CHAPTER 2

“The Council unanimously agrees that they are sacred to the Kingdom Davoren. If any common-folk rebel against them, they will suffer the punishment of death. If a member of the Council of Celestials rebels, they will suffer a fate far worse.”

Night fell quickly over the city.

I crouched on one knee atop a stone slab jutting out from the Black Tower’s giant spire, my cloak billowing in the soft wind that whistled by. I’d swapped my previous one for something much lighter so it didn’t hinder my movements. My black leathers from before were still on, though I’d given them a good scrub and left them out in the afternoon sun to dry beforehand.

A distance away, the sound of a bell tolling resonated throughout the city, marking the hour before midnight. The shipment was due to arrive soon, so I’d deliberately set out earlier to give myself time to find my target before I was to carry out the king’s given task.

Other than the strong beam of moonlight I avoided that overlooked the vast scope of the capital city Kel’enas, there was hardly any light that could give me away. Even the stars winked weakly in the cloudless sky. From up here, I could see the entire span of the town and the thatched roofs of the homes of sleeping citizens. Evading the street lamps that flickered on and off every so often hadn’t been a difficult task. Years of practice and training had meant I was able to move between roofs of buildings effortlessly, and no victim ever expected danger to come from above.

I fingered the chain around my neck subconsciously, watching half a dozen guards on patrol make another loop of the base of the tower, a lantern in one hand whilst the other gripped their weapons in habit. I knew some of those guards–I’d handed them criminals and enemies to the kingdom in person.

Common-folk would find it immensely challenging to scout out a safe path into the Black Tower, much because there was no safe path, only a path that wouldn’t get you caught upon entry. But once you breached the premise, you’d be alone in the shadows and only the hundreds of traps laid out to keep you company. Either an arrow would pierce you right in the brain through the eye or a shuriken would cleave your face in half. Sometimes the tips were dipped in poison, just to make you suffer a little more. Within the first few months after the construction of the Black Tower was completed and the first swarm of prisoners were being hauled into their wretched cells, over several dozen bodies were collected in the morning and sent away to burn, including both infiltrators and those who tried to escape.

No one, not in the years the Black Tower stood, had ever made it past just one trap.

Well, no one except me.

But I had the advantage of being the king’s Protector, meaning I was authorised to enter the Black Tower as long as I had the King’s ring on my finger, the password for admittance. And therefore I knew where most of the traps were and how most of the mechanisms worked, and knew of the hidden tunnel that wove through each floor of the tower that could be sealed in case some unfortunate prisoner decided they were clever enough to attempt an escape through it.

But the tunnel stopped at the uppermost floor, right within the heart of the tower’s spire, where the criminals who had committed the most unspeakably treacherous offences were held captive. So far, there was only one.

Midnight.

I’d never bothered to take note of what prisoners the Black Tower held as my job was just to send them there on some occasions, so I’d taken it upon myself to do some research before I set off earlier.

The Archives were located below the mountain that towered over the palace from behind to keep intruders from seeking information which did not belong to them. Only those who were directly tied to the royal family or had his permission were permitted entry. I was one of them.

The scribes who watched over the Archives hadn’t questioned me when I’d requested a map of the Black Tower and a list of its prisoners. An hour of sitting under the artificial lights the Council created

using magic that replaced candles (to prevent damage to the ancient texts) allowed me to memorise parts of the floor plan I had not yet known about and skim through the names and backgrounds of the wrong-doers condemned to a lifetime in the tower. I’d only been interested in one.

Three years ago, a member of the Council of Celestials rebelled against the order based on their own selfish pursuits and was thrown into the darkest depths of the Black Tower to suffer the consequences of his betrayal, marking him as the first Fallen. They called him Midnight for the dark magic he wielded, which he’d kept hidden from the rest of the members and from the king.

And now I needed to find him.

The two guards who had stood by the entrance of the Black Tower beneath where I perched glanced around before turning in opposite directions to circle the rest of the building. The dagger in my hand glistened violently under the moonlight, waiting for its next kill. Hopefully no blood would need to be shed tonight.

Not just yet, anyways.

