No promises, p.1
No Promises, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Up Next
About the Author
No Promises
Iron Bound: Book 1
Z.J. Cannon
© 2021 Z.J. Cannon
http://www.zoecannon.com
All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. No fae were harmed in the making of this book.
Chapter 1
I took a deep breath and savored the aroma of salt and sunscreen and sun-warmed sand as I leaned back in my beach chair. Ahead of me, the Hawaiian ocean sparkled blue-green like a massive gemstone set into the earth. My eyes followed a man in skintight latex shorts wading out of the water with a surfboard under one arm, then flitted to a bikini-clad woman who gave me a long look as she jogged past, a little closer to my chair than was strictly necessary.
Then I closed my eyes, and let the sun’s warmth caress me. Every inch of my skin tingled, alive with the rays’ life-giving fire—everywhere except my left wrist, where my thick steel watch hung. The scarred skin underneath felt chapped and frostbitten even here, in the balmy Hawaiian winter, when the metal should have been hot enough to burn.
I took a long sip of my drink, a White Russian made just the way I liked it, thick with creamy sweetness that did nothing to mask the bite of the alcohol underneath. I opened my eyes again, but didn’t scan the beach for eye candy this time. Instead, I looked over my shoulder, and let my gaze rest on the mansion at the top of the hill. It stood like a modern castle, a wedding-cake pile of stone and gleaming glass, elegant in its asymmetry.
And it was all mine.
A child’s shriek snapped my attention back to the beach so hard my neck stung. Reflexively, I scanned the shore until I found the source. A little girl, playing chase with her brother. Already her screams had dissolved into giggles. I shook my head at myself. Even if she had been in danger, it wasn’t my problem. The beach had a lifeguard, and it wasn’t me. I was here to enjoy myself.
I tore my eyes away, and found myself locked in the gaze of a woman crouched under a beach umbrella, slathering her pale skin with an entire tube’s worth of sunscreen. Which was an especially impressive feat given that she didn’t have that much skin showing to begin with. She wasn’t dressed for the beach, in bulky black cargo pants and a skintight black turtleneck. But what she did have exposed was pale enough that she would likely be bright red by the end of the day, regardless of how much sunscreen she used or how long she spent under that umbrella.
She looked away almost as soon as our eyes met. But I had already seen enough to be intrigued. Between her pale skin, her long black hair, and her angular elegance, she looked like a modern-day Snow White. But it was her eyes that caught my attention, a blue pale enough to be almost white, like two chips of ice set into her face. That one brief look had been enough to send the chill of winter through me even on a day like today. But it hadn’t been altogether unpleasant, even for a creature of summer like myself.
And I hadn’t missed the way those eyes had lingered on me for a couple of seconds too long.
I smiled. It looked like I had found my plans for the rest of the day.
I waited for her to look my way again, knowing it was only a matter of time. Sure enough, it took less than a minute before her gaze found me again. As our eyes met, I shot her a slow smile of invitation.
She didn’t smile back.
Instead, she turned away again, letting her hair fall across her face. She stood, her movements quick and sharp. She packed away the sunscreen, and folded up the umbrella, and walked swiftly toward the thickest part of the crowd, all in the amount of time it would have taken most people to pop the tube of sunscreen closed.
As she melded into the crowd, her hair fell to one side. She hastily tossed it back into place—but not before I caught a glimpse, for half a second, of a sharply pointed ear.
A chill fell over me again, and this time, it didn’t leave. Just like that, the pleasant haze of the day was gone.
For two hundred years, they had left me alone. Tristra had been the last of the assassins. I had assumed she had made some sort of deal on my behalf, after she had gone home to nurse her broken heart. Either that, or the two Faerie Courts had, simultaneously and inexplicably, simply given up on me. Either way, I hadn’t spent much time dwelling on it. I didn’t believe in questioning one’s good fortune.
I should have known better. The Courts had never conceded to me. They had merely been biding their time, taking the long view as only immortals could afford to do.
But they weren’t the only immortals in this conflict. I’d had time to prepare too. And being reluctant to question my good fortune wasn’t the same as assuming it would last forever.
And I had no intention of letting my oldest enemies take away the peace I had earned. I had wasted hundreds of years in pointless misery before coming to my senses and claiming this life of luxury for myself. I intended to spend hundreds more enjoying my reward.
I pushed myself to my feet. But I didn’t hurry after the woman. I stretched, and finished my drink, and pulled on a silky-soft Pima cotton t-shirt. Then I slowly packed up the wooden beach chair. With the chair under my arm, I walked down the beach path and up the road. I kept a lazy smile plastered to my face, and my free hand ready to unclasp my watch at a second’s notice. I didn’t want to use that option if I had any other available. Not here in tourist country, with too many innocent people to get caught in the crossfire. But I would if I had to.
