Shadow City Read Free Page B

fight.
    He barely held himself in check. Killing Tyler and Niko would not help get Max back. Besides, he liked them. Instead, he turned away and went to sit on an outcropping of rock. The others eyed him uncertainly. They had not expected him to just calmly sit.
    Alexander rubbed a hand over his mouth as he considered telling them the truth. They might stop badgering him.
    He reached under the collar of his shirt and hooked a woven leather strap with his fingers. He drew out a gold disk almost the size of his palm. On one side was a round black diamond the size of a peach pit. Small orange opals traced a glimmering line along the outer rim. Outward-pointing arrows were interspersed among the opals like the rays of a sun. Around the thick edge of the disk were written words in a language Alexander did not understand. They spiraled down over the back to the center to end in a small stylized Egyptian eye.
    He pulled the strap over his head and gazed down at the disk. For years, he had craved it. It was worth a king’s ransom. More. Now he wished he had never seen it. He turned it in his fingers, then came to a decision. Secrecy had done him no good so far.
    He drew a knife from the sheath on his hip. It was a combat knife, both edges honed sharp. He cut deeply across the pad of his thumb and quickly smeared his blood across the amulet before his healing spells could close the wound. The cold, heavy stickiness of the invisibility spell closed over him.
    “What the fuck?” Tyler exclaimed.
    Niko just watched the place where Alexander was sitting, his brow furrowed.
    Alexander wiped his knife on his jeans and sheathed it. “Did you know that Magpie has the gift of true prophecy?” he asked conversationally, the corner of his mouth lifting in a sardonic smile as Tyler started. Hearing the thin air talking took some getting used to.
    “Prophecy?” Niko repeated.
    Alexander turned the amulet in his fingers. “Apparently, whatever she sees always comes true. Or so she assures me. Giselle seems to be of the same opinion.”
    “Get to the point,” Tyler said. His knife was back in his hand, and he was twirling it between his fingers. It would take barely a second for him to launch it, and even without seeing Alexander, he was sure to hit him.
    “Magpie came to see me. The same day that Max’s family was kidnapped.”
    He remembered it with preternatural clarity. He’d been in his apartment deep within Horngate’s mountain fortress. Magpie had opened the door, pushing through the wards as if they were not there. At first, he had thought she must be Max, who was the only person he knew who could open any lock without trouble. It was one of the gifts Giselle had layered into her making.
    Expectant hope had flooded through him and then died beneath a deluge of cold shock when Magpie entered. Foreboding grasped him in a hard hand. The witch’s eyes were entirely white. She had fixed him with that unworldly gaze and had delivered the fateful prophecy in a guttural voice that was nothing like her own sharply cut tones.
    The amulet is coming to you. It will give you your heart’s desire. You will be Prime.
    Later, she had assured him that her prophecies were always true, that he should ignore her words at his own peril. Alexander had long dreamed that the Amengohr amulet would be his. It lent him invisibility at night and allowed him to walk safely in the sunlight during the day. For a moment, he had been elated. He would have the amulet and his heart’s desire—to be accepted at Horngate. But the cost was too high if it meant he would become Prime. He had known such a thing could only happen if Max was dead. Then the prophecy had started to come true. First, Niko and Tyler had begun to accept him as one of Horngate’s Shadowblades, then Alexander had obtained the amulet, and finally, at the moment of her kidnapping, Max had ordered Giselle to make Alexander Horngate’s Prime.
    He would not do it. If he did, she would not have