KATHERINE J ADAMS latest novel, Tonight, I Bleed, is the sequel to Tonight, I Burn.This latest instalment sees the return of Penny Albright who finds herself face to face with death as she stands at the centre of a magical rebellion and back to back with her enemies as she falls deeper into a seductive romance. Read on for an extract.
EXTRACT
CHAPTER 3
We dry in silence in Malin’s bedchamber, preparing ourselves to face the Warden in his court. Heavy silver drapes around the bed are tied back neatly with a black velvet bow, and the matching curtains at the window are drawn wide so the autumn morning brightens the room. Someone has tidied Malin’s hasty dishevelment of the room whilst we finished in the bath.
It’s entirely too cheerful a day outside to follow the horrors of the night. The mist that came with the dawn has burned away and a bird chirrups out across the courtyard.
I pull on the black dress Malin threw on the bed before he went to prepare himself to face his father in court. I have no words, just questions without answers. I’m terrified the Warden was referring to our friends when he ordered us to attend court this morning … but he said things, not witches. Surely, he has to mean the knife.
My teeth sink into my lip, harder and harder as I try to find a better answer, and watch Alice run a golden comb through her hair, silvery-blonde strands still wet from the bath.
‘Alice,’ I whisper, ‘what happened to the others?’
Alice stills, her fingers clenched on the comb, and she leans back against the dressing table, a monstrous thing of dark wood with a huge oval mirror framed in gilt scrolls. ‘They fell while we burned.’
‘Fell?’
Alice’s eyes shine brighter as she sets the comb down on Malin’s dressing table and traces patterns across the gleaming mahogany, slow pictures drawn in water drips from her hair. ‘As we were lost, so now are they.’
‘Alice?’
Alice goes to crouch by the fire, rubbing her hair between her hands in an attempt to dry it, but her fingers are dancing, spinning the invisible threads of our futures on her loom. ‘It won’t stop shifting,’ she says, frustrated. She shoves her hair back over her shoulders and clenches her hands in her lap.
Silently, I kneel beside her and twist her hair into a neat braid that hides the dampness. She looks so unsure. I hate that for her. ‘There has to be something we can do,’ I try to reassure her. There must be a clear path forward; Alice just needs time to see it. But time is swiftly running out.
A frown furrows right between her pale eyebrows, a little crease I want to smooth away with my thumb. She wrings her fingers together and talks to the fire in the grate, not me. ‘The knife needs witches. The Warden has the knife. He needs the witches. If they are his, so is the knife.’
‘But he doesn’t have them?’ I ask, and she shakes her head. ‘And he doesn’t have me either.’
‘Not yet,’ Alice whispers.
‘Not ever,’ I reply, trying to sound surer than I feel.
‘Already he lays the path before your feet. You’ll walk it.’ She’s making no sense. I’m used to Alice’s mystical way with words, but she’s beginning to scare me. And I was already scared enough. Her whisper rises, sharp with panic. ‘I can’t help you. Can’t stop him. I can’t see what to do. You’ll beg him, Penny, before the end.’
‘Alice, please.’ I shake her shoulders gently, and when she turns, her eyes are wild and desperate.
She plucks the air around us as if catching flyaway seeds on the wind and presses a handful of nothing against my chest. Her fingertips brush my lifeline as she pulls away. We freeze as pleasure shivers through me. Fear slams after it, racing down my lifeline and stabbing me right behind my navel. We jolt apart in shock. Alice’s eyes are turned wholly black with the same horror that’s knitting into my gut, her focus off, staring right through me to something no one else can see.
I want to tell her it’s okay. That whatever she just saw isn’t real. It can change. We can change it. But I’m not sure we can, and I don’t have the strength to form a believable lie.
Malin knocks lightly on his bedroom door before cracking it an inch, breaking the tension between us. ‘We need to attend to the Warden,’ he says apologetically, glancing from Alice to me, aware he’s interrupted something – if only I knew what it was. ‘If we’re late,’ Malin continues, ‘he’ll shut me out of his plans again, and if I’m not party to his next moves, we’re up a very deep proverbial creek with a regrettably absent paddle.’
‘Are you the paddle?’ I force a morbid grin and take his offered hand, letting him help me to my feet, grateful for the gentle pressure of his strong fingers around mine.
