Page 2 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
Reed stepped back, gasping. “Is that one of your assassination ordinations?”
“No, those are color-coded black. These are far worse.”
Reed scoffed. “What’s worse than death?”
Pete broke the scroll’s seal, the delicate fragrance of morning dew and pears wafting up his nose.Bollocks,he thought.A female mark this time, and Seelie to boot.
Pete watched Sionna’s nostrils flare at the distinct scent, her keen mind committing it to memory. “Violet missives mean I must deliver my mark to the Shadow Prince.” Pete couldn’t quite keep the blackness from his voice, remembering his own imprisonment in the Shadow Prince’s clutches. “It’s worse than death, I assure you.”
The Troll frowned. “That sounds terrible, Pete. For your mark—and your soul. I don’t envy your lot—or the punishment for failure.”
Pete tossed the scroll aside, shutting an iron door on the do-gooder within. He could damn him eternally this time. There was too much at stake—his hard-earned freedom aside—to show mercy to one Seelie snob. If she were anything akin to the others he’d encountered at the Shadow Palace, then he could see her pealing with laughter and feasting while bleeding men stood in cages around her, starving to death.
Fuck them, Pete thought, squaring his shoulders.Fuck them all.
He grabbed his spoon and dug into his breakfast. “Such is the nature of life as a harbinger,” he answered Reed, mouth full of hash. “Better them than me.”
Part One
“Doubt truth to be a liar.”
—Hamlet
William Shakespeare
One
March 2008, South Carolina, USA
TheycalledthetreeAngel Oak, anddamn, was it enormous. On a small island just off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina, its limbs sprawled across the ground, curling in spirals. Ivy festooned its branches, which splayed open, welcoming as an old friend’s arms. I stood upon red clay on the edge of its park with my two college buds, breathless.
“This is the coolest thing we’ve seen all week,” I said.
Grace scoffed, honey-dew eyes glinting. “We toured the Biltmore two days ago, and thistreeis the coolest thing you’ve seen on our trip?”
“Yes.” I lifted my digital camera, snapping a picture. “By far.”
Olivia laughed. Her highlighted curls ruffled around her shoulders as she remarked to Grace, “Why have we been spending money on admission fees for Amy? We could’ve left her with some shrubs—done the historical stuff without her.”
I rolled my eyes. “Did you read the board at the gate? This tree is the oldest thing we’ll see on our entire road trip. It’s thought to be 500 years old. I’d say that makes it an artifact. And by the way, this artifact isn’t behind a velvet rope or under glass. We can touch it.”
Grace’s laughter bubbled, oak leaves casting lacy shadows on her cherubic face. She gestured at the various signs hammered between roots. “There are literally 20 plaques saying, ‘Don’t touch the tree.’”
Olivia zipped her fuchsia fleece. An academic whose weedy body had little to no fat, she found the 67-degree weather too brisk. Whenever she complained, I reminded her it was snowing back on campus in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
“Signs didn’t stop us at Fort Sumter,” Olivia said.
“Yeah, and we almost got kicked out,” Grace reminded us.
I recalled the livid, red-faced ranger who’d sputtered at Olivia and me to, “Get your asses off the cannon!” Our fellow History Club members would appreciate that anecdote at our next meeting.
“There aren’t any rangers around to yell at us.” I scanned the other marveling tourists traipsing between roots—not a brown shirt in sight. “Here.” I handed Grace my camera. “I’ll do it myself. If I get kicked out, pretend you don’t know me.”
Olivia chuckled.
Accepting my camera, Grace sighed. “All right.”
I strode into the open, my glaring deformities a magnet for other tourists’ eyes. Their gawking wouldn’t harsh my mellow, though. Not during spring break. Though I was an inch shy of six feet with blindingly pale skin, long bright-red hair, and pointy ears that stuck out from my head, I wasn’t a bigger anomaly of nature than Angel Oak.
