The Midnight Court Read online

  Vasily stopped with his cup raised halfway to his mouth.

  “When I ran off into the woods in Novgorod that first Ivan Kupala, I didn’t just get lost. I lied to you.”

  His hazel eyes grew shadowed, but he waited for me to go on.

  “The spirits—the syla—they led me to their grove.”

  “The syla?”

  “They said they belonged to the Unseen World.” I hesitated. The rest would sound absurd. “They bowed to me and said I was the Fallen Queen they’d been waiting for, and I must take the flower of the fern.”

  “The flower of the fern.” Vasily reached behind me to spoon more sugar into his tea, his face guarded, as if he thought the blow I’d suffered from a falling branch that night two years ago had damaged my brain. “And why would these Unseen spirits want you to have a mythical flower?”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  He lowered his eyes as he sipped his tea. “I’m trying to believe you, Nazkia. I can’t imagine why you’d make this up.”

  “I am not making it up. I met them first at the Winter Palace. The one in St. Petersburg, I mean, not the one in Elysium. But they were invisible there. When I found them in Novgorod, they told me they’d manipulated things to bring us to where I could see them.”

  Vasily set down his tea and leaned back against the counter. “Wait. When were you at the Winter Palace?”

  “When I got lost—actually lost, that time in St. Petersburg after we first fell.” I bit my lip when I remembered where he’d been while I was wandering through the empty museum so like the home in which I’d spent my celestial childhood. “The day the Seraphim caught you.”

  Vasily pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose in an unconscious gesture. His poor eyesight, the only thing the unexpected blending of our elements had been unable to fully heal, was a reminder of the pain he’d suffered at the hands of the Seraphim to keep me safe.

  “All right, so let’s say I believe these syla brought us to Novgorod to give you this flower. Why did they want you to have it?”

  “They said it would protect me when I returned to Heaven. They’d hidden it from the queen who abandoned them, and she was looking for me.” I paused. “They’d hidden it from Aeval.”

  He quivered with tightly controlled fury at the mere mention of her name, the shadows in his eyes now red with his element, like a furnace burning deep within. “Aeval? You’re telling me the queen of Heaven isn’t even a celestial?”

  I cringed at his tone, though I knew his anger wasn’t really at me. “Apparently she lied, too.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us this before? Why didn’t you tell Belphagor?”

  “I wanted to protect the syla.” Though having something that was mine alone was closer to the truth. I choked on the next words. “And I failed.”

  The flame of his fury went out in an instant. He pushed away from the counter and took me in his arms. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  As always, an involuntary shiver of need went through me at his touch. I whispered against his chest. “The Seraphim—they attacked them. The syla were burning and I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

  He knew better than I did what it was to be touched by a Seraph within the earthly plane. He’d survived their attack only because of the peculiar spark of our combined elements. Some of it danced over our skin even now, a miniature aurora of pale violet.

  “She survived,” I said. “Aeval’s alive, and she knows I took the flower. She’s sent the Seraphim to punish them.”

  “Seraphim?” Belphagor’s voice, sharp with tension, came from the stairway.

  Jumping at the sound as if he’d touched a live wire, Vasily let go of me.

  Belphagor ran a hand through his dark hair as he came downstairs, the tattooed bands and crosses on his fingers blending with the spiked tips. “You saw them?”

  I put my hands in my pockets, self-conscious in the face of Vasily’s discomfort. “No, but I saw what they’d done. It must have happened somewhere else.”

  Belphagor raised an eyebrow, the steel bar that decorated it glinting in the early-morning light. “I suppose that answers the question of whether Aeval’s still queen.”

  Vasily kept his head down, concentrating on his tea. “Was it really in doubt? Surely we’d have heard something if power had changed hands in Heaven.”

  “I would have thought we’d hear something—anything—even if it hadn’t. The quiet is a little unnerving.” Belphagor descended the last few steps, his stature changing the physical dynamic between the two demons, but not the emotional.

  Vasily’s ruddy complexion turned ruddier as Belphagor wrapped a hand around the taller demon’s neck and pulled his head down for a kiss.

