Chapter 54 #2
"The Phantom Moon brought you to me. Maybe that was all that was supposed to happen for now. And it's enough."
"You really think so?"
I pressed her hand to my heart and nodded. "I had to wait three hundred years to find you. I knew from the first moment I saw you that there was no one else for me but you, so, yes, it's enough. We just have to figure out what we're supposed to do next. You and me."
"You and me." Although her smile was weak, her eyes shone with renewed hope and a deep strength that came from her soul.
I pulled her in for a kiss.
Her lips barely touched mine when the air beside us screamed and split apart with a sound like tearing silk. Dark energy crackled around us, emitting smoke.
Quickly, I pushed Elariya behind me and drew my sword, ready for battle.
A ragged portal tore at the air and expelled a broken body covered in blood and bruises.
Fuck, it was one of my guards.
He tumbled onto the ground and lay there sprawled, his armor slick with black liquid. I'd seen that substance before.
Night Mother's kiss. The same poison that killed my father.
A stone dropped into the pit of my stomach, and my mind struggled to process what I was truly seeing.
It wasn't until the guard rolled his head to the side that I realized it was Marcus, the same guard I'd spared last week when I found out his baby had the Slivershade blight.
Bastian and the others raced outside upon hearing the commotion. I threw up a shield quickly to hold them back. Apart from Arielle, one touch of the Night Mother's kiss and they'd die.
Within seconds, they noticed the black liquid on Marcus and understood why I'd kept them away.
"Gods, what's happening?" Elariya winced.
"Stay back." I held up my hand and cast a shield around her, too. It shouldn't harm her, either, but I didn't want to take any risks.
Marcus' eyes fluttered open, and he looked straight at me. I was shocked to see he was still alive.
“Lord Nightblade. Don’t come near me.” When he coughed, black liquid spilled from his lips. His hands trembled as he tried to raise them. “I’ve been poisoned.”
“What happened to you, Marcus?” I stepped closer, heart hammering. “Who poisoned you?”
“I… did it myself.” His chest seized, a ragged breath tearing through him.
My eyes widened. “Why?”
“To find the truth… my king.” His voice cracked on the last word, but I felt the respect he honored me.
“No time. Must be quick. I stole… a compass.” His hand shook as he fumbled at his side, pressing the device into my palm.
“Found a way into the camp. But…I had to take Night Mother’s kiss to breach the wards. ”
He convulsed, choking down another mouthful of black fluid.
“It’s the only way in,” he rasped. “To see their secrets… you must lose your essence. To die. Unless they give you the protective tonic.”
“Who is they?” I demanded.
“I don’t know. They wore black cloaks. They whispered with no lips. Watched with no eyes.” His body shuddered violently. “Use the compass I gave you. Go back to Kyphuus. Go before they return. You’ll be shocked by what you find.”
My blood ran cold. “What’s there, Marcus?”
“Death.” He wheezed. “Death and sorcery of the darkest kind. They used the herbs… for a ritual I’ve never seen before. Too late. I was too late. They killed them all.” His voice cracked. “Even the children.”
He coughed harder, every word ripped from him. “I don’t know what they’re planning. But it’s big. Go see for yourself. Then…find the necromancer. The one they call… the Soul Weaver.”
I stiffened. I knew the name. The Soul Weaver was more demon than necromancer and did the bidding of anyone who could pad his pockets with enough gold or magic. He was dangerous, unpredictable, and almost as elusive as the Seer.
Marcus shuddered, spit flecked with tar spraying his chin. “He performed the spells.” The words rattled out of him like the last grains of sand in an hourglass.
“The darkness is coming, my King. They’re coming for all of us.” His voice broke into a ragged scream. “You are being watched. Those hollow eyes. Gods, those hollow eyes!”
He convulsed, screaming, black liquid pouring from his mouth and nose.
“Marcus!”
His gaze flicked to mine one last time, full of pleading.
