Free The Girl at Midnight by Melissa Grey Page A

pay
. Echo shook off the sense of dread that snaked around her. It would be a simple job, straightforward in and out. She’d be fine. With a nod, she said, “If you need me to steal something, I will steal the crap out of it. You know that.”
    A smile graced the Ala’s face, though her expression remained serious. “This task will require the utmost discretion, even from our own people. No one must know about your involvement. Especially not Altair or any of his Warhawks. And when I say any of his Warhawks, I mean
any
.” The Ala pinned Echo with a hard look. “Not even the pretty ones.” Echo blushed furiously. “Whatever you find there, retrieve it, and then come straight back to me.”
    As much as Echo hated keeping secrets from Rowan, she would do it. The Ala had given her so much—a home, a family—and asked so little in return. Echo could do this one thing for her. She placed her hand over the Ala’s. “I’ve got this, okay? I may not be feathery, but you’re the only real family I’ve ever known. If whatever this is, is important to you, to the Avicen, I’ll find it. I’d take on the Dragon Prince himself if I had to.”
    With a small smile, the Ala patted Echo’s hand where it rested on her own. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” She let out a long sigh. “I know you must be exhausted, but do you think you’ll be able to depart as soon as possible?”
    “For you? Anything.” Echo spared a thought for the nearly empty pouch of shadow dust in her jacket pocket. “I just need to swing by Perrin’s shop to pick up a few supplies.”
    Echo leaned in to place a quick kiss on the Ala’s cheek, as black as the rest of her but absent of feathers. She was nearly at the door when the Ala spoke again.
    “Oh, and Echo?”
    Echo spun on her heel, walking backward. “Yeah?”
    “Try not to be reckless this time.”
    With a laugh, Echo pushed the door open with her hip. “I make no promises.”

CHAPTER NINE
     
    Dorian’s scar itched. It did that when he was agitated, or angry, or experiencing anything one might call
emotion
. Or when rain was on the horizon, but he didn’t think that was entirely relevant to why it was itching now. He fought the urge to rub it as he watched three of the guards under his command assemble on the rocky shore outside the keep’s walls. Normally, the green and bronze of their armor—Caius’s colors—would be gleaming in the fading twilight, but Dorian had ordered them all to wear civilian clothes and make sure their scales were hidden. They needed subtlety, not a show.
    He could have used the massive archway on the grounds of the keep to transport them all to the shores of the Kamo River in Kyoto, but he preferred the natural threshold between land and sea. Water had always called to Dorian as if beckoning him home, and the ocean sang a sweeter song than the cold iron of the keep’s main gateway.
    He slipped a finger under the patch he wore to hide his scarred eye socket. When he touched the gnarled tissue where his eye used to be, the itch only worsened. No matter how long he lived with the loss, he didn’t think that he would ever get used to how it felt. The eye patch itself was largely symbolic. Every Drakharin and their dog knew he had lost his eye to the Avicen, and he only kept the wound hidden because it itched most ferociously when they stared. It was vanity, but there were far worse sins than that.
    You are my prince, and I would follow you anywhere
.
    Dorian could have laughed at his words, but being the punch line of one’s own joke was a hollow humor. He had long since perfected the art of saying precisely what he meant without saying anything at all. It was true, he would follow Caius anywhere, even into the fires of hell if only Caius so much as hinted that he desired the company.
    The memory of their first meeting was as raw as an open wound. It was the day Dorian had lost his eye. He’d been a fresh recruit, plucked from the ranks of