"Hope can be bruised and battered. It can be forced underground and even rendered unconscious, but hope can never be killed."

—Neal Shusterman

Leaving was always the hardest part. Honora wove the hallway shadows around herself with a flick of her finger, shielding herself from the guards making their evening rounds. She adjusted the edge of her hood and peered around a corner.

The guards were lighting torches again, muttering in irritation. Their backs went to her as they fumbled with firestarters and dead lighters. Their dying fires turned the concrete halls into flickering beasts of shadow. She smiled and crossed the carpeted floor, vanishing into a bedroom door left ajar. Neither of the guards turned. She pressed close to the wall once inside. It was warmer in the bedroom, magic pooling around someone.

"Mother?" a sleepy voice said from the shadows.

Honora pursed her lips and eased the door shut, the oiled hinges silent. Her loose trousers whispered against each other as she crossed the room to the bed. The room was small, containing nothing more than a closet, a bed, and a second carpet of clothes and books. There wasn't even a window. She picked her way through the mess of her son's room and knelt at his bedside.

She lifted her fingers and blew on them. Sparks rolled down from the tips of her digits into her palm, blossoming into a small flame. She caged her fingers around it and let the fire glow. In the low light, she could see her son sit up, dwarfed by his massive bed.

He rubbed his eyes, hair a tousled shadow in the darkness. He squinted at her and frowned. "What are you doing?"

"I need to go again, darling." Honora hid the tremble in her whisper. He deflated, worried eyes scanning her face.

"That's the second time this week." He matched her volume, aware of the dangers should she be caught. And using magic no less. "You're moving too fast."

Honora couldn't help but smile, reaching out with her unflaming hand to stroke his cheek for a moment. "Don't worry about me. I'll be back come dawn."

"And if you're not?"

A plan. Her little boy always had to have a plan for everything, no matter how remote the possibility. He stared at her seriously, and she knew that he already had all the possibilities laid out in his head. If she didn't tell him what to do, he'd come up with something on his own.  Honora breathed in, tense. "Hold your cover no matter what happens. Wait for me to return, and if I'm dead you must tell Ilse to take my place."

"Ilse is too reckless." He clenched his thick blankets. "Let me do something for once. Let me meet with the hunter, I'm more convincing than you."

She gave a forceful smile. "No."

"But I'm--"

"No," she said. The only reason she managed to keep quiet was the fact that she would be killed if anyone found her. "You are the prince, you have a position none of the others have. Our most important piece. Keep the cover."

He was an agent best suited to the shadows. But he could do so much more within his cover and she knew it. She lowered her hand to his, stroking her thumb over the scars that rounded his wrist. The skin there had been torn and re-torn dozens of times by harsh iron cuffs and weeks of struggling. His bones jutted out beneath the mottled flesh.

She couldn't let anything worse happen to her son. He had to remain silent. He was a skilled liar and one of the best manipulators she had ever seen, he wouldn't need anyone's help in remaining hidden. It was Honora's personal feelings that clouded his potential.

She knew it. He knew it.

He closed his eyes and sighed, giving up the argument. He wasn't defeated, though. Not even close. The flicker of fire in his eye made her heart falter, knowing he wasn't going to listen to her.

Honora leaned forward and buried her face in his black hair. It matched hers almost perfectly. Their coloring was exactly the same as well, save for his eyes. His eyes were a pure onyx next to her dark brown.

"Just be careful," he said, voice small and delicate in the shadows.

She quenched the flame in her palm and left her son to darkness.

×

Honora shivered in the night air. Her cloak did almost nothing to protect her from the ocean wind. Icy waters roiled with magic, luring her down towards the waves and away from her husband's city.

She looked back to the walled island. The castle rose above the wall, even down to the rocks where Honora stood. It glowered down at her, the spires unnaturally pale in the night.

