Chapter 71
The chanting thickened around her, a low, pulsing hum that seemed to bleed into the very stones beneath her back. A rhythm she never heard, music she hadn't recognized.
Evelyne’s gaze flickered upward, heart hammering, and she saw them—strange, flowing lines beginning to ignite in the darkness above her. They shimmered, burning gold against the rotted stone, winding in crooked, unnatural patterns across the ruins.
They floated between the robed figures around her, connecting Halwen’s chest to the other priests like a spider's web spun in fevered devotion. The threads pulsed, twinkling sickly, knotting and binding in ways that made her stomach lurch.
Magic.
Real. Raw. And wrong.
Evelyne stared at it, unable to tear her gaze away.
She gasped, but the air filled her lungs too thick and suffocating, as if it didn’t belong inside human bodies at all.
Her skin prickled. Her veins felt alight with fever, burning along the surface of her arms and spine, while somewhere deeper, the blood running through her heart turned to ice.
The ruined courtyard around her seemed to sharpen into unbearable clarity. Every line, every crack, every shifting shadow. Even the dark itself felt translucent.
She could see too much and not enough all at once.
The moon hung bloated and wrong overhead, its light was unnatural, pulsing in time with the low, droning chant that crawled out of Halwen’s throat. Her heart matched it beat for beat, traitorous and loud, hammering against the cage of her ribs like it, too, sought escape.
She could almost see the sound.
The chant rose higher, faster, ritualistic, pounding like feet against the earth. It coiled through the air in ribbons of pressure, curling around her limbs, her throat, dragging her deeper.
One of the older mercenaries cast a single glance over his shoulder, then snapped his head forward again, jaw tight. A younger one stared openly, eyes wide, lips parted in stunned silence.
The air vibrated—a low, humming frequency that crawled over her skin, until the strands of her hair floated gently upward as if underwater. Tiny stones near the altar began to lift. First one, then several, trembling just above the ground.
The chant peaked, thin and sharp as a dagger drawn across glass.
And then—
Silence. Like a sound cut in half.
One beat.
Second.
Then, everything broke.
One by one, the priests and priestesses tethered to Halwen folded.
Their spines bowed backward in impossible arches, mouths wrenched open in silent screams. Blood poured from eyes, ears, and noses, as if the very incantation had turned inward and devoured them from the inside out.
One woman clawed at her throat as it slit itself—a ragged, glistening line opening across her neck with no blade in sight.
Some dropped to their knees, writhing, eyes bulging, veins turning black beneath translucent skin. One priest convulsed so violently his head cracked against the altar stone. Another tore at his own chest as if trying to rip something out.
She tried to scream but no sound came.
It resembled—gods, it was—the aftermath of the Maroon Slaughter. The same brutal wreckage, the same sickening waste, with no one left to name as the cause.
Isildeth gave a ragged, broken sob, pressing herself against Evelyne’s side. Thalen was crying and hid his face in her lap. The mercenaries at the edges didn’t flinch. They’d seen this before.
But Halwen did not fall with the rest.
He stood at the center of it all, unbowed by the convulsions wracking his clergy.
As if whatever force had detonated here had chosen him as its vessel.
His arms were stretched wide, his palms open, his head tilted back.
From all sides, from every dying priest and priestess around him, something surged.
It coiled through the air like a gold smoke pulled toward a flame, winding from their mouths, chests, and open wounds—and poured back into him.
Into his chest.
His spine arched as the force filled him. The tendons in his neck stood out sharp and straining. His mouth parted. His feet lifted half an inch from the ground.
Evelyne stared, unable to look away.
He was not leading the ritual.
He was the ritual.
A thin line of blood slipped from the corner of his mouth, his stare was fixed forward, pupils burning crimson.
Evelyne felt her stomach twist, bile rising up the back of her throat. Isildeth sobbed again, clinging to her like a lifeline. Thalen had gone completely still, his breathing shallow.
Evelyne watched, paralyzed, as Halwen started chanting again, the golden threads now rippling and weaving into new shapes, slithering across the dead toward her.
Toward her.
Pain struck like lightning.
The threads sank into her skin without mercy.
Evelyne gasped, jerking against her bonds, the sensation tearing through her nerves like burning ice.
She screamed. The pain dragged at her bones, filled her veins with something molten and ancient that didn’t belong inside her.
It hollowed her lungs and pressed her ribs inwards, as though the air had been stolen only to make room for something else.
