Chapter 22
Twenty-Two
Rain lashes the stained-glass windows. Thunder murmurs and wind wails, slipping its cold fingers through the cracks in the stone as I slide into the shadows behind a crumbling pillar.
I’d followed Alder through the castle, hiding just far enough behind to stay unseen, my footsteps cloaked by the storm.
I hadn’t wanted him to know I was following—hadn’t wanted to give him the satisfaction.
The chapel stands at the heart of the castle.
A masterpiece of reverence and ruin, rising from an open courtyard where the storm has full reign.
Cracks snake through the marble pillars, thin as veins, and the once-lustrous frescoes high above are peeling, their faded edges curling like shedding skin.
The air inside is heavy, humid, thick with the cloying scent of incense, damp stone, and that ever-present metallic tang that clings to everything in this kingdom and rests against my tongue like rust.
Lightning flares, illuminating the stained-glass murals—waves crashing against jagged cliffs, a hand rising from a dark lake, fingers clenched around a chalice, rain pouring down on bowed heads in a benediction…or a curse.
And there, at the far end of the chapel, carved across the back wall, a serpent.
The sight of it makes my skin crawl. Its stone scales gleam wet in the flickering candlelight, and from its gaping mouth pours a thin stream of water into a basin below.
The trickle distorts the candlelight, and, for a moment, memory drowns me—stone, silver, sacrifice. The hidden chamber. Clara’s death.
Is this chapel tied to that chamber? Is it the origin of whatever rot slithered into that room with its chanting and magick and blood?
My stomach churns.
Nobles file in, and I scoot tighter into the shadows of the crumbling stone. They’re draped in rain-slicked silks and velvets in shades of slate, seafoam, and storm, heads bowed, voices hushed, hands clasped in obedient devotion.
But this isn’t reverence. It isn’t worship.
It’s hungrier.
Fear and fascination braided together. A wide-eyed submission that slides over them, then over me, like oil, slow, insidious, choking.
I scan the crowd, heart starting to race. Velvet shoulders, bowed heads, rain-spattered cloaks. My pulse kicks harder, searching for the familiar line of his jaw, the unmistakable gold of his hair. But he’s gone. Lost somewhere in the sea of nobles welling into the pews like a tide.
For a heartbeat, panic flickers. But I squash it just as fast.
It doesn’t matter where he is. I don’t need Alder to get the answers waiting here. I don’t need Alder at all. I can find my own way home.
At the front of the chapel, on a raised dais, stands Queen Rothmore.
She still wears Mackenzie’s face. Still has Mackenzie’s willowy limbs, that graceful, ballerina-like poise—but the resemblance ends there. Everything that made Mackenzie my friend—warmth, kindness, honesty—is gone.
The queen’s eyes gleam like the point of a dagger, sharp and cold. And the moment she opens her mouth, the congregation stills. The silence is instant. Breathless.
“The gods have sent us a sign,” Queen Rothmore begins, the crowd hanging on her every word. “For decades, we have labored, prayed, sacrificed. And now, for the first time in generations, we are close—so close—to the return of our kingdom’s heart.”
Behind her, her empty throne looms, flanked by two others. In one, an elderly woman, spine stiff, lips pursed, gray hair swept up on top of her head and secured with sapphire pins. In the other, King Rothmore sits scowling, his shoulders as tense as mine.
But he isn’t watching the queen. He isn’t listening. His attention is elsewhere. Victor scans the room, his gaze flitting over corners, faces, shadows with a precision that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
What is he looking for? Who is he looking for?
“We are not alone in this effort,” Queen Rothmore continues, her voice dropping to a hush that somehow fills the entire chapel. The congregation leans forward, heads tilting like flowers bending toward the sun.
The silence thickens. Something in me coils tighter.
“Our former priest was reclaimed by the gods some time ago and taken to his final reward,” Queen Rothmore says smoothly. “We honor Droskyn Vayne. We cherish his memory. However, the Kingdom of Cups does not dwell in the past.”
A ripple of agreement rolls through the crowd like a wave as thunder rumbles overhead.
I tense. Alder said the man we saw was Droskyn—that he should be dead. And if the Queen isn’t lying about Droskyn now…if that wasn’t him on the island hunting down that girl…
Then who the hell was it?
My question is answered before I can finish formulating it.
“The gods, in their infinite wisdom, have sent us a new herald. Their new messenger. Their angel of restoration.”
The crowd shudders, a collective inhale sweeping through them like wind through brittle leaves as white robes emerge from the shadows behind the altar.
The new priest steps forward and into the water pouring from the serpent’s mouth. It spills down his body, soaking his white robes until they cling to his tall frame, outlining every corded muscle. The fabric is nearly transparent now, a second skin slicked against him.
