Night of Masks and Knives (The Broken Kingdoms Book 4)

Four days after the one-sided deal with Inge, stained bandages wrapped my shoulders.

The Kryv took to heart preparing for the viciousness of the Masque av Aska and sparred mercilessly. Tomorrow, I’d have a ghastly bruise under my eye where Lynx knocked me with his elbow, but Gunnar would have a swollen jaw. Fiske might have a new scar over his brow to always remember me by.

Hip joints, shoulders, and the small of my back protested on my sleeping mat. I rubbed my swollen eyes, exhausted as I strode into the washroom. Without a soothing balm or herb of some kind, I wouldn’t be sleeping.

At night, Felstad was magical. Sconces cast ghostly figures across the weathered stones, and the mugginess outdoors left mists and damp on the windows. Light wasn’t gilded or white as in the day, but bluer with a touch of violet, as if shadows stood watch over the haven when the sun faded. Galleys and arcades crossed with hallways and stairwells in a scope I hadn’t explored entirely.

Wet stone on my tongue, the chill of my bare feet, brought comfort and a sense of home.

Using my shoulder, I shoved out of the washroom, yawning, and rubbing the minty balm on my elbows and the back of my neck.

Light crossed in an adjoining hall one bend from my shared room. Behind the door, parchment rustled. Gods, did Kryv ever sleep?

The old study was small and oblong with shelves of dusty leather books and old vellum, few chairs, and wiry pelt rugs.

And the Nightrender.

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. Injury hadn’t hindered Kase from molding into a force of strength and power. I studied the planes of his bare, scarred back, unashamed.

He leaned over a long center table, staring at something sprawled over the surface. One hand covered his left eye, then he switched and placed his right hand over his right eye.

″Couldn’t sleep?” I asked.

Kase turned, his face discomposed, and he hurriedly slipped the tunic he’d draped on the back of a chair over his head.

He began rolling up the sheets of thin parchment. “You are getting rather sly.”

He was distressed, and soon I understood—I had distressed him.

I buried my own unease beneath a grin. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Something pressing keeping you up?”

″No, just going over a few things.”

″Don’t stop because of me. I can’t sleep, for I think I’ve bruised every bone in my body,” I said, holding up the jar of balm. “I would very much like a feather bed right now.”

″Ah, perhaps in the morning we can see who owes the Kryv a favor and get one.”

I snickered and scanned the table.

″What’s all this?” I reached for the gauzy paper. Sketches bled through and eventually pieced together layers of intricate drawings of partitions, full rooms, structures of canopies and walking paths through the transparent sheets.

Kase rubbed the back of his neck. “These are your masquerade plans.”

″I like how you call them my plans.”

″You did the work. The masquerade will be held in the back courtyard of the palace. I was trying to get an idea of any changes to the land and architecture.”

Newly added drawings for a fifth tower were plotted on the south side. The building had two main entrances, one facing the sunrise, the other the sunset. But on a second sheet were dozens of webbed corridors and passages built underneath the tents and removable ballroom where the guests of the masquerade danced into the dawn.

″Bleeding skies,” I said and held up another sheet. “There is an underground boathouse.” Kase didn’t answer. I tried again. “Did you see this? It’s only been added this last turn.” I pointed at the dimensions. “It leads from beneath the palace to the river. Must’ve taken expert planning to carve out without toppling the entire building. Here, look.”

Surely an entire river system under the mansion would be useful, but he frowned and rolled the sheet. “It’s late. I’ll look at them later.”

″I can’t look?” My face flushed in annoyance. “Or do you want me to leave because you still aren’t comfortable with me being here?”

Kase glowered, then tossed the designs across the table. “Be my guest. Look.”

″I’d rather know your thoughts. Out of the people in this room, I’m the least experienced at scheming.”

″I’m not sure about that.”

His stance barred against me, as though I were an icy storm beating him down. Perhaps I should’ve felt foolish for thinking Kase might drop his walls and step out of his armor. Instead, I was angry. A delirious kind. I slammed one hand on the table. “Fine. I understand. I’ll leave.”

″What are you going on about?”

″You obviously don’t want me to be here. I thought we’d stepped beyond some things, but I was wrong. Goodnight.”

He followed me with his eyes. “Are you always so sensitive?”

I chuckled grimly. “When I’m this exhausted, this sore, and this furious at life, yes, I get rather sensitive.”

″Sit down.” He took a deep breath and braced against the table. When I didn’t budge, he urged me to sit with a jerk to his head and waited until I complied. His voice lowered to a dark whisper. “I didn’t notice the boathouse.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, even more irritated. “Forgive me. Next time, I’ll let you scan all the pages before I take a look, so you can know everything first.”

″That’s not what I meant, and if you’d still that temper of yours for a damn moment, perhaps I could explain.” His tone was different, vulnerable, and he wouldn’t look at me. “I’ve already checked every page twice, and I still don’t know how many tents there will be, or that a boathouse existed.”

