Chapter 44
Forty-Four
Iburst out of the stairwell and into the upper corridor, barreling toward the sounds of a gathered crowd. My bare feet slip once on the polished stone, then I catch myself. Sconces flicker with my advance, some guttering out as if they recognize what’s coming and want no part in it.
The corridor narrows, then opens into a vaulted gallery lined with students already pressing close to the balustrade as they file into the arena.
Some spot me. Their faces blanch. I must look a sight, but I keep moving, shoving past two initiates whispering to each other.
One girl summons her soul-knife on instinct as I pass.
A set of double doors looms ahead, carved with the Resonance Academy crest of the blue-flamed crown. Two Hollows stand sentinel, but neither tries to intercept my path. Maybe they’re under orders not to interfere, or maybe even they don’t want to catch whatever magick is leaking from my skin.
I slam through the doors, into the arena’s shadowed overhang.
Noise wallops me. Bells toll, so heavily that the air vibrates inside my ribs.
Where I once fought Void widows in a deserted stadium of empty seats, every bench now groans beneath the weight of Vehloria.
Students fill the lower tiers, their uniforms a restless sea of black, gray, and scarlet.
Keepers are clustered like vultures on the overhang while nobles in their jeweled masks and veiled ladies crane for a better view in the private boxes above them.
I scan the high balcony, searching for the Master Keeper, but my gaze snags on a gilded cage of a box draped in faded, tattered velvet.
There they sit, the excavated remains of the monarchy I once worshipped.
King Thalamew looks like a waxwork figure left too near a flame, his crown, kept mockingly polished and gleaming, sitting lopsided on a head too thin to support it.
Beside him, his adviser, once the kingdom’s sharpest mind, whispers into the king’s ear, likely translating the horror below into a lie the old man can stomach.
My heart twinges for the young princess.
Her expression holds the haunted, vacant look of a woman who watched her mother be killed while her father couldn’t stop it.
I grew up believing these people were the shields of Vehloria, but they’re just ghosts now, kept in storage at some crumbling country estate until the Master Keeper needs them for a public display.
I’m not bitter that they failed to stop the Void, but the sadness is a heavy stone. The realm I believed in is dead, traded for soul-magick and the Master Keeper’s order.
I stagger forward, blinking against the assault of deafening bells, draped silks and banners and torches turning the sandy pit into a luxurious coliseum. Each step drags a line of blood from my heel to the next tile, but still no one notices me.
Ember shivers, wild and bright, but I’m not sure if she’s scheming for a way to take over my body and drag me far from this mob, or brace for a fight. Either way, magick vibrates between us, a bond that refuses to die even when I’m certain I should be dead by now.
I clutch the nearest balustrade, dizzy from the roar of hundreds of voices.
The arena floor has been transformed, no longer the simple training pit I remember.
Gold and silver sands create intricate patterns across the expanse, spiraling toward the center where a raised platform gleams with polished obsidian.
At the far end of the arena, movement snags my attention. A single figure emerges through the iron gates that, not so long ago, belched forth Void widows to massacre the academy’s hopefuls.
It’s not one of the Void’s monsters this time, but that doesn’t make me feel any relief. My blood knows better, now. Someone is being served up as an example, and it isn’t to a bunch of surprised, unprepared initiates this time.
A silhouette breaks the glare of the arena’s torches, broad-shouldered and upright with a gait like a stalking wolf.
Even before he steps fully into the sand, I recognize that it’s Davrin, and the way he moves tells me he’s already rehearsed this moment a thousand times in the privacy of his own diseased mind.
His boots strike the ground with theatrical finality, cape billowing.
He is identical to a villain in a child’s bedtime story. Immaculate, young, and certain he will not be stopped.
The crowd registers him with a sizzle of anticipation, as if everybody prickles with the collective electricity of fear and awe and whatever passes for hope in this place.
Davrin mounts the dais, then turns in a slow circle.
The audience falls silent as he raises his arms, and I notice strange markings climbing his wrists that aren’t quite like Falcen’s tattoos, but more like veins that don’t belong to any living thing.
I can see his skin where the gloves and sleeves leave it exposed, along with his neck, veins glowing with a bruised, roiling velvet so bright, they even travel and light up beneath his leather clothing.
