Chapter Thirty-Three #2
Ryc hands Zirzol his bracer and gently grasps my wrist, running a thumb over the House brand.
“Eve was right,” he says with a quiet, unsurprised laugh. “You’re her House.”
“Cal Anore is filled with Unhoused demons,” Cenviri muses. “You’ll find no shortage of pledges here.”
I shake my head. “Eldoterra would not be as welcoming of demons as you have been.”
And the idea of demons pledging themselves in service to me twists my stomach with nausea. I am not my father.
“My House will remain Eve and me. Nothing more,” I add and the strangeness of saying my House sits heavy on my tongue.
Cenviri smiles. “Then I shan’t worry about you pursuing Cal Anore.”
I scoff a laugh and Ryc chuckles.
“Place your arms together and offer your palms,” Cenviri instructs.
Ryc releases me and cold is quick to sweep in where his touch had been. Cenviri takes my hand, his icy-as-death touch startling me, and places it in Ryc’s, curling Ryc’s fingers over mine.
“Do not release one another until the binding is complete,” he says, his firm tone matched by a firm stare.
His frigid fingers finally release me and they swing to one of the dozen, tiny glass jars strung at his waist. Fishing it by its black cord, the one he pulls contains some semblance of a black, gritty powder.
It’s not a material I recognize.
With a push of his thumb, he removes the cork stopper, and the stench of sulfur and smoke—the stench of the hells—strikes my nose without warning or mercy.
The back of my hand flies to my nose as I grimace, the smell threatening to choke me.
“I imagine the scent of milled dragon’s talon would have a visceral reaction from you,” Cenviri says with a small grin as he carefully tilts the jar over our arms.
With three quick taps of his nail, the substance falls, settling into the narrow crevasse between my arm and Ryc’s. Too quickly it grows warm against my skin.
“I’m tempted to ask how you procured it,” I say and his grin grows as he tucks the jar away. “I’m confident I already know.”
Cenviri’s growing smile is all the confirmation needed.
He bartered with Netharis for the rare material.
Dragons were hunted to extinction long before I existed.
Netharis made sure of that.
Without ceremony or announcement, Cenviri swipes the blade across our arms and I tense with the sudden flash of pain. Silver blooms across the thin line, spilling into the crevasse to mix with the black. He repeats the motion twice more, creating a close series of three horizontal slices.
The mixture of blood and dragon’s talon becomes a congealed dark gray matter. Cenviri mutters a few quick phrases and the familiar crawl of blood magic presses against my chest. The mixture responds and races into the wounds, filling them—preventing them from healing.
And it burns.
With a tight inhale, I force myself to remain still, swallowing my gasp.
My fist tightens, nails digging into the fleshy heel of my palm as I watch the concoction darken and solidify.
At the same time, my arm no longer feels as if it’s been cut—it feels as if a tourniquet has been wrapped too tight.
“The tether is complete,” Cenviri says softly. “It’ll remain sore until we return. It will itch. Do not scratch. Do not pick. If you do, the talon will bury itself deeper. Quite an unpleasant experience.”
Striding around us, Cenviri motions with a tilt of his head for us to follow. Ryc, lifting my hand to his lips, presses a soft kiss into the heel of my palm where deep moon-shaped digs linger on my skin. He tucks my hand into the nook of his arm and follows the necromancer.
“You need to be armed,” Cenviri says, glancing over his shoulder. His waist-length silver braid swings with the motion.
“We are armed,” Ryc replies.
“You need to be armed effectively,” Cenviri corrects himself as he leads us into the hall.
Unlike the majority of halls in the citadel, this hall is one of the few closed ones.
No windows, no arches, no crossing breeze.
Also unlike the rest of the citadel, the hall lies empty.
No merchants, wandering demons, or loitering groups of people chatting.
Aside from the three of us, the guards near the hall entrance are the only others present.
Cenviri doesn’t venture far. Swinging open a door on his left, bright silver light spills into the dimly lit hallway. He vanishes through the doorway, leaving it open behind him.
My feet halt before the door, frozen.
As do Ryc’s.
Towering racks of weapons crowd the room. Swords, glaives, daggers, axes and so much more, fill countless hooks and shelves. All bladed by sheer void—blades so black they absorb all the silver light foolish enough to strike them.
Bloodstone.
Pure bloodstone.
The massive storeroom houses enough bloodstone to outfit the entire Royal Guard of Erus with ease. Row upon row, the narrow aisles between them create a dangerous maze.
There has to be thousands of weapons here.