Streams slip down the silver mask that hides his face but not his presence. It radiates through the room like a current. The congregation breaks into applause, a wave of sound that fills the chapel and crashes against my ears.
Delphara moves toward him. Her fingers trail along the curve of his mask like she’s blessing him. He catches her hands before she can pull away and presses them to his unmoving mask.
She murmurs something I can’t hear over the swell of cheers. Her eyes shine as she clutches him like he’s the answer to her prayers, to the kingdom’s.
The crowd responds in kind. A sound of rapture. Of surrender.
“My steady flock…” The priest’s voice warps, distorted by the silver mask that obscures his face. It ripples, wavy and choppy, as though his words are being dragged through deep water.
My blood runs cold.
That voice—
It sounds like the one I heard during the ritual. The one echoing through the chamber while Clara died.
I can’t be certain. But my body knows before my mind can catch up.
It’s him.
He stands at the altar now, anointed. Worshiped. And all I can do is watch as they devour every word.
“We are called to endure. To sacrifice. To restore. The gods demand it, and we answer.”
The rhythm of his voice is hypnotic, his words rising and falling like waves, lulling the congregation into something just shy of trance.
A shiver crawls over my skin, and I tuck my arms against my middle.
I know this cadence. This kind of tone. This kind of power.
Not just from Cups. From home. From childhood.
A too-small church in the south. The pungent scent of lilies, thick and sickly sweet.
The sour tang of sweat. A preacher with a voice like this one—soft, steady, never needing to shout.
His power wasn’t in volume. It was in the whispers that slipped under locked doors, in the words that seeped in like dark water, warping thoughts before they fully formed.
This is how it starts. This is how control nests inside devotion.
“We stand at the edge of salvation. At the brink of restoration,” the new priest continues, arms spread wide.
The storm howls against the glass as if trying to drown him out, but he doesn’t falter.
His words twist and writhe, a tangle of lies and half-truths that wind their way into the crowd.
And the congregation devours it all, their hunger endless.
“The gods have heard our cries! But the path is not easy. It is one paved with sacrifice. With the blood we give freely to the waters that sustain us.”
I glance around, half-expecting someone to resist. To rise. To question. But they’re all staring at him. Drinking in his words. Cries of amen slash the air like a whip, and I’m not in the Kingdom of Cups anymore.
I’m back in that small, creaking church in South Carolina, sitting stiffly next to my mother.
The heat of the day pressing in through the windows despite the rattling box fans.
The wooden pew beneath me sticking to the backs of my legs.
The pastor preaching about the holiness of suffering, about how pain and endurance will bring us closer to God.
My eyes burned with guilt, with confusion and humiliation.
With the weight of sins already committed and those still lurking, unimagined.
I didn’t always understand what I’d done wrong, only that my body was dangerous simply because it existed.
Because I was a girl. A future woman. A vessel of temptation. A burden of shame.
Eventually, I got older and stopped going altogether. My mother called it rebellion. I called it self-preservation.
But now I’m back in church, listening to that same tone, those same promises, dressed up in new words but still the same ol’ poison. It drips out of the priest’s mouth and swirls around the chapel, a riptide pulling them under. And they don’t fight it. They drown.
I don’t need to know exactly what gods he’s referring to or the kingdom’s past to grasp the weight of his sermon, the power he holds.
This isn’t just belief. It’s control. It’s a hand wrapped around a throat.
Not with violence but possession. The kind that will teach Cups to whisper instead of scream.
The priest’s voice rises, smooth as still water, unshaken by the storm raging beyond the chapel walls.
“For generations, our kingdom’s heart has been silent. But the path to restoration is before us.” His hands spread wide overhead, wet robes dragging against the damp floor.
A murmur moves through the pews. There’s the rustle of silks, the shift of weight, quick, darting glances.
The priest tilts his masked face toward the high ceiling.
The congregation seems to hold its breath in collective anticipation, hanging on his every word, caught in the pull of his tide.
“The High Priest before me, Droskyn Vayne, spoke of our great contraptions of steel and iron. He said the machines withered because the apple blossoms faded. Because the royal line lost its power.”
My chest tightens. Apple blossoms. The Tower. The dead trees.
“But I have found a way for the trees to bloom once more.”
A breathless silence.
“The Rothmore bloodline is not lost,” he says, his fingers splaying wide as if reaching for the heavens themselves. “And neither is its power. A great sacrifice is coming. A celebration. A ceremony!”
A gust blows through the chapel, and his damp robes billow like the wings of a carrion bird. The congregation leans in, a sea of eyes shining with devotion, desperation, hunger.
“And it, my loyal flock, will be the last sacrifice the Kingdom of Cups will ever need.”