And then—she heard it.
A voice.
Not Halwen’s. Not any men.
It began faint, no louder than thought, winding through her mind like smoke. A woman’s tone—not in any language she recognized, yet meaning settled clear. It was warm. Steady. And it wrapped her in the quiet pull of surrender.
You weren’t made for this, Daughter of Silence. Fight. Come home.
“Evie…” Thalen sobbed next to her.
It sobered her.
Halwen’s chanting surged, louder now, desperate in its rhythm. He moved toward her in slow, ritual-bound steps. His face was pale with purpose, red eyes glowing. In his hands, the dagger glinted—a curved, ugly thing, etched with this cursed sigil.
Evelyne’s stomach twisted as she realized the truth: he wasn’t going to stab her.
He was going to carve her.
Like Dasmon.
Images collided in her mind—the priest who taught her to read the old myths, the man who blessed her name on the day of her coming of age, the friend who told her she was stronger than she believed. Now his hands dripped with the ruin he’d made of that faith.
Evelyne twisted against her bindings, panic sparking through the pain. He raised the blade higher, murmuring words that tasted wrong even to the air around them.
“Silence comes with a price…”
No fucking way.
Evelyne lifted both legs and kicked with everything she had left, driving her heels squarely into Halwen’s groin.
The impact was satisfyingly brutal. The man let out a hoarse grunt, stumbling back several paces before crashing hard against the stone floor. His dagger skittered from his hand, clattering uselessly across the ground. He blinked up at the sky, dazed and confused.
And for one brief, bewildering heartbeat, Evelyne didn’t see a traitor. Or a zealot. Or even a priest. She saw a broken man, trembling beneath something too vast for him to carry. A friend.
The mercenaries guarding her stared at Halwen. One of them stepped forward, raising a hand as if to strike Evelyne—
—but the arrow hit his chest first.
Chaos exploded.
There was no warning, just the sudden, violent crash of bodies as Alaric, Ravik, Vesena, and Cedric, along with other soldiers, crashed through the entry archway. The mercenaries barely had time to react. Some managed to draw steel, only to die faster for the trouble.
She twisted, gritting her teeth against the searing pain, and reached for the jagged remains of the shattered altar beside her.
The shard cut into her palm, warm blood slicking her fingers, but she didn’t hesitate.
She sawed through the ropes at her wrists with swift, brutal motions, ignoring the fresh sting as the fibers bit deeper before snapping free.
The moment she was loose, she drove the broken shard into the thigh of the nearest attacker. He screamed, crumpling at her feet.
She rolled to one side, breath heaving, and pushed up to her knees before forcing herself upright. Every inch of her screamed in protest, but she forced her body to obey.
She caught sight of Alaric carving a brutal path toward her through the press of mercenaries. Rage and desperation radiated off him like heat. A group of mercenaries had broken from the fringes of the circle, moving to block his advance. Evelyne's blood boiled at the sight.
Oh, for the love of the gods—no.
She glanced at Isildeth, who lay curled tight by the altar like a forgotten prayer.
Good. Stay small, stay unnoticed. She saw Thalen just beyond the reach of torchlight, hunched over something on the ground.
He was dragging the rope against the edge of a broken stone, his face twisted in concentration, jaw clenched like a soldier twice his age.
The stone had cut into his skin; his fingers were raw. Still, he kept sawing.
Evelyne felt her throat tighten. Brave, impossible boy.
She spotted one of the mercenaries walking to her, blade in hand. Her gaze darted downward, catching a flash of something pale and jagged near the hem of her ruined nightgown. A stone.
She reached for it—only for the stone to leap toward her hand with unnatural speed, slamming into her palm with enough force to make her hiss through her teeth. Pain shot through her arm like fire, twisting up her bones. For half a heartbeat, she stared at the stone in disbelief.
No time to think. The man was almost on her, swinging a short sword with the lazy arrogance of a man who thought her too broken to fight back.
Evelyne tightened her fingers around the stone despite the blinding pain, drew her arm back with all the fury, terror, and sheer spite she had left in her body. It hit him dead center in the forehead with a dull, satisfyingly final crack. His eyes rolled back, and he toppled like a felled tree.
She dropped the stone immediately afterward, shaking her hand as if she could fling the wrongness off her skin. It hit the ground with a soft, innocent thunk, looking for all the world like it hadn’t just served as a murder weapon—and possibly an accomplice to magic.
But she didn’t have time to feel victorious.