Chapter 43
I smelled the rotting flesh, a sour stench preserved by the cold. Chills were strange on my wrinkling skin, like wilted petals stabbed by a thousand needles. As I fell deeper into the depths of the castle, the cold air crawled beneath the servant linen I wore and tore away any warmth.
Torches were stabbed into the stone walls, revealing an endless staircase where light eventually died, though the death remained brief as the dark was warped by another guiding torch, leading the god and me further into the bowels.
With weak, old bones, I held onto the divots between the wall’s stones, trying to keep balance—I waddled as the old beggar did when she’d weave through the streets of Sariem. It was easier to uphold my mask this way. If I began to step in young stride, my body would defy my memories, and she might slip from my veneer.
The God of Deception lived within me, though he was quiet and refused my questions. I’d ceased my incessant curiosities when he stabbed all of his talons into my mind with scraping horns and a carving tail. He did not wish to speak to me, which spoke enough—it was not I who called him back, but my aim to save those in the prisons.
Tap, tap, tap.
The echo disrupted my cadence down the stairwell. Deceit held me tightly enough to remind me he was there, lurking. Like lead, he pressed against me, as though to convey that he could end me in an instant. Flatten me beneath his godly, unholy feet. Though his presence met me like a threat, it was comforting to know he was with me once again.
Air slipped from my ragged lips like mist, and my hands rubbed my arms for warmth.
Teeth chattering, I was under shiver’s spell.
The spiral staircase flattened at the edge of torchlight. Armor clamored in the distance. My blood began to run cold, inflicted by the harshness of winter and the fear of being caught.
Before Deceit could remind me, I retold his mantra—Death awaits us all.
The tips of his lipless mouth stab against my skull. Perhaps it was a smile goaded by the fact that I, too, was the weakness of mankind. That, in Deceit’s absence, I filled my own mind with his eerie voice to offer myself whatever assurance I could give. I had missed Deceit, despite all that was spoken and all the rage he festered before leaving me.
The god’s tail scratched at my heart, and he coiled around it, slowing my heartbeat. Comforting me from my fears.
My body sagged against a corner where guards’ voices rumbled. Tucking my wispy hair behind my ear, I peered around the wall to see two guards at the prison’s door.
“Another?” One asked.
“Aye, died this morning. Or was it yesterday?” He pondered with his mouth’s scar crumpling in a vile grin.
“Doesn’t matter much. Their bodies are slow to rot in the cold.”
“But when is the diener going to fetch the dead bugger? Smells fucking disgusting down here.”
“Only until tomorrow, my friend.” His hearty laughter upset the deranged at the other side of the door, their manic screams rupturing. The guards ignored it.
“Tomorrow, we’ll watch them all die at the guillotine.”
“You will. I’ll be down here, freezing my arse off.”
“’Ello, lads!” I threw myself around the corner.
Deceit kept his hold around my heart—a heart that would shatter in dread without him.
Two burly men startled before the frail woman I was.
“Aye, what are you doing down here?” The question came muffled—a guard held a rag to his nose, deafening the smell of decay.
Deceit seeped sureness into my mind.
“I heard you have a body problem.” My voice was hoarse from the elder’s brittle throat.
“That lazy diener asked I run my ragged, old bones down here to see how many froze.”
“They’re all freezing,” the other guard said flatly.
“I’d imagine in these conditions.” I let chills hurry up my skin with a dramatized shiver.
“You keep it bloody cold down here.”
I stepped forward to the door of oak and iron, but a guard’s gauntlet halted my gait.
“Only the diener is allowed.”
“Well, he ain’t here, and I am,” I said in a haggard voice.
“So, if you don’t mind, I’d prefer to return with my chore complete.”
The other spoke.
“Old lady, the diener doesn’t send others to do his work.”
I addressed both, relishing the god's confidence.
“These are dark days, my sirs, and people keep rolling over dead. It ain’t my fault the diener can’t keep up with demand, but it is my problem if I come back without any news.”
“Only one died,” claimed the scarred one.
My forehead skin folded as my brows rose.
“When did you last check?”
“At the twelfth hour.”
“No, mate,” said the guard with a rag to his beak.
“It was earlier than that. Closer to the fifth.”
“No, the twelfth.”
The rag whisked in his hand.
“No, I remember, the fifth, ‘cause that bloody lunatic was screaming and wailing before the first crow of day.”
The guard’s fingers followed his brawny chin. He looked past us at the stone wall.
“Fuck, these days all blend together down here.”
I reached for the handle.
“Right, so, if you don’t mind.”
The guard with a rag set his hand upon my shoulder.
“Go in alone, yeah? I think I might lose my meal if I get any closer to the stench.”
