A Little Night Muse. Jessa Slade

      Chapter 1

      “...For the crime of treason against the phaedrealii, the court of our steel-born Queen, the punishment is—and seriously, this should surprise no one—death.”

      As the goblin chamberlain made the pronouncement, Adelyn stared down at her clasped hands where the iron chains burned. True enough, everyone knew the penalty for treason. It was easy enough to remember. The same sentence was meted out for sedition, insubordination, noncompliance, obstructionism, incompetence, various forms of folly, and—sometimes—yawning in the presence of the Queen.

      So, no, Adelyn wasn’t surprised. But terror squeezed her heart. With each frantic beat, crimson welled from her blackened wrists to smoke against the manacles. Even looking at the dull metal brought tears to her phae eyes.

      Phae blood in every rainbow color—red like her own, yellow, green, purple, even black—had been shed in the Queen’s court. But Adelyn never imagined she would be the one in chains. She was best beloved of all the musetta who served as inspiration to the phaedrealii courtiers. How had she fallen so far?

      Though she could not flee the iron agony, one tear did escape. She ducked her head to hide her emotion, but the droplet traced a cool path down her cheek. For a heartbeat, it trembled at the edge of her jaw, refracting shards of light. The sparkles danced across the nearest courtiers who leaped back, swatting at the unseemly display as if they could knock away her forbidden expression of feeling.

      The tear fell. It struck the marble floor not with a splash but a chiming ping.

      The faceted emerald teardrop bounced away from her gilded slippers—less gilded after what seemed like an eternity in her iron-clad prison cell. Cursing courtiers scrambled from the stone’s path. No one wanted to be touched by her disgrace.

      Between the fleeing bodies darted one of the chamberlain’s imps, freakishly fast on three crabbed limbs. It snatched the rolling emerald between its rubbery lips. A single bulbous eye boggled at her before the imp tipped back its head and swallowed. Then the wretched little monster burped.

      No shining proof of her innocence would be allowed. Not that Adelyn believed her guilt or innocence was at all relevant.

      “Take her away.” The chamberlain’s peg-toothed sneer reflected in the blank screens of stolen smart phones strung around his scaly neck. “She is nothing to us now.”

      As one, the courtiers in all their phae glamour furled their wings or tightened the luxurious falls of their cloaks or closed their eyes. Shutting her out. Their whispers chased to the far edges of the hall like the distant hiss of a retreating tide.

      As if the terror wasn’t bad enough. For a musetta like her—desired for her power of inspiration that compelled thoughts and dreams to dizzying heights—such rejection burned worse than iron.

      Hands reached for her, but she strained away, tearing the spider silk of her veils. She had wrapped herself in the fluttering scarves—an age ago, it seemed—to emphasize her dusky-skinned, dark-haired beauty. Now the pale veils only served as a stark backdrop for her blood. “You can’t send me away!”

      “Silence,” the goblin barked. Everyone knew the last words of the condemned held particular power.

      Drawing in a deep breath, she forced down the pain of her scorched wrists and the humiliation of exposing her knack of jeweled tears. Every reluctant eye was on her now. Musetta inspired music and poetry, art and science, the wildest flights of fancy.

      But she could also inspire fear.

      Adelyn took no pleasure in the stark faces, but she would not let them pretend as she had pretended she was untouchable. She swept her gaze around the hall, slashing at the phae with a glare as edged as a shattered jewel. “Any of you could be next.”

      Adelyn had time for nothing else as she was pushed into the dark corridor that led to her death.

      Her tears—mere water now, her knack drained—blinded her. Unbalanced by her bound hands, she stumbled. The rip in her veils dipped forward over her breasts. Stupid gilded slippers had no traction.

      A sudden burst of illumination flared beyond her tears.

      “Musetta.” The voice of her looming death—low and rough, as she might have guessed six feet deep would sound—froze her in her tracks.

      The Queen might be capricious and terrifying, and her goblin chamberlain was petty and horrendous, but the Queen’s vizier existed in a dark realm all his own.

      Adelyn closed her eyes, hoping death took her quickly. The vizier’s grim countenance was known to send courtiers into fits of madness. And those were phae who weren’t convicted of treason.

      “Musetta, look at me.” A note of compulsion forced her eyes open.

      She clamped her tongue between her teeth to stop herself from begging for mercy. The Queen had no mercy. And no mercy’s name—at least as it was screamed by hopeless phae in their last moments—was Raze.

      Swathed in a gray samite robe, his hulking figure was a drear wall, his glare equally gray above cheekbones as whetted as the exposed steel of the athame hanging from his belt. Amongst beings who could conjure any masquerade, his stark—and, frankly, uninspired—presentation seemed a mockery, as if he had never left the Iron Age behind. It vexed Adelyn’s musetta power to no ends; a muse did not do gray.

      Not that she would say so aloud, not to