The Sword and the Sunrise (The Nightmare Court Book 1) Read online

  “I could hardly make love to a woman and then kill her directly afterward, could I?” He raised his eyebrows.

  That was his reasoning? In that case—

  “I suppose you wouldn’t be entirely dead, but that would be almost worse, because you’d be at court, and if anyone there knew, it could go very badly for me.”

  Not entirely dead? What was he saying? “Of course they’re dead,” she said tersely. “I have witnessed the coffins being borne up on the morning after the Equinox. I have seen the Conclave taking them into the crypt. All the girls are buried there.”

  “I don’t know what you’re speaking of,” he said. “No part of you will leave this forest after tonight.”

  She must have reacted to that as well.

  Because he cringed, stepping back from her, reaching up to rub the back of his neck. “I’m sorry. That was… unkind.”

  And she couldn’t wait any longer. She wasn’t going to be able to seduce him, and he was backing away from her, and she needed him close. She moved quickly, because quickness was an advantage that strength didn’t always cultivate, and she needed all her advantages. Her hand darted out. Her fingers closed over the hilt of his sword.

  She pulled it from its scabbard with a ringing sound.

  His eyes widened. He groped for the blade.

  She danced backward, taunting him with the tip. If he touched it, he’d only get a cut across his palm for his trouble.

  He went still, eyeing her stance. “What is this?”

  “I’m not being fed to the nightmares.”

  “It’s not like that,” he said.

  “Well, I’d stay and chat, and you could tell me exactly what it is like, but I find I don’t care. Whatever it’s like, I’m not interested. It’s not happening to me. Why don’t you just let me go?”

  He shook his head slowly. “Well, well, well. A hundred years, and no one’s ever put up a fight. What is your name?”

  She glanced over her shoulder at the door. She remembered the sound of the chain being drawn across it. She couldn’t simply flee. How was she going to get out of here? She pointed the sword at him. “You said you’d go and get me something if it wasn’t in the room. How would you get out if the door is locked?”

  “I’d knock and one of the others would open the door for me.”

  She lunged for him, and she did this fast as well. The tip of the sword lodged in his shoulder.

  His nostrils flared, but he made no sound.

  “Do it,” she said, dragging the blade across his skin, cutting him, settling it at his throat.

  A line of black blood seeped through his clothes from his shoulder over his collarbone. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

  “You’re planning on killing me.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you yet,” he said. “But if I have to…” He yanked a knife out of a holster on his upper thigh, and he brought the blade up against her sword. Metal clanged with enough force to skew the sword tip away from his neck. He advanced on her, slashing with the knife.

  She parried, blocking his blade.

  They were locked that way for several seconds, and then they both moved at the same time, backing away at once.

  They circled each other.

  She kept her eyes on him as she moved, and she didn’t see the table until she collided with it. She snatched up one of the plates and hurled it at him.

  He ducked.

  It struck the wall behind him and shattered.

  She ran for him.

  He ran for her.

  Their blades met again. Thrust. Parry. Thrust. Parry.

  And they backed up again.

  He lifted his chin. “Put the sword down.”

  “Not a chance,” she grunted.

  Too quickly, he flipped the knife in his hand, so he was holding the blade, not the hilt. And then he sent it hurtling through the air for her.

  Her eyes widened. She stepped to the side, but not fast enough. The blade caught her diaphanous blue gown, pinning her to the wall between two of the tables of food.

  “I meant to do that,” he said, already across the room, coming closer. “I meant it to pierce your dress, not your skin.”

  She reached out and snatched the knife out of the wall, out of the fabric, ripping the thin dress in the process.

  He was on top of her. “If you can call it a dress, that is. It doesn’t cover much.” His hand was encircling her wrist, the one that held the sword.

  “Oh, are you distracted? Terribly sorry.” She brandished the knife.

  He ignored the knife and squeezed her wrist. His grasp was painful. His hands were huge. He was crushing the bones of her wrist. He smirked. “Distracted? I don’t think so. Drop the sword.”

  She dropped it. She jammed the knife into his face.

  He seized her other wrist with his other hand. He forced both of her hands above her head and pinned her to the wall.

  She struggled.

  He was stronger than her. He was close. Every part of him was cold, even his breath. He smelled like pine needles. “Am I going to have to tie you up?” he rasped.

  She writhed, bringing up her knee to try to get that into him.

  But he blocked her with his leg and then he pressed the length of his body against hers, and she was smothered and trapped and engulfed. His voice was quiet. “It’s not the end, all right? Calm down. Don’t make this harder than it already is.”

  “Harder for you?”

  “Harder for both of us.”

  She slammed her head into the bridge of his nose as hard as she could.

  He grunted, his head jerking back. His grip on her didn’t loosen at all, however.

  She was still holding his knife. She tried to twist it, to get it into his skin. But she couldn’t.

  “That was…” He shook his head at her. “You were amusing at first. I’m not so amused anymore.”

  Her head hurt from where she’d driven it into his nose. It was pulsing. “Eat dung and die,” she spat at him.

  Despite what he’d said, his mouth twitched into a smile at that.

