Chapter 39 Midnight
MIDNIGHT
Sidarphion, I beg thee to bless me with a midnight endless. When the clock cleaves the night, grant me the power to slow the spend of the hour for an infinite indulgence of my desire.
Claudia is buzzing with excitement while she walks through the dark corridors of Cygnus. She’s so close now. Tonight, Lamour will fix everything. She’ll be free from Sidarphion. Cassius will be saved. A lifetime of happiness will be theirs for the taking.
Sliding past the gate to the Astrologia wing, she spins up the spiral staircase and reaches the observatory. The door is slightly ajar, which is odd. Lamour always locks it, even when he knows she’s only minutes behind. He’s too anxious to leave it unlocked, even for a second.
She smells it before she sees it—the blood. Sour and hot, it smells fresh. Her breathing speeds. The edges of her vision fray.
Lamour must have hurt himself with a new spell. He could be dying. He could be dead. Without wasting another second, she charges inside.
All the air leaves her lungs. Before her, everything sharpens, then blurs again.
In the center of the room, Lamour hangs weightlessly, upside down and naked, held by nothing. There are several wounds slashed into his skin, all bleeding fast and glowing bright.
Constellations, Claudia realizes. Celestial spells.
His head hangs back, making the slit on his throat yawn like a mouth. Blood gushes from the wound, pooling beneath him in the center of a chalk-drawn pentagram. Six candles pulse around him, and there, standing in the corner with the grimoire in his hand and blood on his face, is High Sage Triche.
The faraway clock tower tolls twelve times for midnight.
Triche looks at her with a crazed smile, flashing bloodstained teeth. “Miss Jolicoeur, you are right on time.” With a wave of his hand, the door slams behind her. She hears the lock click.
“No” is all Claudia can say. No, no, no, no.
It feels as though the floor is tilting beneath her. She sees Triche’s lips moving, but the words are just noise. She can’t hear, can’t think, can’t even move.
The rest of Lamour’s life spills out of this throat, and a plume of white, shimmering smoke erupts from his mouth.
All too late, Claudia realizes what she is witnessing.
This is an ascension ritual, and the white smoke is Lamour’s soul.
Triche tosses the grimoire and claps. “Finally.” He then stretches his arms out and opens his palms, curling his fingers inward and commanding the white smoke.
It moves like a snake toward him. When it’s close, he opens his mouth and breathes it in.
Loud, wet choking sounds erupt from his mouth while he forces more of the specter between his jaws.
Claudia skirts the edge of the circular room, getting as far away from Triche as she can. The backs of her legs meet the edge of Lamour’s desk. Never taking her eyes off the High Sage, she reaches back, feeling for anything that could be a weapon.
Once Triche has swallowed all the smoke, Lamour’s body shrivels and shrinks, smaller and smaller until it implodes into nothing but ash and dust. His blood, thick and unmoving, steams on the ground. His remains fall into it like snow melting into the sea.
Triche stands tall. Proud. His wild eyes find her, and he motions her forward. “Come here, dear.”
She doesn’t move. “You—you killed him.”
“Professor Lamour’s death was a necessary part of a divine plan for the good of celestial magic. Now come here, else let him die in vain like the others.”
“The others…” Her voice cracks when she realizes the truth. It’s been him all along. It wasn’t Sidarphion who killed all the celestial witches.
It was Triche.
Her knees nearly give out. She leans back against the desk, and Lamour’s needle pokes into her palm. “Why?”
Her brain feels white-hot while she draws Orion behind her back.
“You know as well as I do that Sidarphion is a dangerous and malevolent being. I had to remove him, and now, I will replace him. Finally. It took me far too long to realize that I can’t become a god until Sidarphion is dead, and it took me even longer to know how to kill him.
I tried everything, tested every theory.
Every type of kill, every method for consuming the soul of another celestial witch.
I tried drinking their blood. With some, I ate their eyes.
Others, I wore their skin. Nothing worked, until tonight with Lamour. ”
The smell of hot, unmoving blood wafts up. Claudia swallows a gag. Acidic anger burns in her eyes.
“Now, I’ve done it. Everything is in place,” Triche continues. “The last piece is you.”
“If you kill me, Cassius will never forgive you.” She needs to keep him talking while she finishes the spell; only a few more stars until Sagitta is complete.