I bit down on the blade of the dagger to free my hands, shuffling along the ledge until I found an even enough edge to grab onto. Wrapping my fingers around the rough stone, I pushed my feet out from underneath me and let the ledge bear my weight as I slowly lowered myself down until my legs dangled in the air and all that stopped me from falling to my death were my two hands that gripped onto the roof of the tower.

The Black Tower had no windows, for obvious reasons, but the wall no more than half a metre in front of me was a faulty one. Not because it could crumble at any point, but because a slab of stone large enough to kill a bear could fling outwards like a door.

Another trap, of course, for a prisoner or an outsider who stood too a bit too close to the wall and would unsuspectingly fall a few hundred metres to the ground. Except the stone could only detect movement and pressure from the inside.

Gently, I unhooked my left hand from the ledge and let out a low sound of pain when my right arm barked in protest, the jagged surface digging into the flesh of my fingers and palm. I removed the dagger from between my teeth, bracing both feet on the outer wall adjacent to the stone slab before tracing the edge with the tip of the blade. My heart was slamming rapidly against my ribcage and the pounding of my pulse in my ears drowned out the whisper of wind drifting past as the blade found its target and slipped into the thin gap separating the slab from the rest of the wall. I shoved the steel deep into the opening and another burst of pain shot through the right side of my body.

There was a reason why I had chosen this particular dagger; the hilt was almost as thin as the blade itself and fashioned from pure silver strong enough to withstand the weight of a giant rock.

I returned myself to my original position, evening out my weight onto the other arm. And with a measured push back from the wall where my feet were still placed, I swung myself backwards, feeling the air rush by under my hood, before kicking out a leg and the boot of my right foot collided with the hilt of the dagger, thrusting it fully into the gap.

The slab of stone let out a groan before it swung wide open.

With another swing, I slipped through the opening and quickly side-stepped before the stone let out another sound and hurled back shut.

I stood still for a moment with my chest heaving up and down, listening for the sound of rushing footsteps or cries of warning, but there were none. This far up the tower, it was probably difficult for any sound to travel back down to the base where most of the night guards were stationed. I snatched up the dagger which had clattered to the ground, returning it to its sheathe at my side before checking my bearings.

The corridor to the right would lead me straight to Midnight’s prison cell, if I could get past the traps first.

I’d made the mistake of triggering a few of the traps my first time here, spending exactly one minute avoiding the rows of spikes which emerged as the floor opened up by leaping off the wall and

weaving through the plumes of fire which erupted from the hidden burners on either side of the path, earning the guard who had failed to alert me a warning in the form of a knife pressed to their throat. There had been more times when an accidental misstep had led to a near brush of death, but those had only given me the opportunity to learn the pattern of traps laid out, which most people didn’t.

They usually followed in threes or fours, each one giving the intruder mere seconds to react before the next assault came. The further up the floor, the more malicious the trap, and the more magic was of assistance. Apparently the Council had decided the Black Tower was one of the only places aside from their headquarters that could retain the use of magic.

It wasn’t impossible for me, just a little bit of an inconvenience.

I tread carefully down the corridor, keeping my senses alert for a sign of a trap that could spring up at any given moment. I hadn’t yet explored the area up here before, but based on the floor plan I’d memorised earlier on, the mechanisms used to build the traps were roughly all the same. If it wasn’t a spurt of flame, it was an army of arrows. The entire tower was warded against all magic outside from those used in constructing the traps, too, so manoeuvring through them would entirely be based on the intruder or the prisoner’s own skill.

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I whipped out a second dagger from the depths of my cloak, making a cross with the first in front of my face as the arrow came whistling towards me, the tip mere inches from my eyes before I flung arms outwards, severing the wood clean through the middle, both halves of arrow bouncing off the walls on either side of me and dropping harmlessly to the ground with a hollow clang. I only had three seconds to react before the next three pierced through the air, flanked by another row of two, each one level with a different part of my body.

Instinctively, I arched my back as the first few arrows passed over my head into the darkness behind, then stepped to the left, using my dagger to redirect the flight of another. But before I could grasp onto the shaft of the last one and send it soaring back to where it came from, I felt its sharp edge cut through the fabric of my hood, tearing through the seams. I leant back just as the arrowhead grazed the surface of the mask shielding the right side of my face, the sound of steel scratching against silver echoing in my ears.