  It made her angrier. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. She had trained for this. She was supposed to be able to beat him, in any situation, in any eventuality. They had prepared for so many variables.

  But never for the one where the nightmares were real, where there was no bed, where he had no interest in her beyond trying to make her last night on earth comfortable.

  She swallowed. She hadn’t used any magic yet. The sparkles on her face, they weren’t paint, but crushed topaz, the magical jewel. She shut her eyes, murmuring the words of the spell to unleash the magic.

  “What?” he said. “If you want me to understand you, you’re going to have to speak louder than—”

  The power surged out of the jewels encrusting her face and hands, bright and hot like the sun. It crashed into his body.

  He crumpled, screaming as if he’d been hit with acid. He clawed at his face and neck where the light had hit him. He fell to his knees, letting out strangled noises of pain.

  She had never seen anything like that. The magic… it could hurt, but not like that. She had intended it for shock value, a distraction. She hadn’t expected… She stared at him.

  He was still on the floor.

  What was she staring at? She needed to go.

  She rushed past him, heading for the door. She slapped her palm against it.

  “Eithan?” came a deep voice from the other side.

  Sun and bones, it was locked. She chewed on her lip, looking back at Sir Eithan, then again at the door, then back to Eithan.

  He was recovering, starting to get to his feet.

  “Eithan, you all right?” came the voice. The door started to open.

  She dashed back to Sir Eithan. She still had his knife. She fell to her knees behind him. She wrapped her arm around his shoulders, putting the knife to his throat.

  The door was open. “What’s going on?”

/>   She pressed the edge of the knife into Sir Eithan’s skin.

  Eithan hissed.

  “How’d she get your knife?” said the knight at the door.

  “Stand up,” she whispered in Eithan’s ear.

  “She’s quick,” said Eithan. “Little help here?”

  “Do what I say, or I’m going to slit your throat,” she said. “Now, stand up.”

  Eithan barked out a funny laugh and he stood up. “By all means, Jonas, stand there gaping and do nothing,” he said to the knight at the door, who was doing exactly that.

  She stood with Eithan, addressing the other knight. “Sir Eithan and I are walking out of this forest, and if you try to stop us, I’ll kill him.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Think this through,” came the soft voice of Sir Eithan.

  “Shut up,” Nicce snarled, pressing the knife into his throat again for emphasis. She turned to look over her shoulder again, and she could see the other knights, all four of them still gathered at the door to the fortress, maybe fifty feet away. They were staring after the two of them as if they couldn’t believe this was happening.

  She supposed it would be surprising for them. Eithan had said something about a hundred years back there in the room. Nicce had known the knights were old, that they didn’t age in an unnatural way, but she hadn’t known how old. Anyway, as near as she knew, none of the brides had ever done what she was attempting to do.

  And she wasn’t even sure what she was trying to do. She knew she needed to escape, and she knew she couldn’t fight all of the knights at once, and so she’d used Eithan to get herself out of the fortress. Now…

  She was making it up as she went along.

  “We’re heading down the path that leads out of the forest,” said Eithan.

  “Are you deaf, or are you just eager to bleed out? Shut up.” Her voice was strained.

  “When we get out of the forest, we’ll run directly into the Conclave,” he said.

  Sun and bones, he was right. The men who had handed her off to the knights stayed out there for the entire night, fasting and praying and beating on their chests or something, all in supplication for forgiveness for what they had done. It was nonsense, religious claptrap—at least, according to the Guild. She’d never paid it much mind. But if she went out the way she’d come, she’d have to contend with all of them. And she might be able to fight her way out against men like that, or she might not. Either way, it would be known that she’d escaped and that she wasn’t being sacrificed, and she knew that would mean she was a target.

  He was still talking. “There’s no point in this, girl without a name. I sympathize. Believe me I do. But you are marked, and your sacrifice will serve a purpose. You can’t escape this.”

  “Are you trying to talk me into letting you kill me? Truly?”

  “It’s not death,” he said. “It’s a change. You will live on in the Nightmare Court.”

  “I thought I told you to shut up,” she said, drawing the knife tighter to his throat. But they weren’t moving now. They were standing in the middle of the forest, and she wasn’t sure if she should go back down the path to the Conclave or not. Where else could she go?

  All right, all right, think, she told herself, taking a deep breath. She knew that there was another way out of the forest, because she’d found it on a map when she was trying to plan out her escape after killing Sir Eithan. It was something the Guild never bothered with trying to prepare her for. What was she to do after the deed was done? They hadn’t cared, which led her to believe that once it was done, she could be free of them. So, she’d planned out her escape all on her own, but she hadn’t thought she’d have the nightmares to contend with.

  “Turn around,” she said to Eithan.

  “Whatever you do, it’s not going to matter,” he said. “You were chosen. And it has to be at dawn tomorrow.”

  She started to ask him questions. Why did it have to be tomorrow? How did killing a girl keep the nightmares back? But then she remembered that she didn’t have time for this, and she squelched those thoughts. “Shut up.” She pressed the knife into his skin again. She felt a trickle of cold blood on her hand.

