Prologue Prince Sloth #2
Anyone casually stumbling upon it would never think it was associated with the Goddess of Night. However, if they’d come looking for the goddess of death, then they might believe they’d found her.
The more recent corpses stunk this close. There were an alarming number of fresh bodies. If I were superstitious, I’d think the Goddess of Night had been preparing for this moment and needed sacrifices. Or maybe her Temple Knights were to blame.
I’d sometimes wondered if they’d ever attempt to free their goddess.
I shifted between the stakes, bloodied fingertips brushing their barklike surface, searching for any markings. There were none.
I glanced up just as Xavier jumped. He landed with a muffled curse, arms windmilling at his sides as he flew backward onto the dirt.
He’d narrowly missed impaling himself.
I offered him a hand, which he slapped away, glaring, his mood darkening by the second. I flashed my teeth, the grin more feral than friendly as I jerked my chin at the chamber walls.
“Help me search for runes.”
Xavier gave me a strange look as he got to his feet.
“You don’t remember?” he asked, skepticism plain in his voice.
I silently envisioned eviscerating him until calmness descended again.
“Clearly not.”
“They won’t be visible yet.” He nodded to the hole in the top of the mountain. “Not until the moon sits directly above us.”
I followed his gaze and slowly released a breath. The moon had almost fully risen; it wouldn’t be much longer.
I left Xavier and moved throughout the chamber, trying to work off the strange feeling settling over me. The brutality of my thoughts was curious.
I wasn’t used to feeling so… on edge. Tense. Those emotions were better suited to my more volatile brothers, Wrath especially.
I had nothing to gain by fueling the rage building within. My magic was replenished by knowledge, by stoking the unquenchable thirst to learn all I could. It’s why my circle in the Underworld was thought to be standoffish and lazy. We were a court of readers first.
The power of the dark book combined with the lack of my magic had to be to blame, though Xavier’s temper was closer to the surface too.
Something was very wrong with this chamber.
Unease trickled in again.
I could no longer tell if it was coming from Xavier or me.
Moments later a cloud passed over the moon, briefly shrouding us in darkness before silvery light shrugged it off and bathed the temple in its glow.
As if the Goddess of Night was truly looking down upon us, the chamber walls began to sparkle.
The mica that had seemed to just be sprinkled in natural formations revealed a different truth: in the wash of moonlight, they were runes.
All around us, ancient words emerged.
I spun in place, translating them as quickly as I could.
“There.” I pointed to the west-facing wall, locating the beginning of the passage. “Beware of waking the gods; their dreams are often our nightmares. Carpe noctem.”
“Seize the night?” Xavier’s voice echoed loudly. “What in the frozen hells does that mean?”
I cursed. “It’s Nyantha’s motto for her mercenary wraiths.”
“Her… wraiths. Yes, yes, of course.”
My gaze sharpened on him. His research should have turned up that information; almost every historical text mentioned them in passing.
Nocturnas were her shadow warriors, legendary in their own right.
And they were currently locked away in Somnia, the dream realm where Nyantha had been banished. I glanced back at the runes; there was something familiar about the message that made me think of an old druid spell. I swung back to face my master librarian.
“Xavier…”
Suddenly, dozens of shadows peeled away from the temple’s walls.
One by one they dropped into the skeletons and decaying corpses, the force of their merging rattling the bones.
As swiftly as the shadows had fallen, they rose in their new forms.
Eyeless skulls swiveled in our direction, the sockets now glowing with a strange crimson light.
My skin prickled from the ravenous hunger I saw there. The need.
Shadow wraiths wanted what they no longer possessed. A body. A soul.
Not truly vampires or zombies, they fed on their victims’ fear, not their flesh.
That didn’t mean they couldn’t cause physical harm, though, especially while inhabiting a host body.
It should have been impossible for them to be here.
Xavier whimpered beside me and the Nocturnas’ attention turned to him, his fear stirring them into a frenzy as they all took a step toward us in unison.
I unsheathed my House dagger from its scabbard, the blade glowing in anticipation. I palmed the cool hilt, which had been molded after the tree of knowledge, my House crest, and adjusted my grip to its familiar weight.
The same dark power that stoked my rage made me crave blood.
A killing calm descended.
I locked onto my targets, already envisioning their destruction.
The Liber Noctem would not be taken from me.
