The Blood Mirror Never Lies novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Moor Road

Elspeth wakes outside the gates with only her childhood and a paper naming her a traitor. A Fallen smuggler who says she paid him for three years points her to the Hollow before the hounds arrive.

I woke face down in wet heather with a paper pinned to my coat.

The sky was grey and the rain had stopped sometime in the night.

My mouth tasted of iron.

I sat up slowly and checked what I knew.

My name was Elspeth Rainsford.

I was twenty-one, from Saltby, where the boats go out at four in the morning and my mother had sung to the nets.

My mother had been buried on a Tuesday. I remembered the rain on the lid.

Then I remembered packing a bag, and a letter with a black wax seal, and nothing else.

I looked down at myself.

I was wearing a black wool gown I had never seen. My left palm was cut open and crusted. On my left wrist sat a thin red ring, hot as a burn.

I unpinned the paper and read it.

"ELSPETH RAINSFORD. UNWRITTEN BY ORDER OF THE COURT OF RAVENMOOR. CONSPIRACY WITH THE FALLEN. ATTEMPTED MURDER OF ODETTE CRANE. HER BLOOD HAS BEEN PUT TO THE GLASS AND ITS JUDGMENT IS FINAL."

Underneath, in a different hand, one more line.

"Her fated mate, Lord Cassian Rooke, was present."

I read it three times.

Then I looked up at the iron gates behind me.

They stood open a crack, black and tall, with a ruined abbey rising above them.

I had been inside. I didn't remember the inside.

My wrist throbbed once, hard, as if something on the other side of those gates had just pulled a thread.

I stood up. My knees held.

"Easy," said a voice behind me. "You'll want to walk, not run. They watch this road."

I turned fast.

A man stood on the track with his hands open and visible.

He was lean, with a red-brown beard and a battered leather coat. Both his hands were covered in old burn scars.

"Who are you?" I said.

"You don't know." He said it quietly. "They really did it."

"I know my name. I know I'm from Saltby."

"Then you know more than most they put out here." He lowered his hands. "Perrin Ash. You've bought from me for three years."

"Bought what?"

"Paper." His mouth went flat. "Copies of records. Names of people the Court has unwritten, and where they were sent."

My stomach turned over.

"Then I'm what the paper says I am," I said. "I plotted with the Fallen."

"I'm Fallen," Perrin said. "You paid me. You never plotted a thing with me that I'd call a murder."

"You'd say that."

"I would." He nodded as if I'd scored a point. "So don't take my word. Take this."

He took a step closer, slowly, and showed me his right palm.

A scar ran across it, new and pink.

"My cousin sold a knife," he said. "Six nights ago, to a woman in a grey hood who paid in coin and never showed her face. A Fallen blade, my family's mark on the hilt. Five nights ago that blade is in the vault of the Court, and Odette Crane's arm is cut open."

"And I'm the one who did it."

"That's what the glass says." His jaw worked. "The glass shows what your blood did, Elspeth. Your blood was in that room. I don't know why, and you can't tell me."

"No."

"So I don't know who held the knife. I know it wasn't ordered by anyone I'd ever deal with."

He was telling me the truth. I could tell, and I didn't know how I could tell.

I looked at my wrist.

"What is this?" I said.

"The bond. Your Lord's ring." He swallowed. "It should have gone out with the Unwriting. It hasn't. I've never seen that."

Somewhere behind the abbey a horn sounded, low and long.

Perrin's head snapped toward it.

"Hounds," he said. "The Court's walking the road for strays."

"Strays?"

"Anyone they unwrite and leave alive." He caught my elbow, and my body turned with his before I'd decided anything. "There's a hamlet a mile east. Smoke from three chimneys. They call it the Hollow. The people there can't be touched by the hounds."

"Why?"

"Because every one of them has already been unwritten," he said. "There's nothing left to take."

The horn sounded again, nearer.

He pushed his flask and a heel of bread into my hands.

"You told me once that if they ever did this, I should say one thing to you." His eyes held mine. "Trust your hands."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know. You never explained it."

Then he was gone into the heather, bent low, quick as a hare.

I stood on the road with a flask in my fist and a stranger's gown on my back.

The hounds bayed.

I ran east.

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