The arrow flitted past.

I frowned at the small puncture in the hood. It wasn’t large enough to be noticeable, and a few stitches would easily repair it, but Valentine had gifted this cloak to me with many other items, all of which made up most of my personal belongings.

Through the shadows, I could make out the bars of Midnight’s prison cell. I squared my shoulders and padded down the rest of the corridor, tucking my weapons away. The air was eerily colder in here, like the Black Tower had stripped away everything and left nothing but the darkness.

I paused in front of the cell just as the light overhead flickered on, powered by magic. There was no movement from within, and the silence reigned so heavily it was almost suffocating.

Then, so fast I nearly missed it, there was a flash of gold and suddenly, I felt a warm breath hardly an inch from my face. I lifted my gaze, and my heart jerked wildly in my chest as I drew in the most startling pair of amber eyes, haunting and unblinking and breathlessly compelling. My hands clenched into fists at my side so hard my nails dug into the flesh of my palms. Under the weak light, I could just about make out the slender slope of a nose with a mouth set underneath curved into a cruel smile and wisps of dark hair falling over an angular face.

“You found me,” the male whispered into the air between them, and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

I shifted a step back. “Midnight,” I said, keeping my voice even.

“I’m impressed. Your little display of acrobats back there was rather entertaining to watch.” His smile grew through the gap between the bars. A churn of anger swarmed the pit of my stomach.

I didn’t respond, instead casting a look up and down the length of his torso, drawing in the stained white shirt and black trousers he wore. The front of the shirt was smeared with dirt and something deep

brown, or red, that was unmistakably dried blood. Apparently it wasn’t custom to offer the prisoners of the Black Tower any means of hygiene. His skin was ghastly pale from the lack of sunlight but surprisingly not as grimy as I would’ve thought, but there were large bruises darkening the skin underneath his eyes and his cheeks were slightly sunken inwards, almost like he hadn’t eaten in days, maybe even weeks. I wondered at what point in the years he’d been held captive here did his sanity start to fade.

“I’m here to get information, Fallen,” I said instead.

Midnight’s face became a mask of emotionlessness–if anything, ice-cold, the previous amusement quickly fading. “About what?” He asked, but something told me he already knew the answer to his own question.

I had to crane my neck to fully see his face. “The girls that are being shipped into the city–I know you know about them–where are they from.”

“The information I provide always comes with a princess, darling–”

“Don’t call me that,” I snarled.

He didn’t protest, but something dark flickered in his eyes, and that viscous smile was back on his lips. “I’ve been waiting for a long time for this, you know,” he said, wrapping a hand around one of the bars of the cell.

I scoffed. “Waiting to be used?”

“No.” There was a deep, ancient sadness that resonated in his voice. He paused for a while, then said, “It gets awfully lonely up here where my only loyal companions are the shadows.”

“I don’t care what you’ve been waiting for,” I snapped. “What do you want in exchange for the information?”

He glanced over my head, looking off into the distance, but I didn’t follow his gaze. “Does the king know you’re here?” He asked me.

“What?”

He returned to me, hollow and conniving, studying me from head to toe and finally pinning his eyes on my hand, where there was no ring present. “The king. Does he know you’ve sought out the kingdom’s most feared convict tonight?”

I stifled the rage that seeped into my heart. ‘This has nothing to do with him.”

“Really? Because I thought as his so-called Protector, you’d at least give him the courtesy of knowing where you are, in case he suddenly needs…protecting.”

“You know what I am?” The question escaped my lips before I could think twice about my words, and it hung between us for a long second.

“I know everything, darling,” he drawled, sounding as if he had much better things to do than speak to me. “I’ve seen you lurking about in the Council headquarters of the White Tower before, but only when the king is there, following him around like a little lost pet.”

It was rare that anyone noticed when I was with the king, though the palace was usually empty save for Valentine and I and his loyal guards. Most of the time, my presence was entirely ignored by any visitors the palace received. Even in the White Tower where the Celestials resided, their tedious and information-heavy monthly debriefings with the king hardly gave them the time and effort to pay attention to my whereabouts and what I did with my time as they droned on and on. I was practically invisible to them. But it also meant I knew as much about them as Valentine did, since it was widely accepted that I never left his side.

