Page 104 of Steel Heart Iron Claws

A body slumps out.

Lurching forward on instinct, I catch the body and lower it to the floor. My thoughts go haywire. My senses,too.

What the fuck?A body? Who the hell is this?

He’s a young Black man with shorn hair. I press my hand to the man’s neck, but only out of habit. I can already hear how nonexistent his pulse is. Can smell the rot beginning in his flesh.

I drag a hand over my face. “Fuck.”

Looking closer, I realize I’ve seen him before—in the Hall of Vale, refilling Iyre’s water glass. His limbs are cold but not yet stiff. He’s been dead two hours at most.

His complexion is strangely pale. When I slide my fingers up his arm, I don’t feel a drop of blood beneath the skin.

A deep cut on his right wrist catches my attention—the fatal wound. The callouses on his hands tell me he’s right-handed, so it’s unlikely he did this to himself. Besides, his left hand doesn’t have the metallic scent of a blade.

Which means someone else bled him to death and shoved him in this wardrobe.

The muscles of my back shudder, reminding me how far I’ve pushed myself. Groaning, I get to my feet and start to lift the dead man?—

A floorboard creaks outside.

Shit. Someone is coming. I grab a chair to climb back through the roof, but it’s too late.

The door opens.

Iyre saunters in slowly, hands clasped like a perfectly innocent schoolgirl, looking unsurprised to find me there amid her shattered bottles.

She nudges the broken yellow bottle with her toe.

“Lord Basten. How did I know that, sooner or later, you and I would have words?”

My jaw clamps as I climb down from the chair and shoveit back under one of the work tables. “Maybe because since I set foot in this castle, I’ve wanted to dothis.”

I slam my fist around her throat, shoving her against the wardrobe door. An inch from her face, I hiss, “Give me back my fucking memories, or I’ll do to you whatever you did to this poor bastard.”

She chokes, “I needed to renew my powers. Paz has always been more than happy to serve. His breath. His blood. Whatever I need. Of course—sometimes I get carried away with my acolytes.”

My stomach roils as I squeeze my fingers. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“We gain powers from offerings. The trinkets left on our altars, for example. But the most potent offerings come from sacrifice. Human blood fills my goblets. I eat memories like sugared figs. We take everything you wretched humans can offer us, and we turn it into pure fey. I didn’t bottle up your memories for some collection, human. They don’t exist anymore. They becamefey.”

She hisses the word in a strange low pitch, and the lantern throws out red-tinged sparks of crackling fey.

When I flinch away from the sparks, she suddenly latches her hands on either side of my head.

Lightning surges out of her palms against my ears.

Pain bursts through my head. I let her go, staggering down to my knees, slamming my hands on either side of my skull.

A wail rolls out of my throat. For weeks, I’ve imagined wringing this fae’s neck until she replaced the void in my head with every memory she stole. The days with Sabine. The nights—gods, the nights.

What did I once tell Sabine about the fae?

Trust a snake and get bit, and it’s your fault, not the snake’s.

For once, I hate to be right.

My hand presses hard against my chest, fingers curling in like I can hold myself together.

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