At least seven sheets of new and old design drawings were scattered across the table. The Nightrender was the dark fae of the land, a ghost, slier than any fox in the brush. And he’d missed a glaring opportunity.

″What are you trying to say?”

Kase tapped one finger on the edge of the table, opened his mouth a few times, then changed his mind as if gathering his thoughts. Finally, he looked at me directly. “I don’t . . . read.” He quickly recanted. “I mean, I can read, just not well. Something is different with my eyes.”

I reeled through my memories of reading with Kase. As children, I told him stories. At Salvisk’s he’d tossed the ledger of cheeries at me. “Different in what way?”

The Nightrender shifted on his feet. I couldn’t recall ever seeing him so out of sorts. At last, he sighed. “Everything moves about. I’ll blink and a term or measurement will flip or jump to the top of the page. Takes me hours to read a sheet. I’ve always struggled.”

For as long as I’d known Kase Eriksson, I never knew this. “You could’ve just said something. Did you think I’d taunt you?”

″I don’t know. I’ve never told anyone.” He cleared his throat and stared at the sheets.

″But you’re telling me?”

″Because you stick your nose in everyone’s bleeding business, and you have this annoying habit of getting me to talk.”

I grinned but heat stung my cheeks. “Someone needs to.

He covered an eye again. “This helps.”

I watched him squint at the boathouse dimensions for a time before I blurted out my own confession. “The memories I steal terrify me.”

Kase looked up, and I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. He seemed intent to hear more. Didn’t he split a piece of his armor, giving me a peek inside? I could do the same.

I scooted to the edge of my chair, fiddling with the corner of one sheet of paper. “I hated stealing them because I knew I’d witness something horrible. Sometimes I would cry, then when I sold them, I would pretend as if they hardly mattered. As if I enjoyed the brutality. Eventually, I started to believe I did.”

″There is nothing shameful about despising brutal things.”

″Nor is there shame if the written word is difficult to understand.” I challenged him with a raised brow. He frowned and glanced back at the parchment, but I had a feeling I was winning the argument. I nudged his hand with mine. “If you’d like me to help, I’d like to stay.”

Kase considered me for a moment before turning over the designs to my side of the table. He sat next to me, cautiously, and asked about specific things: ledges with spikes or smooth surfaces, tent sizes and shapes, what would be inside, and how many folk could squeeze in. He asked how windows on the palace were latched, how many stairwells, serf quarters, barracks for skydguard.

Like he did with Dagny’s mud drawing, I circled important areas with a charcoal pen, even doodled things like water for the boathouse, or a crown for Ivar’s chambers.

Kase rubbed his eyes after the candle melted to nothing more than a bulge of wax. I sipped a pungent tea I’d brewed to keep us awake, and still, my eyes were heavy.

″What do you think?” I asked.

″We’re facing a challenge, but I’d expect nothing less.”

″We will not have long to pull this off.” My fingers drummed over the passage at the top of one page, a sort of schedule of events. There was a single line that’d caught my attention: slutet av handeln. Trade end.

We took ‘trade’ to mean the hidden Alver barter for Niall’s future bride.

″Until the twelfth toll,” Kase said soberly. He pointed to a vast circle of chambers under the central rooms of the palace, all connected with crisscrossed corridors and passages built around a center room. “How you described this, I’ve no doubt this will be where they hold the trade.”

″Then that is where you will put me.”

″You’ll put yourself there.”

I didn’t care for this plan. To seduce Doft had been different—he’d been there for pleasure, and to be clear, I did not do an exceptional job at seduction. To convince the Heir Magnate I should be his choice, to pose as some exotic, mysterious woman at the masque, frankly, Tova ought to be the one to go in.

Kase seemed to think Tova would wind up slitting Niall’s throat too soon.

That, and the Kryv were once kept at the Black Palace. Odds were, Niall would recognize Tova, even if illusions were in place.

I hugged a musky blanket around my shoulders. “When Hagen was taken, this moment could not come soon enough. Now, it seems as if we are not prepared at all, and it is nearly here.”

″We’ll be ready,” he said.

″Sometimes I wonder if you say things to convince yourself.”

″We’ll be ready,” Kase repeated. “We’ve no choice. If Hagen is bartered away, finding him again will take turns.”

″But you’d never stop.”

The ferocity in his stare was answer enough, but he said, “I’d never stop.” A collision of fury, pain, and grit darkened his face. He stepped closer. “You were right. If you would’ve been the one taken, I would’ve never stopped fighting. I won’t now.”

″Fight to the end. That’s what it means, right?”

″Yes. A reminder to never give up, and never give in to those who delight in breaking others. Who’ve tried to break us. We refused long ago to let them, and whenever we meet, we will fight until the end of them—or us.”

″Maybe after this, we’ll find a way to fight for more Alvers. Not only at the masquerade.”

″You should live your life,” he said softly. “Away from here, Malin. You should leave and be happy far from Klockglas.”

″Without you?”

Would the Nightrender remain a man the desperate folk made deals with, a killer defined by dark mesmer?

