Little Red Shadow (A Talented Fairy Tale Book 2), page 1
Little Red Shadow
By
S. C. Grayson
Copyright © 2023 S. C. Grayson
Edited by Lisa Green.
Cover Design by MiblArt.
Interior Artwork by Lulybot.
All stock photos licensed appropriately.
Published in the United States by City Owl Press.
www.cityowlpress.com
For information on subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher at info@cityowlpress.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior consent and permission of the publisher.
CONTENTS
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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
Sneak Peek of Spears and Shadows
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Acknowledgments
About the Author
About the Publisher
Additional Books
For all my stabby ladies and gentlemen.
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1
The ball would have been lovely if Scarlett wasn’t expecting to be killed at any moment. Or rather, she anticipated somebody attempting to kill her, but she had no intention of letting them succeed.
Scarlett wove through the crowds of society’s finest, gowns and jewels glimmering gaudily under crystal chandeliers that had been hung in the garden of all places. She shoved down the instinct bubbling up in her chest, telling her to cling to the edges of the party where she could listen to conversations unnoticed. Instead, Scarlett held her chin high, causing her feathered headdress to flounce above the socialites’ heads despite her small stature. The blue silk of her voluminous skirts cut a wide swath through the crowds.
Heads turned as she walked, gossip tittering behind gloved hands. Scarlett fought to keep her shoulders square, reminding herself they weren’t really looking at her. When she passed by, all they saw was the prize of the social season, with a dowry to match.
A bolt of energy shot up Scarlett’s spine as she caught the assassin’s attention, the back of her neck prickling as his gaze fell on her. A nervous shift and a hand sliding into a coat as if to grasp a weapon, and she knew she had found her mark. It took all of Scarlett’s self-discipline to maintain her composure as she let her eyes drift up to the lower half of the man’s face, not quite reaching his eyes. She offered what she hoped was a coy smile befitting a lady of her standing. If she hadn’t known he was the would-be killer before, the tight twist of his mouth that passed for a smirk would have given him away.
Scarlett didn’t linger, instead continuing to pick her way through the crowd. She loosened the reins on her instincts, letting them guide her to the edges of the revelry, where the light from the chandeliers was thin and the shadows could partially obscure her. A prickle on the back of her neck told her the man still followed, but at least now other partygoers were less likely to see her disappear with a man who turned up dead later. Scarlett ignored the sharp ache stabbing the base of her skull at that thought, instead slipping into the privacy of the hedge maze.
The dense shrubbery muted the sounds of the revelry, lending a distant feeling that helped her focus on the task at hand. Having space for something as frivolous as a hedge maze in the tight quarters of London struck Scarlett as ostentatious, even if it was lovely, but she was glad for the cover. She rounded a few corners, carefully listening for the sounds of couples stealing an illicit moment, breathing a sigh of relief when she heard none. Instead, boots tromped at the entrance to the maze, and she frowned at the would-be assassin’s lack of stealth. Still, it would make her job easy.
Darkness curled around Scarlett as she stepped back into the shrubbery, urged on by her Talent, melding her midnight blue dress with her surroundings. Here in the shadows, she felt the most at ease she had all night, even as she slipped a knife from her lacy sleeve.
The tromping footsteps came closer, and her mark rounded the corner. He passed by her hiding spot, not looking in her direction, a small pistol raised in his hand. Scarlett coiled in on herself, ready to pounce, when the moonlight shimmered on the ornate barrel of the gun, illuminating the man’s shaking hand.
Scarlett hesitated, taking a small step instead of leaping forward, knife first, as she had intended. That movement was enough to alert the man to her presence, and he spun to face her, gun inches from her face. They stood frozen like that for the barest of moments, although time seemed to stretch, looking into his wide dark eyes. Then Scarlett grabbed his wrist and twisted, digging her fingernails into the soft flesh between tendons. The pistol dropped from his grasp as he let out a breathy curse, and Scarlett snatched it from the air with her other hand before it could hit the ground.
The man’s hands flew up in surrender as Scarlett leveled both weapons at him and got her first good look at his face. His full lips were parted in shock, but his eyes held something softer—something that looked strangely like relief, which was odd considering Scarlett could end his life at any moment. His nose lacked any of the tale-tale crookedness of repeated breaking, and the way he held his shoulders in his navy velvet waistcoat spoke of a comfort with fine clothing. This was no street brawler or undercover gang member before her. As she contemplated him, his dark brows drew together as he regarded her in return.
“You’re not Georgette Ward.” His voice was surprisingly steady.
Scarlett didn’t attempt to deny it.
