The Orphan Queen (The Orphan Queen #1)(3)

Connor peeled away from the fight and hurtled toward me. “Wil! I’m sorry! I was coming to help you, but he—”

“It’s all right.” I dropped to one knee and touched his neck. “How bad is it?” It was all I could do to keep from hugging him, checking the rest of his body for wounds. He was old enough that it would only infuriate him. Still, I didn’t stop myself from pulling him closer.

He tilted up his head and cringed, but the cut on his neck wasn’t deep. “It hurts.”

“Put pressure on it. The bleeding will stop.” Instead of coddling him more, I turned and rushed the glowman who’d hurt him.

The newcomer had the glowman worn down. The beast was panting, bleeding from cuts all over his arms and chest. His shirt hung in shreds. With a mind to add a few more gashes to his collection, I ripped him away from the stranger and slammed him against a building.

A fantasy tickled the back of my thoughts: the brickwork coming alive, swallowing the glowman whole. A fantasy it remained; I couldn’t call attention to my power.

“Why did you attack my people?” My voice was little more than a growl, a knot of rage and fear. If they knew who we were . . .

His gaze flitted beyond me, toward Connor and the others. “The boys looked easy.”

Not because they knew us. Good.

Again, I slammed his head into the bricks. His eyes grew unfocused. “Touch us again,” I said, “and you die.” Maybe he could die right now, for what he did to Connor. I had daggers. I could do it quickly. It wasn’t like he was human. Not anymore.

A presence warmed my back, and the glowman tried to wrest himself away. “No!”

“Excuse me.” The voice was deep and unfamiliar. “I’ll take him, if you’re finished.”

I spun away from the glowman as he crumpled to the ground, and readied my daggers, but the hooded man didn’t look up. Quickly, expertly, he bound the glowman’s hands and feet together with a silk cord.

The sounds of fighting died away as the other Ospreys dropped their opponents. Five bodies littered the ground, still breathing for now. My eyes followed the stranger as he turned toward me.

His face was covered by a thin sheet of black silk; only his eyes remained unhidden, though shadowed now.

Black Knife.

“Thank you for your assistance.” He stepped closer and offered his hand, but then paused and let it fall back to his side. “You?”

Wonderful. He recognized me from the last few times our paths had crossed. Though he’d never saved one of my friends before.

I threw a glance over my shoulder. Melanie had gathered the other Ospreys and they were already slipping quietly away. I took four long strides backward.

“What’s your name?” Black Knife stalked toward me, removing another silk cord from a pouch on his belt. “I’ve been looking for you. Where have you been hiding?”

I touched my chest and feigned flattery. “You’ve been looking for me?”

“Who were those children? More recruits for your gang?”

Same group. Younger orphans. Not that I’d tell him what we were, or from where we’d been taken.

“Surely we’re a waste of your time. There are worse things in Skyvale than a few teenagers trying to feed themselves.”

His gaze cut to the glowmen bleeding in the alley. A few of them were beginning to stir. “What are you stealing this time?”

“Do I look like a thief to you?” I reached for a look of innocence.

“You look dangerous.”

I smiled. “Thank you.” Before I could consider the wisdom, I pulled a dagger and threw it.

Black Knife swore and darted aside. The dagger struck behind him, pinning a glowman’s hand to the ground. The broken pipe he’d been reaching for rolled away.

When Black Knife kicked the pipe aside and knelt to tie the glowman, I ducked around a corner and ran as fast as I could, crossing into the White Flag district and taking to the rooftops. The other Ospreys would be waiting at the inn.

Away from the quiet of the warehouse district, midnight life rumbled on the streets below: drunks staggering home, dogs barking, and babies crying. The moon cast wan light over the district, not yet reflected in the mirrors that hung on the taller buildings. If Black Knife had followed me, I couldn’t see him.

I paused on the roof of an apothecary and whispered to the sky, “Thank you.” My Ospreys were safe. That was all that mattered.

They were my only family, my only hope for home. When the Indigo Army invaded Aecor almost ten years ago, every adult living in the palace was slaughtered, and the highborn children were brought to Skyvale, the capital of the Indigo Kingdom. We escaped the orphanage a year later and named ourselves after the national animal of our conquered homeland.

The Ospreys, these children, were my life. Without them, I had nothing.

But with them . . .

With them, I would take back my kingdom.





TWO


AFTER DROPPING INTO the apothecary and lifting a few bandages and powdered herbs, I made my way to the Peacock Inn and slipped inside through the open window on the top floor.

We couldn’t afford the room, even though it was the worst one in the building; but Patrick, Melanie, and I had once broken up a huge fight that would have ended with five dead men on the floor, police swarming through White Flag, and the Peacock’s owner in jail. Now the innkeeper always let Ospreys stay when we were in town.