Chapter 35
ARLET
Cursed One’s restlessness wakes me once again. I look up at the hallway and see the torch outside flicker, its flame bending sideways, drawn toward something unseen. Shadows crawl up the wall, slick and alive. The air hums faintly, like a blade drawn slowly from a sheath.
“Do you feel that?” Vann asks, voice alert. He shifts, pulling away from the space that connects our cells, and there’s a slithering presence in the back of my mind. Strangely enough, I think he’s right.
“Yes.” I crane my neck. “Is it guards? Or is Thorne back?”
Before the question can be answered, the torchlight shivers again, and a shape folds out of the darkness, revealing a man cloaked in black. He steps through the gloom as if it opens for him.
His long black hair falls around his face like his long cloak falls over his all-black garb. With the wave of his hand, he throws shadows over the wall and it turns transparent.
“The Living Shadow,” Vann breathes from the other side at the same time that I say, “High Lord Castien.”
Vann presses his face to the hole, and I see his beautiful blue eyes for a moment before my attention is drawn away again. When he tries to crawl to me, he is stopped by the now-fuzzy separation of stone.
Castien looks just as feral as he did the day I met him with Arion. His darkness, likely a reflection of his faraway court built on the power of secrets and brutality, seeps into every available inch of air.
“Anything you do to her, I swear on the gods above and below, I will do to you,” Vann says, voice firm and terrifying.
Castien’s eyes glint, but more interestingly, Cursed One wakes up fully.
Him again, she thinks. But it’s not an accusation. It’s almost reverent.
I force myself upright as much as possible with my weak body and wounds. “Why are you here?”
His gaze slides over me. “It seems we have friends in common.”
My brows furrow. Arion?
Or…perhaps his daughter, Vesilane, had taken over the position of my lady’s maid—only for a short time, but she had been incredibly kind to me.
“Your daughter?” I ask.
“No.” He doesn’t move, but he also doesn’t elaborate. “I watched the trial of the beasts. You see, like many others, I fully expected that both of you would live through this first spectacle. What fun would the games be if you didn’t?”
I frown.
“But then I realized something peculiar as you fought. You are frail. Yet, at one point you held yourself like a warrior. You aren’t a warrior, are you?”
I bite my lip.
He continues, “And then, a bit later, I noticed something leaking out of you. You, little flame, are bleeding power.”
“I don’t have powers,” I spit back.
“How can you be so sure?” he retorts.
“What do you want?” Vann asks, but both of us ignore him.
I swallow, noticing that my throat feels a little less full of daggers. “Some humans do when they get their Fuegorra; I sure as hell did not. I am also not one of the blessed brujas with their own power.”
He hums. “This didn’t seem like troll magic, nor some aberration of human physiology.”
“Any magic in my body was the divine magic from the Fuegorra. And Arion made sure to have that cut out.”
Castien moves back and forth carefully.
“That was also acting as a seal,” Castien says. “When they cut it out, they didn’t steal any magic. They freed another kind to flow through you.”
Vann growls low. “She just told you she doesn’t have any power. I suggest you start explaining instead of speaking in riddles, elf.”
Castien doesn’t even glance his way. “You can feel it, can’t you, human? There’s something inside of you—even I have heard rumors that Arion had to go to drastic lengths to get you here. Some say he mingled with the Dark God. A demon, perhaps. Tell me I’m wrong.”
Vann says nothing, and I don’t know what to say. He wanted his daughter to be my lady-in-waiting, and she clearly was with Mrath. Is he with Mrath, too?
“Why don’t you ask Arion?” I manage.
He ignores me, but I feel the acute strengthening of the presence in the back of my mind. The feminine creature that lurks, often dormant, but now utterly, totally awake.
“Shadowflame,” he says softly. “Fire that feeds on darkness. Only possible because of a cursed host inhabiting your body. One of the souls stolen by Abhartach. It seems…that somehow, you were given a passenger who possesses such a power. And you have created a bond with that demon.”
“She doesn’t want it,” Vann snaps out.
For a second, I hesitate. That was certainly true at one point. At one point, all I could think about was being free. But Cursed One has been there when no one else was.
I’m almost touched.
“No one ever does,” he says slowly. “Try to see if you can access the power.”
“Arlet, this could be dangerous,” Vann says sharply. “Do you honestly think this is a good idea?”
I look at him again, see the earnest devotion, and melt.
“I want to know what he’s talking about.” I turn back to Castien. “How do you know any of this?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he holds up his hand, and from his palm, a shadow begins to flicker. Something akin to a flame.
