Chapter 51 Bryony
brYONY
THE BOAT ROCKS as if it’s trying to fling me into the sea.
Every wave that slaps against the hull sends another burst of icy water into my face. My hands are numb from gripping the sides of the boat. The wood is rotting and salt-stained—exactly the kind of vessel you’d expect from someone hoping you’ll drown before reaching shore.
Ahead, the walls of the Onyx Keep emerge from the fog.
The building is hidden behind the high barrier, but the stonework is imposing.
It looms. Back in Vartena, mothers used to frighten their children with tales of Nyholm and the Dark King’s wrath.
How he decorates those walls with the bones of trespassers.
I never thought I’d be stupid enough to test those stories.
Another wave sends the boat lurching. I pull my coat tighter around my shoulders, but the cold suffusing my limbs has nothing to do with the frigid water.
No, this is the chill of primal terror. And I’d be lying if I said some part of me wasn’t tempted to spin this rickety death trap around to Asteria.
After a few more minutes, the boat hits the shallows, and I vault onto land.
It takes every ounce of strength to drag the vessel onto the narrow strip of beach.
By the time I wrestle it under a gnarled tree, my arms are trembling.
It’s not the best hiding spot, but it’ll have to do. I can’t afford to waste more time.
I study the wall stretching up before me.
The barrier juts out of the rocks in columns of quartz and basalt fitted together.
Sea spray and dark lichen coat the stones, but where the dying light hits just right, the wall shimmers with an inner luminescence, as if someone bottled starlight and poured it into the rock.
That’s when I hear it—a flap of wings. Power rolls across the beach in a crackling tide of electricity.
I jerk my head up to see a demigod soldier emerging from the mist, wearing gleaming silver armor. His gray feathers spread wide as he veers sharply toward the keep. The air warps around him, sparking with his magic, the charged scent growing stronger.
“Shit, shit, shit.” I press deeper into the shadows under the branches.
They hung the bodies from the walls and let the birds pick them clean.
That’s what my governess told me about what the Dark King did to the last Devaliants who breached his borders.
My heart pounds so hard I’m sure the sound will give me away. But then the demigod vanishes behind a crumbling parapet.
I let out a relieved exhale. Right, then. Guard presence, unknown numbers, and clearly on edge.
This is fine. Everything’s fine.
I eye the seawall again. It looks no less daunting on the second inspection—smooth as polished glass, without so much as a dead vine to offer purchase. But there’s an uneven ribbon of stairs hewn directly into the cliffside that might offer a better vantage.
Better than nothing.
Keeping low, I sprint across the beach, sticking to the deepest shadows at the base of the bluffs.
My boots slip on wet rocks as I navigate the terrain.
The path switches back and forth, the incline steep enough to make my already sore muscles scream in protest. But I grit my teeth and focus.
One wrong step, one loose stone, and I might as well ring a dinner bell for the guards.
The distant crash and drag of the waves fade to a muted roar, replaced by the wind whipping itself into a gale—
A prickle dances across my nape. Then I hear the unmistakable crunch of boots over scree.
I don’t hesitate. I lunge for the shadowy cleft in the stones to my right, folding my body into the tight recess and wedging myself as far back as I can go. Trying to make myself small. Invisible.
A ball of light pierces the fog, the edges of the nimbus nearly licking the toes of my boots. A figure materializes from the mist with broad shoulders, soot-dark wings, and armor.
Another demigod sentry.
Fuck. I’m a hairsbreadth from discovery, and there’s nowhere left to run. My lungs turn to stone in my chest. Don’t breathe. Don’t blink. Don’t so much as twitch, or it’s all over.
The guard’s head cocks as he scents the air. An endless moment passes while I hold my breath.
Go. Please fly away. Please don’t scent anything mortal.
The wind shifts. A sudden gust drags in the noxious scent of rotted fish from the sea. The guard wrinkles his nose and scowls, then he launches himself into the air with a powerful flap of his wings, disappearing into the mists.
I sag against the stone. If that breeze hadn’t covered the scent of my mortality—
Move. Get inside before they double back.
I scan the seawall above for anywhere I might slip through, and… there—a fissure in the stone latticework, barely wider than my shoulders. The edges are crumbled and broken, and it’s a tight fit, but if I angle my body just so—
Power lashes across my senses a split second before the heavy thump of wingbeats sounds once more.
No. Not again.
I scramble up the sheer rock face, my fingers hooking into grooves and fissures.
With a silent prayer to the stars, I heave my body into the narrow gap and wiggle through.
For a breathless moment, I’m certain I’ll get stuck.
