Sabre Read online

  Sabre

  A Crimson Daggers Novel #2: The Three Little Pigs

  Emma Savant

  Copyright © 2018 Emma Savant

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Dan Van Oss, Covermint Design

  Editing by Emmy Ellis, Studio ENP

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  www.EmmaSavant.com

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  A Note from Emma

  Also by Emma Savant

  About the Author

  1

  I scanned the gilded treetops and long black shadows that stretched out below me in every direction. Only the tallest pines grew above the mansion’s tallest turret, and I had to resist the urge to jump from the balcony and onto one of the branches just out of reach.

  “I think you’re good,” I said into my phone. A cool breeze blew my dark hair off my forehead. “No smoke visible here.”

  “You sure?” Brendan said. Voices and power tools sounded in the background, evidence of the Wildwood werewolf pack working to build their new home. “I don’t want our fires visible.”

  “I know,” I said. “I don’t see anything. Forest looks quiet from where I’m standing.”

  “That’s good, then.”

  He didn’t sound totally convinced, and he didn’t need to explain to me why. The spell to shield and protect the site of his pack’s new den had been cast by my mother—a member of the Crimson Daggers, a secret coven of witches sworn to hunt and destroy monsters the world over. The witches in my coven and the members of Brendan’s pack didn’t get along, historically speaking, and tensions had gotten even higher after my grandma had offered them the free use of the forested acres that stretched into the hills behind her mansion.

  She’d offered out of guilt, I knew, after my cousin and her former protégé had betrayed us all by attacking the Wildwoods’ den and murdering eleven members of their pack in the process. Grandma felt she had a debt to pay, and I was one of the few in the coven who agreed.

  There was a part of me, though, that hoped she had also offered out of a desire for a better future—one in which the werewolves could continue to provide sanctuary to the people who sought them out.

  “You want to come by for dinner in a few?” Brendan asked.

  “Is this a date?”

  “Depends on if you consider making hot dogs over a fire with my entire pack a date,” he said.

  “That would normally be a yes, but I can’t tonight.”

  “Stiletto training?”

  “Carnelian deadline.”

  It was a perfect description of my life these days, with half my time devoted to training as my grandmother’s eventual coven successor, and the other half spent working for Carnelian, my grandma’s quickly growing fashion house. Trying to fit one of those things into my life and have time left over for sleep and socializing had been a challenge. Trying to do both, I thought, might actually kill me.

  Still, Grandma managed to lead the coven and her company, and if I was going to follow in her footsteps and become everything she already was, I had to learn to juggle, too.

  I ended the call and went downstairs, tugging on a sweater as I went. The air had turned nippy this past week. I knew, from a lifetime in Portland, that it would get hot again and then turn beautiful for a few weeks before plunging into a dim, rainy winter.

  Mom stopped me when I was almost to the bottom of the stairs. “Did you get your run in this morning?”

  “Two miles,” I said. “Little over sixteen minutes.”

  “You need to be faster than that.”

  “I know.” I looked at my watch. “I’m aiming for fifteen-thirty by the end of the year. I have to get to Carnelian now, though.”

  She stepped aside, and I darted down the next two steps and out the door.

  It wasn’t a long ride on my motorcycle from the mansion to Carnelian’s downtown studio and showroom, but every extra second at a stoplight felt like an extra second I didn’t have.

  Our design lab was almost empty this late in the evening. One other designer, Danny, nodded at me and returned to a sketch on his computer screen. Some of the designers sketched and watercolored the old-fashioned way and scanned their designs, while others, like Danny, seemed to know their way around a digital drawing pad better than a pen and paper.

  I didn’t know my way around anything, but limited art skills didn’t mean I couldn’t create powerful designs.

  Or so Grandma said.

  I slid into a seat in front of a computer and pulled up our sketching program. I opened the mannequin image I was using as the core of all my designs and began sketching over it, keeping in mind the guidelines Grandma had given me: expansive, flowing, reminiscent of old sailing ships and billowing curtains.

  It wasn’t hard to turn the instructions into images in my mind, but getting those on the screen was enough to start a headache blooming behind my eyes.

  In every other avenue, my body obeyed me exactly. Whether weaving my motorcycle through traffic or pinning one of my sisters to the ground during a sparring match, my body did as it was told and did it well. But when it came to drawing, to transferring the ideas in my mind to something another person might see and understand, I was as clumsy compared to the other designers as the average person was to me when it came to riding or fighting.