The reason behind Vaelyn’s hesitation to take House Cenviri by force becomes crystal clear.
“How? I thought…” My voice evaporates as I take a slow step into the room. “I thought Netharis kept all bloodstone in the hells.”
“This is but a small fraction. He kept the majority of it,” Cenviri answers from across the room.
Silver hair and pale green eyes appear over the top of a dagger rack.
“But it’s enough for Vaelyn to heavily consider less combative options when dealing with Cal Anore.
” His wicked grin, hidden by the weapon rack, shines in his eyes.
I wander farther into the room, Ryc following, passing the rows of racks and stop at the end of the row Cenviri’s chosen. He plucks a curved dagger from the lower rungs of a rack. Gripping it tight in his left hand, the blade curls back, ending a finger’s width before his forearm.
It’s a beautiful, malicious-looking weapon, reminding me of a demon’s talons. But the design, it’s not meant to pierce through ribs and reach the heart—it doesn’t have to. A blood-bearing cut from a blade of bloodstone is more than enough to be a death sentence.
“And Netharis gave you this?” Ryc asks. His surprise mirrors mine.
He steps past me, approaching a rack of swords on our left.
Various hilts gleam gold, their grips wrapped in black leather, showing little evidence of ever having shed blood.
With a flick of his nail against the flat of a blade, a ringing chord fills the room for a moment.
The haunting note hangs in the air longer than it should before fading.
“One of Netharis’ security measures,” Cenviri replies, collecting a second dagger identical to the first. “He wanted a store of bloodstone here should the Layer Lords ever make good on their whispered uprising.”
I scoff, trailing my fingers along the jeweled pommels of the dual-bladed axes on my right as I move to join Ryc. Rubies, amethyst, citrine, onyx… the colors of blood, bruises, and death.
“The Layer Lords’ threat of overthrowing Netharis is nothing new,” I say, shaking my head.
“You’re right,” Cenviri says with a nod. “And Netharis grew tired of the rumors and instigated the Layer Lords to move against him—with Vaelyn’s help, of course.”
“What?” I ask. “Vaelyn would have—”
I stop myself short.
It would better serve me to shift my perception of Vaelyn simply being involved in a game of manipulation to that of him being the conductor. Netharis claimed power and did what he thought necessary to retain it. Vaelyn overturned everything in pursuit of the same.
Neither is acceptable.
And yet one lives while the other has found the void.
Vaelyn, for all his faults, never hid who he truly was. I simply refused to see it. Not anymore.
“Vaelyn convinced Kassil that he, the heir of the hells, could open the vaults of bloodstone,” Cenviri continues and I clamp my mouth shut to listen.
“Together, they proceeded to develop a plan. The Lord of Wrath was to take the hells. It emboldened Kassil and he began to make demands, believing himself to have the upper hand against Netharis.”
The motivation for Netharis’ sudden agreement to the marriage contract after centuries of not giving an answer becomes clearer than I’d like. I was used as baited hope. Naturally, Kassil would want to become the god of death—it’s all he ever talked about when we were alone.
I was supposed to help get him there.
I never had interest in that.
The convergence of half a dozen half truths wrapped in countless lies begins to paint a rather surreal and vivid picture. Netharis giving me three days to sign the marriage contract was by design—not a kindness. Netharis knew Kassil would back me into a corner and I would retaliate.
He expected me to kill Kassil.
Had Netharis done it, it would have turned Kassil into a martyr among the Layer Lords. And after my Tower quaking display days earlier… Netharis held confidence I could kill the archdemon.
A bitter scoff escapes me as a tiny smile curls my lips.
I escaped instead.
Ruined their little plan.
“Druka tells me when you escaped the hells, Netharis began to fall apart,” Cenviri says. “She was almost convinced he cared for his daughter.”
“Impossible,” I counter in a near whisper. “Netharis only cares for himself.”
“Correct. And Vaelyn follows closely in his footsteps,” Cenviri adds.
His wicked smile returns and he snags a black leather sheath from the bottom of the rack.
Tucking the blade into it, he fastens it to his robe belt.
As he repeats the process for the second, he says, “Where Netharis was paranoid concerning his Generals, Vaelyn is paranoid concerning the elder gods.”
“The primordials?” Ryc asks, his dark brows creasing.
Cenviri nods. “In fact, in the contract he offered, he sought to have me hunt and end these slumbering gods. Needless to say, I declined.”
My mind becomes a whirlwind of thoughts and I take a step backward. Ryc’s hand finds the small of my back, offering steadying support.