I gasp, and lean forward. It’s like…Arion’s power. Like my power. Cursed One practically hums with delight.
“You have one too,” I say.
He nods and extinguishes the shadowflame. “I believe, in old tales, they called my kind warlocks—those who get their power from some sort of dark source. Personally, I feel the term ‘demon’ is too charged. We all use power for good and bad; I don’t consider one better than another.”
“Except,” I say, “Cursed One has been trapped in some dark fiery pit. She didn’t choose to bind herself to me, Arion did it through the help of Thorne. She would prefer to be free.”
Castien tilts his head to the side. “She is not only bound to you, it seems. That collar”—he points to my neck—“gives Arion her power as well. She is not a lesser soul. She is one of the most powerful I have ever encountered.”
My mouth falls open.
I think back to Mrath’s attack at the masquerade. I had asked her what that magic was and she replied, “Me.”
Arion is using me to get to your power? I ask.
Cursed One doesn’t respond.
Is this what you couldn’t tell me?
Part of it.
Lord Castien interrupts my thoughts. “Has she given you her name? It isn’t wise to say it aloud.”
I pause. “No.”
“Ah,” he says. Then he reignites the flame and it appears right in front of me. “No matter. I want you to touch this. Just to be sure.”
“Arlet,” Vann says, reentering the conversation, “be careful. It could hurt you. You are already weak.”
The concern in his voice touches me again.
“I will be careful,” I say softly.
Then Castien adds, “Better now than when it burns bright during another trial.”
Nervous, I reach for it. The moment my fingers brush through the flickering apparition, cold floods my veins. The world narrows. Shadows pour up my arms, curling around me like smoke.
Cursed One’s voice hums inside my chest. Does it feel good to know this power, Arlet?
I snatch my hand away.
“Arlet!” Vann calls. His fingers brush through the hole again, but can’t reach far enough.
“I am all right, Vann,” I say plainly. I stare down at my hands—ribbons of black and silver smoke drifting from my fingertips, fading into the air. I had thought it was so strange that Arion didn’t have elemental magic. Now I know why.
“There it is,” Castien murmurs.
“What did you do to her?” Vann demands.
“Nothing she didn’t already carry,” Castien replies coolly. “You think she’s fragile? She survived curses, gods, and your lies. She’ll survive this.”
“Get away from her,” Vann retorts.
“If I wanted her harmed,” Castien says, stepping back, “you’d already be ashes.
” He looks at me. “Listen, girl. The fire inside you is wild. It has grown. If you don’t master it, it will master you.
If you wish to live through these trials, then you need to find a way to harness it by working with your tether. ”
I stare at the writhing power, letting the new sensation calm my feverish skin. It is strange, unnatural. “I don’t know how.”
“This is why I have come.”
“I still don’t understand why you would betray Arion,” I demand. “Especially now that I know this connects me to him.” My fingers brush over my collar.
“I do not know what Arion’s goal is with you and that collar,” he admits. “But, as I said, we have a mutual friend who is interested in your survival,” he responds simply.
“Mrath,” I say sitting up straighter. “She obviously didn’t succeed in killing him before, so what happened?”
He hesitates, then shifts his shadows around us, as if he were locking in the sound even more.
“She was injured, but she has already started to make her way back. You should see her soon.”
My eyes widen. “Will she attack yet again? So far, she’s proven useless against Arion.”
“Right now, all you need to focus on is surviving.” Then his voice softens. “Close your eyes. Call the presence by whatever name you know.”
I obey, because something inside me already knows what to do. The dark behind my eyelids breathes, and something answers. When I open my eyes, a small flame hovers above my palm—black at its center, rimmed with silver light.
Since you asked so nicely, Cursed One says.
I feel Vann watching me, marveling perhaps. I don’t know what to do under his scrutiny.
“I can’t put it out,” I say, looking up. Slightly panicked.
“Yes, you can,” Castien says. “Command it. It belongs to you.”
I exhale. The flame flickers once, then shrinks to nothing.
Castien gives a single nod. “Good. ” He studies me for a long moment, his expression unreadable, then adds quietly, “You will be able to make it out alive.”
Before I can ask what he means, he kneels, drawing a slim, obsidian dagger from within his cloak.
Its blade hums faintly with runes that burn silver blue in the dim light.
I stiffen, ready to fight if he comes closer, but he only presses the flat of the weapon to my side—right over the bandaged wound.
“Hold still,” he murmurs.