37. Emmerick
Chapter 37
Emmerick
R yssa hadn’t come for tea. Maybe she was as disgusted with me as I was. Tapping my foot against the sitting room floor, I took a deep breath and stared into my cold cup of tea.
It had been a week since I’d come out of the darkness to find I’d committed another unspeakable crime.
One moment that ass of a King from the Wastelands had been here talking about Sybilla being sick. Then, I’d been standing over Haward’s body.
My own heinous actions shook me.
I should write to someone—confess. But what if it happened with my friends and family nearby? What if I let them into this castle and then tried to hurt them too?
Even if I didn’t harm them, the idea of pulling them into whatever web of evil plagued me felt wrong.
They couldn’t possibly understand.
Ryssa had taken my broadsword that morning a week ago and handled hiding Haward’s body in the garden crypts. I couldn’t imagine how she’d done it alone, and when she’d returned, that shadowy void in her robe had stared at me.
“It wasn’t your fault...” she’d reassured me. But how could it not have been? Then she’d asked the most peculiar question. “King Emmerick, have you taken a map from the crypts below the castle?”
I still had no idea what she’d been referring to.
We’d told Barden that Haward would be traveling to the West Corridor to negotiate land contracts on my behalf with Bringham. He’d seemed unworried until no word of Haward’s arrival had come.
Our ruse would not hold for long. Barden had already begun asking me questions and word had started to spread about the missing lord.
My foot kept tapping, and I gnawed on my lower lip.
There was a light knock on the door before a familiar flash of auburn hair bounced into the room and Elsedora sat beside me on the sofa.
“Who let you in this time?”
Elsedora kept appearing unannounced and sniffing around the castle. I’d told my guards to ban her, but she kept seducing them or skirting them; she was frightfully fast and lethally quiet.
“Again—I am quite good with guards. They tend to like wild redheads with no moral compass.”
“So you’re still propositioning my guards to get into my castle? Remind me to fire them all.” I huffed, not having the energy or patience for her today.
“Only the pretty ones,” she answered. “The brunette with the dimples is quite taken with me. Her name begins with an ‘S,’ but I forget what it is.”
“Do you prefer women?” I sipped my cold tea, wanting her to leave me be. Though for some reason, her presence kept the dark thoughts from creeping in. So instead, I engaged her.
“I prefer people . Soft things,” she said as she leaned over me and trailed a finger down the buttons of my jacket as though she was searching them for something. “ Hard things, too.”
The insinuation in her voice made me choke on the tea I hadn’t realized was still in my mouth.
She smirked and continued, “Speaking of hard things, where is your blade today?”
“Being repaired by the blacksmith,” I lied.
“Really?” She placed an arm over the back of the sofa behind me and crossed a leg beneath herself to face me.
“Is it unusual for a sword to require maintaining?”
She smirked and asked, “Do you know why I’m really here, puppy?”
Curiosity was a beastly inconvenience. I sighed, not wanting to admit that I did, badly, want to know.
Her visits had become something of a comfort—a poorly timed, confusing comfort. But if she came without bad news, it meant Sybilla was safe.
“No. But something tells me you’re going to tell me even if I do not ask.”
She shrugged. “You would be correct. The Death Origin, Caym, has risen. He is using envoys to do his bidding. Done any of his bidding recently?”
My shoulders tensed. I’d never been much good at lying. “What would make you think that I have?”
She hummed for a moment. “Well...for one, there is a mark of Death on the hilt of that broadsword you usually carry. I hope you trust whomever you gave it to because we don’t know exactly what it does. And also, I have seen the change occur in you more than once.”
I held my breath.
I’d put Ryssa in danger.
My heart rose to my throat. “I have never seen anything wrong with my sword. And what change?”
“It could be charmed so its wielder cannot see it,” she answered. “Your eyes grow darker—hollow and callous. Nothing like the warm gold they are now.”
I shook my head. “That is a ridiculous accusation.”
“Oh, pet. I do like you. It would be a shame to see you die.” Elsedora trailed a finger down my neck and to my collar and then flipped it as though inspecting it, too.
“Elsedora…”
Her expression brightened far too much for the nature of this conversation. “Yes?”
“Stop trying to turn me to putty after delivering information like that—I am not the Death Origin,” I ground out.
She hummed, “No, you are not. But he’s sank his claws into you. You’ve wielded Death, haven’t you? You seem to always be wearing those gloves.”
“I’ve done no such thing.” The lie felt sour on my tongue. I had. She continued to touch the space where my stubble met my neck, tickling me. “And stop touching me like that. For Sources’ sake, you’re Fen’s sister.”
