Chapter 34
Sidney
The silence on the ride to Adelaide left my thoughts unguarded, with no equations or formulas to keep them in line. My thumb hooked into my belt, tracing the empty space where my stake should have hung.
Above me, the midday sun burned a harsh reminder across the sky: Seven days of light remained. Seven more arcs before the magic failed and the disguise dissolved.
And then what will you do?
It was only then that I acknowledged a deeper truth: I hadn’t fully considered what came next. Once Sanguine was no more and the good slayers at the temple…
What? Took me back with open arms?
I scoffed to myself. I was old enough to know not to believe in fairy tales. Captain Stark’s hostility had me rethinking everything. Though it wasn’t completely her fault. At some point, I’d stopped asking Lord Aetherius for his grace. And I missed that part of my life less than I expected.
By the time Adelaide’s garden came into view, I was happy to abandon my introspection. I had no answers, only a plan that hinged on me placing a crown upon my brow.
The witch stood waiting right outside her haven under the willow tree.
Her green eyes shimmered as she took me in.
“Tick tock. One week left. Your vampiress is seeping into the ground while the worms make a meal of her, and the anchor is thinning to a single strand. Soon, there won’t be enough of her left to hold the glamor. ”
I followed her through the willow’s hanging leaves. She already had her ritual implements laid out on the wooden table, including a wicked sharp needle. I eyed it, dry swallowing. “I know.”
“Do you?” Adelaide leaned in. “To keep up your disguise for the final stretch, the magic must sink deeper. The pain will be nearly unbearable. You must step closer to the grave than you ever have.”
“Just get it over with,” I said before I could lose my nerve.
She didn't use the green paste this time. Instead, she picked up the needle carved from bone, its tip glistening with something dark. The mixture carried a sharp scent of sulfur layered over wilted lilies.
She reached out, seizing my arm in an iron grip. “Don’t move.”
The needle pierced my elbow, and agony shot through me. I jerked, but her grip held firm. She pushed the point in, and heat exploded through my arm, racing to my spine and outward.
As she chanted, the trees tilted. The shadows under the willow rose like ink, coiling around my throat and tightening until breath and sound vanished.
The world dropped, and the ground slammed up to meet me. Sulfur coated my tongue, tangled with the sweetness of rotting fruit. My feet sank into cold, wet earth. It clung to my boots and pulled me down. Glimpses of shadow-like, inhuman beings shifted in the darkness.
This had to be Terrigana’s underworld, one of the six hells. There was no other explanation.
A pit carved into the bowels of the earth, choked with mud, roots, and creatures that writhed through decay. Muddy walls surrounded me, slick and impossible to climb. Souls clung to them anyway, scraping at dirt that crumbled under their touch. They fell back into the pit without a sound.
The same shadow shapes moved among them. Elongated fingers coiled around ankles and throats, dragging the desperate back into the depths where many-legged beasts waited.
A figure formed in the gray haze: Ilyana Krudelbach. Not the cold, calculating vampiress I had staked, but something hollowed out. Her shape flickered like a candle in a gale, translucent and jagged.
“You,” she hissed.
My voice stuck in my throat, and my body refused to move.
“You took everything from me.” Her eyes were dark pits filled with accusation.
“I never expected to see you again.” The statement slipped out before I could stop it.
She clenched her fists. “Every time Adelaide renewed the disguise, she fed on what remained of my soul to power the magic. She carved away the last pieces of me.”
My throat tightened. “I didn’t know.” But in a way, I had. I was the one who’d bargained her soul away. I was the reason she was here and would be here…forever.
“You didn’t want to know.” Her laugh rattled like bones in a jar. “You let her tear me apart so you could wear my face a little longer.”
Silver light spilling through widening gaps further fractured Ilyana’s essence. Bright threads escaped these gaps and coiled around my wrist before vanishing into the bracelet.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, feeling it was wholly inadequate amongst the shadows of the damned.
“Sorry?” she shrieked. “You stole my image, and you are sorry? My face. My sister. My name. You walk through my life while I rot here.”
Guilt crashed through me.
Behind her, the shadows paused. They turned toward her.
“You are a monster.” Her translucent hand closed around my throat. The touch burned like frostbite. “A demon wearing stolen skin. What did I do to deserve damnation for your revenge?”
“I never imagined this would be your fate.” And I hadn’t cared. I let her hold my neck, allowing her to hurt me. I deserved to feel at least a fraction of her pain.
“When you die, you’ll come here with me. Soon enough, you’ll learn what it feels like to rot from the inside.” A shadow creature rose behind her, its body rippling like tar. It hooked its fingers into her ribs and dragged her off of me, deeper into the pit.
The mud surged, thick and freezing. Hands of wet silt clawed up from the muck and locked around my ankles.
Breaking free, I sprang and grabbed Ilyana’s translucent shoulders.
Cold knifed up my palms, and her form flickered in and out of shape.
I yanked her loose, tearing her from the creature’s grip as her outline shuddered under the strain.
Her wide eyes met mine, begging me not to let go.
The muck swallowed her lower half, pulling her down inch by inch. No matter how hard I hauled, I couldn’t slow her descent. The creature lunged again as another rose beside it, reaching for me. Its hand clamped around my wrist, cold enough to numb the bone.
I ripped my arm free and kicked against the sucking earth. The creature’s reach skimmed my heel as I tore myself upward. Ilyana remained trapped, the pit dragging her back into the dark while I fought my way out.
More hands rose from the muck and caught her. They wrapped around her waist and arms. She did not resist. She let them pull her into the mud, into the mass of writhing shapes. Her eyes never left mine.
The darkness split apart, and the world snapped back into light. I jerked back into my body, still standing in the same spot, and dragged in a breath that scraped my throat. The air tasted like flowers instead of rot, too sweet after what I’d just left behind.
