Chapter 49
Chapter forty-nine
She came to beside the table. Lux blinked at the wide wooden legs as she gathered her wits. She tipped her head back, and Corvin’s boot filled her vision. He stood beside her head. In that moment, lying at his feet discarded, she knew she would never be more than a tool to him.
A pet—a doll—for a powerful man.
“Welcome back, Alix. We’ve missed you greatly.”
Lux’s eyes widened. It’d worked. How had it actually worked? Alchemy, she fumed. Always ruining the order of things.
Corvin’s voice was creaking and bitter. A voice of nightmares. But the one that answered was quite the opposite.
“Corvin? Death to the Devil! What have you done?”
“Did you see them, Alix? Did you see the Saints in the Beyond?”
Lux slowly pushed onto her knees. Her fingertips buzzed where they met the flagstones.
The society’s first overlord cleared his throat. “I can’t say. Already, it’s faded, and I only recall peace. When did I die? Saints above, Brother, you must tell me what’s happened to you. To us.”
“You’ve been gone nearly two centuries.”
Silence enveloped the sanctum. And Lux stared upon Corvin’s twin as if she didn’t belong to herself again. Only for his gaze to slide to hers, to remind her of what she’d done.
His eyes were as raven black as his hair, even in the torchlight.
He sat upon the table much the same as Shaw had those months ago in Ghadra.
But his fingertips—they weren’t the relaxed hold of someone relieved to have been brought back into the presence of family.
They blanched in their grip. His gaze flicked from her to Corvin, his features such a replica of his brother’s, immediate distrust flooded her chest.
But when his eyes returned to her, they seemed eager to convey something. Something that could not be said aloud. “Congratulations. You’ve always wanted a necromancer.”
The statement reminded Corvin of her, and he glanced down with a flicker of surprise at her kneeling. “A victim of Mania Malus. Her brilliance taxes her, but all will be rectified soon enough. We need something from you, Alix.”
“Of course you do.”
Lux stiffened at the hurt in Alix’s voice and glanced back to where Shaw lay upon the dais.
He’d shifted at some point during her revival, the back of his head now resting upon the throne, his throat exposed.
Her attention landed on the basin. She wished it wouldn’t have. A bloom of ice unfurled in her chest.
Her attention jerked from it. Landed once again on Corvin.
At what he held against his hip.
How it glinted in the torchlight.
A syringe—and its needled point.
“There’s a problem, you can see. With me. With us all.” Corvin gaze swept his brother’s form. “I cannot achieve all that I want. I cannot become all that I should be. It’s your fault.”
Alix laughed, low and humorless and a perfect mirror of his brother. Still, he didn’t bother to stand. Like he was perfectly content to remain where he’d been for over a century. “Hasn’t it always been?”
“Don’t mock me,” growled Corvin, and he hovered nearer. “We were never meant to be two.”
“Take that up with fate, Brother. I didn’t split from you purposefully.”
“Trust me that I have.” He loomed so that they all were better able to see his face. And in the strange light, Lux thought she really didn’t recognize him. A sinister force glowed from his eyes.
He was as wicked as they came. He was the devil on the door. She pushed herself to stand.
“When you died,” Corvin said. “I was supposed to be free of your torment. But even in death, you didn’t relent. I realized too late that you took what I needed with you to the Beyond.”
Alix scoffed. “I took nothing besides my own soul.”
“Precisely.”
Alix’s grip softened. He folded his hands into his lap. His eyes, however, were as dark and hard as the stone around him. “What would you do with it? I think I’ve given you—all of you—enough.”
Corvin’s thumb ran the length of the syringe.
“A pity you didn’t know of our project before your death.
Powerful gifts, Alix, are meant for powerful minds.
I’ve been doing what was once an impossible task in your absence, and the collectors have surpassed every expectation.
Educating the masses just as you wanted.
And bringing peace to the world. All by granting the vast strength of brilliance to those loyal to a common goal.
If that isn’t worthy of Sainthood, why, I wouldn’t know what is. ”
“Peace—Corvin. You’re decaying before my eyes!” The horror on Alix’s face matched Lux’s own. “This is blasphemy. They couldn’t have all been in agreement?”
The dark laugh returned. “Do not speak to me of blasphemy—you, a weak believer and maybe even a heretic. This pathway wouldn’t have been created if it wasn’t meant to be used.