“So what? You are owed a bit of fun before your likely demise.”
I leaned away. “He’s my friend. He would burn me alive where I sit. And you’re just trying to distract me like you do with my guards.”
I scanned her face. She was pretty—wide hazel eyes and freckles across a dainty nose that made her appear softer than I knew her to be. Under different circumstances, maybe my interest would have been piqued.
But I’d never been one for trysts, and my damned heart always latched onto only one woman at a time. I’d made a habit of taking an interest in emotionally unavailable women who held my secrets.
But Ryssa held my secrets for me, not from me.
Elsedora stood and said, “What a shame. Something tells me you could use a bit of distraction.”
As she headed for the door, my heart thundered.
“Wait.” I stopped her. “Did you take a map from the crypts?”
Her lips turned up and she nodded. “Care to tell me what it does?”
“I don’t know, actually,” I answered. “I’m not confirming that I believe you, but hypothetically, if I am one of these envoys…how do I stop it?”
Leaning in the doorway, she crossed her arms and something akin to sadness crossed her features. “You don’t,” she said. “At least we have no reason to believe that Caym would let you go in any way other than death. He will keep killing through you, building his strength until then.”
She hovered there as though wanting to say more as I swallowed hard. I’d killed innocent people. I’d “ Death-wielded, ” as she’d put it.
My shoulders collapsed; my elbows rested on my knees as I tried to absorb what she’d told me.
Finally, she added, “There are two more like you. Sybilla suspects Haward and Bringham. Be careful who you allow into this castle…for their sake and yours.”
I nodded as my stomach dropped, and then she was gone.
As soon as Elsedora’s footsteps were far enough down the hall, I leaped up and moved for the door.
Lady Ryssa had mentioned once that she spent most afternoons in her gardens. Suddenly, I felt ashamed that I’d never visited her before. It was a prominent estate just a short ride from the castle, and I took a carriage.
I stepped up to the front door and flexed my gloved fingers in anticipation. I knocked, and there was a commotion inside like someone was fumbling to get to the entry.
A gruff male voice said, “Who’s it?”
Had she mentioned a husband? I knew she wore a ring beneath her gloves. Why did that possibility bring out an ugly possessive streak in me?
“It is—” Before I could finish my answer, the door swung open.
A man, seeming to be in his late eighties, greeted me. “What do you want?” His white hair was wiry and untamed atop his head.
He seemed to look past me and didn’t bow—that much I liked about him. “It is King Mattock. I’m here to see Lady Ryssa. This is her residence, is it not?”
At that, the man let out a hearty, condescending laugh. “Yeah, boy, you’re King Mattock. And I’m the Prince of damned fools.”
I was taken aback, but then I realized the man still wasn’t looking at me.
“This is my residence, boy. That Ryssa girl has been a big help to an old blind bastard like me. Come in.”
Help. His residence. I stood there confused.
If Ryssa wasn’t the lady of this house, then Haward and Barden had been duped. I had been duped.
I followed the old man inside.
“Name’s Rivolt.”
“I truly am King Mattock,” I said, for the first time wanting someone to believe it.
He simply scoffed at me.
“And Lady Ryssa, she’s not here?”
“She is no lady of this house. That isn’t what we call housemaids. If you were King Mattock, you’d know that much. She’s out in the greenhouse—likes to tinker out there when she gets a break from helping in here.”
I glanced around. Dust coated most of the surfaces, and the rugs looked as though they hadn’t been beaten in years. Texts reminiscent of the ones in Asterie’s tower library were stacked high atop the dining table.
I’d been allowing Ryssa to help me with administrative tasks for months. She’d always seemed privy to noble matters.
Always helpful.
Always insightful.
She may not be the lady of this house, but judging by the state of this house, she also wasn’t a housemaid.
“Might I go and have a word with her?”
“She doesn’t talk much, but sure. Out through the terrace, down the steps, take the path to the pond.”
“Thank you, Rivolt.” I moved through the cluttered estate and out the windowed double doors into a manicured garden. She’d said she spent most of her free time in the gardens at her estate.
One truth. One lie.
I’d get to the bottom of this. There must have been some mistake. The man was old; maybe he was a relative she’d taken in. He was confused.
I carried on down the path until a sprawling pond came into view, and beside it sat an overgrown greenhouse. When I stepped inside, I found Ryssa bent down by a row of newly planted rose bushes, plucking weeds from the soil around their roots.
Her burgundy robe hood was down, and she faced away from me. All I could see of her were petite, scarred hands pulling at roots in the soil, a gold ring on her left ring finger, and a long tousle of straight wheat-blonde hair tied back at her nape.
