Chapter 32
NICO
Istared up at the spires on the Draconi fortress.
And up.
And up.
This place seemed bigger than the last time I was here, an immovable mountain of stone and steel, perched on an island just outside of Venice, hidden from the world by ancient, powerful wards.
We’d taken a convoluted route to avoid being followed, but now that we were inside, even my father couldn’t find me.
“This is a terrible idea,” I muttered beneath my breath. “The worst so far.”
Emberline punched me lightly in the shoulder. “You always say that. Things usually work out in the end.”
“Except when everything ends up on fire.”
“Hmmm. Well, I did say usually. But look around, everything is made of stone and seems practically indestructible. I’m sure this will be fine.” Her face brightened. “In fact, if you…”
I pointed my finger in her face. “Do not make a death joke right now. I mean it, princess.”
She stuck out her bottom lip.
“There he is,” Dante announced as Severin stalked across the grass toward us, broad shoulders rolling with every step. “Thank you for letting us use the training yard; I know you’re busy.”
“Anything for Nico, and besides, I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” Severin slapped me on the back, hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. “And anything to bring that fucker Blackwood to his knees and put Giovanni in a shallow grave. Burning him is too good a fate.”
“This is a bad idea, Sev.” I decided if anyone was going to listen to reason, it was my master. “My magic isn’t meant for this realm. The destruction I could cause…”
“Will be nonexistent. We’ve prepared a warded training area especially for you. Walls strong enough to stand up to anything. Fire. Lightning. A nuclear blast. First, let’s see what you’re capable of, then I’ll plan my attack around your powers.”
“My magic is like none of those things.” I shifted my weight, studying the older vampire. “It’s not elemental, Sev, it’s… primordial. Cosmic. In other words, not meant for the physical constraints of this realm. And besides, it’s locked down by Emilia’s magic, which none of us can undo.”
I felt better saying that out loud.
My get-out-of-jail-free card, my one saving grace, since everyone around me had lost their godsdamn minds.
“Who do you think cast the wards?” He winked, sounding far too jovial for someone who was about to die. “They’re clever, really. You step through, and every trace of Emilia’s containment spell is removed. When you exit the training area, her spell locks back into place. Nothing to worry about.”
“Do you remember that mission we went on in the mountains of Romania? The one you said not to worry about? The one that ended up being a total clusterfuck? This will be a hundred times worse.”
“Nonsense. Nothing could possibly be worse than Romania.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” I muttered.
He just clapped his beefy hand on my shoulder and steered me past the high stone walls and the groups of sparring trainees, more than I’d ever seen on the island at once.
“I see you’ve pulled everyone in. How many soldiers total?”
“Nearly four thousand. Better trained than Blackwood’s guards, even if they don’t all have magic.
Still, a knife slips between ribs just as easily, whether you’re gifted or not.
We know every meter of this city, and Lady Valeria has graciously given me access to her spy network, which has proven invaluable. ”
Four thousand.
I did a quick calculation as we rounded the high outer wall and crossed the churned-up training fields, avoiding clumps of grass where booted feet had dug in during mock battle.
That might be enough. We didn’t have solid numbers on the guards, but they couldn’t number more than a few hundred.
And while Giovanni had paid mercenaries and a few turncoat Dynasty soldiers guarding him, they couldn’t amount to more than a few dozen.
A faint flare of hope ignited at the thought of driving my father out of Venice for good.
But right now, I had to talk sense into my old master.
We crossed the wide training field, heading for a squared-off area of rocky, uneven ground, surrounded by a shimmering energy field.
The place I was probably going to die, I thought grimly.
“Sev, this is a mistake.” I stopped, and after a few more steps, he turned to face me, brow pinched together.
Severin was a battle-scarred warrior, broad and bulked out with muscle, used to barreling through whatever barriers stood in his way.
But releasing my magic without fully understanding the consequences wasn’t something any of us—especially me—should rush into.
“No, it’s not. I’ve always seen something special inside of you, Nico, something bigger than all of this.
” He swept a scarred hand across the fortress, the training grounds, and my friends watching the two of us.
“Even as a boy, starved from the streets, darkness burned inside of you, more brightly than anything I’d ever seen.
