Chapter 68
Evelyne kept her breathing steady, though every instinct screamed at her to fight, to claw their way free of the nightmare they were now in. Instead, she did what she had been taught since the moment she first learned that words could be sharper than blades: she studied.
Thalen was curled up next to her, shaking terribly, but she could see him gritting and twisting his wrists, trying to free himself.
She did not recognize the cultists. Not a single face stirred memory. They moved with a peculiar stillness. Too synchronized, too smooth. They looked like priests—both men and women. The Flame of Rhyssa had never barred women from service. The goddess burned in both.
Keeper Halwen was a specter of the man she had once known, as if he was a marionette pulled along by invisible strings. His eyes were haunted. Empty in a way that unsettled her more than rage would have.
Evelyne licked her cracked lips, forcing herself to speak.
“Halwen,” she pleaded, letting the name carry all the memory it once held. “Listen to me. You don’t have to do this.”
Nothing. His hands continued their slow, mechanical tracing of ancient symbols in the dust and ash at his feet.
She pressed on, her words quickening. “Whatever you believe you’re achieving here, this isn’t the way. You’re better than this. You taught me better than this.”
He flinched—almost imperceptibly—but he didn’t stop moving.
“Halwen,” Evelyne begged again, more urgently, straining against her bonds. “You can stop this. You still have a choice. Please.”
But the man she once trusted didn’t seem to hear her. His lips moved without a sound. When he finally spoke, it was barely more than a whisper.
“It must be done,” he murmured. “The song must be continued.”
The words didn’t belong to him. She could see it now, plain as the blood drying on her wrists.
Isildeth stirred with a soft, broken gasp, her body jerking slightly against Evelyne’s side. When she woke fully, terror overtook her. She clung to Evelyne instinctively.
“Evelyne…”
“I’m here,” Evelyne assured, shifting just enough to steady her. “Breathe. Slowly.”
Isildeth’s breath hitched, then stuttered again.
“Look at me.” Evelyne’s tone softened just enough to anchor. “We’re alive. That’s more than they intended.”
Isildeth blinked rapidly, the tears spilling anyway.
“I need you to focus,” Evelyne continued. “Thalen’s here. He’s hurt, but he’s awake. I need you to take care of him. Can you do that?”
The maid gave a quick nod—uneven, frantic, barely held together.
“I’ll find a way,” Evelyne murmured. “We’ll get out. I swear it.”
With a shuddering breath, Isildeth pulled back. She glanced over Evelyne’s shoulder, spotted the small form curled on the floor, and crawled toward him, whispering his name.
The ruin around them grew darker as the evening bled slowly into the night. Last night the full moon was rising. She counted the hours in her mind like a litany, ticking each one off in silence.
She had to survive long enough.
Think, she told herself fiercely, her mind sharpening against the grinding wheel of fear. What can you do?
She tried to assemble everything she had learned in her life, but nothing had prepared her for this. There had never been a class at court on how to free yourself from the bonds and how to find the will to strike down someone you had once trusted to guide you through faith and grief.
Was he truly the architect of this madness? Was he the hand behind the Maroon Slaughter? Why? What could possibly be gained by ripping apart the kingdom from within?
None of it made sense. Her instincts shouted that this was more than a simple betrayal—something deeper, more dangerous.
So she changed course.
Her eyes slipped shut for a beat as she wrestled her breathing into steadier rhythm.
What would Alaric do?
The thought came almost unbidden, and it startled her.
But it lodged stubbornly there, refusing to be shaken loose.
Alaric, infuriating man that he was, would not be sitting here waiting to be saved.
He wouldn’t waste breath on pleading. He would be annoying.
Ask questions. And when the moment came he would act without hesitation.
And if the moment didn't come, he would make one.
Evelyne opened her eyes again, fixing Halwen with a look so calm it could have frozen fire. If she was going to die here, she would die knowing why.
“Halwen,” she called. “Tell me. What is this ritual? Why are you doing this?”