  He sucked in a sharp breath. “Would you be careful with that? You seem to want me to move about and help you, and if you slice me the wrong way—”

  “My apologies.” She was sarcastic. “There’s another pathway out of the forest. I saw it on a map. We’ll go out that way.”

  He sighed.

  She started to walk, and he stumbled ahead of her.

  But before they got very far, something swooped down out of the sky.

  It had broad wings, but not with feathers, more like a bat’s, a very large bat, and its face was a mess of squirming, long tendrils, all reaching through the air for them.

  Eithan drove his elbow into her rib cage, knocking her down and getting another chunk taken out of his neck for his trouble.

  She fell to the ground, cowering on the path.

  Eithan stepped in front of her, shielding her with his body.

  The nightmare swooped down, its horrible gleaming tendrils brushing down on the ground on either side of Nicce. It opened its mouth, and it was a wide empty maw of nothing. Gazing into it froze her to the spot. It was wrong in some way, unspeakably wrong.

  Eithan drove his fist into the center of its face.

  It made a squishy kind of sound on impact.

  The nightmare squealed.

  Nicce shook off the effect of looking into its empty mouth. She scrambled to her feet and started running, armed with nothing but Eithan’s knife.

  “Wait!” called Eithan, turning to look after her.

  Behind him, the nightmare wrapped its tendrils around his legs and arms. It began to pull him backwards, opening its mouth again.

  Nicce turned away, running into the woods. Perhaps Sir Eithan would die anyway.

  He deserves it.

  She ran.

  She crashed through the forest, noisily brushing aside the branches and undergrowth she encountered, running and keeping the location of the fortress fixed in her mind, because there was another path on the other side of it, and it should lead her out of the forest. From there, she’d…

  Well, she’d worry about where she was going to go if she actually managed to get out of this forest.

  She heard things amongst the trees and overhead, but she refused to let herself think about them. She focused on finding that path.

  And within ten minutes, she had found it. She slowed down long enough to tie her dress up so that it wasn’t in the way of her legs, and then she hurried down it, through the dark forest, the only light that of the moon filtering through the tree branches.

  Eithan didn’t seem to be behind her, so maybe he’d been eaten by that thing. She didn’t know. She didn’t care. She was going to run and she was going to get free.

  Suddenly, she tripped.

  She went sprawling, face first on the path, glancing her chin painfully, her palms scraped up, and then she realized that she’d tripped over something that was lying in the path. It was long and knotted, almost like the root of a tree.

  But it was moving.

  She rolled over onto her back, and then went up onto her elbows, crab-walking backward as the thing rose up over her.

  It was entirely made of these long root-like things, a great mass of them, and they all moved independently of the others. It was coming for her, moving on its root-legs, and she couldn’t make out a head or anything like that, but that made looking at it worse, because she couldn’t make sense of it, and its lack of any semblance of normality made her feel weak and horrified.

  She managed to get to her feet. She slashed out with her knife, but she didn’t connect with anything.

  I should run.

  But that would mean turning her back on it, and she couldn’t do that.

  One of the root things shot out and wrapped itself around her leg. It tightened painfully.

 
She cried out.

  The root thing jerked and she was on her back, being dragged over the path and into the center of this thing, whatever that center was.

  She screamed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Eithan surveyed the other knights, all of whom were spattered in the blood of a nightmare called an athoath. They’d been searching the forest for the girl for hours now, and finally they’d found her here in the athoath’s den. Then it had taken all five of them to kill the godstaken creature, which had enough protuberances to keep twice as many men busy for three times as long. He was exhausted.

  Eithan was lucky that he hadn’t been eaten by that gassigoth she’d left him in the clutches of. Luckily, the other knights had come to his rescue. Then they’d spent far longer than he would have liked tracking the girl.

  Now, the girl was huddled in the corner of the athoath’s den. Her dress was tattered and torn and even more of her skin was visible. She was shivering, and her teeth were chattering, but she was still clutching that godstaken knife for dear life.

  The other men were hacking up the pieces of the nightmare. It didn’t really die until it was in pieces. They wouldn’t want to interact with the girl, anyway. It made them uncomfortable, talking to her too much before they had to kill her.

  Well. Maybe it wouldn’t have made Septimus uncomfortable, but it was better not to indulge Septimus’s base nature, wasn’t it?

  Anyway, that was the way of things. Eithan handled the girls. He always had. None of the girls had ever been like this one, but that didn’t mean that his duty was any less clear. He crawled into the den and reached out for the girl.

  She slashed at him with the knife, clenching her teeth together, which stopped the chattering.

  He sighed. “Come now.”

  “What?” she said in a trembling voice. “It’s not as if you’re rescuing me. You’re going to kill me as soon as the sun rises.”

  “I told you,” he said. “It’s not death.”

  “No?”

  “Well… not exactly,” he said. “I’ll tell you all of it, but first, let me help you out of here. It smells.” The athoath fed mostly on deer and squirrels and other animals, but it left the bones here, along with whatever meat clung to them. It was a rancid, horrid place.