Anyway, when it came to caring about innocent human lives, I had already learned my lesson too many times over. If it was them or me, today I was choosing me.
I left the tourist street behind, and strolled up the winding road to the top of the hill. Ahead of me, my sanctuary beckoned. Sun reflected off the windowed walls like a useless lighthouse beacon shining at midday. But this lighthouse was only designed to protect one person: myself.
I held my index finger up to the fingerprint reader, and the door slid open. The bells and whistles of the security system had cost a fortune, but I had several fortunes to spare. Not that anything the security company could offer would be much good against what was coming.
Inside, I dropped the act. The smile fell from my face, and I let the chair clatter to the floor. I paused only long enough to lock the door behind me and reset the system before jogging through the house. I didn’t spare a thought for my usual homecoming rituals. I passed the bar without pouring a drink, and crossed the living room without my usual long appreciative glance out the glass wall that faced the ocean. I didn’t even spare a second to try to catch a glimpse of the woman. Even though there was only one route up to the house, I had no doubt that she I had seen was too well trained to let herself be spotted.
Instead, I went straight for the basement door. The doorknob rattled under my hand, but didn’t open. It was locked.
Another chill crept over me as I drew back. My fingers tightened around my watch, sending an ache through the small bones. Even if I had wanted to keep the basement door locked—which I didn’t, because I needed to be able to access the room below as easily as possible at all times in case of emergency—I couldn’t have. That door only locked from the inside… unless you had the key.
It looked like someone had found it.
“You should keep a closer eye on your surroundings,” said a cold female voice from behind me.
Slowly, I turned. The woman from the beach was standing in front of me, in the center of the living room. In one hand, she was holding a knife—one of my knives, the special ones I kept in the basement, with their black iron blades that didn’t reflect the sun. She had pulled down one of my curtains, and wrapped it around her hand to create a barrier between herself and the metal, but her face was still creased with pain.
I stepped back until I hit the basement door. The blade in her hand made me acutely aware of my own lack of weaponry. Not that I was ever truly unarmed. I played with the clasp on my watch, and tried to sound casual. “You can’t tell me you didn’t bring your own weapons. Ones that wouldn’t be quite so painful to use.”
The woman held the knife out at arm’s length, like it disgusted her. “When I saw this downstairs, I couldn’t resist the opportunity for poetic justice.” Icy hatred flashed in her eyes. “Is this what you used on them?”
I frowned. I’d heard many sneering fae speeches over the past seven hundred years, always the prelud e to yet another assassination attempt. The fae did love to hear themselves talk. The ones who weren’t trained well enough to come in hard and fast without warning, that is. And this wasn’t how the speech was supposed to go. “Used on who?”
Instead of answering, the woman took advantage of my confusion. I didn’t see her throw the knife; my eyes only caught the movement once it was already halfway through the air, flying directly at me. I didn’t have time to dodge before the blade caught me in the shoulder, pinning me to the wall.
I didn’t scream, but only because I couldn’t breathe. Claws of ice ripped at my flesh from the inside as the burning chill spread along my veins. The sun outside seemed to dim. My legs buckled underneath me as all the strength left my body at once. I managed to stay upright, but only by sagging back against the wall.
My fingernails dug into my palms, in frustration as much as in pain. That knife had been coated in iron dust, meant to infect the bloodstream of whoever came to attack me. Now it was in my own. Even if I were to take off my watch, nothing would happen. The iron dust wasn’t enough to do permanent damage—not to me, at least—but it would take my body a few hours to clear it from my system. Until then, it would sap my magic as much as it had my physical strength.
The pain of iron poisoning was like nothing else. I always felt it as the utter cold of outer space, the winter chill that was anathema to my Summer nature. A Winter fae would probably have felt it as the nuclear heat of the center of the sun. It didn’t affect me as strongly as it would a full fae; even so, for those first few seconds, it was always all-consuming.
Which was why it took me longer than it should have to get past the pain enough to realize what was wrong with this picture.
I hadn’t had time to dodge, but the knife had caught me in the shoulder. A non-fatal wound.
“They had two hundred years to train you,” I said through gritted teeth, “and you can’t aim better than that?”
“I wasn’t aiming to kill.” She stalked slowly up to me as another gray wave of weakness swept through my body. “What did you do with them?”
“I have no idea who you’re talking about.” I tried not to let my weakness show in my voice, but I knew it was a lost cause.
Her hand, with the remains of my curtain still wrapped around it, shot out toward the knife. I grabbed it before she could. The touch of the hilt against my bare palm sent a bone-deep ache through me, but the steel watch had accustomed me to that pain long ago. I gripped it tightly and gave it one sharp yank. I swallowed a scream as the blade tore into my muscle a second time on the way out. Blood flowed from the wound, soaking into my shirt and dripping down onto the floor. It was a familiar sight, almost identical to human blood unless someone looked closely enough to see the sheen of fae blue atop the human red. I would have to watch that wound. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t have been a concern, but the iron dust would slow my healing. Not stop it entirely—I would be back to normal in a few days regardless—but slow it. And depending on how lucky she had gotten with her strike, I could lose a lot of blood in the meantime.