  The sketch, the fifth and final one I had promised to have on Grandma’s desk by morning, seemed determined to destroy itself with every line I drew. Still, I worked at it, redrawing lines over and over until they captured the movement I envisioned.

  I couldn’t control my talent, but I could control my hard work and persistence. I’d learned the value of that persistence over the past few months, as I’d worked to either become a real Dagger or prove my worth at the fashion house despite falling behind Sienna in every way.

  Every way except not being a stark-raving murderer, anyway. That turned out to have been the final key, and now I was next in line as Grandma’s heir.

  To everything.

  I finished the sketch, saved it, and then dropped all the files in Grandma’s review folder for the morning. Then I checked her schedule—because I was still her assistant, on top of learning the ropes as a designer—and responded to several emails and confirmed an appointment at our showroom with members of the Faerie Queen’s council.

  It was almost eleven by the time I returned to the m
ansion. I was the last person here, again, and had missed dinner, again. Not that missing dinner mattered. The fridge was always full of three or four different kinds of leftovers. But I missed eating with my coven sisters, especially now that it meant I had one less chance to get a sense for how the individual women felt about the wolves living rent-free on our land.

  I knew I should trust my coven and rely on them, but ever since Sienna and Autumn had been caught attacking the werewolves and almost murdering me, my grandmother, and my werewolf friend, Alec, I couldn’t help but look twice at every facial expression and overanalyze every comment and tone of voice. Being a Crimson Dagger was supposed to mean I could rely totally and completely on any one of my sisters, but I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that was real life.

  Not anymore.

  2

  I warmed up some leftover casserole and made myself a hot cup of herbal tea, then ate while scrolling aimlessly through social media posts and reflexively liking anything one of my sisters shared. It was funny to see their posts—even within the relative safety of the JinxNet, the Glimmering world’s magically enhanced version of Humdrum internet, members of my coven operated in secrecy. I couldn’t help grinning every time I saw one of Rose’s post-workout selfies, where she claimed to be training for a triathlon, while I knew she was just keeping herself fit for the next time she had to destroy an aggressive cockatrice. And I laughed out loud when I read Rowan post’s about seeing the new alien-like bugbear at the Glimmering zoo. She didn’t mention she’d had a hand in its capture.

  The kitchen door opened, and Ginger came in, wrapped in a bathrobe and wearing a plastic shower cap over her short hair. Her skin, which was always a rich, dark brown, seemed especially glowing tonight and it put me in mind of long, lavender-infused baths and other luxuries that belonged to people with calmer schedules than mine.

  “I heard the kettle beeping,” she said. “Is there hot water left?”

  I nodded and thumbed toward the kettle. “There’s plenty. I figured I wasn’t the only one who’d need tea or cocoa at this hour. Looks like you had a nice evening.”

  “About time, too,” she said. “It’s been a long week.”

  “You forgot to take your shower cap off.”

  She laughed. “It’s on purpose. Doing a hot oil treatment.”

  She pulled out two mugs and rummaged through one of the boxes filled with tea bags.

  “The chamomile blend is in the jar near the back, if one of those is for Cerise,” I said.

  “Oh, thanks.” She dropped a reusable tea bag into one of the mugs and selected another tea for herself. The chamomile one was for Ginger’s wife. Grandma had thrown the blend together once using herbs from our magical garden out back, and Cerise had loved the tea so much she’d made up a new batch every few months for the past several years.

  It was these little things I knew about my sisters that made it hurt to doubt them. I’d looked up to every Dagger older than me practically since birth.

  “Do you know if the Wildwoods have finished moving?” Ginger asked.

  Her voice was casual—casual enough that I knew I should be cautious about my answer.

  “They’re all at the new spot now,” I said. “Most are sleeping in tents until their den is finished.”

  “Odd that they’d choose a den over a house. I heard Nelly offered to build them something.”

  “Just preference, I think,” I said. “Their old den was pretty cozy.”

  Ginger poured hot water over the tea bags, and steam rose in gentle curls. “That’s right, I forgot you went inside the old one.”

  “You did, too,” I said. “When we rescued Grandma.”

  I immediately wished I hadn’t said it, because no one around here needed more reminders of that time the Wildwoods had kidnapped the Stiletto and held her for ransom.

  “I prefer the house,” Ginger said. She tossed me a thin smile and dunked her tea bag absently up and down in the water.

  “I know you’re not happy they’re here.” I propped my elbow on the table and looked up at her. “But we need to trust that Grandma knows what she’s doing.”