Of course she had to be a damned blonde.
She was just as gracefully beautiful as I’d imagined her, and I longed to see her face—to know the woman I’d grown fond of.
As I approached, deep scarring around her neck became visible. I grimaced, thinking of how painful whatever had put it there must have been. Drawing closer, I wanted a glance of her profile, to confirm what I knew—she’d be beautiful.
My boot hit a metal bucket.
Ryssa startled and turned toward me, rising.
No.
Backing away, I tripped over the pail and came down on my ass, hard.
Firose.
“What have you done with her?” I shouted from my vulnerable position, splayed there on the ground. “How are you—you’re dead!”
Firose’s face dropped—as did the weeds from her marred hands.
“King Mattock,” she gasped.
Though she made no move to strike, I slid back and rose to my knees, searching for the sword no longer at my hip.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Where is Ryssa?” Self-preservation made me ask the question. Because I knew the truth. Ryssa had never existed beneath that veil. The cloak she wore was wrapped around Firose’s petite frame.
She stepped forward and extended one hand toward me. “Listen, Emmerick, please.”
I pushed to my feet, pulling my dagger from my boot. Holding the blade between us with a shaking arm, I stepped out of her reach.
“Please. Don’t strike until you’ve heard what I have to say.”
Blood pulsed in my ears, and cold sweat ran down my back. The scarring at her throat formed a ring all the way around her neck, purple and gnarled. Her face looked like cracked marble, with scars running from her temple to the peak of her full lips.
Lips that had once kissed mine roughly over wedding vows in the Central Tower on a night that I’d hoped to forget. The Divine who’d conducted our ceremony had worn gray robes and a gray veil—his voice had been grave and commanding. It’d seemed as though he held an investment in our marriage and wanted to put Firose on my throne. Poison-soaked memories blurred into the reality that she had never truly died. Seeing her face again was all I’d needed for the memories to return.
Our union had not been nullified. My lawful Queen consort stood before me.
My heart shattered. This woman before me was not the soft-spoken Ryssa that haunted my dreams. She was my worst nightmare.
“You,” I growled.
Firose’s eyes brimmed with tears. Fake. She’s incapable of remorse.
“How?” I shouted and lunged for her. She didn’t attempt to fight—no fire formed in her palms.
She gasped when I slammed her against the iron-framed glass of the atrium. “Please,” she said through tears. “I beg you. I’ve tried to help you, to stop you when he takes control. I had been tracking him with a map, but it was stolen from me. He kept reaching you before I could. I was your father’s friend once…I tried to help him then too.”
With my body pressing hers to the glass, I brought my hand up to place the blade against her throat. “You have thirty seconds to convince me not to bleed you out right here.”
I should just kill her.
Firose winced against the feeling of the blade at her throat. “It was real...our time spent together. It was real. At first I only wanted to ensure you did not Death-wield, that he couldn’t harvest more through you. But then I enjoyed your company.”
I shook my head.
Closing her eyes as tears streamed down her pallid, cracked cheeks, she continued, “Caym found me a week after Fen asked me to marry him. He was in Commander Stygian’s body then. I was in the Temple of Light in Belray.
“I had everything I ever wanted. I was about to be the happiest woman alive. Caym took the worst of me and set it aflame. At first, it was infatuation. Then fanaticism. Within weeks, he could control me fully. He takes your anger and uses it to kill, destroy, maim, and when he bleeds you dry of your will to live, he simply takes a new envoy in your place. There are three of you he’s infected.” Her voice cracked.
Elsedora’s words circled back to me about the Death Origin rising, about me being an envoy. Sybilla suspected me, Haward and Bringham.
I lessened the pressure of my dagger, too appalled with myself to hurt her. Not when she looked so damned helpless, not with tears burning down scarred cheeks. She breathed a sigh.
“How do I know you are not him now? I assume he can still control you?” I demanded.
“I am no longer an envoy,” she answered. “He cannot control me any longer.”
I scoffed. “How?”
“I don’t know,” she answered frantically. “One moment I was being torn apart in the throne room of Luz. The next, I woke in a field of flames on the West Corridor shores. It’s as though the Sources melded me back together. ”
“Can he hear us now?” I should let the blade sink in. On one hand, she’d deceived me; on the other, she’d also been at my side for months. Every emotion grew at odds with another. I hesitated.
“No, he can only move between envoys when you are close. It’s why he relies on his relics—the deathmarks. The marks do not control you; they track you. That is what the map in the crypts tracked too—the active deathmark. I knew when he neared. But I could only stop him so many times without risking him finding me.” She reached up to place a hand on my chest. “I’m sorry...for lying, for it all.”