  Though I’d borne Vasily’s child, he had been Belphagor’s paramour since long before we met. After the initial surprise at learning his lover had fathered a child in his absence, Belphagor had given Vasily his blessing to maintain a physical relationship with me. Despite his assurances, however, it had been months since Vasily had touched me. He was riddled with guilt—while Vasily had kept me warm through a subarctic winter, Belphagor had been a slave to the queen’s basest whims, and in the end, her whim had been to let my cousin Kae beat him almost to death.

  But Vasily had come to save his love—and he hadn’t come alone. A small army of Fallen had assembled for Belphagor’s aid. It was the Code of Thieves. The vory v zakone of the terrestrial demon community looked out for their own.

  Belphagor held Vasily’s gaze for a moment, hand gripped tightly around his neck, before letting him pull away. Though Vasily surpassed him in height and sheer bulk, there was no question who dominated their relationship—and that Vasily liked it that way. The look that passed between them as they parted spoke of all they seemed unable to say. As far as I knew, Belphagor had never told him what he’d done in service to Aeval, though Vasily, I think, had guessed at its nature.

  When the three of us sat at the table with our tea, Vasily made a point of keeping space between himself and me. Though I’d never made any claim on his affections, he seemed as reticent to be demonstrative with Belphagor in my presence as he was to be seen touching me in Belphagor’s. I worried about what effect this conflict in his head was having on their relationship. I’d neither seen nor heard any signs of their intimate relations since Belphagor’s recovery, and they were not the sort to do things discreetly, no matter how much they imagined themselves to be.

  Love’s arrival dispelled the awkward silence. “I guess everybody’s up.” Her soft voice was almost scolding. She grabbed some of Ola’s teething biscuits from the counter and nibbled on them as she joined us at the table. “It took me forever to get Ola calmed down enough to sleep.” Now she was definitely scolding. “And you’re drinking tea, Anazakia. It’s no wonder the baby can’t get to sleep.”

  “She’s barely nursing anymore,” I said defensively, but I set down my cup with a twinge of guilt. Love came from a large family, and she knew far more than I’d ever imagined there was to know about the care of infants. She even insisted “the boys” give up smoking their cigars and cigarettes, though I occasionally found all three of them by the garden shed sharing a smoke as though it were an illicit drug.

  Opening the portable computer she kept plugged in at the kitchen table, Love began clicking away in a manner that mystified the three of us. Belphagor was somewhat familiar with the device, but he said the “web” Love navigated effortlessly had been little more than a glimmer in someone’s eye the last time he’d fallen.

  “Might as well check the chatter,” she said. “As long as everyone’s up.”

  The three of us shared a round of guilty looks; the sitting room beside the kitchen was where Love slept.

  “Chatter” was what she called the odd bits of information that came to her from various sources, often buried in what she called “clutter”—random messages on discussion forums and in virtual communities that seemed meant to mask the real communicati
ons of the underground. Sometimes she even found chatter in games.

  “Wait,” said Love, as she always did when she found something of interest, as if the rest of us were on the verge of taking the computer from her to skip past whatever she’d found. As if we could. “There’s something from our old friend ’possessed85.’” She glanced up at me. “He’s the Romani contact who helped us locate you and Bel.” Roma was the name she used for her people, though she spoke of the “gypsy underground,” just as Belphagor and Vasily did. “He’s sent me a PDF.” She ignored our blank looks. “Looks like a newspaper clipping or a pamphlet. The beginning is cut off. But I think it’s about you, Nazkia.”

  “About me?”

  “I recognize your name in here, but it’s in that ’angelic’ script you’re all so fond of, so I can’t really make out much.”

  Belphagor stood behind her and read from the screen: “’Construction on the new wing of the palace—replacing the former Celestial Glory burned to the ground by the Grand Duchess Anazakia Helisonovna of the House of Arkhangel’sk in her fit of madness—to be completed in time for Her Supernal Majesty’s Grand Equinox Gala.’” He gave me an apologetic look. “She really took to that story I made up for her.”