‘That would make you the creek,’ he parries with a quirk of his lips and a comforting hitch of one eyebrow. There’s a question there though, hidden in a squeeze of my hand. Are you all right? He’s sensed the disturbance between me and Alice, but how could he not? The air is thick with it.
Alice holds out a hand for me to pull her to her feet, and my attempt at humour seems so out of place, Malin’s response crass, but she picks it up and runs with it. ‘Penny is the current carrying us along. And the creek will clear to crystal if we ride it to the end. I can’t see how,’ she says softly. ‘But you will see, Penny. Somehow, you always seem to see more than me.’
But I didn’t see what just made Alice so terrified. Now, she sounds as if she’s accepting something, and I don’t see what that is either.
I clasp her hand, and my smile wavers. ‘What’s gone right hasn’t been me. Most of it’s been everyone else picking up the pieces of my mistakes and finding a pattern in them. The knife … the fire …’ I press my lips together, composing myself. ‘Last night – I didn’t see that.’
‘Nor did I,’ Alice mutters.
Malin holds open the door and gives us both a reassuring sort of nod. ‘You do yourself a disservice, Alice.’
Alice’s head tilts a little to one side as she looks up at him. ‘You did not see it, Malin.’ I’m not sure if she’s asking a question or stating a fact. ‘You could not have seen it. Yet you punish yourself for missing what was not there to be missed. Why?’
Malin opens his mouth and closes it again, seeming lost for words. Or unwilling to answer. His expression suggests he’s asked himself the same question. I see an apology in Alice’s eyes, and I’m hit with the feeling of being in the middle of something I don’t fully understand. I’m a naive fool who stumbles into decisions without gathering all the facts. I thought I was being brave – binding Malin’s lifeline to mine, giving up my lifeline for the knife, creating my friends’ crystals – when maybe I’ve just been a catalyst for the villain to act out his plans all along.
‘Penny?’ Malin says quietly, pulling me back to reality.
Alice’s frown has deepened and she’s focused on me now. ‘What do you see?’ she asks.
‘Nothing,’ I reply. ‘I wish I did.’
Malin helpfully adds, ‘I suspect she’s blaming herself for last night.’ ‘I’m not!’ I absolutely was, but that’s a rabbit hole of a conversation I’m not falling down.
Alice nods, backing up Malin, not me. ‘Why, Penny?’ she asks, and it sounds innocent enough, but I see the spark of her gentle teasing. She knows exactly what I was thinking.
‘We don’t have time for questions with complicated answers.’ I don’t hide my irritation. Tiredness prickles behind my eyes. ‘Magic is about to be destroyed and we have no plan beyond an audience with the Warden.’
‘About that…” Malin squares his shoulders, and a tendon flickers in the side of his neck. ‘We have to stop him—’
‘Yes, I got that. Thanks for clarifying.’ I shouldn’t snap, but if we don’t have time to untangle Alice’s wavering visions, we definitely don’t have time to state the obvious.
Malin presses his lips together in a tight line, but there’s a little indent in the bottom one. ‘We need the knife.’
‘If you have an idea, spit it…’ I trail off as Malin’s eyes darken and finish flatly, ‘…out.’
‘Penny,’ he says again and stops, biting my name in half with the snap of his teeth. Slowly, he squares his shoulders and blocks the doorway, facing up to me in the same manner as he did to Dante earlier, and the words he’s struggling to find are delivered in the same hard tone. ‘If the Warden orders you to heal him—’
‘You want me to break our contract?’ I ask.
Malin watches me carefully, concern hiding behind his sternness. I rub the little rosebud mark on my wrist, squeezing a finger under the Warden’s gold cuff. Our original contract was fifty pages of clauses and small print and a hell of a lot of burning to provide Malin with information on the Warden’s court.
Our current contract is one clause: Don’t heal the Warden.
The collateral is the same: My soul.
‘I can’t.’ I feel my shoulders soften, my resolve faltering, and double down with a glare. ‘Don’t you dare tell me I have to.’
Breaking the contract Malin worded so carefully to set me free will put me in his possession. Neither of us wants that.