Easy prey for Nyholm’s gods. But then I leverage myself with a grip on the rocks and fall on the other side.
I hit the ground hard. All the air rushes out of my lungs, and for a second, I can’t do anything but lie there, bracing for the inevitable shout of soldiers.
But there’s nothing. No shouts, no footsteps. Just wind rattling through dead things and waves hitting rocks below.
Pushing up on my elbows, I take stock of my surroundings.
I’ve landed in what must have once been a grand garden.
Skeletal trees claw at the mist-choked sky, their leaves blackened and curled in on themselves like burnt paper.
Statues dot the garden, depicting gods with limbs shattered and heads gone.
One has a woman pressed against a male’s chest, her face turned up like she’s begging.
Another of a goddess with her wings snapped off at the shoulder blades, reaching for a companion who’s broken beyond recognition.
Dark ivy wraps through eye sockets, between fingers, like it’s trying to drag them all down into the earth. Because this? This is a graveyard.
And beyond it all looms the keep.
There’s something eerily beautiful about this place in all its faded grandeur.
The stonework is crystalline, like solidified starlight, with spires toppled and broken.
Former bridges of sparkling pale rock lead nowhere now.
It looks like a palace of jagged glass. The walls have battle scars—places where the masonry is more crumbled than others.
“Just go,” I whisper to myself. “Finish this.”
I push to my feet and pick my way between the statues, trying not to look at their faces. Trying not to think about the lovers frozen in stone and the broken limbs. Was this from the war? Or did someone… do this on purpose?
Stop it. Staying still means thinking, and thinking means remembering that being here is insane.
The windows throw back my reflection as I pass, but I ignore my warped image and spot a gap where a window shutter dangles on rusted hinges.
There we go. That’s my way in.
I press my fingers into the small opening. The weakened wood protests, then yields with a soft crack that might as well be a thunderbolt in the preternatural quiet. I wait, but there’s only silence.
My hands tremble as I work the opening wide enough to fit through. The chamber beyond is dark and empty, but I swear I feel eyes watching me. Waiting.
But it’s too late to turn back now.
In, out. Get what I came for, and get gone.
I lower myself into the room. The air presses close, thick with the scent of mold and decay.
My stomach turns. I breathe through my mouth and wait for my eyes to adjust. There’s not much here—a shelf clinging to one mildewed wall with old books spilled onto the floor, some trinkets collecting dust on a few tables, a telescope at the window.
But that proof of someone previously here sends a frisson of unease through my gut.
They watched the stars. They read these books and walked the bridges in this keep, and probably never imagined it would all crumble like this.
The desk draws me forward.
A scattering of maps peeks through the grime, hundreds of years out of date, but I’d know those borders anywhere—the spine of the Duehavn Ridge as it cleaves the realms. Two sides of a coin.
My breath catches when I spot the sigil marking Hellevig, carved so deep it nearly pierces the parchment. I can almost see the Dark King hunched over these maps, plotting my family’s destruction.
The sensation of a gaze boring into my back sharpens.
I whirl, reaching for my knife, but there’s only darkness. Shadows twisting in on themselves. The curtains move, but it’s only the wind through the broken window.
Go, Bryony. Now.
I ease open the door. The space between my shoulder blades prickles again.
Find the atrium. Get it done.
My fingers trail along the wall as I move deeper into the keep, hurrying past dozens of shadowed doors.
It reminds me of the crypt beneath Hellevig’s temple—that same weight that makes you want to hold your breath.
Makes you feel like you’re trespassing. The air feels hungry here, too sharp, like a monster’s maw waiting to devour me.
I count doors as I pass. Seven. Eight. Nine. My fingernails dig into my palms, and my shirt sticks to my back with sweat.
Stop thinking. Move.
I round the corner, and—
My breath catches at the vast chamber with soaring columns and a vaulted glass oculus.
Even choked in dust, devoid of light, I can see the bones of what this room once was.
How it would have dazzled before the war made it a ruin.
Every inch of the pale stonework is carved with elaborate filigree, and there are more statues of goddesses standing regally with their wings spread, carved out of dark rock.
Ivy creeps up the walls and around the staircase.
My gaze sweeps the abandoned chamber, falling to the table against the far wall with crumbling scrolls and ancient ledgers. Sitting right there is a small chest just as Alexios described.
I stumble toward it. Some last thread of survival instinct screams a warning: Too easy too easy this is too fucking easy. But hope is a cruel master. It drowns out the doubt as I grab the small chest and cradle it.
Then a hand clamps around my wrist, rings glinting. A voice scrapes against my ear, cold as the grave: “I don’t like mortals in my territory.”