Every face is glued to him. Even the Hollows, supposedly beyond the pull of spectacle or pride, stand at attention, empty eyes fixed in his direction.
“Falcen, where are you?” I murmur, tearing my attention away from the arena’s center to scan the edges for any sign of him.
He’s nowhere in the open bleachers. Not hidden in the shadows behind the Keeper’s box or stationed among the guards at the perimeter of the pit. I force myself to keep scanning, even as my skin itches with the certainty that Malakai would torch me on sight if I stepped out from behind this pillar.
“Behold,” a voice detonates overhead, shattering the resuming conversations. Keeper Malakai steps into the overhang, his pose so imperial he could have been molded out of the Master Keeper himself. He lifts his arms as he surveys the crowd below. “The future of our academy.”
The crowd hushes, leaning forward as one body. I shrink deeper behind the pillar, pressing my back against cold stone with the confidence of a rat who’s survived one too many cullings. I can’t help peeking, anyway, tracking Davrin as he stands on the dais, soaked in the awe of attention.
“For decades, we have battled the Void,” Malakai continues. He lets the silence hang, as if each word is a stone thrown into the open grave of Vehloria’s memory. “We have lost our brightest, our strongest. But today marks a turning point in our war against the Voidspawn.”
Davrin notches his chin. That purple fire has crept fully up his arms now, crawling jagged and alive toward the base of his neck, projecting an afterimage even when I look away.
He flexes his hands, and for one stomach-turning instant, I swear the light pulses not just through skin and gloves, but into the air.
All without summoning his soul-weapon.
The crowd’s attention shifts, a ripple of bated disbelief running through them. No one can handle that much power and remain themselves. Even in this den of sadists, unfiltered resonance is a serendipity that borders on myth.
“Today, we introduce the first of our Elite Riders,” Malakai announces. He lets the new title settle, waiting for the disbelief to ferment. “Initiate Davrin Koll has mastered what even others of the highest status in the academy could not. The perfect communion with soul-resonance and the Void.”
A strangled sound escapes from the king’s box.
Thalamew’s face is a mask of disgust, lips peeled back in an involuntary rictus.
The adviser clutches his arm, whispering—no, hissing—urgent and terrified.
The princess, that poor wraith, stares at Davrin as if she’s seen the ghost of her mother’s killer, and I can’t help but feel a stab of kinship.
You can recognize the moment in another when their world is about to be burned down, replaced by smoke and ash.
The crowd gasps. Vehloria’s former king jumps out of his chair, his elderly face devoid of color as he spins to his adviser, lips moving rapidly while he points at Malakai.
Malakai raises his arms higher as if embracing the entire assembly, his achromatic uniform and cloak absorbing the light of the sconces around him.
But his bicolored eyes pierce through. “For too long, we’ve fought a losing battle against the Void.
We’ve trained our best into Elites, then sent them to die at its edges while it consumes more territory each year. ”
Davrin prowls below in a perfect circle, his hands folded behind his back, yet that violet light races through his veins, illuminating him from within.
That same glow now outlines his entire frame, a silhouette of luminous rot.
Not a single flash of discomfort crosses his face at the change, only serene, arrogant control.
Malakai opens his arms wider, and for an instant, his face is lit by a gleam of mania.
“For too long, we sent our Soulren to die inside the rifts and tears. For too long, we let the Void claim our lands, our people, our future. Today”—his hand gestures as if presenting the sunrise—“we seize back what is ours. Not with fear, but evolution.”
I claw my nails into the pillar, nearly stripping the skin from my knuckles. Falcen, where are you?
Malakai’s voice drops again, the final twist of the blade. “The old world taught us to fear the Void’s touch. They believed that corruption meant collapse. That those who changed were lost to us forever.”
No shit, I think. Probably because they watched thousands of their peers and kin die under the talons of the Voidspawn.
A trembling bellow comes from the royal box.
“This is madness!”
King Thalamew lurches upright, pounding a sallow fist against the velvet-draped rail. “You cannot possibly believe that Soulren are meant to consume the rot. What have you done to this boy? How many others have suffered terribly and died before him?”