Chapter Thirty #3
Eve turns her eyes to me. “What happens if she doesn’t?”
My brows pinch. “What do you mean?”
“What happens if I die before she delivers?” She swings around the table and claims the seat beside me. “Does she still get my soul?”
I stammer, taken aback by the questions.
I don’t want to answer.
She’s not going to like what I have to say.
“Ves.” She pierces me with her stare.
And I grimace. “Yes,” I answer, reluctantly. “Your soul still belongs to the hells.”
“And what happens to her?”
I swallow hard, bracing myself for the return of Eve’s anger. “Nothing.”
Netharis was the only demon who delivered on all his contracts. He was the only one with the capability to do so.
Eve falls against the back of her chair with a weak yet stunned scoff. Pursing her lips into a tight line, she nods.
“Nothing?” she repeats as if I’d spoken in a language neither of us understand.
Her darkened laughter rings through the archives. Dragging a hand over her face, she heaves a long, long sigh.
“Nothing…” she says again. “It can’t be nothing, Ves.”
I remain silent, fighting to keep my heart from tearing as she settles into the truth of her demonic contract.
“How are you sure she hasn’t already?” I ask, realizing too late it sounds like I’m defending Druka—I’m not.
Eve laughs.
“If she’s unable to communicate with you, how would you know if she’s fulfilled her end?” I ask.
“All of Eldoterra would know,” she shoots back with fire. “There would be headlines across every godsdamned paper on the continent.”
What in the nine hells did Eve ask for?
And what made her think a succubus could deliver something so grand?
“I might be able to negotiate your release—”
“I don’t want to be released!” she interjects and her fists find the table once again.
I fail to flinch, used to more severe outbursts.
“I want her to keep her word! I want her to make damning my soul worth this. I want her to make Cora’s death mean something.” At this, her voice breaks and her breathing grows shallow.
She throws her face heavenward, fighting the sudden silver lining her eyes. Her words and my guilt wrap around my throat, and grow tighter than any chokehold.
“Don’t keep demons as company,” I whisper, my vision blurring. “They’ll leave you scarred and broken.”
They’re the same words I told the raven.
Because they’re true.
And it’s killing me to watch Eve learn them this way.
Eve wipes at her eyes with hasty fingers, lowering her gaze to the table.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
I’ve said the words millions of times throughout my centuries.
And I can count on one hand how many times I’ve meant them.
I mean them now.
“Druka isn’t the only demon you know, Eve,” I continue, grateful my voice is steadier than I feel. “You don’t need to risk your soul to get what you want.”
“What I want,” Eve whispers, “is Tiarsus dead.”
Tiarsus… she’s mentioned him once before, during our time in the Moon Temple. If I remember correctly, he was the leader of the thieving guild she took part in.
“I would hunt him for you,” I say, holding her stare. “No barter. No exchange. No contract.”
And perhaps that says something about me and the kind of demon I am. Or perhaps it says something about the camaraderie Eve and I have found and fostered.
She’s sacrificed enough. I want her to find her own happiness. And if that means hunting this Tiarsus, so be it.
“Don’t be stupid,” she says with a weak laugh. “You’ve enough going on. A Sovereign Queen can’t be chasing a thief.”
“Maybe not a Sovereign Queen,” I counter, giving her a small smile. “But a High Empress can.”
I’ll have more resources available to me than what can be garnered through Erus alone. I’ll have the strength, eyes and ears of eight fae nations. Finding a singular, notorious fae would be light work.
Eve grows rigid in her seat.
“You would do that?” she asks, muting her surprise as her eyes meet mine.
There’s a small collective of people in this realm I would fight for. Eve is counted among them.
“For you? Yes.” I nod once.
A cold shiver races down the length of my arm and settles into my left wrist. A tiny tendril of green slips onto the table from beneath my sleeve. Eve notices it too. Her eyes narrow as I pull back the edge of my sleeve, bearing more of my skin and forcing my bracer to move a hairsbreadth.
A veilflower bracelet.
Hooking a finger around it, I pull, and it snaps, bursting into thick, dark blue smoke. As I lower my sleeve as far as my bracer will allow, searching for more vines or flowers, a stark black stain against my skin is revealed. And I freeze.