You were exceptional, Nico. Then Emilia locked it away,” he said, somewhat sadly.
Truth, my magic murmured.
I turned so Severin didn’t see my throat clogged with emotion, how my heart burned beneath his praise. No one—except for my friends—had ever believed in me. And after everything my father had done and said, I was afraid to believe I was worth anything at all.
“When you were young, I understood. Such power was nothing a child should be responsible for, but now… now you are ready.” He gripped my arms, forcing me to look at him, his expression fiercely proud.
“Embrace what you are and become everything you are afraid of. That’s the only way this works.
Fear is all that holds you back, so don’t give in to it. ”
Dear gods, I was going to destroy us all.
“You and Emberline should team up.” I shook my head, just imagining that absolute disaster. “Bad plans and fancy speeches and all of that. The two of you would be insufferable.”
“More like unstoppable.” He winked. “Now, get in there and show us what you can do. Make me proud.”
Make you dead is more like it.
“You’re sure this ward will contain anything I unleash? It looks pretty flimsy.”
Severin’s head swiveled to scan our surroundings. “Dear gods, don’t say that too loud. Emilia wove this spell herself. Took her hours. She’s confident it will stand against the magic trapped inside of you. I trust her.” His dark eyes gleamed. “You should trust her, too.”
Emilia’s containment spell had never failed me here on earth. For decades, her magic sealed eons of darkness inside me, a tight, churning knot of cold that waited quietly, like a secret about to be dragged out into the light.
I just didn’t know what that secret was capable of.
In the other realm, I only knew the feel of my other form, the shape my body took when I transformed. But here, in the mortal world, with its different laws and rules, I might become anything.
A raging thunderstorm. The Grim Reaper.
A fucking nightmare.
And that would be the last thing my friends would see as they died, the last thing they would know. Once I stepped through and embraced the Emissary, who was to say any of me would remain?
I eyed the wards, that paper-thin barrier that was supposed to keep the power of the cosmos contained. Already, shadows poured off me in waves, twining around my legs, spinning out across the grass behind me.
As if urging me to turn around.
Of course, Emberline noticed, her gaze flicking from that swirling darkness to my face, then back to the shadows, lips pinched together in worry.
“Only once have I ever fully let the Emissary out, Severin,” I warned softly, my skin crawling at the memory. “Never in this world… but in the Underworld. And I didn’t even understand what was happening. All I remembered was…”
Cold.
Consuming me whole.
Bones cracking and skin ripping as I expanded far past anything my physical form could contain.
The next time I opened my eyes, I stood before a stone gate, framed by a fragile, blowing veil, the delicate fabric luminescent. Then quiet, dark words echoed inside my head, “You may walk through my gate, or you may serve me.”
How quickly I’d accepted that devil’s deal. A twelve-year-old youngling, full of rage and the thirst for revenge, I’d grasped her offer with both hands and devoured every word, giving Death back what she asked for.
“Yes. I will gladly serve.”
Shadows, cold and consuming black shadows, burst out of me—eyes and mouth, fingers, toes and heart.
My form had expanded painfully, tearing me apart as I rose and rose and rose to an impossible height.
Darkness seeped from every pore like poison, slowly, painfully, then all at once, a gushing fountain that drowned me, choked me, swallowed me whole.
In that moment, the moment of my rebirth, I created something.
A place I kept returning to.
Far worse, a place Emberline kept returning to.
“I don’t know how, but I tore a hole in the side of the Underworld. Shredded through the veil that forms the barrier between life and death. A hole that still exists. If I could damage a realm where nothing is alive…”
“Well, you see my dilemma.”
Severin swallowed hard, eyeing me, then the fragile wards.
“You have to try, Nico. You can’t keep something this powerful locked away forever.
I spoke to Dante at length.” His steely gaze lifted over my shoulder.
“He explained about his fire demon. He can help you master your own demons. You just have to trust him.”
“He threw me out a window the other day.”
“The way I heard the story, he tackled you.” Severin’s lip quirked. “But I’m splitting hairs. Give this a go, and if things go wrong, just walk back through the wards, and the spell locks back into place. It’s that simple.”
Oh, my fucking gods.
Give it a go might well be the final words this male ever spoke.