“No bother. My nose stopped doing me any good nearly a decade ago,” I said, my stomach turning in the foul stench.
“Keep away from the bars,” the scarred man warned.
“We’ve got a couple mad ones in there.”
The door latched behind me, and I stood alone. It appeared like an endless tunnel, framed by iron bars and dim firelight. It left me uneasy, standing where a muddle of outcasts and the unhinged congregated.
Keep your steps, Rhoswen, the god commanded, so I obeyed, walking further into my father’s dungeon.
Prisoners dwelled in the shadows, but I could not make out figures beyond the bars. Wincing into the dark, nothing stirred except dark breath.
I cannot see anyone, I uttered within.
Do you need to call upon your Shadow for sight? Deceit scorned.
Do not make light of it, Deceit. I will never call for that damn Shadow.
The god’s talons grazed my mind. There is no light, Rhoswen.
Gods, you are insufferable.
His grin punctured my skull. And yet you missed my company.
Don’t let it go to your head. If you get any heavier, I’ll flatten.
“A soft thing, she is… So soft.” A twisted whisper came from the shadows. “So warm.”
I slipped my hand beneath my linens and grabbed my dagger.
As I passed a cell, the edge of my sight stretched. Gnarled fingers emerged from the dark and unfolded. A bone connected to the hand, covered in skin of pale moonlight and black rot. Too thin, too broken, the hand reached for me past the bars.
It clamped my arm, yanking me back with strength it should not own.
“Release me,” I demanded, not loud enough to tell the guards I’d shunned their warnings of deranged prisoners.
“Shh.” A mouth appeared with black gums, obscure behind iron bars. Festering in frostbite, the sunken cheeks then fell back into the dark. There was only a fleck of light where the eyes might be.
“Do not wake them.” His voice was mangled by madness, and his tongue glazed over rotten teeth. His other hand then appeared, lifted to his mouth, and yanked his tongue. He screamed.
The acid in my stomach crept to my throat.
He seemed to growl at himself as his hand recoiled from his tongue.
“They can taste warmth, and when they find it—” A shrilling laugh escaped his throat.
“They will tear you apart.” Laughter turned to horrid weeping, but his grin stayed, perhaps frozen in place.
I began to curdle the breath in my lungs, to speak in magic and demand he fall into peaceful rest, but the god held back the air.
His mind is already soured, child, Deceit uttered. Your magic will do nothing.
I looked away from the prisoner, unable to withhold the sight any longer. In a desperate jerk, I ripped myself from the man, his fingers cracking off me.
“She does not listen to us,” he whispered.
“She will become stiff, just like the others, when warmth is taken from her.” And with a disturbed cackle, he fell back into the crypts of his cell.
I continued down the center of the passageway at a hurried pace.
A distortion of whispers and screams met me from all sides. Hands reached for me and rattled the bars.
“Don’t let them bury me,” one wept.
“The voice. I only did as it told me,” another claimed.
“They can’t see, but they know I was right. I was right. I was right.”
Horrid words met me from all sides.
Deceit released a long rumble, a single note, that drowned out all others.
Thank you. I took a slow breath, looking at my feet and away from the frostbitten hands.
Before I walked far, Deceit spoke, Look, child.
I lifted my eyes to the cell at my left, Deceit scraping my eyes with his.
“Gwendolyne,” I hushed my cry. My heart leaped.
Gwendolyne’s porcelain skin screeched as she turned to me. Rather, to the elder woman I wore. Lulls of soft, orange light reflected on her skin, drawing attention to the frost covering her. Beyond her, I saw no others. She sat still. Crystalized.
My skin snapped, each wrinkle smoothing in a quick stretch.
I charged for the prison and curled my fingers around the iron bars.
“Rhoswen?” Her cheeks flexed—a layer of frost cracked on her skin. Sounding like unwetted gears, she rose and joined me beside the bars.
“What are you doing here? H-how are you here?”
The iron lock clanked it in my hand.
“I need to get you out of here.” I stabbed my dagger’s point and a pin into the keyhole.
“No, child.”
I did not regard Gwendolyne’s words.
“I will mask myself as one of the guards. There were only two—”
“Rhoswen, no,” Gwendolyne interrupted with authority.
“No?” I halted my picklock.
“What? Why?”
“Child.” Another voice caressed my back. It was a feminine voice, an intoxicating whisper.
“You should not be dwelling in the prison.”
My heart stopped.
“Rhoswen, you need to leave,” Gwendolyne demanded, her pale blue, starry eyes set upon me.
A hand touched my back, sending a cold tremor up my spine. My scalp was tender in chills.
I turned, twisting my feet. My face fell ashen.
The Matron of Shadows.
