Reckless (Free Preview) Read Free Page A

Lava-Men who boiled the blood of the earth,
the eyeless bird that saw all, and the Goyl with the jade skin who gave
invincibility to the King he served — stories told to children to fill the
darkness underground.
    “And which scout told you that?”   Hentzau rubbed his aching skin.   Soon the cold would have given it more cracks
than fractured glass.   “Have him
executed.   The Jade Goyl is a myth.   Since when do you confuse myths with reality?”
    The guards nervously ducked their heads.   Any other Goyl would have paid for that remark
with his life.   Kami’en, however, just
shrugged.
    “Find him!” he said.   “She
dreamed of him.”
    She.   The Fairy
smoothed the velvet of her dress.   Six
fingers on each hand . Each one for a different curse.   Hentzau felt the rage rise in him.   It was the rage they all bore in their stony
flesh, like the heat in the depths of the earth.   He would die for his King if necessary, but to
have to search for the daydreams of his mistress was something else.
    “You need no Jade Goyl to make yourself invincible!”
    Kami’en eyed him like a stranger.
    Your Majesty.   Hentzau now often caught himself not wanting
to call him by his name.
    “Find him,” Kami’en repeated.   “She says it’s important, and so far she’s
always been right.”
    The Fairy stepped to his side.   Hentzau pictured himself squeezing her pale
neck.   But not even that gave him
comfort.   She was immortal, and one day
she would watch him die.   Him and the King.   And Kami’en’s children and his children’s children.   They all were nothing but her mortal stone
toys.   But the King loved her.   More than his two Goyl wives, who had given
him three daughters and a son.
    Because she has hexed him!   Hentzau
heard a whisper inside him . But he bowed his head and
pressed his fist over his heart.   “Whatever you command!”
    “I saw him in the black forest.”   Even her voice sounded like water.
    “That’s more than sixty square miles!”
    The Fairy smiled.   Hentzau
felt rage and fear choking his heart.
    Without another word, she undid the pearl clasp with which
she pinned her hair like a human woman, and brushed her hand through it.   Black moths fluttered out from between her
fingers; the pale spots on their wings looked like skulls.   The guards quickly opened the doors as the
insects swarmed toward them, and even Hentzau’s soldiers, who had been waiting
outside in the dark corridor, recoiled as the moths flew past.   They all knew that their sting penetrated even
Goyl skin.
    The Fairy put the clasp back in her hair.
    “Once they find him,” she said, without looking at Hentzau,
“they will come to you.   And you will
bring him to me.   Immediately.”
    His men were staring at her through the open door, but they
quickly lowered their heads as Hentzau turned around.
    Fairy.
    Damn her and the night she had suddenly appeared among their
tents.   The third battle, and their third victory.   She had walked
toward the King’s tent as if the groans of their wounded and the white moon
above their dead had summoned her.   Hentzau
had stepped into her path, but she had just walked through him, like liquid
through porous stone, as if he, too, were already among the dead, and she had
stolen his King’s heart to fill her own heartless bosom with it.
    Even Hentzau had to admit that the best weapons combined did
not spread as much fear as her curse, which turned the flesh of their enemies
into stone.   Yet he was certain they
would have still won the war without her, and that
victory would have tasted so much sweeter.
    “I will find the Jade Goyl without your moths,” he said.   “If he really is more than
just a dream.”
    She answered him with a smile, which followed him back into
the daylight that clouded his eyes and cracked his skin.
    Damn her.
           
     

4
    On The Other Side
     
    Will’s voice had sounded so different, Clara had barely
recognized