Chapter 27
SERIS
The cellar smelled wrong.
Not the mustiness of old stone. Something colder.
I gripped the hilt of the blade Kaelen had pressed into my hand that morning, fingers slick. Behind me, Daemon's team spread into formation without a sound. Years of operating together had made them fluent in silence.
Malzaun raised a fist. We stopped. He looked back at Daemon.
Daemon stepped to the front. Our team lined the walls of the cellar, waiting to exit into the hall.
"Something's off," Daemon murmured beside me. "Kael."
Kael moved up to the entrance. His footsteps didn’t make a sound. He slipped into the hall alone. For a brief moment, we held our breaths in the suffocating silence. Beside me, Kane shifted his grip on his weapon, sensing the same unnatural tension in the air.
I felt it too. The air pressed against my skin with unnatural weight, carrying the same wrongness I’d sensed in the tunnels.
This wasn’t simply the pressure of war.
This was hunger.
"Clear," Kael whispered from the other side of the wall.
Clear.
Malzaun and Daemon exchanged a brief, puzzled look, but we moved forward anyway.
Malzaun gestured his veterans ahead as we made our way toward the throne room. They moved as one, checking corners, weapons ready but controlled. We followed in their wake, stepping carefully past servants who registered our presence with less awareness than furniture.
Kael’s eyes scanned the corridor. "Something’s off. We should reassess."
"We can’t," Daemon said quietly. "We’ve run out of time."
The stairwell spiraled upward, leading to the chamber before the throne room. Our footsteps should have echoed. Instead, the stone swallowed sound, muting everything except my own heartbeat.
We emerged into the chamber, and found it empty.
Since entering the castle, we hadn’t seen a single soul.
"The throne room's ahead," Daemon said.
Malzaun held up a hand. We stopped again. He directed his men into formation with silent signals. One turn was all that separated us from the throne, and the Devourer.
We crouched low and moved along the wall.
When we finally made the turn, we found something wrong.
The door was open.
Not ajar. Not partially revealed. Wide open, both panels pushed back against the walls as if welcoming guests to a feast.
Daemon went still in the way that meant his mind was racing. "That's never open."
"A trap," Kael finished. "He knows we’re coming."
I reached for the Veil carefully, just enough to sense beyond normal perception. The world fractured at the edges. Reality felt paper-thin here, stretched over something vast and hungry that pressed against it like a face against glass.
The Devourer was close.
So close I could taste its anticipation.
"We go forward," I said.
Daemon looked at me. "Seris, "
"It knows we’re here. It’s been waiting." My hand found his. "There’s no sneaking past this."
His fingers tightened around mine. Then he nodded once and released me, shadows already gathering at his shoulders.
Malzaun moved his veterans into an advance formation. They flowed through the open doors, weapons ready, covering angles with practiced precision.
The air thickened.
The pressure that had been building since the cellar suddenly snapped like a rope pulled too tight.
Behind us, boots struck stone.
I spun.
Soldiers poured from doorways we’d passed, sealing off our retreat, forming a wall of shields and spears between us and escape.
"Forward!" Malzaun roared. "Get her to the throne!"
His veterans surged into defensive positions, creating a barrier between us and the ambush. Twenty elites against the full force of the castle guard.
Steel clashed in the narrow corridor as the first wave hit.
Outnumbered, but unyielding.
They cut down anyone who came within reach, holding the line with brutal precision. Malzaun shouted orders from the rear, cutting down the few who broke through their formation.
"We can't leave them!" I started back, but Daemon caught my arm.
"That’s exactly what we have to do."
"They'll die!"
"They know." His voice cut through the chaos. "Malzaun!"
The captain didn't turn. His blade flashed, parrying a spear thrust, and his voice carried over the combat. "Move!"
One of his veterans fell. Another stepped into the gap without hesitation.
"Seris." Daemon's hand framed my face, forcing me to look at him. "They chose this. Honor that choice."
Zephyr stepped toward Malzaun and set his feet. He fired through the gaps, doing what he could to support the line, but there were too many enemies and not enough arrows.
He glanced back at us. "We have to go. Now."
The throne room doors waited at the end of the hall.
Malzaun's unit fought with desperate precision, holding the corridor against overwhelming numbers. They were buying us time measured in heartbeats. I forced my attention away from them and fixed my gaze ahead.
We ran.
Daemon matched my pace. Kael and Kane flanked us. Zephyr brought up the rear, loosing arrows as he moved backward, covering Malzaun’s line for as long as he could.
The throne room doors loomed closer.
Twenty feet.
Fifteen.
Behind us, a scream, cut off too quickly.
Ten feet.
The shadows beyond the doors writhed with a wrongness that made my teeth ache.
Five.
"Don’t give them an inch!" Malzaun bellowed, defiant.
We crossed the threshold.
The doors slammed shut behind us.
Steel clashed on the other side, fainter now, muffled by wood, magic, and the weight of what we'd entered.
I pressed my forehead against the carved surface, feeling the battle through it. Malzaun's unit was fighting with everything they had, buying us seconds that tasted like blood.
I turned from the doors.
And faced the throne.
The Hollow Throne sat at the chamber's far end, raised on a platform of black stone. It pulsed, not visibly, not in any way I could name, but I felt it in my bones. It beat to a rhythm that matched nothing living or of this world.
Daemon stood beside me, shadows coiling around his frame like living things. He had always kept some of his power in reserve to slow the effects of the curse, but now he let it burn as brightly as it could.
"It's waiting," he said quietly.
"For what?"
"For us."
I looked toward the far end of the vast throne room.
A figure sat unnervingly still upon the throne.
The Veil sang against my blood, recognizing its own reflection, twisted into something monstrous.
Behind us, beyond the sealed doors, Malzaun's veterans had bought our presence here with their lives.
Ahead, the Devourer waited.