Deceit?
“He is no longer there, child,” Constantine spoke in all-knowing.
“My call, you could not hear it?”
I shuddered, knowing I heard no such call—that eerie lullaby that summoned Shadows and cast out gods.
Constantine’s curling lips were framed by her black hair.
“It brings me gladness you could not. Such means you are growing accustomed to the Shadow’s presence.”
“Rhoswen? What does she speak of?” Gwendolyne asked.
Standing between the two, I divided the Matron of Shadows and the Mother of the Guild.
“You harbor many secrets, child.” Constantine seized a strand of my hair, twirling it around her long finger.
“Secrets from the gods, secrets from men, and even secrets from young Lord Alistair. But he, too, keeps secrets.”
“Do not speak of him,” I said through my clenched jaw. My fist tightened at my dagger’s hilt.
“Tell me, Davina, when will you finally bring forth honesty?”
“What did you…?” I fell dry of words. The stone walls caved in around me, suffocating me of thought and breath.
Gwendolyne spoke in the distance.
“Rhoswen, what did she call you?”
Constantine cradled my ashen face.
“I have many eyes, Davina Torrance.”
The matron spoke my name again, and the ground crumbled beneath my feet. Though somehow, I stayed standing, as though something fused my bones upright.
The matron purred.
“A Shadow, my beloved child, has chosen you. And drawn of the Shadows, secrets are revealed.”
“Rhoswen, what does she speak of?” Gwendolyne’s voice echoed at my back.
Numb to Gwendolyne’s question, I spoke to Constantine alone.
“You are mistaken,” I said in a weak breath, though I knew my pleas were meaningless.
Constantine knew. My Shadow dwelled in her eye’s reflection. It was in my mind, throughout my body, where the God of Deception should be.
I lowered my sights to my wrists, and the veins were drenched in black.
“Do not fret, my child.” With each word the matron spoke, the Shadow melded into me.
“Your crown will remain unspoken by me.”
“Rhoswen?” A glass tear shattered upon the ground.
I turned again, leaving Constantine at my back.
Gwendolyne was no longer alone. Shadows lightened. In the dark of the cell, there were beyond ten guild members huddled in the corners, scraping their skin for warmth. One lay nearest to the window, their mouth slacked open. Lifeless. I peered around myself, seeing the neighboring cells filled with guild members.
A Feytra, server to the Goddess of Fire, sat in shivering, handless. Bandages covered her wrists, hardened in old blood. Another, a Bloodletter—server to the God of Carnage and the Goddess of Wisdom—was shackled by ten chains. He could not even comfort himself.
“This is what will become of the gods, Davina,” Constantine whispered at my side.
“They will fall into ruin. There is no hope for them.”
“Rhoswen, why does she keep calling you that?” Gwendolyne begged for an answer.
I looked back at Gwendolyne with water pouring down my cheeks. As though my tears held writing, Gwendolyne understood.
“Paden’s daughter… She is you,” Gwendolyne hushed.
My words could not form. My tongue knotted behind my lips. Since I’d fled that night as a girl, the princess’s name had never been spoken over me. Never, apart from the God of Deception, but always within the safety of my mind.
Gwendolyn held my gaze.
“The vision of Sight. A new crown will rise.”
I tread nearer to the iron gate.
“A new crown? What are you talking about?”
From the dark, another man crept towards the bars. He limped upon one foot, stained with frostbite. His eyes were pale, distant. A servant to the God of Sight.
“Wylie?” I asked. I knew him from when the guild had fallen.
He had told me that Vera was in the castle.
Wylie’s eyes rolled back.
“Davina Torrance.” His voice was strange amidst Sight’s sway.
“The lost princess of Andrael. Your birthright remains sewn to your name.”
I asked, the question never seeming relevant until now.
“Which name?”
He continued.
“Mourn those whose death is imminent. This is their place in the tapestry of fate. And from their deaths, the end of days will be ushered in. Blood bleeds beneath the lightless sky, yet the white rose blooms from the desolate soil, and a new crown will rise from the ashes of our deaths.”
The matron reached out and cupped Wylie’s face. Gwendolyne startled, and black ink seeped from Constantine’s fingertips and into Wylie’s skin. He began to convulse, but his head was held steady in her hold.
“Let him go,” I cried, and the deranged men yelled with me.
The matron pressed her thumbs against Wylie’s open eyes, drenching them in ink. Gwendolyne grabbed Wylie, her skin tolling like a bell against the ground. Her ice-frosted skin cracked. Constantine released her hold, and Wylie trembled to his knees and fell to the stone ground.
I did not think. Ration had lost me. I lifted my blade above my head and sent it down to the matron’s heartless chest. Before her gown could be cut, the blade froze. I froze. Around my bones, the Shadow crippled my motions, chaining me up like the Bloodletter.