“Do you still have the blade in your boot?” I kept my attention on the advancing shadow wraiths, forcing myself to wait before striking. “Xavier. Focus. Where’s your blade?”
“I… I’m not sure.”
One Nocturna seemed to be hungrier and bolder than the others.
It stalked forward disjointedly in its reanimated corpse body, the flesh gray and half rotted hanging loosely from its limbs.
The stench was foul enough to make my eyes water as it closed the distance.
A small tremor went through the floor. Followed by a deep, reverberating rumble.
I jumped back, watching as the skull I’d bled onto sank into the earth.
Xavier dropped to his knees and began to pray. I’d never seen him do that before.
I would have shot him a questioning look, but I was transfixed by the altar of bones slowly emerging from the gaping hole beneath the cavern floor.
It resembled a macabre pedestal that must have been hidden for centuries.
Something in its center stirred.
Skeletal fingers unfurled, the joints cracking as they stretched wide. The hands clawed at the darkness now pouring from the center of the altar, creeping higher, straining as if they’d been praying for this exact moment.
I stood rooted to the spot, ignoring the Nocturnas creeping closer.
Slowly, impossibly, the hands sank back into the shadows and began to lift an object into the dim light. My heart thrummed madly. Fear erupted from whatever was hidden in the shadows as if it were the very essence of the emotion.
The skeletal hands rose higher, clearing the shadows, and I stared at a book, cradled reverently in the dead’s embrace.
My heart ceased to beat for a second as I drank it in.
Its cover was black with one striking image—a gold phoenix rising in a blaze of vengeance. Sparks flickered across its feathers, sending prisms of light across the altar it rested upon.
The whole altar seemed to shiver… in fear. Or anticipation. A prickle of unease went through me. It was no ordinary book.
The Book of Nightmares was truly here.
After all these years, all this hunting… it was so close I could smell its ancient pages. The most alluring of perfumes.
Xavier’s emotions flared wildly, his panic striking out.
He’d seen what I had. The Liber Noctem was finally within our grasp.
I lunged for it. My blood had released it from its hiding place, and that somehow made me feel bonded to it in a way I couldn’t explain.
I snapped the bones as whatever magic fueling them continued to keep them locked in a death grip around the Liber Noctem.
The moment my bare hands made contact with the book, a wave of dark power rushed through me, forceful enough to make my knees buckle.
It was temptation, taunting, fear, promises of unending power, vengeance. It was chaos and destruction, and it took everything in me to hand it over to Xavier and not race out of here with it.
It was mine.
As if acknowledging the peculiar connection, gold light flashed out from the book and a searing heat flared across the skin on my torso and arms, the delicate lines creating a design I couldn’t afford to remove my leathers to look at now.
Within mere seconds the pain stopped, making me wonder if I’d truly felt it at all.
There was no time to ponder what had just happened; the shadow wraiths swayed with agitation. They’d paused while the book emerged but wouldn’t be still much longer.
“I’ll draw them away,” I said. “You take the book out of here.”
I shoved the book into Xavier’s arms even though it was the last thing I wanted to do. Then I sprinted into the advancing undead soldiers, letting instinct and muscle memory direct my every blow.
The first of the fresher corpses staggered toward me, its jaw slack and milky eyes weeping pus.
I brought my blade down, cleaving through its exposed clavicle, and its arm flopped uselessly to its side, held by nothing but a rotten strip of sinew now.
I swung again, severing its head in a powerful blow. It hit the ground and splattered open, the gods-awful stench temporarily overwhelming my senses.
Another Nocturna snapped at my shoulder, and I spun, ramming my elbow into what remained of its face. Rotting teeth shattered with the impact.
I hacked and slashed, clearing a half circle around me as decaying body parts flew in all directions.
Putrid blood and other gore slicked my palms, and I skidded in foul viscera as I tried to keep my footing steady despite the increasingly slippery ground.
A third Nocturna, missing half its skull, came at me with a broken sword.
I parried with my dagger, ignoring the whine of metal against metal before driving my blade up through its ruined head.
I fought without pause, unleashing the full force of my fighting abilities, and even without my magic to aid me, I was violence made flesh.
Wrath might be the general of war, but each Prince of Sin was lethal.
I had thousands of texts on war and anatomy and had studied the most effective ways to disarm and destroy.
My wings snapped out from where I’d kept them, shielding me from blows and swiping out the legs of several Nocturnas.