Rooks and Romanticide by J.I. Radke

Levi.”
    Levi shrugged. “I don’t either, anyway.”
    It was just preposterous. It was asinine. It was laughable. The proposition left a bad taste in Levi’s mouth. Or maybe it was the fruity Dietrich liquor. But drunken schemes were the best and the worst. Weren’t they…?
    With a scatter of rocks and dead leaves, a scuff of his heel against stacked stone, Levi slipped down the inside of the gothic wall that ran around the grounds of the Dietrich estate. Palms raw and knees sore from uneven Lincolnshire stone, his feet hit the grass, and he dropped to a crouch, waiting for any sign of guards nearby. Putting his mask back on compromised his peripheral vision. He didn’t like it.
    Even from the back, the Dietrich house was altogether the essence of grandeur. The house was monstrous. Parapets and chimneys soared. The windows were tall. Dark gnarled and knotted trees, which had lost most all their leaves already, lined the courtyard. The ornate fountains bore roaring stone lions. A wooden swing swayed idly from the branch of a deadened tree, but it was broken and hung cockeyed, mossy and seemingly untouched for years.
    A juvenile little exhilaration pumped through Levi’s veins like a current, and as he caught his breath, he shook his head at his companions’ words again and thought, They jest at scars that have yet to feel a real wound .
    Levi followed the wall to the manor, passing the vast courtyard and slinking toward the shadows of the house, barely breathing just to keep a keen ear for the sound of anyone tailing him. He’d heard stories that Dietrich guards were brutal, and while that was a thrilling challenge, he didn’t really feel like facing it tonight. He inched along the southern wing of the manor, lingering under the vines and little poplars that grew along the stone.
    The house was unlit save for a few upper windows and one room with its balcony doors open, spilling warm light down on the dark lawn. Levi froze in the shadows at the slight rustle of movement. He fell still, wondering if he’d been seen. The night was silent for a breath or two, just the rush of the cool wind through the trees, the sounds of activity inside the big house muffled and faraway, leaking out from the balcony threshold. And God, what had he gotten himself into now, letting BLACK talk him into this? Stop, wait, don’t breathe, where had the sound come from in the first place? And then, brisk and unsympathetic from above:
    â€œYou’re lucky I’ve kept the hounds in tonight. Haven’t you heard? They’re beasts. They’ll tear you limb from limb.”
    Crouched in the shadow of the Dietrich wall, Levi almost choked on his tongue. But he recognized the voice. If anything, the cocky tone gave it away in an instant.
    Levi stood with a creak of leather holsters beneath his fine shirt as he noticed a familiar-looking revolver poking out over the edge of the balcony, around the side of a stone gargoyle perched on the corner. Reflected light bounced off the muzzle. How opportune that he had been passing by this balcony of all the ones on the house—
    â€œShow yourself.” It was the same demanding voice, but this time Levi realized that the hidden speaker already knew who it was lurking below his balcony.
    The Earl Dietrich’s face appeared then, peeking around the balcony gargoyle. When Levi shifted forward into the pale slant of light, the Earl seemed to falter a little, uncertainty darting behind the mask of importance on his face. God, but what a face. He was an eerie little prince, sage-like and cruel, perfect youth and the bleakness of tragedy. There was still some paint left on his throat and face from that gaudy insult of a costume—the “ Death of the Ruslanivs ,” really, now?
    The bitter night chill kicked the hair off the Earl’s temple and lent Levi a clearer look at the soft white skin of his face, the haunting eyes written through