Chapter 25
EMBERLINE
After an elaborate breakfast and three pots of coffee served by a host of her silent, black-robed priests in a sumptuous dining room draped in dark red velvet, we still didn’t know any more than when we’d arrived.
I shouldn’t have been shocked.
After all, Emilia was the mistress of secrets, and drama was kind of her thing.
Still, we needed answers. Gods knew we’d risked enough to get them.
“Well…” With a clap of her hands, the priests scattered. “Let’s discuss your uncle and his penchant for…”
“We need to know if we can destroy the Basin, Emilia.” I fidgeted in my high-backed chair, muscles stiff from sitting for so long. “If there is the slightest chance Blackwood could get his hands on that artifact… We won’t be safe until the Basin is gone.”
“Fine.” She sighed dramatically, but she didn’t outright refuse, which had my hopes rising, until she opened her mouth again.
“So find yourself a witch and destroy the thing.”
I refrained from rolling my eyes. Honestly, why did she make everything so godsdamned difficult?
“Involving outsiders is risky, and this is no time to take chances. You know more about that relic than anyone, which is why we went to the trouble to wake you up.” I stopped right there as every trace of humor slid off her face and the temperature in the room dipped.
“Okay, that’s not how I meant for that to come out. We woke you up because if anyone is powerful enough to destroy the Basin, it’s you.”
“Well, that’s a bit better, I suppose.” Her eyes glittered. “And here I thought you were an expert negotiator.”
“I don’t have time for careful words.” I kept my eyes locked on her. “Blackwood nearly killed us, Emilia. In my dream. I don’t even know how that’s possible, but I do know this. After what we’ve seen, Blackwood’s cruelty far exceeds my uncle’s. We can’t risk him controlling the Basin. Not ever.”
“You’re not wrong about him.” She folded her napkin and placed it on her plate, which was instantly whisked away.
“Blackwood is old. Very old. And old creatures stew in their immortality until cruelty poisons their bones. His dark power… is an abomination of the rules of magic. As for how he used my runed circle to trap you in your dream… that is my problem to solve.”
Nico kept his eyes down, his food untouched. His silence was doing him—and us—a disservice.
As much as I wanted to support him, he was the one who needed to clear the air.
And yet… he hadn’t said a single word. Not spoken up for himself or condemned his shit father, or… I rearranged the napkin on my lap, pretending I wasn’t studying Nico out of the corner of my eye. Yes, my heart hurt for him. I understood he was ashamed, but he had to stand up for himself.
I loved Nico, but I couldn’t fight this battle for him, and until he talked—really talked—to Dante and Gabriel, his parentage would be a festering wound between them.
“Can the Basin even be destroyed?” Dante asked, laying his hand over my knee, bouncing up and down beneath the table.
“We now have both the real Basin and the decoy, and Giovanni has spies fanned out across Venice searching for them both. It would be foolish of us to assume he won’t find them, eventually. ”
“Could he even tell?” She arched a dark brow. “Without the proper type of magic and a certain degree of skill, I highly doubt even the most skilled mage could spot the difference. And if they dared touch the magic, the Basin would, most likely, kill them.”
“And what is the proper type of magic?” Gabriel propped his elbows on the table. “After seeing Blackwood’s guards in action, we cannot allow him or Giovanni access to that kind of power. We’d never survive the aftermath.”
“You do know the story of how the Basin first came to Venice? And who brought it?” She leaned back in her chair, as though she was getting comfortable.
I stopped myself from groaning out loud. Everyone knew this story. It was the legend our Dynasty had been built upon. And, apparently, we were going to hear it yet again.
“The High Priestess from the north who found the Basin had watched her entire coven die in a massacre. Though she’d fought bravely, the Ash Makers brought something to the battle she never expected and had never seen before. Black magic.”
The Ash Makers. Vampire hunters ordained by the Church to hunt down and exterminate our species.
I Ceneratori, my father always called them. I’d only ever heard stories; though rumors swirled they still existed, I’d never seen any proof. But their reign of terror had decimated both witch and vampire populations in the early days of our kind.
“With a handful of survivors, the priestess traveled south, carrying the only thing she was able to salvage—the Basin.”