I turned back to the table and started gathering our horns, but Kase curled his hand in mine. He urged me to leave the mess and turned me around. Those eyes were dark when I faced him, not from mesmer, but something else. Something that sent my blood rushing.

He drew gentle circles over my palm with his thumb. “You would be better off without me.”

″You would be better off not assuming you know what is best for me. Or what I want.”

Kase locked me in the satin black of his eyes, then pulled my wrist, smashing my body against his. One hand held the small of my back, each fingertip moved agonizingly slow up every divot of my spine.

I prayed he would not notice how my pulse raced, how my fingers trembled as I touched the sharp edge of his jaw.

″You would be better off listening to me.” The way he touched me, slow, sensual, needy, I had little control in the way my body arched into him.

″If you said better things, I might listen.”

A dark groan rumbled against my body. Kase pressed my back to the wall. Hips, chest, hands, he had them all against me, heating my skin and heart. In this moment, whatever he asked of me I would do. I wanted to scream at him to command me, to take the whole of me.

For a killer, a thief, for a man enrobed in darkness, he touched with a scorching gentility that drew out ragged breaths and embarrassing moans I could not stop if I tried.

″Malin.” My name off his tongue came like a plea. As if he were begging me to stop him, to keep him from crossing the line between us.

I would do no such thing.

He’d stolen my heart when we were young, and I’d never asked for it back.

When he lifted his eyes, only brilliant, beautiful gold stared back. He studied me, commanded me. Ansel had warned me the Nightrender would own my soul. Oh, how little my friend understood. I owned nothing, for everything I had to give had always belonged to the Nightrender.

″Damn you.” A harsh curse. It was all I was given before Kase kissed me.

Where his touch had been gentle, his kiss was desperate. Fingers tangled in my hair, he pulled me closer.

I clawed at his shoulders, gripped his tunic in fistfuls, circled his neck to allow me to lose myself in the feeling of his hard body.

Kissing the Nightrender was more exciting than lightning on the Howl, drew more sensation than the bite of a winter wind. For a moment, smoke fluttered through my head. I absorbed the memory of his discomfort, then his relief when I discovered his secret challenge with words. Tension from worry about the guild, about me, about Hagen absorbed into my consciousness. Kase felt a great deal he never showed, and I was intruding.

I begged mesmer to leave me, to let me have this moment in its rawest form.

When I gave into him, thinking only of the now, giving and taking my breath with his, the smoky memories slowly faded.

His sly mouth parted my lips. The warmth of his tongue against mine set me aflame. He tasted like sweet heat. A fierce collision that tilted the ground beneath me.

My fingertips slipped beneath his tunic. I took a great deal of pleasure the way the Nightrender groaned, as if he’d begun to unravel as much as me. As if one spark of touch caused him to lose control.

I memorized the hard planes of his chest, his overheated skin. Kase gripped my thigh, lifting my leg, all to grant his hips space to press into mine.

I gasped. The kiss broke as my head fell against the wall. His mouth, tongue, and teeth scraped down the front of my throat. Desire trembled through me, and if he did not keep his hands on me, I would not be able to remain standing.

Kase explored my neck, my jaw; he kissed me and claimed me.

When he lifted his gaze, those eyes were rife in a greedy flash of desire. With slow tugs, he lifted the hem of my tunic. The chill of his calluses raised the skin of my bare stomach. Beneath my top, his grip was demanding as he dragged his hand up the curve of my waist.

Kase grinned against my mouth when I choked on my own breath as he touched me. The tips of his fingers teased the curve of my breast, learning the shape of me and destroying me all at once.

How much had changed since that first deal with the Nightrender. I had feared him, hated him in some ways. Now all I could think was how badly I wanted him to crawl into me. How his touch would be the memory I’d never give up. One I’d recall again and again, with the hope of many more.

My hand went to his belt. Kase freed a rough breath, revealing his desire as my hands pulled at his trousers. His forehead fell to mine. On the wall, he flattened his palms beside my head, stance wide, giving me freedom to do as I pleased.

I made plans to do just that.

Until the door clattered against the wall and brought us to an abrupt stop.

″What are you doing?” Ash stood in the doorway, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

Great hells.

Kase fumbled back as if I’d burned him. “Ash.” He cleared his throat, and maneuvered in front of me, concealing the way he’d left me breathless against the wall. “What . . . what is it?”

″Hanna,” Ash said, as if he hardly cared about the scene he’d stumbled upon. There was a delightful innocence about the boy. Enough I could hardly find the will to be irritated he’d interrupted.

″Another nightmare,” Ash went on, “she’s asking for you.”

The moment would end here. I knew the instant Kase turned his eyes to me. He was many things, but even the Nightrender did not have the strength to ignore the call of little Hanna.

His gaze said a hundred things. Regret, need, desire.

Kase dragged his fingers through his tousled hair and followed Ash. He was unsettled, and I knew there would be enough time for him to overanalyze what happened in here.

Enough time for him to build those walls he thought protected me. Time for me to realize if he did, I would be more broken for it.