For someone who fought battles for a living, he was pretty fucking cavalier with my life. And his life.
And everyone else’s.
Or he was too stubborn to listen to reason. Probably that.
“Fine.” I stripped off my coat, my shirt, thought about kicking off my boots, then eyed the rocky, uneven ground and left them on. “But when this goes to shit, the aftermath is on you.”
“Good luck,” Emberline called from ten meters away, Dante tugging her back so she couldn’t come any closer. She gave me an enthusiastic double thumbs-up. “You can do this.”
“Remember, you can’t outrun Death, especially in those boots,” Dante called, laughing uproariously as he elbowed Ember in the side. “I’ve been waiting all day to use that one.”
“Gods, kill me now,” I muttered, dragging my hands down my face. “Fuck. I didn’t actually mean that. What I meant was, don’t let me level this entire island and everyone on it. Let Emilia’s wards hold.”
Before I lost my nerve, I stepped through the shimmering barrier, and magic cleaved through me, colder than a knife. The containment spell vanished, and for a single, too-long second, I hung suspended in midair over an endless abyss.
The transformation started slow, bones cracking like brittle sticks, tendons and muscles stretching into place around them, a hoarse curse rasped out of heaving lungs.
My spine arched, vertebrae climbing along with the agony of shredding skin as my shoulders rose higher and higher, bone carving itself into sharpened angles beneath flesh that darkened from warm bronze to the deep, unnatural gray of a moonless abyss.
My face hollowed out, clinging to a skull too ancient to belong to anything alive, sharpened teeth and long, curved fangs bursting from my jaw.
Elongated fingers unfurled, tipped by talons, each one curved like a reaper’s hook, shadows pouring from me like living ribbons, coiling around me as I straightened, my very soul groaning from the strain.
The world became a smear of white, too bright for me to see a thing.
Gods, this was going to fucking kill me.
Good, I decided.
Then I wouldn’t kill everyone else.
Shadows shoved up my throat in a vicious wave, choking me, pouring out of my unseeing eyes, from my palms in a flood of endless darkness that filled up the box I was inside, enveloping me in a thick black cloud.
Somewhere outside of myself there was screaming, but it was nothing to the screaming inside my head as I became the Emissary, ribbons of spectral darkness thrashing around me like sharpened swords, carving through stone and steel as if they were butter.
Blocks as big as houses fell, ancient mortar crumbled, part of the wall collapsing into dust.
I doubled over, the points of my claws sinking deep into the flesh of my temples, blood running down the sides of my face as the chaos inside my head grew louder. Red cloaked my vision, and my ears hollowed out; there was no way to escape the sound clawing into my brain.
I clapped my hands over my ears as the screaming—so many voices tangled together into a cacophony of noise—intensified. Magic whipped around me unchecked, powerful enough to raze this entire island. I couldn’t control my magic, couldn’t think around the noise as I bled and bled and bled.
I was going to destroy this island and everyone on it.
Truth.
That was my last thought as I was hit from the side, the breath knocked out of me.
Talons scraped rocks out of the ground, raking furrows in the dirt as I was dragged sideways.
What the fuck was this?
Some fresh hell I didn’t know about?
Once again, that knife of cold magic cleaved through me, the containment spell locked back into place, a cage powerful enough to crush the Emissary down and down and down until I was back in my own skin, arms and legs blistered, staring up at Dante, flames covering his body, his demon glaring down at me like he wanted to burn me alive.
Like I hadn’t fucking warned him twenty times this would happen.
“You can thank me later,” he intoned, the corner of his lip lifting in what might be a smile. “It seems you can outrun death, after all.”
My head fell back onto the ground. “Gods, you are going to make my life a living hell with these fucking jokes, aren’t you?”
The healers had just finished tending to me, and I was wrapped in a blanket when a young Draconi soldier strode across the lawn, giving Dante a wide berth.
“Master Severin, this just arrived from the city.” He handed Severin a folded note, saluted, and marched away.
Sev scanned the message, brow pinched, then ran a hand over his bald head.
Once. Twice.
Three times before he sighed.
“A message from Blackwood himself. An emergency session of the council has been called for tomorrow. Mandatory attendance. No exceptions.”