It’s a Malbolge rune.
A title… Lady.
“Is that…” Eve’s breathy question lingers between us.
My fingers fly.
Unfastening the stays, I toss the bracer onto the table, knocking over the glass I’d caught earlier. Yanking back the black material, the whole of the mark reveals itself—stark against the pale of my wrist.
Lady of the Veil.
“I fucking knew it,” Eve whispers.
Me?
I’m the demon with the insignia of the veil?
How?
I can’t—I don’t understand how this could happen.
Houses in the hells require the god of death’s approval and matriarch-led propositions never gain it. None of this makes sense.
Eve’s bracer joins mine and, ripping back her own sleeve, she plants her wrist beside mine.
Vessel of the Veil and Lady of the Veil.
“We have a House.” Eve’s bewildered yet bright laughter fills the archives.
“We have a House,” I echo the sentiment, staring at our wrists with sheer disbelief.
As my mind continues to whirl at the possibility and the impacts likely to follow, Eve hits my leg with the back of her hand, earning my attention.
My eyes snap to her. “Eve, what in the—”
The words catch in my throat as I follow Eve’s frozen stare and find four veiled constructs. Standing along the length of the table across from us, they remain motionless. Yet somehow, an unfelt breeze billows the edges of their shimmering veils and curled ruffles of their sleeves.
Silence sits heavy upon the center of the table.
Hands clasped before them, they wait.
“What do they want?” Eve whispers, and like her, I’m unable to look away.
I answer with a tiny shrug and even tinier shake of my head. “I’ve no idea.”
The construct on the far left lifts a hand and waves a wrist. A wash of tingles race down the back of my neck as a scroll of parchment appears beside our bracers and unfurls.
A contract?
Fully unrolled, it’s blank.
Bright blue letters—common tongue letters—sear across the surface and darken, burning themselves into the age-worn paper.
We are your archivists.
You inquire, we answer.
“Magic castle with magic staff… of course there’s a magic library with magic librarians,” Eve muses.
More blue blazes on the parchment.
A single word.
Archivists.
Eve lifts her hands to her chest in mock surrender. “Archivists,” she corrects herself with a dip of her chin. “Who lack a sense of humor,” she adds in a mutter.
Despite my best efforts, a small smile curls my lips.
The line of archivists stand, their hidden stares take on an expectant feel.
“Alright,” I say, shifting my weight in my seat as I pull my hands into my lap.
“I’m searching for a ritual. Soul mending.
Not the ritual for mending an animal’s soul, a mortal’s—a person’s.
If such a ritual exists, I need it. I’d also like any recorded history of the ritual’s use, successful or otherwise. ”
In unison, the constructs curtsy before streaking off in different directions.
More constructs appear, materializing out of nothingness in bolts of silver-blue to speed down aisles and vanish between towering bookshelves.
It doesn’t take long for the first to return, her arms stacked with leather-bound tomes.
With a silent snap of her shimmering fingers, the table clears—glasses, books, even the layer of dust pops out of existence, leaving our bracers untouched upon the table.
Slack jawed, I watch in silence as the construct sets her stack before Eve and me.
I’ve only seen the gods wield such ability.
Glancing at Eve, I discover we wear the same shocked expression. The ease with which these constructs wield Aether is perception changing. How can Aether grant such capabilities?
“Why would they help?” Eve asks, her eyes trailing after the construct as she speeds away. “You’re not High Empress yet.”
Again I shrug. “I’m not going to tell them not to,” I offer for lack of a better answer. “We could spend decades searching this place and still come up empty handed.”
I don’t have decades.
I barely have weeks.
“Then we’d better get to it,” Eve says, reaching for the stack of books. She pulls the top, placing the book before her.
A plume of dust from the pages bursts into the air as the cover strikes the table. I lean away as Eve waves a hand through the cloud, a severe grimace upon her face.
Following her lead, I set the next book before me, careful not to jostle its cover. There’s no title, author, or volume number—nothing to indicate what its pages hold. I would have never found what I need had I been left to search these shelves myself.
Bracing myself for the discovery of all nature of answers, I open the book, turn a few pages, and begin scouring the words.