Malin’s aware of precisely what he’s asking, and the hardness of his tone doesn’t hide his regret. ‘If you refuse, there’ll be nothing of you left by the time the Warden’s finished. He’s done playing games. All the pieces are lined up, he’ll seal the veil tonight. Now he has the knife, there’ll be no stalling it, no stopping him. Alice needs you. The Resistance needs you.’ He pauses and steps a little closer. We’re caught in the doorway, the three of us, so close together I can see the soft little hairs on his neck below his ear, the slow throb of his pulse in his throat beating to the same rhythm as mine.
The chill of him spans the space between us, cooling my skin, and I stare up at him, summoning the strength to deny him again.
I cannot do what he asks. It’s not even an argument. Then, he softens. ‘I need you.’
‘I need my soul,’ I answer.
‘Can you trust me?’ Malin asks. ‘Please.’
Reluctantly, I nod. ‘Your contract … it’s not easy to get past. I can’t heal the Warden, my magic refuses.’ I swallow hard. ‘But we could kill him. Together, before anyone else gets hurt. With your magic tied to mine …’ Malin looks like he’s about to shake me, and I fold my arms in defiance. ‘I can’t touch the Warden’s lifeline with ill intent, but with both of us …’
‘He has safeguards in place, wards and protections worked by the Gilded. He knows our lifelines are bound.’ Malin frowns, considering a moment before he continues. ‘But you’ve been using my magic all night; use it again in the throne room. Direct my magic to push past the contract binding yours.’
Alice adds, ‘Then Penny keeps her soul?’
‘No.’ Malin’s fingers circle my wrist above the Warden’s cuff and his thumb runs underneath the metal, finding the mark of our contract by memory. The gentle pressure takes some of the sting out of what he’s asking. ‘Heal him slowly, as little as you can get away with. Buy me time to locate the knife.’
Alice leans a little closer to me and says, ‘I can undo it. The contract. When today is done. I see the threads that bind you.’
Malin exhales with relief at Alice backing his plan.
I’m less convinced. ‘How will you get the knife? The Warden won’t have it hung on his belt.’
‘No. But he’ll have the key to where he’s locked it. He won’t have trusted that to anyone else.’ Malin rolls his shoulders as if he’s preparing for battle, setting muscles rippling down his spine beneath his perfectly pressed black silk shirt. ‘Do exactly as the Warden commands, whatever he orders, and I’ll help you. Don’t give yourself away, don’t try to manipulate the magic protecting him, we only get one shot at this.’
He brushes a curl of dark hair out of his eyes and turns away to collect his mask from the sitting room mantelpiece. The golden spire burned into his spine shimmers above his black silk collar in the morning light.
How is it still morning? How is it already Samhain? How are we so damned far behind every move the Warden makes? A shiver of dread runs down my back.
‘Ready?’ Malin frowns, a crease in his perfect brow as he ties on his obsidian mask, hiding the injury to his cheek.
‘Ready,’ I reply. Alice nods.
We have hours to prepare for the ball, to come up with a plan to stop the Warden sealing the veil between Life and Death. If we fail, the dead won’t die, souls won’t pass into Death where they belong. Unable to cross the Horizon, they’ll slowly transform until Halstett’s streets are filled with fog-wraiths and the Warden will rule over a city of the dead.
And without magic, there will be nothing we can do to stop him. The Warden will sit in his fortified palace, immortal and untouchable, and I’ll be damned if I’ll be kneeling at his feet while he does. We’ll find a way to stop him, even if it means giving Malin my soul. But first, I need to play the part of the Warden’s perfect little Gilded pet one more time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I’m a dark gothic fantasy writer.
My childhood was spent travelling the world, and I finally settled in glorious Oceania, more specifically in New Zealand. I just adore the name Oceania. It reminds me of mermaids and sea witches and Neptune ruling beneath the waves. I’m passionate about positive LGBTQ+ representation, and love blending my own bisexuality into my character’s journeys.
I write. A lot.
Mostly tucked away in my office with a dog curled up at my feet in the wee small hours of the morning while the rest of the house sleeps. Sometimes in the car waiting for dance class to finish. On Mondays it’s one of three cafes with a huge caramel latte and a view of the Cook Strait.
No matter where I am, I’m never happier than those moments when my writing truly takes me away, and I’m in a realm where Death is a place, the future is woven from silk, and love can be found in the most unexpected places.
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