“You’re not an assassin,” she fired back, chancing a glance at the pistol in her hand. The flowery engravings along the barrel and the finely polished surface marked it as a dueling pistol, and not something to be hastily tucked into waistbands of lower city thugs.
“What gave me away?” he sighed, cocking his head as if he were bemoaning losing at a hand of cards and not attempted murder. If Scarlett had any doubts about her snap decision against slitting his throat, they were fading fast.
“Why do you want to kill Georgette Ward?” Scarlett demanded instead of answering his question.
“I have nothing against her, even if she is a little angelic for my taste,” the man hedged, taking a shuffling step back. Scarlett matched his movement, not willing to let him forget about the gun pointed at his face.
“If you have no quarrel with her, then why follow me in here, thinking I’m Ms. Ward, with a gun drawn?” Scarlett’s tone was icy, even as she was tempted to believe the man before her. The anger that boiled under her skin at the thought of a threat to Georgette’s life cooled in the face of his manner. He didn’t strike her as a killer, and Scarlett was far too familiar with the lifeless look of an assassin’s gaze.
“I personally wish her no ill, but somebody else wants her dead, and they’ve made it my business,” he said.
“The Wolves.” It wasn’t a question. The clawed pawprint on the bottom of the threatening letter Georgette had received made that part clear enough. It was why a ruthless street gang was after a socialite who had never even set foot in their territory that Scarlett couldn’t puzzle out. The scribbled mess slipped through Georgette’s open window as she slept hadn’t even demanded money or favors.
“I’m not a Wolf,” the man insisted, “I’ve just had some unpleasant run-ins with them. I’ll even let you inspect my body to see I carry no gang tattoo, if you ask nicely.”
The roguish wink he offered would have been enough to make Scarlett roll her eyes if his exaggerated manner hadn’t made it clear he didn’t ever take himself too seriously, even when flirting with a would-be murderer. Clearly not somebody well acquainted with the harsh realities of gang life.
“If you’re not a Wolf, then who are you?”
“I could ask the same thing, considering you’re clearly not Ms. Ward. But since I am polite, I’ll have you know that I am Lord Benedict Pearce. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He offered one of his hands to shake, but Scarlett’s grip was full of weapons. Still, she let the gun and the knife drop to her sides. She was far less comfortable threatening the younger son of a duke than she was another piece of lower city scum. Now that she thought of it, alone with the son of a duke holding multiple weapons was not a position she wanted to be caught in.
“An
“A friend of Georgette’s,” was all Scarlett offered. “And if you or any of your Wolf friends come after her again, I won’t hesitate to start relieving you of body parts.”
With that, Scarlett stepped back into the darkened passage in which she had hidden before. A flick of the wrist was all it took for shadows to leap into action, thickening until she was all but invisible.
Looking startled, Lord Pearce started after her, only to find the narrow row of hedges deserted except for darkness. He jogged down the pathway he thought she had escaped through, and Scarlett pressed against the leafy wall to let him pass, before doubling back to escape the maze.
As Lord Pearce passed, Scarlett thought she heard him mutter something under his breath sounding vaguely like “not friends with Wolves.” Scarlett kept her shadows gathered around her as she ducked back into the garden, just enough to make her appear like a dark flicker to anybody that might look in her direction. She shoved her knife and the stolen pistol into her bodice as she picked across the lawn. Instead of heading back to the party in the main part of the garden, she darted to the back fence before launching herself upward to climb over it—a task that would have been much more difficult if she hadn’t insisted on wearing her pants under the skirts. Still, she heard a rip as a loose piece of lace caught on a wrought iron pole, and she made a mental note to apologize to Georgette for damaging her dress.
It was only a handful of moments before Scarlett pushed through the doorway to a cellar a few blocks away and let out a sigh of relief as she threw the bolt behind her. As soon as she knew she was alone, she tore the elaborate wig off her head, dropping the mass of chestnut curls unceremoniously on a crate beside her. Shaking out her own mousey brown hair, ends just tickling her ears, restored a sense of normalcy to an evening full of surprises. Scarlett was no longer comfortable with the weight of headdresses and sculpted hairstyles, making the weight of her disguise a constant reminder of a life she had left behind.
She moved on to unlacing the dress, pushing the stiff fabric down her hips and pulling on the loose gray shirt she had stashed here earlier. Fabric that had once been white and crisp now draped against her skin, soft with years of daily wear. She glanced at the dueling pistol laying atop the heap of skirts, gleaming gently in the line of moonlight shining in through a gap in the doorframe. Scarlett considered for a moment before snatching it up and shoving it in her belt. It could fetch enough money to pay her rent at Granny’s for a year.