Above her, a line glowed in the sky where the city's fires and lights flared out against the clouds. The air tasted like snow. It would never snow, not for another decade or so, but Honora liked to think it might. She inched towards the water, her boots scraping against sharp stones. She went rigid every time one of them fell loose into the water. Those small sounds were nothing against the roar of the waves, but it still made her buzz with fear.

The water lapped around her ankle when she finally reached it. She winced as it pierced directly to the bone, cold cutting through her boot.

Her other foot joined the first, and she walked slowly, cringing at every step. The water seemed to still as she kept going, until it was mirror-flat wherever she touched. She stopped when it was just to her waist, the reddish-black tint of the ocean bright over her cloak.

The smell wasn't as bad for her as it was for humans, but it still reeked of rust and decay. She swallowed and eased herself onto her knees, the water coming up to her shoulders then.

"You -- you know where I need to go." She couldn't stop her teeth from chattering. But it was the intent, not the words.

The sharp stones and sand beneath her knees caved slightly. She nodded and took a deep breath, plunging her body backwards into the reeking water.

The ground had vanished, taken over by a tunnel of water that dragged her through the sea floor. It wasn't cold anymore, the water rushing over her churned warm. The salt bit into her chapped lips.

A moment later, she burst to the surface.

Honora gasped in hot summer air. She sputtered and swiped water away from her face. She squinted up at the dawn light, shimmering over a tall line of islands.

The Tibetan cluster. Everest.

Good.

The glorious cities there had long since been ruined, shattered into bricks and rotting wood. Honora spat again and waded through the water to the cliff's edge. Her clothes dried as soon as they left the water, fluffing against her skin. The sea sucked water back into itself, magic giving her a final caress before vanishing back into its source.

Honora gripped the jutting stones of the cliff with both hands and hauled herself up.

It was a long climb up the island, her hands cut open halfway through and her blood smeared across the stones. She breathed through the pain and ignored her ragged skin dragging and ripping against the unforgiving cliff. Sweat worked its way through her clothes, far too thick for the weather. She slapped her hand against the flat cobblestones, letting out a breath.

She groaned and pulled herself up all the way, putting her feet onto the old street. Honora plucked a couple blades of grass from her sliced palms. She sighed and swiped them against her trousers.

She lifted her hands and let magic knit its way to her broken skin. Sand pattered to the street as her power worked the grains from her flesh.

The city around her was entirely rubble, its lack of walls jarring. Magic rippled strangely on this island. Like a scar.

"Alekhine!" She called. "Hunter?"

The click of his boots on the road drew her attention towards the city itself. The once magnificent arches of the Everest capital lay in pieces, fissures big enough for Alekhine to stroll through.

"Yell that a little louder, why don't you?" Alekhine was several decades her junior, only a few years older than her son. A scrappy-looking fellow with blond hair and a slender build.

His scars lanced dark against his pallor, contrasting with the ever-shifting patterns of his sigil tattoos across his throat and wrists. She swallowed as a curve slid from his chin to his collarbone, flesh shifting over it. More than that, she spotted magic dragging behind it, trapped beneath the skin. It made her sick to wonder what had been done to him. It was unnatural.

"There's no one to hear." Honora scowled at him.

"Ominous," he said. He strolled over to her, hands in his pockets. He stood stark against the sunbleached ruins of the city. Alekhine stopped several feet from her, his hands conspicuously close to sheathed blades along his thighs.

She stared at his face, pointedly ignoring the unnatural whorls of magic seething under his skin.

"And?"

She cocked her head, "and?"

"You asked to see me, here I am." He glanced around, a practiced wariness to his motions. "Is there a reason?"

Honora smirked, brushing past him. His magic didn't reach out for her; it floated, dead, under his skin.

"Follow me."

He did, eyebrows raised. He walked with a hunter's swagger. The kind of stride that came with knowing you could kill everything capable of dying. He looked young, but she knew the magic that flowed through his veins could keep him youthful for centuries.

"Are you going to lure me to my doom? I'd have liked a few hours warning to get my affairs in order."