I growled at the memories darkening my thoughts.
“Marching us into battle with me chained like an animal...you or him?”
She winced. “Me. I so desperately wanted to die. The late Mattock, your father, fought him, but over time he weakened, and fighting Death only leads to death. He had chosen Asterie as his new envoy. But when you killed her—”
He’d picked me instead.
I let my arm drop to my side with a fist clenched around the dagger’s handle. In those awful visions that haunted me, I’d seen her there helping my father.
“And who are the others?” I asked.
“I have good reason to believe Barden is one—he was always near where the map showed the mark. I never found the other. He only needs envoys until the next black moon, when his Reverist power will return to him in full. Then anyone and everyone is at risk of coming under his influence.”
I reached down with my free hand and raised her chin to force her to meet my gaze. Crystal-blue irises greeted me—like the prettiest blue skies. I wished their beauty brought me the joy I’d thought seeing Ryssa for the first time might. “How do I know you’re not lying?”
She rasped out, “You don’t.”
I scanned her face while running my thumb over the scarring that ended just above her cupid’s bow. Flatly, I said, “You died. Asterie saw it.”
Why did I pity her?
A lump formed in my throat.
I was one of Caym’s envoys. If he could truly hop between us, then it was imperative that we avoid Sybilla’s cousin like the plague, and anyone else for that matter.
“Are you loyal to him?” I demanded with inches between our noses.
She shook her head. “No. He ruined me. He ruined everything...I don’t want to see you meet the same fate.”
Those clear skies began to well with tears again. I had to think. I had to do something.
We had a chance to get away.
I had a chance to get her away. I wasn’t entirely sure when that had become important to me.
“Do you know if the deathmarks are exclusively on his envoys? Could he be tracking others or other objects?” I asked.
She swallowed hard. “It’s possible. They are crafted with a dark charm. The envoys cannot see them. All those books in there I’ve collected for centuries—I’ve scoured every page, every line. These are uncharted waters.”
I slipped a finger around one of the buttons of her cloak and undid it.
“What...”
Her mouth hung open as I undid the next button.
“What are you doing?” she breathed.
“Undressing you. Take every bit of cloth, every pin and piece of jewelry off .” We would take no chances of being marked by Death wherever we traveled next. “I have been seeing memories of you. He might have realized you were near. It seemed that subconsciously…I knew you were near.”
In that moment, I might not have been possessed by the Death Origin, but surely something possessed me. For months, Firose had loomed in my shadow-filled nightmares and Ryssa in every moment of light. Somewhere between the two planes, she stood before me, embodying the truest forms of love and of hate rolled into one.
“If it is the relics he uses to track us, then you need to be rid of any before we go,” I said.
“Go?” She stilled. “With you?”
“Yes.”
I stepped back to allow her room to undress herself.
I couldn’t put the pieces together fast enough. But I knew that I wouldn’t leave her there. After dropping her robe, she pulled her tunic over her head. She discarded the golden ring from her finger, and it fell with a metallic ping on the stone of the greenhouse path.
I stared at it. A memory flashed of me slipping it over her knuckle.
Firose could have challenged my crown or forced her way next to me as Queen.
She hadn’t.
She could have run from it all.
Yet she’d stayed to help me.
She pulled the ribbon from her hair and dropped it. “He could have placed more than one on you,” she said as her fingers hooked into her breeches. She pushed them down her legs, which were scattered with deep white blotches of scarring. “You should change clothes too.”
Watching her undress shouldn’t have excited me, but I’d once told Ryssa that I would find what was hidden under her robe beautiful no matter what.
Somehow, I still did find her alluring.
Her blue lace undergarments made my mouth dry, and I averted my gaze.
I nodded and dropped my dagger to undress, too. Since I wore only a tunic and breeches, it was quick work. Leaving only my undershorts on, I asked, “Where did you put the sword?”
“I’ve mostly been carrying it since I found you that day. I left it in the Temple of Light this morning. It will just look like you are having a day of prayer.”
She struggled with the laces of her corset.
“Let me?” I asked.
A pile of clothes and unsaid words lay between us as she nodded and turned. I found the clasp at the top before pulling at the dainty laces far less gracefully than I’d like to admit. She leaned into the touch of my fingers at her lower back.
At the sensation of her soft skin, need sank heavy in my stomach and blood rushed to my groin.
She was flushed when she spun around, and I watched her slip the corset straps off and let the garment fall. My heart pounded as Firose placed her hand on my chest over one of the burn scars she’d given me that night in the tower.
“This,” she whispered, “wasn’t me.”
I desperately tried not to stare at her body, but failed. My resolve to be a gentleman ran thin.