“What is the price?” I asked again, unable to control the impatience in my tone. “Or would you prefer I slit your throat right here?”

It was an empty threat, and we both knew it. If he wound up dead, or the cell suddenly lacked a prisoner, the wards around it would immediately notify the guards. That was the reason why no one had ever made it out of the prison alive.

“Actually, I believe I’ve changed my mind,” he hummed. “I’d prefer not to share any information I know to the King-Slayer. Especially if she’s going to slit my throat.”

King-slayer. Ice froze the blood in my veins.

“What,” I seethed, “are you talking about?”

He let out a low chuckle, the sound reverberating in the air around us and sending a chill through my bones. “Surely you haven’t already forgotten?”

I said nothing, my silence a hint for him to elaborate.

He shrugged. “It is only just a little rumour I happened to hear five years ago. One which claimed that you killed the late king so his son could steal the crown and rule in his stead. It’s a little cliche, if you ask me.” A breath hitched in my throat. “But I’m sure you have nothing to worry about–that was just a rumour, was it not?”

“Who else knows of this rumour?” I asked quietly.

In the matter of half a second, his face was suddenly so much closer to mine than before.

“Just–” His eyes bore into mine like fire. “–Me.”

It had been a cold winter’s night, around the time all the guests had filed out of the palace after an evening of festivities in celebration of the late king’s coronation. I remembered that day like a brand in my mind. I remembered waiting for his attendants to leave him alone in the throne room before I approached him. I remembered his unsuspecting expression, almost like relief, when he saw me. Then I remembered his desperate pleas, the taste of vengeance on my tongue, the burn of half a decade of bottled-up hatred and anger finally erupting within my heart as I pierced that sword straight into that wretched man’s chest and spiked his head on the lion-head sceptre he carried with him all the time.

Midnight seemed intrigued. “Did he ask you to do it, or did you take it upon yourself to earn the name King-Slayer?”

He’s a tricker, a manipulator. He’ll get into your head… I shook Archibald’s words from my mind.

“Enough,” I snarled, baring my teeth at him, struggling to resist the urge to whip out one of my knives and drive it into his throat and watch his blood spill. “Stop wasting my time.”

“What would you like to know?” He cocked his head to the side, folding his arms as the shackles around his wrists rattled against each other.

The fabric of his shirt shifted to the side, revealing to a section of his chest, and I noticed for the first time the thick swirls of black that inked his skin, snaking around one half of his torso and winding all the way up to his collarbone, where it branched out into thinner lines that stretched across the right side of his neck and stopped a few inches above his jaw, reaching just below the outer corner of his eye. He raised a brow.

“Who is responsible for the shipment?” I ignored his bored expression.

“The one tonight?”

The news of the shipment was only known by the king, the Council and those involved in the trade. And there was no possibility of any of them leaking the information to a fourth party–those who had were already dead.

Midnight appeared to have seen the question in my eyes. “I know everything, darling.”

I growled, whisking out the small knife at my thigh and pointing the tip at his neck. “I said not to call me darling.”

Midnight didn’t flinch, his tone reeking nothing but indifference when he said, “Taurier. Nathaniel Taurier.”

I drew back the blade, but I didn’t put it away.

“You’re being lied to,” he continued, raking his eyes down the length of my body as I stepped away from his cell. “You just don’t know it yet.”

There was a warning in his voice, so subtle that I almost didn’t catch it. His lips were set into a grim line.

“You deserve to rot here for a century for what you did three years ago, Fallen,” I reminded him as I met his glare evenly. He gave no reaction.

Instead, with a drawn breath, he said, “The price, King-Slayer, for the information you were given.” I jerked my chin at him in response, signalling for him to name it. He didn’t hesitate in his answer. “Go to the docks tonight. Taurier won’t be there–he never is–but you’ll be able to understand why I said you’re being deceived.”

I didn’t spare him a second look as I whirled around and set off for the docks of Kel’enas.