so they could not fix on the memory of Remy.

Patrik glanced up at her. “Simon told me that when the angels were in the Deep, they tried to find a way out, and in doing so, they tore a hole between the Deep and the world beyond it.”

Eliana nodded. “Zahra mentioned the idea of other worlds to me.”

“He had a name for it. I can’t remember.” Patrik frowned for a moment. Then his face brightened. “Hosterah. That was its name. The world of the cruciata.”

“So when the angels came through the Gate…”

“They brought some of these beasts with them,” Patrik finished grimly. “Simon told me the angels are doing everything they can to shove them back into the Deep, keep them from flooding through and overrunning our world. But that seems to be a difficult task, even for them.”

Eliana rose, backing away from the beast. Its legs and torso were attached to the planked floor with chains so heavy they had dug deep furrows into its flesh, but she still didn’t relish the idea of being near it.

“What does any of this have to do with Zahra’s box?” she asked.

“See that?” Patrik pointed at the nearest chain. “Cruciata blood.”

Eliana inched closer and, squinting, saw that the chain was indeed wet—but not with any blood that she had seen before. Instead of red, it was a deep, rich blue, like the eastern sky at sundown.

“There’s a particular weapon you can forge, using cruciata blood,” Patrik said. “It’s called a blightblade, and it’s lethal to angels. Well, not lethal, exactly, but if an angel is stabbed with one, the angel will get sucked up into the blade and will stay there, trapped, leaving the human body they were inhabiting empty and useless.”

Eliana thought quickly. “There must be a huge market for this. People who forge blightblades, sell them to rebel factions. Angels, trying to buy them up so they’re hard to find.”

Patrik nodded. “And they’re hard to forge too. Very tricky process, and only a few ingenious fools have managed to perfect the process. One’s in Meridian, a nasty old man named Rufian. Woman who caught this one”—he nodded at the viper—“is a friend of mine. And by ‘friend’ I mean a woman I got marvelously drunk with in Vintervok two days before I met Harkan. She’s mad. She hunts these things and sells them to the highest bidder.”

“And this?” Eliana withdrew Zahra’s box from her pocket. In the dim lamplight, the metal gleamed its strange copper, each plate layered with violet-and-blue waves so deep it looked possible to dive into the metal and sink forever.

“To be honest, I’ve never seen anything like that structure,” Patrik admitted. “A box instead of a blade. But the metal it’s made of… Simon had a blightblade once, and I’ll never forget the look of the blade. That bizarre copper color, always shifting and iridescent. Like a bird’s wing gone liquid.” He nodded at the box in her palm. “It looked just like that.”

Eliana went very still. “But when I asked Simon about this, he seemed as ignorant as I was. He told me nothing about it. He acted as though he’d never seen such a thing.”

“Well, then,” Patrik said after a moment. “I don’t know why, but Simon lied.”

25

   Rielle

“I know you’re still in Kirvaya, but my head is full of anxious storms, and writing you helps quiet them. Ingrid brought home a dead beast, Audric. That’s at least part of what’s been slaughtering our soldiers in the east—and yours as well, I suspect. It is a beast unlike any I’ve ever seen, made of melded parts. Tiger and bear and bird. And even, I think, dragon. I know, it sounds ludicrous, and Ingrid thinks I’m a fool for entertaining the idea. But its hindquarters are scaled. Tough and spiked, lightly furred. Do you think angels could be controlling these creatures? And how were such beasts created in the first place? We have many questions and no answers. Meanwhile, the attacks continue. Every two weeks, one of my outposts is sacked in the night, the bones of its soldiers left scattered, the snow at its gates painted red.”

—A letter written by King Ilmaire Lysleva to Prince Audric Courverie, dated December 27, Year 998 of the Second Age

Faced with Ludivine’s quietly furious gaze and Audric’s desolate one, Rielle at first could not speak.

She stood awkwardly, rigid, unsure whether it would be best to proceed as if nothing had happened—as though she hadn’t in fact recently been kissing Corien, as though her skin wasn’t still tingling, awakened by his touch—or if she should instead go on the offensive, though she didn’t feel as if she had much ground to stand on, depending on what Audric knew.

She drew a breath and managed only to say, “Oh. Hello.”

Audric’s gaze fell to the shield in her hands. Already, the heat of the hearth fire was melting the layer of ice and snow encrusting the metal. Water dripped onto the carpet beside Rielle’s boots.

“Is that Marzana’s shield?” he asked quietly.