"You're eighteen years old, not ten." Honora shot back, more out of irritation than true venom. He walked next to her, one eye at the threat and the other on his surroundings. He shrugged, dead fish-blue eyes fluttering systematically into probable hiding spots as they passed. 

They arrived at a tunnel, the gaping maw somehow less fearsome than the people standing before it. "After you."

Alekhine smirked at her. "I'm not stupid."

"Did I say you were?"

"You've implied it before."

Honora's mouth twitched upwards. She folded her hands in front of herself primly and stepped into the shadows. Alekhine followed a careful distance behind her.

Several meters into the pitch blackness, Honora illuminated her fingers with a flare of heat. Alekhine flinched away from her. The glint of steel in the dim light made her frown slightly. His long blade was thankfully angled downwards, and he didn't seem keen on leaping to her throat. Startled, then. Like a little bunny.

"What makes you think I want to kill you?" Honora sighed. "We've done this dozens of times before."

He shrugged again. His sigils wrapped around his fingers as he clenched his knife.

"We're running out of time," she said.

"Oh, so you're finally cluing me in on this ridiculous 'plan' you think you've got?"

She ground her teeth in irritation, then elected to ignore him. "The Kings are relying on him less and less, if we want to weaken them, this may be our last chance. We'll have to kill Greymark."

Alekhine's brows rose. He let out a coughing laugh, bending in half with the force of it. "Take a bloody number! Half the world wants his head on a platter, doesn't mean shit when he's the most powerful man alive."

Honora wrinkled her nose. "Greymark isn't as strong he pretends. Something's upsetting the balance in magic, tipping it out of his favor and into ours."

He didn't even shake his head. All he did was finish laughing with a tense smile marring his face.

"But you knew that, didn't you?"

"I don't... I'm still not completely on board with this, you do remember that. Haven't even agreed to anything substantial."

"Why, because he's your master?" She laughed, a brief, forced sound. "You're more than a dog, Alekhine. That's why I chose you over all the others."

His blade met her throat then, she hadn't even seen him move. The edge of it pressed against her vein, just barely knicking the topmost layers of her skin. A single flinch could end her life. Temporarily, anyway. 

Honora stilled, falling silent. He stared her down with those dead eyes. "I would be careful of your next words, witch."

His voice was even, but he'd already betrayed an emotion. She lifted her hand and pushed his knife away, slow and gentle. He didn't resist. 

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you." He had a lover in the hunters. She'd never asked after them specifically, but she knew he was touchy about it. Be careful. The nagging voice in her head sounded suspiciously like her son. He would have handled Alekhine with kid gloves, charming and endearing himself into the hunter's favor.

He nodded. Then froze. His face, which had always been still as a stone to her, morphed into horror and panic. Her eyes dipped down, spotting the magic lancing up and down his body. "We're too late."

Honora pursed her lips, fire enveloping her hand down to her elbow.

Alekhine turned to the entrance of the tunnel, where morning light had blossomed during their conversation. It wouldn't yet be dawn at her own castle for another few hours, but Honora knew she wouldn't see her son for a very long time. She hoped he wouldn't be too afraid when he woke up and she was gone. She hoped against hope he'd keep his head down.

There, sword in one hand and a handgun strapped to her leg, stood another hunter. Her sigils writhed violently along her bare arms, forming enchantment after enchantment and sending magic spiralling beneath her flesh.

White-blond hair glowed gold when she stepped into the tunnel like some underworld creature descending into a killzone. The hunter's near-black eyes came into the glow of Honora's flame, and she had to suppress a shudder at the sheer rage that came from within.

"Lin, I can explain," Alekhine said. He lifted his hands in surrender. Even then, he appeared cool. His hands were steady. The woman didn't stop. Didn't even slow as she pulled her handgun from her side.

Alekhine half-turned his head to Honora, his dead eyes wide and fixed on Lin. "Run."

He made to draw his sword, but only managed to get it halfway out before the hunter was upon him. Honora stuffed down all instincts to help and fled.