Ice trickled down my spine at the echoing tone of her voice, at the way her gaze turned inward, as though she was truly peering into the past. I’d heard Emilia possessed the Sight—an ability to see into the future—but I’d never seen anyone look quite so… clairvoyant as she did right now.
“She intended to go further south, far beyond the reach of the Church’s hunters, but as luck would have it, the rains came, and the roads turned to mud and their wagon…
well, wooden wheels and clay do not mix.
So, they camped just outside of the city, which was little more than a loose network of islands connected by bridges.
There was no mighty city built on water. Not yet.”
“We all know the story, Emilia,” Gabriel interrupted impatiently. “Just tell us, can we destroy the damn thing?”
“That depends. Do you want my help or not?” Her lips pinched together. “The last I heard, you came to me for help. This is me helping. Take it or leave it.”
I shifted in my chair. Yes, we needed Emilia’s help, but when assistance came wrapped up in word games and puzzles…
“Little did the witches know they’d broken down inside a vampire warlord’s territory. He attacked, yet even with his army and weapons and fangs, he found he was no match for their magic or her superior wiles. And thus, a partnership was born.”
“You mean she gave him the weapon he used against his own people?”
“She gave him the means to organize eight warring factions into an empire. To stop the bloodshed and build a kingdom. To create a city that glowed like gold and did the impossible—float on the water.”
“By enslaving his own people,” Gabriel grit out. “Don’t try to sugarcoat the past, Emilia. Before he died, Marcello told me everything. That the tithe of blood—the very ceremony the warlord offered his warriors—was a trap meant to bind them. Control them.”
“Or was it a means to judge their souls and find the best of them? Was the test merely a way to sort the good from the bad, to ensure only the pure of heart ended up in power? To make sure that what happened to her coven would never happen again?”
“Then how do you explain my uncle?” I asked bitterly. “Or Rocco? If the Basin is so godsdamned good at weeding out evil, how the fuck did those two end up in charge?”
“Because nothing is perfect,” she said sadly.
“And mistakes can be made. Not by the Basin, but by mortals. The warlord never enslaved his people. He and the High Priestess brought order, built a city, established a Dynasty, and now everything is crumbling under the weight of their failures. When it collapses, this city will collapse with it.”
Emilia leaned forward, her focus sharpening into something predatory.
“The Basin’s magic is intrinsically linked to this Dynasty. To its blood. To its people. And yes, in Blackwood’s hands, he will use that connection to turn us all into slaves. But that was never the intent of the gift, the magic, or the priestess. And all the warlord ever wanted was peace.”
“Well, given the bloodthirsty nature of our species, I’d say he set the bar a bit high,” Dante grumbled, squeezing my knee. “So, could you do it? Could you destroy the Basin if it came down to it being used against us?”
She shook her head, “I’m afraid I cannot.”
“Then what the fuck are we…” Dante rose from his seat.
I laid my hand over his forearm to stop him. I tipped my head to the side, watching her play with the bone key strung around her neck. The way her voice had softened when she spoke of this warlord, probably dead for a millennium, made me curious.
But it was the way Emilia told the story, as though she’d actually been there, that set my hair standing on end.
“You said the High Priestess found the Basin,” I prompted. “Where does one just find a magical relic?”
“Beneath the roots of a sacred oak tree, felled during a violent storm. The earth split open, revealing a hidden chamber built by a forgotten people older than the Celts. At the center of the chamber was an ancient stone basin carved from a single piece of black basalt, its surface covered in runes she was not able to read, though she recognized the power radiating from the stone.”
There was that look again.
As if Emilia was staring straight into the past.
Ice shivered over my skin, as if someone walked over my grave, Dante laying his hand over my arm, his grip firm and steady.
“It took ten of her strongest witches—and all their magic—to lift the great stone from its resting place and drag it back to their village and another month before any of them gathered the courage to access the magic.
“The first three witches who attempted it died the second they touched the surface. They used ancient binding spells, intent on controlling the relic. Then the High Priestess cut her hand and dripped her blood upon the stone—not to bind an ancient power, but to make an offering to the three-headed goddess. And the Basin answered back.”
Unease pulsed inside me as I remembered the book Gabriel brought me—barely a month ago—that told this exact story.
And how the priestess was never heard from again.