“Take care of my little girl. Tell her… I didn’t die a traitor.
Not to my king. Not to Galaythia.” His voice cracked into a final, desperate cry then words I didn’t understand.
An old tongue. Ancient. Desperate. “Asailaeth! Asailaeth! Asailaeth!”
Tar spewed out of his mouth, his nose, his eyes.
He was dead before he even drew his last breath. The tar swallowed him whole, slick and relentless, devouring him from the inside out. It had to be down to the sheer volume of poison he’d taken. I’d never witnessed anything like it. Not even in the worst of battles.
After my father’s attack, we had to use a spell to move his body, ensuring no one else was contaminated.
But Marcus… Marcus rotted in front of us.
The poison gnawed through his armor, eating flesh and bone until all that remained was a blackened puddle.
Then, as if the world itself rejected him, the remnants unraveled into smoke and scattered on the wind, drifting away as if he’d never existed.
Marcus—the guard who’d sacrificed his life for his baby and now his kingdom.
Thinking fast, I swept my hand through the air, searching for lingering traces of the poison. Nothing was there. The poison had burned itself out.
I lowered my shield, and Bastian and the others stepped forward.
“We have to go,” I said before hesitation could steal our momentum. “Garrick, stay with—”
“I’m going with you.” Garrick moved to my side, his face stern. “You expect me to let you rush into Gods know what alone? If anything happens, I’m the only one who can heal wounds carved by dark magic.”
He was right. I gave a short nod.
“I’ll stay with Elariya,” Arielle offered, rushing to her side. “Go. Quickly.”
My gaze drifted to Elariya. Her eyes were wide, her hands trembling. This was her first glimpse into the true darkness of my world.
“Be careful,” she called after me.
I inclined my head once more, then conjured the compass I’d received from Marcus, pulling it from its astral pocket. Its metal gleamed faintly in the sunlight.
With a flick of my hand, I portaled us to Kyphuus.
The compass led us right back to where we’d stood last week, but it looked absolutely nothing like then.
Last week, we’d roamed woods filled with tall evergreen and blue Sequoia, then we’d ended up in an ivy-covered grove. Now, we were surrounded by clusters of rotting skeletal trees that looked like they’d been consumed by hellfire.
It was definitely the same place. I could still feel the bitter edge of dark magic in the air, but now we were seeing beyond the glamour.
There was smoke billowing into the sky not too far ahead. We moved toward it.
The woodland path deceived us, appearing flat until we reached the lip where the forest floor dropped into a dell, steep-sided and cloaked in mist.
The wind shifted, clearing the mist, and we stopped short as horror revealed itself.
Broken bodies lay arranged in a perfect circle. At least a hundred of them. Or more. They were all Fae. Males. Females. Children.
"Sweet fucking gods," Garrick breathed, his hand moving instinctively to his sword hilt.
I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. All I could do was stand there and take in the hellish desecration laid bare before me.
The dead Fae had been placed with ritualistic precision, as though some monstrous hand had set each piece of the offering with care.
Their faces were frozen in silent screams, eyes wide and staring at the mottled gray sky, as if they had stared at something none of us could see.
Fingers snapped backward at grotesque angles, forced into reaching gestures toward the circle’s heart. Bones jutted through skin, pale and sharp against the blackened earth.
At the circle’s center, symbols had been carved so deep into the soil they’d cut into the earth’s marrow. The lines bled smoke, thin, writhing tendrils that drifted into hazy shapes of twisted faces with hollow eyes and mouths open in soundless wails.
The stench hit next. Sulfur and scorched iron, undercut by the faint, cloying sweetness of rot. But not a single fly dared touch them. The air above the corpses hung unnaturally still, as if even nature recoiled from what had been done here.
These Fae hadn’t just died. They’d been desecrated. Sacrificed.
And they looked like they’d been dead for weeks.
I was right when I’d thought we were too late. We always were.