Читать онлайн «The Black Knife»

ONE

I COULDN’T REMEMBER how I got home.

One minute, I was running through the warehouse district, and the next, I was on my balcony, dropped to my knees. My body shook. My mask stuck to my face. I leaned over and heaved. I was covered in other people’s blood.

The clock tower struck four—only a couple of hours until dawn.

The glass door to my room opened and James stepped out. “Tobiah?”

I looked up and tore the mask off my head. Cool air stung my face and throat.

“Saints. ” James rushed at me and took the mask from my clenched fingers. “What happened? Is that your blood? You look—” He shook his head.

I must have looked like death. “It’s not my blood,” I rasped after a heartbeat. Most of it wasn’t my blood, but I couldn’t manage any more just yet.

“Good. ” His shoulders dropped as tension ran out. “A cracked rib we can hide. Minor cuts and bruises might be from sword practice. But this? What happened? Tell me everything. ”

With some encouragement—and help—I got to my feet and followed James into my quarters. I washed up, first peeling off the dirty, bloody clothes. My shirt was ripped from the falls and the fights, and maybe I’d been hit with weapons, too. I couldn’t tell one pain from another.

Haltingly, I told James about the events of the night, from finding Romily, to the setup and betrayal, to the Nightmares and the glowmen. “I killed him,” I whispered. “Mercush.

“He wasn’t human anymore. ” James kept his tone hard. “He killed his own sister and he would have killed you. ”

“I know. ” I pulled off the wrap binding my ribs. The cloth was soaked with blood and sweat, and a huge bruise flowered over my cracked rib, still blue and purple in the center, but browning at the edges. Tonight’s events probably hadn’t helped the healing. “I know Mercush wasn’t human anymore, and that’s how I justified it to myself. But then I watched the last glowman kill the Nightmares, and I didn’t do anything to stop it. ”

James closed the space between us and didn’t quite touch my shoulder, like he wasn’t sure I didn’t have some grave injury there. But his voice remained calm and steady, with a new intensity. “They saw your face. They might have identified you. Still, you didn’t kill them. The glowman did. That’s not your fault. ”

Was it my fault if I could have saved them? Was my identity more important than their lives? They were Nightmares. Criminals. They consorted with Hensley and other shine-makers and flashers.

But they were also my people, and what kind of prince was I—what kind of king would I be—if I allowed them to be slaughtered by monsters? Even monsters they’d created? Surely I could do something more than kill glowmen—and let them kill Nightmares. There had to be a better way.

Sill, generations of kings hadn’t stopped shine and glowmen. Why did I think I could?

Well, maybe those kings simply hadn’t been doing enough. That was why I’d resorted to vigilantism, after all.