Transformation complete, she shoved the discarded disguise into an empty barrel, making note of where it was so she could tell one of the Wards’ manservants where to fetch it later. The weight of makeup still itched at her eyes and cheeks, and Scarlett scrubbed at it idly with her sleeve as she exited back onto the street, more in her element than she had been in hours.
The sound of a carriage clattering across the cobblestones approached. Scarlett darted through the dark patches between the flickering streetlamps so they wouldn’t see her pass, making her way down the street as little more than a wraith.
“You know we have a front door,” Georgette pointed out as Scarlett tumbled through the bedroom window, as she did every week when Scarlett made a late-night visit. It passed as a greeting between the two of them now, and Scarlett simply shrugged, as she always did.
“I’m assuming if you’re here and whole, that the ball went as planned?” Georgette stood from her dressing table and pulled her silk robe more tightly around her, inspecting Scarlett with a worried gaze. Scarlett held out her arms, displaying her lack of injuries, and Georgette’s round face relaxed.
“My mother and father still aren’t home. I assume they’re still at the ball trying to act as normal as possible to not give you away, although they will have to come up with some excuse as to why they came with a daughter and are leaving without one,” Georgette fussed, pulling Scarlett farther into the warm bedroom, away from the chill drifting in from the still-open window.
“They’ll just say you felt faint and went home to lie down,” Scarlett assured Georgette. “It won’t be hard to believe with how delicate you look and how tight you wear your corsets.”
Georgette huffed in feigned exasperation. “I’m not as much of a princess and you and my parents seem to think I am, you know.”
Georgette’s appearance undercut her statement, with chestnut curls framing a face so pale and so fine-featured, it would be perfectly suited to a porcelain doll if not for her tendency to grin so wide you could count her teeth, or to scrunch up her nose when she was amused. The only reason Scarlett was able to successfully impersonate her was their similar heights and the fact Georgette hadn’t been out in society for long enough for everybody to recognize her easily. She had only attended a few parties before the mysterious death threat confined her to her house. Still, it had taken a lot of powder to cover Scarlett’s freckles enough for the disguise to be passable.
At the reminder, Scarlett rubbed at her itchy face with a sleeve, probably only making her face dirtier.
“Come here and I’ll get that makeup off, now that you’ve already smeared it all over yourself. You can tell me what happened while I work, and I’ll feel better if my hands are busy.”
Scarlett did as she asked and sat down on the stool at the dressing table while Georgette dampened a cloth in the bowl on her washstand.
“Was there really an assassin?” Georgette murmured in a tremulous voice as she dabbed at the kohl around Scarlett’s eyes.
“I wouldn’t call it an assassin, but they did send somebody with orders to frighten you.” Scarlett couldn’t quite say he had been ordered to kill her, even though the threat to Georgette’s life had been clear in the letter. Her life was just so soft and gentle, Scarlett couldn’t bring herself to mar that any more than her presence already did.
“So, the Wolves did manage to infiltrate the ball.” Georgette’s voice was hardly more than a whisper.
“Not quite. They seem to have a man on the inside who they’re having do their dirty work. Probably blackmailing him or having him rough you up as repayment for some corrupt business deal,” Scarlett reflected, thinking about how adamant Lord Pearce had been the Wolves were no friends of his. Still, he had pointed a gun at her.
“If he’s not a Wolf, maybe he will tell you why they’re after me. And if he’s not actually a gangster, he could just be a good man caught in a bad situation,” Georgette insisted.
Scarlett smiled at her optimism, even as she bit her tongue to keep herself from pointing out that “good people” were the reason she was a lower city gang member herself.
“I’m not sure how much they’ve told him, but I’ll see what I can do.”
Georgette beamed as if the whole issue had been resolved and those who wanted her dead weren’t still at large. The sight of it made Scarlett’s chest warm even as it ached. It was that optimism that kept her coming back to visit her oldest friend every week, even when she had sworn off high society. Georgette was the one bright spot keeping her from slinking into the shadows of the slums and embracing the future as a lower-city gangster she knew to be inevitable. Scarlett was aware it couldn’t last though, as the amount of blood on her hands grew. Sometimes she thought she should climb out Georgette’s window and never come back, but she wouldn’t do it now, with her life in peril. If some of the scars on her conscience could come from protecting Georgette, then she would consider them more well-earned than the rest.
“Do you want me to ring for some tea while we wait for my parents to return?” Georgette offered as she wiped the last of the red paint from Scarlett’s lips.
