Chapter Thirty-Eight
Kysillia reigned with a heart of fire, her veins gold with the molten blood of the earth. The endless starlight in her will cast back the darkness beneath. Made the shadows bow and death itself retreat. For she was chaos entire, untethered like the flames she summoned. Flames she used to form ancient blades of her will, so even when she reigned with the ancestors above, her kin would know. She was starlight entire.
– The Song of Kysillia – Unknown
Temez. The ancient word echoed through my mind in the darkness. Eluding me despite how heavily its meaning sat upon my tongue. A calling that sent my magic turning uncomfortably inside me.
Too late , that desperate voice in the darkness whispered, forcing my tired eyes open. The dim morning light streamed through the arched windows, tiny specks of dust dancing in its stream. A peaceful flutter to their movements as I curled my toes, body weighted with deep rest.
A hard warmth along my back, the brush of soft breath at the nape of my neck and the heavy weight of an arm draped across the curve of my waist. Curled so protectively. My eyes ran along the muscular line of his forearm, the pattern of those scars as they caught the soft grey light. How our fingers had intertwined on the bed next to me.
Emrys.
That small crescent moon at his knuckle caught the weak sunrise.
I turned ever so slightly in the tangle of sheets and with the barest motion he fell to his back. I rose on my elbow, expecting to find him considering me with sleepy curiosity, but he was still asleep. The dark shadow of stubble at his jaw, hair falling across his brow. Hand resting on his toned stomach. Breaths even and calm.
I bit my lip against the urge to kiss him as I drank in the sight of him so unarmed. So peaceful. Something sharply protective pierced my heart. Those ash smears remained on his skin. Traces of me.
The brutal nature of his scars as they curved down his body, even beyond the waistband of his trousers, still half unbuttoned after the frenzy of last night. How quickly it had been smothered, but not extinguished. Simply became something else. Gentle and intimate, making my heart ache.
I wanted to stay, but I looked to the creeping grey light of dawn. That feeling didn’t go. Didn’t dissipate.
Too late , that darkness mocked before I’d silenced it with that killing blow. My muscles were tender with a strange aching I understood. For too long I’d pretended to be mortal, played their game. My body needed more, the Kysillian in me demanded more and I’d ignored it too long.
Quietly I slipped from the bed, feet soundless on the rug. The cool morning air nipping at my thighs where Emrys’s shirt came to rest and I realised that was what he’d put on me.
My cheeks burned, ignoring how the brush of the fabric had not long ago been his lips. At all the things still unsaid.
How those marks at my lower back ached a little less now, free from the weight of those secrets.
I reached for the door, only for the handle to catch the too-long sleeve of the shirt. Like a child’s hand grasping for attention.
‘I’m coming back.’ I rolled my eyes at the doorframe. Clearly, I was unfinished with its master.
Content with my words, the house opened the door to the study instead of the hallway, letting me slip back into the horrid cold room of Fairfax Manor. The fire was dead in the hearth. Thankfully a maid hadn’t been, the reek of smoke from the ballroom seeped through the thin floorboards.
I pulled on my robe against the damp bite of the air, knotting it closed and moved to the desk to gather up my things, finding my papers and my bag. I rummaged inside and through my notes on the fey runes. I recalled that I’d identified the runes as Rudocc markings. I’d mocked Montagor with that truth.
Rudocc . The word pierced through the fog in my mind, trying to drag up every story my father told. I found a pencil and I began drawing the symbols. I knew Rudocc. My father had taught me all of it, all the histories entwined with the ancient fey. All the stories they carried.
Too late , that voice mocked so sharply, as if breathing over my shoulder. The pencil clattered from my grip as I looked down at the markings once more, seeing the simplicity of the word repeated. The word I’d missed.
Temez. Salvation. The word they’d carved in that stone. Over and over again. Begging for it. Anything to save them. Something in their blood calling out. Desperately.
I rummaged through those papers again, wild with the ferocity of my thoughts, finding the map of those ruins, of Fairfax and everything beyond, spreading it out across the floor.
How those fey temple ruins curved and stretched across the lands, forming a barrier of ancient sacred stone. The stones placed exactly to form the shape of a rune.
The half-star of Kaylin – the seventh Kysillian King. His promise of protection before he led the other kings to seal this earth.
The mark of defence to keep something out. Something older than the fey who came before. Older than Ruddoc. From the time of Kysillia and her battle against the Old Gods. Just like the ruins. Just like the Verr pit.