But I could worry about that later. For now, I had more immediate problems.
I held the knife out between us, and flicked a few drops of my blood onto the floor. She flinched back.
The temperature in her gaze dropped another few degrees. “You’ve got an impressive kill room down there. How many of us have seen it?”
“You’re the first,” I said. “No one else has been stupid enough to come after me in two hundred years.” I gave her a deliberate once-over, even though it wouldn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. “Winter Court, by the look of it. That’s a change. Usually it’s Summer, trying to correct their own mistakes. They learned their lesson after what I did to their last assassin, but I suppose it makes sense that Mab is slower on the uptake.”
The woman’s jaw clenched. She let the curtain fall to the floor, and drew her own weapons from the waistband of her cargo pants. Twin curved daggers, carved from sharpened bone. They had been polished until they gleamed like ice.
I waited for the familiar pre-battle adrenaline to wash over me. Instead, I just felt tired. From the iron, yes—but more than that, it was from the weight of all the memories of all the fights. Every time I had faced down another one of the fae, just like this.
I had thought it was over.
I lowered my head—not enough to let my eyes lose track of her weapons, just enough for her to read the message. “I’m done fighting,” I said. “All I want is to relax on the beach, then come home—alone or otherwise—and enjoy a drink and a good meal. I don’t want this, and if you know anything about the Courts’ history with me, you don’t want it either. If you go home now, we can avoid an outcome that won’t make either of us happy.”
The woman sneered. “You certainly think highly of yourself, human, if you think you’re a match for Mab’s right hand.”
“I’m not human. And unless Mab deliberately sent you out here ignorant of what you were facing, you know how many of you I’ve killed already.” I straightened as much as I could, and shifted into a fighting stance.
She took that as her cue, and crossed the last of the distance between us.
I lunged for her, meeting her slow advance with as much speed as I could muster. She shifted from slow to quick instantly, dodging back and to the side. As she moved, too fast for my eye to follow, a burst of wind slammed me back against the door.
It occurred to me, then, that this fight was unlike any other I had fought against the fae. At least in one important way.
She had access to her magic. And this time around, with iron dust spreading through my veins like ground glass, I didn’t.
But I had fought fae opponents who outmatched me before, even if not in this particular circumstance. And I had won every time. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been alive to fight her.
And I hadn’t forgotten the way she had chosen to wound instead of kill when she had thrown the knife. It also didn’t escape my notice that, as fast as she could move, she could have slit my throat three times over by now—but she hadn’t. She was hesitant. Afraid, was my guess, despite her veneer of cold ferocity.
I could use that.
When one of her daggers whipped toward my throat, I was ready for her. I blocked it with my own weapon, and shoved myself inside her guard. But I didn’t go for the kill. I could already tell she was quick enough to take me down with her, if it came to that. Instead, I rested the tip of the knife, still red with my blood, against her arm.
A blister formed on her skin almost instantly. She hissed in pain and started to pull back. With my free hand, I grabbed her forearm and held it in place.
“You saw my basement,” I said, low and serious. “You figured out that the weapons I have down there are designed for one purpose: to fight your kind. I coated this one with enough iron dust to render your magic useless for a few days—if you’re very, very lucky. If not, you’ll be facing a slow, lingering death, no matter what you manage to do to me before the end.”
She fixed me with a look of cold disdain. “Do you think I’m stupid? The iron dust is gone—it’s in your blood now.”
“Maybe so,” I said. “But look what the knife is coated with now. My blood. The human blood your kind hate so much. The human blood you just dosed with iron. And even if the amount in those few drops isn’t enough to do any damage—and knowing how sensitive the fae are to iron, I wouldn’t count on that—do you know what else is in human blood? More iron. What do you think it will do to you if it gets into your bloodstream?” I pressed the tip of the knife a little harder against her skin, not hard enough to break the skin, but hard enough to threaten.
The woman held herself as still as an ice sculpture. The only movement was the time-lapse growth of the blister on her arm. It darkened as it spread, and jagged black streaks spread out from the center.
But she held onto that look of contempt. “The iron in your blood won’t hurt me. Do you think I don’t eat meat? Humans are just another kind of animal.”
“You digest the meat you eat. Are you so sure there’s no difference?”
As it happened, there wasn’t. I was bluffing. With at least one of the assassins before her, the fight had gotten vicious enough that more than a few drops of my blood had smeared onto their wounds. Nothing had happened.
