Nocturna (A Forgery of Magic #1)(50)

With the Equinox Festival happening tomorrow and the royal family hosting a ball, the city had already broken out in celebration. Tipsy couples danced in tight circles, tossing pesos at the musicians playing quick merengues back to back.

Finn should have been roaming the marketplace, thieving from every drunk she came across and treating herself to some sangria, but instead she followed the prince on his scheme to track this magic and trap it with whatever he’d learned from that weird Englassen book.

Like all Castallano children, Finn had heard the legend of Sombra and Nocturna—the darkness he would bring if awakened. She’d once asked her mother what Nocturna even meant.

“It means the end of all things good,” her mother had said as she mashed garlic cloves. Finn had shrugged those words off as a child. Now they rang in her ears, the sound crisp as the snap of a bone.

“There!” Alfie said, drawing her from her thoughts. He pointed at a pub with blue doors tucked into a darkened, quiet corner of the Brim. He walked toward it, the hand holding the black dust outstretched before him. His palm was turning pink from the heat of the dust. “This must be the place.”

The end of all things good could be waiting for them inside this very pub. Finn stopped short at the sight of its name—the Blue Thimble.

“This place?” Finn swallowed. The Blue Thimble was where she was supposed to meet Kol to give her the vanishing cloak. Would she even be here tonight? It was too strange a coincidence. And any place Kol owned was not the sort that you simply walked into. No one dared to step into her pubs without an invitation from the boss herself.

Alfie looked down at her from beneath the hood of his cloak. Once they’d reached the Brim, they’d removed the vanishing cloak to move with ease, but the prince still wore his own to keep people from recognizing him. “Sí. Do you have a problem with this specific pub?”

“No,” she said, quelling the fear billowing up inside her. She’d meant to kill Kol anyway; might as well kill her and help the prince trap the magic at the same time. Two annoying birds, one stone fist.

The prince squared his shoulders. “Then we ought to get this over with. Quickly.”

It was bold of him to think they’d be able to trap this thing at all, let alone quickly. Exchanging a grimace at what was to come, the two opened the blue doors of the pub and stepped in.

The first thing that hit her was the smell. The metallic scent of blood clung to her, coating her tongue. She clapped a hand over her mouth and nose as she took in the horror around her.

There was so much blood. Too much.

The Blue Thimble was large and sweeping, with a serving bar that stretched the length of its left side, and the pub in its entirety was awash with blood. The wood bar was slick with it, as if it had been varnished red. Twenty or so corpses were strewn about the place, like toys tossed by a spoiled child. Limbs had been cut off, throats slashed, and bellies eviscerated to leak rivers of red. The pub’s countless tables and chairs were toppled and overturned onto the slippery ground. Her eyes couldn’t make sense of what she saw. The red overwhelmed her, dizzying her senses.

Finn bent over and vomited where she stood.

She grabbed the bar for support. Her hand came away wet and crimson. With a strangled gasp she took a step away and slipped on something bony—a dismembered hand splayed on the floor like a spider of flesh and bone. Finn landed on her knees, her trousers stained red. From this angle she could see that the floor was dotted with piles of the same black dust from the palace, as if someone had emptied a chimney into the pub and spread the ash in mounds.

The prince pulled her up gently by the shoulders. He was saying something to her, but his voice was muffled and carried an echo, as if it were coming from the inside of a long-necked bottle.

Two drops of blood splattered on Alfie’s forehead. He froze mid-sentence, fear pulling his face taut as the blood rolled down his nose and onto the bow of his lips. His gaze drew up and Finn followed his stare, afraid of what they’d find. A body was pegged to the ceiling with knives, a smile cut into the throat. Blood dripped from it like a leaky faucet.

The corpse dripped three more times, dotting his cheeks with blood before Finn pulled him sideways. He was stunned to silence as he wiped his face, smearing the blood in fat stripes.

For a moment, her fear was eclipsed by a flicker of hope. This was Kol’s pub. Maybe she’d been killed in this massacre. If Kol had been killed, then her magic would die with her, and Finn would be free to use her propio again.

Finn focused, willing her face to change, but she felt that same stoppered ache building in her head. Her propio was still blocked. The ember of hope was snuffed out, replaced by a blinding anger that singed her from the inside out. She wanted to overturn the bloody tables, to add more carnage to the scene. So Kol was alive, but after this massacre, likely done by an enemy mobster, Kol had probably left town. How would Finn find her now?

Then the thought came, crawling from the darkest recesses of her mind: Will I be stuck like this forever? Trapped with this face?

That made her sicker than the bloody scene before her.

The prince’s eyes widened. He pointed over her shoulder. “Finn.”

Finn followed his gaze back to the blood-smeared bar she’d gripped only moments before. At first, she couldn’t tell what Alfie pointed at among the broken bottles and unmoving bodies draped over it, but then her eyes found it. A hand with blackened nails rose from behind the bar, curling over the wood, its palm slick with blood. A second hand followed. A man rose slowly from behind the serving bar. He was shaking violently, his eyes black from edge to edge. His veins, raised and dark, squirmed beneath his flesh. He breathed raggedly, the sound sending a shudder through her bones. Finn and Alfie skittered back, stepping on limbs and puddles of blood as they darted away from the man.