  “Nelly has good intentions,” Ginger said. “No one can deny that.”

  The tightness of her lips revealed everything she was trying not to say.

  I frowned a little. “But you don’t think she’s right to let the wolves live out back.”

  “Hard to see it working out,” Ginger said. “Monsters and monster hunters living in such close quarters?”

  A flush of frustration crept up my neck, and I swallowed and tried to fight it back down.

  “They’re not monsters,” I said. “And it’s not like they’re in our backyard. It’s a quarter of a mile up the hill to their den.”

  “Not much distance when you’ve got four legs and the help of the moonlight,” Ginger said.

  I could tell she was trying to be polite, but her disapproval leaked out in the tightness of her lips and the slight lift of her eyebrows.

  “Grandma wouldn’t let them stay here if she thought they were dangerous.”

  “She might if you vouched for them,” Ginger said. She picked up her mugs and carefully crossed the room with one in each hand. “Nelly trusts your opinions.”

  It should have been a compliment, but I bristled at the way she spoke.

  “What, you think she shouldn’t?”

  “I’m glad you’re going to lead us someday,” Ginger said. “Sienna had traits that I don’t think would have been good for the coven in the long run. So I mean this respectfully, but you need to get your head in the game. You’re a Dagger.”

  “I know,” I said sharply.

  She leaned against the kitchen door and looked at me. She was tall and beautiful, and had always been one of the Daggers I’d admired most when I was a child and she was a novice like I was now.

  Something in the way I viewed her had changed, though—or maybe it was something in the way she viewed me.

  “I’m just saying, it’s not your job to make sure the werewolves have a place to sleep at night, especially when we’ve got so many real problems to deal with now. You heard they found the body of that missing faerie girl, right?”

  It must have been clear from my face that I hadn’t heard. Ginger softened and sighed.

  “It’s all over the news. I’m sure you’ll hear about it tomorrow. Just remember, Scarlett, your responsibility is to protect the world from monsters, not to protect the monsters from the world. The wolves can take care of themselves.”

  “Not if people like us decide to go around murdering them.”

  “Sienna was one person,” Ginger said. “That doesn’t mean the entire coven needs to be okay with them living on our land, even if you have a crush on them.”

  She pressed her lips together and closed her eyes briefly. I opened my mouth in outrage, but she shook her head quickly.

  “I’m sorry, that was over the line,” she said. “Who you sleep with is your business.”

  “I’m not sleeping with anybody,” I said hotly.

  Who even had the time?

  “Either way,” she said. “Just because you like a few of them, doesn’t mean they need to move in, you know?”

  She pushed the door open and slipped into the hall before I could say anything else.

  The clock on the wall chimed midnight. I swore under my breath, dumped my empty plate and half-empty mug in the sink, and ran upstairs to try and get a few hours of sleep before this all started again.

  3

  I overslept the next morning and hadn’t even gotten all the way down the stairs when I was faced with more of my sisters complaining about the wolves. Poppy and Blaze were in the foyer, grabbing their coats and tugging on their boots before they left for the day. I caught the word werewolf and paused at the top of the stairs to listen.

  “Scarlett seems to think they’re pets,” Poppy said.

  “Kid’s trying her best,” Blaze said. She pulled a knit beanie over her
spiky platinum hair. “Give her a chance.”

  Poppy slipped on a jacket. “I know she’s young, but I think it’s a little much for her boyfriend’s entire pack to move in with us,” she said.

  I cleared my throat. They looked up. Poppy quickly dodged my gaze, but Blaze offered me a small smirk.

  “Hey,” I said, continuing down the stairs like I hadn’t just been eavesdropping. “What are you guys talking about?”

  “Oh, not much,” Blaze said. “The weather.”

  “I heard,” I said dryly.

  This wasn’t going to work, not if every Dagger besides me was constantly gossiping about the wolves and complaining about how Grandma had chosen to make amends for Sienna’s attack on their den.

  I took a deep breath. “You guys have a problem with the Stiletto’s decision?”

  Poppy glanced at the door, then sighed and turned to me. “I do,” she said. “I think it’s a bad idea to have them here and I don’t think having them so close is appropriate. If Nelly’s okay with you dating her kidnapper, that’s up to you. I’m not comfortable having them so close to the mansion, though. Some of us have kids here.”

  “I know you think they’re safe,” Blaze said. “But I’ve handled too many werewolves over the years to think there’s no chance of one of them snapping and seeing one of the kids in the yard as easy prey.”