  I shrugged, though it was still a sore spot. There was nothing to be done about it now, and he’d meant well. By suggesting I was mad, Belphagor had given Aeval an excuse to let me live. Of course, when fortune had placed me within her grasp, the queen had ordered my execution all the same.

  “’This tragic conflagration,’” he continued, “’as Host and Fallen alike will sadly recall, took the lives of every worker who came to petition Her Supernal Majesty in the Palace Square that infamous morning. Her Supernal Highness the Grand Duchess Anazakia Helisonovna managed to poison her chambermaid—’”

  “I did not!”

  “’—and escape from the comfortable seclusion in which Her Supernal Majesty had restrained her after her first fit of madness cost the Firmament its former principality and nearly every member of the supernal House of Arkhangel’sk.’”

  While I seethed silently at this lie, Belphagor swallowed and went on.

  “’On that early summer morning, nearly a year to the day from her first attack, Her Supernal Highness summoned the strength only the mad possess and struck down every agent of the Palace Guard who did not perish in the fire. Her Supernal Majesty the queen narrowly escaped murder at the hand of the grand duchess now dubbed “Bloody Anazakia” by the citizens of the Firmament.’”

  “Bloody Anazakia!” My face reddened with embarrassment and outrage. “And now I’m not only the murderer of my family, I’m responsible for the fire her own Seraphim started!”

  “There’s more.” Belphagor’s expression was almost meek. “’Her Supernal Majesty has set aside an official Day of Observance to commemorate the tragic events of the Solstice Conflagration, and to pay homage to the last legitimate heir of the House of Arkhangel’sk…’” He paused and reread this part. “’The last legitimate heir of the House of Arkhangel’sk, His Supernal Majesty the Principality…Kae Lebesovich, who also perished in the fire.’”

  It struck me like a physical blow, much harder than I’d expected. The Kae I knew had died on a winter’s day in the mountains of Aravoth when he’d fallen under Aeval’s enchantment, though no one had known it yet. He’d died to me for certain the night he put his sword through the bellies of my family, including the pregnant belly of his own wife, Ola’s namesake. But now he was forever lost.

  Though I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it, I’d been harboring a secret hope that somehow I could free him from the queen, that someday he’d return to himself, the beloved cousin of my youth. That hope had been consumed by fire a year ago, and though I’d feared it was likely, we’d heard nothing, and I’d allowed myself to hold on to a fantasy. To hear the truth with certainty was devastating.

  I tried to keep the tears from falling. I had no right to mourn him. He had no right to be mourned. I rose and used the pretext of rinsing my teacup in the sink to hide my face.

  Pushing back his chair with a jerk, Vasily growled low in his throat. “Tell me you’re not crying for that son of a succubus. You saw what he did to Bel. You were there.”

  “Vasya,” Belphagor said gently. “Let it alone.”

  “No, I will not let it alone!”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and gripped the edge of the sink. A muffled thud followed, as if Vasily had shoved Belphagor away.

  “He would have taken you from me. Another day—if I’d wasted one more day—you’d not have survived that filthy hole!”

  “Moi malchik.” Belphagor whispered the private name he used for Vasily: my boy. I’d never heard him say it, had only read it once in a note I wasn’t meant to see. Love and pain and desire were captured in that single breath.

  “Don’t you dare.” Vasily’s voice was huskier than normal. “You had no right to leave me. Not for her. Not for the odds, not for anything. You had no right to put yourself in that hole and nearly leave me forever.”

  There was a moment of pregnant silence before Vasily went to the entryway, kicked off his tapochki as he grabbed his outdoor boots, and departed with a slam of the door that rattled the dacha. Upstairs, Ola began to cry, and Love jumped up out of habit.

  “I’m her mother.” The protest came out more harshly than I’d intended.

  She sat back down, chagrined, and I hurried up the stairs, glad not to have to look Belphagor in the eye. I took Ola to bed with me and nursed her back to sleep, more for my solace than her own, while I cried silently against the sunset gold of her Arkhangel’sk curls.

