Page 6 of Shadowed

I should be frightened. I am frightened. But underneath the fear there's something else—a low, sharp itch in the palms of myhands, the one I get when I'm looking at a lock I haven't seen before. The itch that says: I want to know what's inside.

Bad instinct. The kind that gets people killed. The kind that has kept me alive for six years because the locks I couldn't resist were the ones nobody else could open and the things behind them paid the best.

Outside, the fog presses against the window. Somewhere in it—and I am almost sure now, the way you're sure of a draught before you find the crack—something watches.

"I can see you," I whisper. Probably a lie. Almost certainly a lie.

But the shadow at the edge of the gaslight shifts, just barely, like something that heard me and is deciding what to do about it.

4

CALIGO

The shadow-map on the strategy table is wet with her route.

I push a tendril across the dark stone, drawing her path home in shadow-ink that won't dry until I dismiss the shadow that's drawing it. Bridgemire to Cutler's Alley. Cutler's to Brick Lane. Brick Lane to the chandler's shop in Spitalfields. Mine. Every corner of the route mapped because the route is hers and what is hers is mine and I've been counting the corners the way I count the percentages—every fraction one closer to the night I take her.

My cock is hard against my thigh.

Has been since the third lock at the merchant's house opened for her without instruction. Heavy, prehensile, shadow-dark and stirring beneath the stone of my chair. My shadows draw her body in the corners of the throne room without permission—the line of her spine, the wings of her shoulders, the curve of her hip my shadow has watched through three years of shifts and bends and crouches at cellar doors. I know the shape of that hip. I will know the taste of it. The hand that slides between her thighs to wake her in the dark will be mine.

Lord Nephilik enters from the eastern passage.

He sees the wet shadow on the map. Doesn't comment. After four centuries of service, Nephilik knows when to look at the floor.

"The documents fetched triple."

"Morrow recognised them."

"He warned her to forget the address. She accepted the payment. She doesn't forget anything." Nephilik's shadows flatten against his coat—the formation that means he's about to deliver something he isn't sure I'll want. "The route home took her through Cutler's Alley. The observation shadow you stationed there pooled wrong."

The shadows along the walls ripple. I haven't given them an instruction in three minutes and they keep moving anyway.

"How wrong?"

"Right instead of left. Four inches off true."

"And?"

"She noticed."

I turn the throne. The stone moves under me with effort, the soul-damage threading complaint through every bone of the chair. My wings stir against my back. They've been folded for three centuries. Tonight they're stirring without my permission. My cock pulses between my thighs and I don't look down because looking down would mean acknowledging that a four-hundred-year-old strategist is standing across from a prince whose hand wants to be on himself the moment Nephilik leaves.

"Show me."

Nephilik's shadows ripple. The throne room walls go briefly fluid—the surveillance report painting itself across the dark stone in shadow-ink. Lilith in the alley. Knife already drawn. Three inches of cheap steel held correctly. Her back against brick. Her chest barely moving. Four minutes of stillness so complete I count it twice and the second count doesn't change.

"She's faster than the file said."

"Yes, my prince."

"Her grip on the knife."

"Functional. Practiced."

"She didn't wait for the shadow to attack."

"She doesn't wait for anything to attack, my prince. She moves first." Nephilik's eyes do the thing they do when he's deciding whether to add commentary. He decides against. "She held the position until the shadow corrected. And then said something to the empty alley."