“Cassius will understand. I’ve done all this to avenge his family from the one who destroyed their legacy, and I will do anything to protect him now.
” Leaning close, Triche sniffs the air. “I can smell Sidarphion on you. He’s tasked you with killing Cassius, hasn’t he?
He’s given you the bargain that Odette failed to complete.
” He tilts his head. “I can’t allow that to happen. ”
“I would never hurt Cassius. I’d let the bargain take me before that ever happened.”
Triche smiles. “So you’ve accepted that you’re going to die, then. Good.” He lunges for her, but he’s not fast enough.
“Orion, Sagitta,” she screams.
Orion’s sword glows in her hand. Triche crashes into Sagitta’s impenetrable protection.
When he stumbles back, Claudia charges him, knowing she has only seconds to land a killing blow.
She swings the heavy, unwieldy sword across his body, but all it does is slice open his robes and reveal his naked chest. His skin is pure white, as if absent of all blood, and thin as paper over his ancient bones.
Covering his torso are hundreds of harsh, messy wounds that look like cigarette burns.
Closer, Claudia realizes that they’re all constellations in combinations she’s never even dreamed of.
She can’t imagine what they all can do when paired in these strange ways.
But she’s about to find out.
Beneath the stars, Triche shakes and glows.
His eyes burn bright silver, and he flies away, far from the reach of Claudia’s sword.
Again, she charges him, but all he has to do is lazily hold up his hand, and a powerful force explodes from his palm, knocking Claudia all the way across the room.
Her back smashes into a bookshelf. Heavy tomes come crashing down on her, their sharp corners arrowing against her skull.
The sword flashes in her hand, readying to fade.
Her mouth tastes of blood. With her cheek pressed to the floor, Claudia feels the vibration of Triche’s heavy steps while he storms toward her.
He places one foot on either side of her hips and grins down at her.
“You can’t kill me, Claudia. I’ve lived for over one hundred years, and I will live for an eternity more. Your death will bring me to my ascension.”
Through labored breaths, she says, “I thought you were good.”
“If goodness was my aim, I never would have gotten where I am or where I intend to go. Gods do not play by the mortal order of good and evil.”
“You’re a monster. Not a god.”
“My dear, you’re too foolish to understand the difference.”
The High Sage pierces his thumb with a sharp tooth and smears blood on her forehead. “Aries, Crux.”
The room blurs and fades to black.
Claudia, flat to the ground, opens her eyes.
Wherever she is, there is no light. Only a damp stone floor below her and cold darkness everywhere else.
Her scholar robes are gone, and her white dress has been roughly sliced down the spine, all the way to the small of her back.
As she stands, it hangs loosely around her frame as though she’s lost all the weight she’s worked to gain.
She stretches out her arms, feeling for anything firm, anything to indicate where she is right now.
The movement tugs at wounds on her back—injuries she doesn’t remember having.
Reaching back, she runs her fingers along a series of jagged cuts.
She counts the ones she can reach—at least ten.
There are more in the center of her back that she can’t quite touch with her fingers.
Straining to reach them, she stumbles into a craggy stone wall.
It’s as damp as the floor. Where is this water coming from?
She feels along the wall, which curves quickly.
She stretches her arms out to either side, realizing she can touch both sides of this cramped place at the same time.
When she turns slowly, her fingers meet cold iron bars.
She pulls herself close to them, peering out into the dark.
In the distance, there is a bead of orange light.
“Hello?”
The bead of light grows as someone approaches, carrying a torch.
The orange glow washes over the entire room.
It’s a small, curved cell that stretches up impossibly high so that the light cannot reach.
All around her are sticky red handprints.
Her fingers, curled around the iron bars, are covered in blood.
The room isn’t damp. What she felt in the dark—it was blood.
Blood on her hands. Again.
High Sage Triche steps out of the darkness. He’s wearing black robes, undone so she can see his white chest covered in scarred constellations. “Hello, Starling.”
She inhales sharply. “How do you know that name?”
He scowls. A groan bubbles at the back of his throat. “Don’t ask questions to which you already know the answer. It’s foolish. I despise foolishness.”
After a hard swallow, Claudia says, “You spoke to Sidarphion.”
His gray eyes reflect the flames of the torch while he looks her up and down. “He spoke to me”—he reaches through the bars and curls his hand around her throat—“when I sank my teeth into you.”