  The cousin who’d killed everyone I loved had once been my best friend, so close that my sister Omeliea, to whom he’d been betrothed since childhood, had sometimes viewed our friendship with suspicion. But she’d never had anything to worry about. Kae had worshipped the ground she walked on—until the day he’d killed her.

  In the morning, I picked up a book from the nightstand and sat watching Ola over the tops of the pages I wasn’t seeing, watching her breath rise and fall. In the early days of her unexpected life, I’d sometimes woken her just to make sure she was still breathing, just to be sure she was real.

  There was a soft knock on the door, and Belphagor opened it without waiting for my answer. Reflected in the mirror beside him, my eyes were red and puffy. I tried to hide them by letting my curls swing over my face, but Belphagor sat on the bed beside me and tucked my hair behind my ear.

  I met his eyes reluctantly. “I’m sorry.”

  “Nazkia. You have nothing to be sorry about. You told me once you still loved your cousin, and I told you there was nothing wrong with that. And I meant it. He was still your family. He was still taken from you by the tragedy that took the rest. You have every right to mourn him.”

  “But Vasily’s right. He would have killed you.”

  “Vasily’s hurt. I frightened him. Heaven knows, I frightened myself.” Belphagor grimaced. “I had no business trying to make that deal with Aeval. He’s right about that. I should never have gone back to Heaven on my own. But you mustn’t feel guilty about your affection for your cousin. Vasily may not understand, but I do.” He sighed. “There were times when I actually liked the fellow myself. Not so much near the end, of course.”

  Belphagor never spoke of the assault he’d suffered under my cousin’s knut, a wicked tool of punishment once used on wayward peasants in the world of Man. Kae had also flayed the soles of the demon’s feet to ribbons. Those injuries had eventually healed, but the mangled wreck of Belphagor’s back had taken far longer. It had given him fever for a time as some of the older, deeper trenches cut into his flesh became infected, and it had left him with permanent scars that were painful to look at.

  He smiled ruefully. “At any rate, that’s not what I came here to talk about. I didn’t hear everything you were telling Vasily last night, but I caught enough. The Seraphim attacked these—what did you call them? Sylphs?�
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  “The syla.”

  “Because they gave you something of Aeval’s.”

  I nodded glumly and explained to him about the flower of the fern.

  Belphagor eyed me with a careful lack of expression. He would have called it his “wingcasting face,” the trick that made him a master of the card game. He didn’t believe me any more than Vasily had. “The flower—this ’tsvetok paporotnika’—where is it now?”

  “I lost it.” My voice was sharp with anger at myself. “I’d kept it in the locket you pinched from my nurse. When Helga saw me wearing the locket, she took it, and I couldn’t get it back.”

  In the aftermath of my family’s murders, my childhood nurse had changed toward me. Years of hiding her Fallen identity while serving the House of Arkhangel’sk had made her bitter, and she blamed me for surviving while my brother Azel had not. But I couldn’t be angry with her. She was the reason I’d survived. It was Helga who’d hired Belphagor and Vasily to hide me in the world of Man.

  Belphagor looked baffled. “When on earth did Helga see it?”

  “Not on earth,” I said pointedly. “In Heaven. She used the charm you gave her, thinking to bring you to her. She heard you were at the palace and she was furious, wondering what you’d done with me. But I had the callstone in my pocket, and it called me from the dacha instead.”

  He groaned. “Bozhe moi. The callstone. I’d forgotten it.” The wingcasting face was gone as he narrowed his eyes. “I thought you said you returned to Heaven on your own, to spite me.”

  “I meant to. I just didn’t have the nerve.”

  Belphagor laughed out loud, startling Ola awake. Her tousled curls popped up from the blankets beside me and she grinned at Belphagor and reached out for him with her little fingers, saying “Beli” with nearly supernal insistence. Much to Belphagor’s chagrin, Ola had managed to pick up Vasily’s pet name for him, even before she’d first said “Papa.”

  He lifted her and tossed her lightly in the air, catching her as she giggled. It was her favorite game. Despite the shock of discovering his Vasily had fathered a child, Belphagor was devoted to her.