Your mission was noble, Brother. But it was a mission rife with faults.
People were furthering their brilliances, yes.
But it was open to interpretation. It was being put into practice in dangerous ways!
Weak, volatile spirits cannot be trusted.
I don’t understand how you’re unable to see that. ”
“You’ve lost your mind,” Alix whispered.
“That is not my fault. You’ve cursed me in your death; I cannot sleep. All I think of, all I wish for, is to become more. Once, I thought that meant you had to be gone. Your soul departed to the Beyond and no longer in my way. But now—”
“Stop. You’ve become something wretched, Brother. I’ve met no Saints in death, but I can say this, I have felt them. And they do not feel as you do. You’ve twisted their purpose and will achieve nothing of what you want. If ever a person suffered from Mania Malus, it is you!”
That sinister light in Corvin’s eyes brightened.
Lux was sure there was no blue left now in his irises.
He sneered. “You are what’s wretched. If it weren’t for your very existence, I would have been whole from the start.
I would not have to do what I now need. And I need your dreams, Alix. Don’t worry over me.”
“Drain my lifeblood all you like and leave me to the void, but you will never own my dreams.”
Corvin laughed outright. “Soon, I will have more than even that.”
Lux screamed when the needle plunged into Alix’s eye.
Alix twitched, but otherwise did not move. Maybe he couldn’t. Corvin held onto the syringe and, carefully, began to draw backward. A liquid like starlight filled the glass chamber.
Lux’s shaking grew violent. Her revulsion nearly sent her again to the floor. To remove lifeblood this way…on a living, breathing—
When Corvin pulled away from his brother’s eye, Alix groaned. But the society’s overlord didn’t pause. He plunged the needle again.
After that, Alix made no sound at all. Lux didn’t think she’d ever feel well again. She would have rather wished him dead. But as sensitive as she’d become to Death now, she sensed nothing. He lived still.
When Corvin was through and Alix lay slumped and discarded on the table, his silver gaze met hers. “Don’t look at me like that.” He tapped the starlit glass. “We cannot extract it any other way. I’ve tried.”
As if that were the only part to be horrified over.
Corvin handed the filled syringe to Artemis before making his way to the basin.
He knelt. Turning away from the pedestal, he laid his head back and fitted his neck to the groove of the basin’s lip.
“We must keep them alive, Lux. I know you understand extracting the lifeblood from the dead will sever their ties from this world permanently, their soul unable to return. That drinking it afterward will grant you healing, an additional lifetime. But what we’ve discovered here—”
Lux’s knees weakened when Artemis stepped to Corvin’s side. The healer’s hand rose, the needled point poised over the soft corner of his overlord’s eye. Wrong, wrong, wrong, beat her heart.
The needle plunged.
Corvin hissed a pained breath, but he did not move.
And Lux wondered how often he’d done this. How many pilfered souls resided within his rotted body.
Half of the syringe was injected before the needle was removed. Corvin exhaled, long and slow. “To harvest from the living is where true power lies.” He laughed this time when his opposite eye was punctured. “He didn’t want me to have his dreams? Now I will own his very soul.”
The needle pulled free. Corvin sat up. Twin trails of scarlet trickled down his face. His eyes found hers, welling red.
Lux wished she could tear him apart. “You are destroying people. You have no right.”
But Corvin transformed before her. Gone was the grey cast and sloughing skin. In its place, Mothlock’s Overlord was again pale, frost-like, and made perfect.
Devil take me.
Around her, every collector lowered their hoods.
“I have every right,” he bit out, and his voice was his own again.
“We are brilliant. We are power. We are chosen. How can’t you comprehend it is only for humanity’s betterment that we do what we do?
And I feel it! Finally. I have never been more whole than I am now.
The curse is lifted, and I am made perfect, Necromancer.
I am a Saint.” He swept nearer to her, his eyes bloodied but eager.
“I wish you’d look around you. To realize what a travesty it is to watch brilliances be squandered or used for harm.
To see books in the hands of those who cannot begin to understand them.
This is my purpose, Lux.” His fingers gripped her chin. “I told you so that day on the cliffs.”
With the blood still fresh and wet against his skin, he pressed his cheek to hers.
Into her ear, he said, “And now you may bear witness to the real extent of my brilliance.” When he pulled away, he left behind the scent of iron.
Lux swallowed against the rising nausea, swiping at her skin with the back of her hand.