She licked her lips before she spoke again. “You’re a kind man, and you will be a great King. You deserve none of this, but he will warp what you are. It is what he did to me—I didn’t start this way either. It doesn’t mean I don’t deserve your hatred for what I became.”
“Why did you decide to help me? Why not just run?” I ground out, trying to ignore the heat of her palm on my chest.
“It felt right. I thought maybe if I could save you from falling too, then it might redeem some of the pain I’d caused. That it would redeem not having been able to save Corric.”
I examined her face—the pinch between her brows, the way her mouth hung parted as she gazed up at me. I should kill her, loathe her. She’d tried to destroy my city, tried to kill my friends, and forced me to marry her for my crown.
It hadn’t been her. At least not all of it.
Could we be broken down and sorted neatly into the good and bad parts of ourselves?
I’d killed more people than I could remember—him.
I’d gone against my dearest friend and threatened to take her crown by force—me.
I’d visited King Sheffield, found him on a ride and knocked him from his horse, letting Death crawl into his veins—him.
I’d stationed troops along the borders at Bringham and Haward’s recommendation—me.
I’d become a vessel. Unveiled before me, a woman stood who understood how helpless that felt.
My voice grew lower. “I don’t know what to think of you. I don’t know if I hate you or want you.”
Her fingers traced the burned handprints on my bare chest as though mourning them. She looked up at me again and said, “Then think nothing of me at all.”
The sapphire flames in her eyes made me grow brazen. “Do you want me?” I asked.
“Yes,” she breathed out. “But your favor isn’t something I deserve.”
There was a half-naked woman before me who had become the object of so many of my desires these past months. They blended together in a fog of hate, and lust, and a heady sense of having too little time to make my own choices.
My resolve broke.
“Then I’ll think later,” I groaned as my mouth crashed down onto hers. Her fingers dug into my shoulders, breasts pushed to my chest with nothing between us.
In one swift motion, I lifted her and pressed her to the atrium glass. My mouth moved down her neck, eliciting a gasp. Tracing the lines of scarring there with my tongue, I groaned as she hooked her thumbs into the waist of my undershorts and pushed down to free me. I pulled the lace of her underwear aside.
As her hand found my length between us and positioned me at her entrance, I groaned into her shoulder.
“Take what you need, my King,” she whispered into my ear.
Obliging, I pushed into her, and she cried out. I gave her no time to adjust to me before driving in again, reveling in the feel of her tightening around me.
Nails dug into the upper plane of my back. I grabbed a handful of her hair. In urgent fury, we both chased releases we didn’t deserve—retreating and colliding in a frenzy of need. The way she felt writhing against that glass was freeing.
I’d only been with one other and sex had never felt like this. Raw. Hungry. Mutually selfish. Wrong in ways that felt unjustifiably right. It was life and death, punishment and revival, passion and ruin.
Firose met my pace until we both cried out, and I spilled into her with a satisfied groan. Her head fell to the center of my chest, between the marks she’d left on me that terrible night when neither of us had control over our fates. We both panted.
Something snapped into place as she looked up at me, still coiled around my waist. The lust of the moment faded with the setting sun, but an aching sense of recognition settled in my stomach that I wouldn’t admit to myself or her.
The Source power in my veins felt fed.
Her irises were dancing with red flames, and in their reflection, I saw a glowing ring of light in mine.
After having come together, we didn’t share words or tender moments. Instead, we both walked silent and naked as the days we’d been born to the main house. It would be impossible to verbalize how incredibly reckless this all had become.
Guilt settled in my gut—I’d turned away Fen’s little sister out of respect earlier that day and then ended up pressing his ex-lover against a greenhouse window and taking her in an impassioned frenzy.
What in the Sources’ names had gotten into me? The answer to that question was a dark truth.
Rivolt was snoring in a chair in the sitting room. With a finger over her lips, Firose motioned with her other hand toward a bedroom door. Inside, she approached the wardrobe and opened it.
After tossing clothes that were far too small my way, she pulled on an oversized tunic and loose breeches.
As I slid up my breeches, I stumbled into a chair.
Firose responded by shushing me. Mussed and flushed looked good on her; she appeared naive even—at odds with the centuries-old scheming enchantress I knew her to be.
The tunic uncomfortably hugged every muscle of my torso, but luckily, the breeches fit without crowding spaces they shouldn’t have. Firose had to lace too-big boots tightly before she passed me a pair.
We slipped out the back doors without an inkling of where we should go to hide from the Death Origin. He would undoubtedly search for us once he noticed my relic hadn’t moved for some time.
Where would he be the least likely to look?