Halwen moved toward the crumbling altar at the center, where a massive tome lay waiting. The book looked ancient—its leather binding was cracked and blackened with age. He spread it open with a reverence that bordered on fear, the heavy pages whispering against the stone like restless spirits.
Evelyne watched him carefully, noting the way his fingers trembled as they traced the faded script.
Halwen’s hands had never shaken before.
He didn’t meet her gaze. Only one word rasped from his lips, raw and broken:
“Prophecy.”
“What prophecy?”
Halwen did not answer. His hands moved, thin fingers tracing slow, trembling patterns across the pages. Evelyne strained to see, but from where she sat she could make out nothing. Prayers? No. She could feel it deep in her marrow—whatever was written there was older than prayers.
“A sacrifice is required,” Halwen intoned. “The last thread, unaware it spins the loom.”
Evelyne’s mind worked fast, faster than her fear.
She narrowed her eyes. “What happens after?”
Halwen’s fingers stilled briefly over the book before resuming their slow, mechanical tracing.
“One full moon, one verse,” Halwen intoned, his voice hollow. “The song born from the Day of Silence, each thread woven in sorrow, each note stitched in blood, until the loom of the world frays and the final breath of Elareth is spent.”
Before she could ask another question, a hand struck her across the face with vicious force. Pain exploded across her cheek, sharp and disorienting. Evelyne crumpled sideways onto the cold stone floor.
Isildeth shrieked, a high, terrified sound that bounced against the ancient walls. Thalen jerked against his bonds with a hoarse cry, eyes wide, lips moving around her name.
“Shut your mouth!” the man snarled.
She stayed down for a breath. Two. The taste of iron rising in her throat. The ringing in her ears swallowing the rest. Humiliation burned hotter than the pain, prickling along the back of her neck, telling her she should look away, hide, fold in on herself.
She didn’t.
Evelyne gathered the pain, fury, helplessness, and shoved it into the quiet, locked box where she kept all useless things, and looked up.
They weren’t cultists this time. They came wrapped in hardened leather. Mercenaries, most likely, their skin was inked with dark tattoos that coiled along their necks and forearms. Blades hung low at their hips. She counted twenty, or more.
The one who struck her stood out not for his size, but for the cruelty he didn’t bother to hide. Wiry, fox-eyed, with a hooked scar dragging down one side of his cheek. Now he crouched beside her, teeth bared in something too lazy to be a grin.
“Keep an eye on the pretty one,” he said to others, not bothering to whisper. His breath stank of metal and something sour. “We’ve got to complete the verse.”
Two others flanked her on either side, hands resting on the hilts of worn blades. One of them reeked faintly of blood and clove oil; the other had a tattoo snaking up the side of his neck that disappeared into his collar.
“She’s the right one,” the tattooed man muttered. “But if she cracks early, we’ve still got the boy.”
“I’d rather not use him,” Scarface said, snorting. “Too much fire in that one. You saw how he bit Dorian?”
“Still the same noble blood,” the other one quipped.
Evelyne’s breath hitched.
Another two moved in behind Halwen. The rest of the hired blades melted into the shadows along the crumbling perimeter of the old ruin, forming a ring.
Scarface leaned in again. “Doesn’t matter how noble the blood. We just need enough of it.”
“Thandros said the timing has to be exact. Rite won’t work without full resonance,” the tattooed man murmured. “We’ll need more essence than last time.”
Evelyne’s gaze snapped toward them. Essence?
Her heart thudded against her ribs.
She didn’t speak, didn’t move—but her mind raced. That wasn't a metaphor. Not with these people.
Her stomach turned sharply, an echo of bile rising unbidden. Her hands prickled, trembling faintly before she could still them. And behind her eyes—Dasmon’s face, pale and slack in death, the cruel red carving at his mouth.
She swallowed hard, forcing the memory back, anchoring herself in the steady rhythm of her own breath. Aware now of every rise and fall of her chest, every fragile second it still moved.
She closed her eyes again, just for a shaky breath.
She would not let Thalen die here on an altar of someone else's prophecy. And gods help them all—she would not die as anyone’s sacrifice.