My palms throbbed as if I had been holding something far too cold for too long, the ache settling deep into the bones. Still, the pain was muted, wrapped in a strange haze.
“There now. That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Adelaide smiled as she spoke. Her tone hadn’t changed, but I swore she was mocking me. She had to be mocking me, knowing I’d gotten a glimpse of Terrigana’s hell.
I wanted to scream at her, wanted to curse her, but my throat closed around the words, refusing to release them.
I hadn’t realized…I had made a terrible mistake by forging a deal with this witch. But there was no going back now.
“Your disguise will hold another week.” The witch examined the needle she’d buried in my arm before licking the trace of my blood from its tip with quiet satisfaction. “But that’s the last time. She’s gone to the underworld. Best make her sacrifice on your behalf count.”
I collapsed into the dirt-covered bench across from her willow trunk throne, my head spinning. The cold from the pit still clung to my marrow, making the garden’s warmth feel artificial. I was Ilyana again, but the disguise felt heavy and wrong, like wet wool clinging to my skin.
“Time to uphold your side of our bargain.” Adelaide settled into her seat and called for tea. Her eyes glittering with expectation. “So tell me, how goes your grand revenge?”
I swallowed against the rising bile; the taste of the underworld still lingered in my mouth. Feeding her my doings as entertainment was last in my priorities. “Just…give me a moment,” I murmured.
She dipped her chin. A new puppet creature brought out the tea service, this one resembling a warthog.
“Cris is gone, then?” The unsettling creature fumbled the tray with its hooves. I moved to help it set the service on the table.
“Oh, yes, unfortunately. He didn’t suffer as much as I wanted him to, but now he’s getting to know real punishment in the afterlife,” Adelaide responded breezily. She poured me a cup and slid it over. “Snake’s tongue and knotweed today.”
I took a sip. Disgusting, of course. I took another, desperate for the hot liquid to scald away some of the chill trying to overtake me from the inside out. The tea’s aftertaste was minty, leaving my breath colder than when I’d started.
Reluctantly, I began sharing my news. I wouldn’t get to leave until I fulfilled this chore. “The second trial is complete. I captured an assassin from the House of Whispers to present to the flask. It accepted him.”
“An assassin.” Her smile widened. “How deliciously ruthless. And how many have you sent back to the dirt, half-breed child?”
“I killed Fiorella Bernard. Lorelei’s dead, along with her Devotion.
There have been others, but I never learned their names.
Oh, and Genevieve too, though that wasn't by my hand.” I touched my throat, the phantom sensation of Ilyana’s frostbite still stinging.
Or perhaps it was the damned still trying to drag me down with them into that abyss of mud and darkness.
“But you’re not sorry she’s gone.” Adelaide tilted her head, her eyes tracing the movement of my fingers. Her eyes creased a little more at the corners.
“No.” I dropped my hand, my jaw tightening as I met her gaze with a frigidness that felt borrowed from the pit.
Adelaide’s laugh burst forth. “Honesty! It is a rare vintage in this garden. Most girls try to wrap their murders in lace and excuses, but you? You wear your sins like a shroud.” She leaned back, her eyes gleaming with approval and hunger.
“Sentimentality would ruin you. Now tell me, how many candidates remain?”
“Six. Including me.”
“Five more obstacles between you and the crown.” She studied my face with unsettling intensity. “Can you do it, Sidney? Can you kill five more vampires in seven days?”
The question weighed heavily in my chest. Felicity’s face flashed through my mind. “I have to.”
And if the third trial didn’t happen soon, I would need to kill my competitors in their beds, just as they feared. One week was so little time.
If I didn’t stand alone with the Flask by the week’s end, the competition would end with a dirty-blooded dhampir where a vampiress should be, and they would tear me apart for the lie.
I turned over my hands. The frost-scored blisters on my palms had faded to faint marks, nearly invisible. By tomorrow, they would be gone. Yet the cold persisted. The pit clung to my memory like a shell of ice that refused to thaw. Ilyana’s face hovered in my mind, translucent. Accusing. Damned.
“Seven days,” Adelaide repeated. Again, her cheerful tone seemed mocking at best. “Seven days to claim the throne and burn the House of the Sanguine to ash. Or seven days to watch your facade crumble and you face the consequences of your lies.” She took a long drink of her tea before flashing a smile that stretched too far, showing too many teeth.
She gestured toward the path. “I am satisfied. Best not to waste any more of your precious hours sitting in my garden.”
I rose on unsteady legs and walked away without a word of goodbye. I didn’t look back.
The stone bulk of the mansion loomed as I approached the garden wall.
Ash waited somewhere in the woods behind me, where I’d slipped from his back and left him in the shadows.
The return passed without incident, yet the days layered upon me, pressing down.
Deep in my bones, the cold settled, a physical ache I could not shake.
I slipped stiffly through the wall and moved through the rose graveyard toward the servants’ entrance, my hood pulled low as I navigated the darkening day.
I emerged from the shadows ten feet from the door when a servant stepped out from behind a stone pillar, blocking my path.
His eyes shone brightly with the zeal of a secret discovered.
He had been waiting, positioned here deliberately by someone who knew I would come this way.
For one frozen heartbeat, we stared at each other.
I could kill him. My dagger was in my hand before I consciously made the choice.
Three steps. One strike. Silence. But then a window above us glowed with sudden light.
A shadow moved behind the glass, watching.
If I killed him now, whoever was up there would see.
Would know. The servant’s lips curved into a smile as he ran into the mansion, where his shout would reach the most ears.
“Lady Emmeline!” His voice cracked with urgency. “I’ve found—”
Emmeline had been waiting for a crack, and now she had one. The teeth of the trap had already snapped shut around me.