Constantine’s lips stretched into a devious curl.
My fingers splayed, and the dagger fell from my grip, clanking on the stone floor. In deadly grace, Constantine folded herself and gathered the blade from the ground. She concealed it within her gown, and the Shadow released me.
I bent down and put my hand on Wylie’s back. No breaths.
I shot up with pounding veins.
“You killed him!”
“No, princess,” she purred, and I yearned to rip the matron’s tongue from her mouth.
“He is not dead. His soul now dangles in Shadow’s noose, until the day his body releases him.”
“You trapped him within himself.” My glare was as sharp as my voice.
A frigid, glassy touch wrapped around my wrist—Gwendolyne took my arm and wiped my skin as though to wipe away the black blood from my veins.
“What has happened to you, child?” Another glass tear shattered on the stone at her feet.
“The Shadows have sanctified her,” Constantine spoke in her ethereal song.
“Far more than the gods ever could.” The matron took my arm from Gwendolyne.
“Come, Davina. You mustn’t intervene in the guild’s fate.”
I twisted myself from her hold.
“I-I cannot leave.”
“You must leave,” Gwendolyne said.
“What? What do you mean?” I asked.
“I came to save you. I need to save you.”
Gwendolyne held my gaze.
“Rhoswen, we have mourned our deaths within many nights of lament. It is not for you to save us.”
“I will save you,” I cried, holding her hands and lifting them to my face—to give her my warmth, my tears.
“Child,” Gwendolyn hushed.
“The name you carry brings you great suffering. The gods will be pleased you have come to us, and they will look at you in favor.” Her porcelain palm gliding along my skin.
“I release you from your obligations to save us from the king’s guillotine. Deny the Shadows, Rhoswen, and continue the fight.”
Constantine’s voice charmed the cells in a strange tune.
“Gwendolyne, you and your people are a curse on this age. If the king did not wish you to die before all, I would send my children to tear you apart.”
Gwendolyne’s flawless skin showed her anger.
“Matron, what a blessing it would be to be torn by Shadows rather than be damned to this age where your children consume the good of the gods. You will die not long after I.”
“When I die, my sacrifice will mark forth something far greater.” Constantine set her curling fingers on my shoulder, speaking to my back.
“Come, my child.”
“I cannot leave you,” I whispered my mourning.
A solemn smile cracked Gwendolyne’s lip.
“The God of Sight declared, our deaths are for the greater good.”
“There is no good,” I cried.
“Not in this damn place.”
“Then let us take heart in the lesser evil.” Gwendolyne spoke calmly.
“Leave, Rhoswen. The gods deem it so. You must live, so that we might live through you. Do not fret. We will be standing in the Everlaides soon.”
Constantine’s sureness matched Gwendolyne’s.
“Your gods will fall from their thrones.”
Gwendolyne cradled my cheeks.
“Goodbye, child. We will see each other again in the afterlife.”
In a corralling bind, Constantine wrapped her arm around me and drew me away. Gwendolyne’s fingers fell from my cheeks, her final touch leaving my skin burning from the bitter cold. I wanted to feel it, forever—the touch of the woman who took me from the streets of Sariem, saved my life, and gave me a home.
There was a deeper cold lingering, etched into my bones and channeling through my blood. The Shadow did not allow me to turn back, to see my brothers and sisters one last time before they stood before my father’s guillotine.
“I hate you,” I managed to utter through gritting teeth.
“You will see all one day, Davina. And until that day, Rhoswen Fallen will walk in line with Shadow’s step.” The matron halted before the outlet and turned towards me.
Had I command over myself, I would have refused her and left, but the Shadow demanded I look at their mother.
“Davina,” Constantine hushed.
“As I have spoken, your bloodline will remain harbored in secret by the Shadows. They have plans for you. Tragically, wonderous plans.”
“I will have no part in your fucking plans.”
“No, child, not my plans. My children’s plans.” Constantine lifted her hand to the door, though halted before she knocked.
“Should I find you in search of the guild’s freedom, I will ensure the Shadows shackle you until the guild’s final breath. Do not forget, my children have many eyes.” And she demanded.
“Mold your skin to the old woman. You will leave as you came.”
The Shadow could not wield the god’s magic, but I cannot say it did not influence my actions. My skin morphed, my bones became brittle, and the elder woman consumed my flesh. Each step taken was taken by the Shadow’s influence, not mine.
The door shut behind me. The shackled guild tucked away with the deranged that wailed to the moon.
Defeat had met me this night, and it stabbed my heart with a stake of anger.
My brothers. My sisters. I had failed them.