mouth, my friend,” Trace ground out angrily, using the press of his blade on Baylor’s throat to force the other man to sit upright onto his heels. Even despite his quick obedience, the highly honed tip of the blade cut into his skin and started a river of blood flowing down his thick throat. As for Trace, his roaring temper had shifted from betrayed anger to a storm of fury. “Do you think this is how this will end? Do you really think I will merely take you into my custody and march you to your fate at the hands of my regents? After you follow me here to engage my ear in whispered plots and backstabbing sedition meant to pit one regent against the other? A sister against her brother? Oh, no, Baylor,” Trace assured in a voice that ground to a low and slow resonance of threat, “I am my Lord Chancellor’s vizier, and it is I who advises him, but while I would have you hanged publicly to be made an example of, Tristan would not see you as the threat you truly are.
“His Grace,” he continued bitterly, “suffers from the overconfidence of power and strength. A flaw only time will rectify. Also, there is his unshakable foundation of his trust in his sister’s loyalty, a factor which makes him laugh off plot-makers like you. It is a mistake many young regents have made. He forgets that voices like yours will always find the ears of the discontented and disloyal whether they succeed at their intended goal or not.
“Their reign is far too youthful to be given such a test, and our efforts at peace with the other Nightwalkers would distract him from realizing that. So no,” Trace assured the kneeling man, “this will not end civilly. It will end with my sword severing those seditious vocal cords of yours and keeping you from ever whispering your ill words to a single other ’Dweller.”
“It is against the law for one ’Dweller to take the life of another!” Baylor reminded him with a sneer. “A law you instigated, if I recall! How steady do you think this political body will ever be when its own lawmakers cannot abide by its own rules?”
“Do not quote my own laws to me, traitor,” Trace hissed through clenched teeth, pushing forward on his blade until Baylor squawked in protest. “Or do you forget that an attack on any of the ruling body is considered an act of treason and war? In war, the law is suspended with circumstance and proof of cause.” Trace leaned forward to close the distance between their gazes. “Do you forget the dagger you plunged into my back so soon?”
The gasp from the girl on the floor was unmistakable, and Trace cautiously kept pressure on his blade as he glanced toward her again. Sure enough, her eyes were tracking anxiously over the length of his back as if in search of the dagger he had just mentioned.
By the Dark, Baylor was right! The Lost woman could see him! She could hear everything they were saying. It was impossible, his logical mind demanded once again in knee-jerk denial, and yet…
Trace looked away. He didn’t have time for distractions. He knew Baylor couldn’t give a damn about some perceptive Lost. He was just using her to waste time and seek advantage. If Trace waited much longer, he was going to end up giving it to him. He doubled his grip on the hilt of his katana and braced his feet against the steadily increasing weakness of his body. He saw Baylor’s entire body tensing exactly like his own was, preparing to act in order to save himself. But Trace knew Baylor was waiting for him to pull back for a swing before moving, and it was a moment of advantage he refused to give, even if it made his task harder and more gruesome in the end.
Trace took a breath, and with a deeply ferocious cry to vent his anger and frustration, he plunged all of his weight forward onto the top six inches of his blade. It was his meticulous maintenance of the thing that did the best part of the work. Before Baylor could so much as flinch in realization, the finely honed blade sawed into flesh and critical arteries. The traitor’s gasp of understanding actually bubbled from the cut in his throat, the wet intake of air and blood the only sound in the end. Baylor’s hands reached around the blade that was killing him in a last-ditch effort to struggle, but he only succeeded in cutting himself to the bone of his palms.
Trace went to pull his blade free and step back, wanting to let the body fall where it was, as it was, but suddenly his legs turned to rubber and every muscle in his body relinquished the strength he had struggled so hard to maintain. He fell to his knees. Hard. His grip on his sword fumbled and released and a moment later he felt himself tumbling over the hardwood floor.
He knew it was because of the heavy wetness of his own draining blood that this was happening. Frankly, he was surprised he had lasted this long, never mind come out on top of a fight with a brute like Baylor. Trace had to admit it had been utter dread more than anything that had driven him. He had feared that Baylor might succeed in his unlikely plans to drive a wedge between the brother and sister regents. He had feared for the Shadowdweller people as a society if he did.
Then, even as he was aware of the edges of his consciousness fading, Trace felt the shaking touch of warm hands on his shoulders, turning him over gingerly while struggling with his weight. Golden hair, tickling in feathers against her skin, surrounded the woman’s head like a nimbus when she leaned over him. The cut was short enough to be a boy’s cut, he noted numbly. Why would such a beautiful woman, with hair of such an amazing color, want to cut it all off? He had never understood humans, even when they weren’t Lost. Or women, for that matter, of any race. The odds were definitely stacked against him understanding anything about this situation.
“L-let me help you,” she stammered, leaning over to cup his face between two soft hands. The skin of her palms brushed beneath his nose briefly, and Trace was caressed by a warm, sweet scent. Like honeysuckle and lilacs. Another anomaly, he noted, because the Lost should have no scent, nor warmth. Those were living human traits. The Lost were just lost; souls without the flesh traits of their bodies. But even if he were hallucinating, why would he concoct details like that? Trace didn’t think the warm scent of lilacs and humanity was something his own imagination could easily conjure up.
Trace faded after that thought, but found himself jerked back to awareness shortly after when the force of tearing fabric jerked at his body. He lifted his lashes despite their incredible weight and tried to focus on the woman who was struggling at stripping off his shirt.
“Leave me be. I’ll be fine,” Trace grumbled.
Well, it wasn’t entirely true, but it wasn’t as if she could do much to help him. He just needed to be left alone for a while. Just long enough so he could catch his breath, regroup, and find the strength to Unfade.
Trace gave no thought to the fact he was completely deluding himself and that he was in very real danger of dying. He also dismissed the knowledge that unconsciousness alone might send him spiraling out of his Fade, and even his pain-numbed senses were warning him that it was still daylight in Realscape. If he lost his grip on the secure darkness of Shadowscape, he would be burned up alive within a matter of moments upon returning.
So much for the idea that his breed was supposed to be immortal. He’d never understood the word “immortal” in that context. Their longevity of youth and the intense hardiness of the species as a whole might make them long-lived and quite difficult to kill, but at the moment he was living proof—or rather dying proof—that mortality was indeed possible. Be it the act of bleeding to death, a beheading, or sprawling into sunlight, his breed was most certainly capable of dying.
Trace knew there wasn’t much the Lost one could do for him. He didn’t even know why he could feel her in the first place. Also, the little thing was shaking like a leaf with her trepidation. Understandable, granted, considering all she had just seen, but nothing that would inspire him to set his faith in her. Not that he was known for setting his faith in the unpredictability of women lately.
Trace found a pocket of strength within himself, just enough to allow him the advantage of using her existing fear against her. He burst upward beneath her, making her squeal out a scream as he rolled her hard to the floor, following