Too late , that voice mocked.
Here , it had also whispered. That voice in my mind as I stood in the ballroom …
I skidded on the map as I lurched to my feet, throwing open the door and rushing down those stairs, racing through the damp and dilapidated hallways, slapping away the sheets that maids and footmen had hung to hide the destruction. Bare feet slid on the ash and rubble as I made it into the ballroom. The room groaned and creaked with the barest gust of wind. I ran right to the centre, until I saw where the floor had cracked, the charred sharp remains where it had started to fall in upon itself.
My magic churned like a wild creature in my chest, pounding against my ribs with unease as that stone around my neck began to flicker weakly. I could see a glint in the darkness, far beneath the house.
Here , that voice mocked with a cruel whisper as a dark chill bit into my skin.
It wasn’t possible.
That map, those dark marks on each point. I saw it now. The symbol I’d missed. Why the fey built their temples like that, well before the records began. Markers of their own. Paths that shouldn’t be crossed. They weren’t temples. They were watch posts. Fortresses against the darkness that slept beyond.
Those marks carved into stone. Prayers for salvation. Something in their blood made them afraid. Made them beg for protectors that no longer existed. Calling for their savior Kings.
Reimor. The Kings were dead. The Kings had died sealing the earth with their magic. With chaos fire. And here was one of those seals. That’s why the Fairfaxes moved their house, to conceal something this dark.
‘Miss Woodrow?’ came the soft voice of Lord Fairfax from behind me, tinged with a strange, cruel amusement. ‘Whatever is the matter, dear?’
I dragged in an unsteady breath, mouth dry with fear. Everything in me was telling me to run, but I was pinned in place by the brutality of what lay before me.
Blood. It had been hunting blood to break the seal. The blood of a creature that had formed it. Ancient blood.
‘You wished to see where it all began?’ he asked, a small laugh in the words that seemed to crack unnaturally in his throat.
A horrid wave of something strange rushed through my heart. Something I should have sensed. I turned to see him, and there held between his thin fingers was the familiar glow of a spell trapped in an orb. My spell.
Zeltu. The command echoed in the back of my mind. To go to the beginning. So it had come back here because it was all the same. These traps were all the same.
I tasted smoke on my tongue. Felt the ancient rage rumble through me, a storm without end. Magic in that pain that wished for vengeance.
Reimor , came whispered into my ear, tears blurring my vision as I saw her in the corner of my eye. The spirit of that girl with only a spark of the magic she should possess.
A warning I was foolish enough to ignore. Why she hadn’t been able to escape. Even in death. The house had devoured her. Why the verbius had tried to flee.
Septus mor wasn’t just to summon. It was a command to hide the true potential of the dark. To hide what was real. To hide the evil beneath this place.
My skin was irritated by Fairfax’s mere presence. A faint ringing in my ears and my magic rose, surging to my palms until the tips of my fingers glowed. The wishing stone burned against my skin.
I threw out my hand, commanding that spell in the orb to erupt, but the thing in Fairfax crushed it. Scattering the purple aura across the ruined floor.
A cracking of bone, Lord Fairfax’s head tilted awkwardly, a hollowness to his eyes. A chalky nature to his flesh, like that of a corpse.
Greed wasn’t the only thing that summoned the dark, that could claim a mortal soul and turn it into something else.
Grief could too.
‘Norac ,’ I whispered, more to myself than to the creature that dwelled here. Fairfax tried to frown, to seem concerned, but the being inside was too enraged, his face becoming a mangled mix of expressions before it grinned. Skin at the side of his mouth splitting with how wide it stretched, strings of flesh snapping as blood poured from his lips.
A horrid pressure filled the air. My lungs were suddenly too tight, the walls too close. Darkness seeped into my vision. A cracking and popping of limbs, shadows rushing beneath his pale skin. Fanged teeth too big for its mouth appeared as dark liquid ran free from his eyes. Skin hung loosely, revealing muscle and the red of flesh beneath.
‘Clever little troll,’ it mocked before it lunged across the room with a feral scream. I tried to turn on the rubble-filled ground, tried to run – but the creature was faster, tackling me from behind. The force of it cracked my head against sharp rubble, only for the horrid crashing creak as we tumbled across the ruins, towards that cavernous hole in the centre and the darkness beneath.
‘No !’ I screamed, clawing at the loose wood and rubble, but there was nothing as we were consumed by that darkness.