Chapter 64
My stomach lurches at the vicar’s touch. Just his hand on me, and I’m nearly sick all over his shoes. Every step is a struggle, his grip never easing on my elbow.
The world around me blurs into a smear of color and shadows and smooth walls and dragon sconces. I can’t focus on anything when he’s this close. When he’s touching me. All I’m aware of is his proximity. His suffocating presence that makes my skin crawl.
Breathe, I tell myself, breathe and keep your head high.
We reach a carriage house that opens to Vinguard. It’s so strange to see the city from the streets after weeks of looking out upon it from the height of the monastery. Two ornate carriages await, their polished exteriors familiar and as flawless as ever.
These things never show up when anything good is happening.
“Valor Reborn with me,” Vicar Darius instructs. “My son, too.” He says son with a note of disgust. “Put the rest in the carriage behind.”
The number of Mercy Knights surrounding us has doubled. Now they also wield crossbows. The message is clear: run and die.
The vicar guides me to the carriage door, his hand never leaving my person. “After you.” The kindness is a mockery.
I climb in and instantly go for the farthest corner.
The relief of breaking physical contact with him is so overwhelming that I practically collapse into the seat, pushing back as far as I can into the plush velvet—the carriage is small, and I want all the distance I can find.
To my surprise and delight, the vicar doesn’t immediately follow; instead, he barks additional orders, probably to the driver, given how the carriage rocks.
Lucan is pushed in by a knight next.
He slides in beside me, and there is a single moment where it’s only the two of us.
The vicar is still just on the other side of the half-closed door, along with a small army of Mercy Knights.
But I’m not paying attention to them. All I see is Lucan, his gaze holding mine. He shifts slightly to face me.
My heart races, and suddenly all the things I was mad about before evaporate. I don’t want to lose this. Whatever it is between us. Even if it’s messy and confusing…it’s real. It’s mine. And one of the last things I have.
“I will get us out of here,” he breathes, voice so low that even in the confines of the carriage, I strain to hear him. “You saved me once already. Now it’s my turn.”
“Lucan, please—” I begin, voice catching.
“He cannot have your power. He cannot have you.” There’s a fierce protectiveness to the statement that steals my breath.
I swallow hard, words fighting past the knot in my throat. All I can say in reply is, “I don’t want him to hurt you.”
“Even though I betrayed you?” He doesn’t move. He’s so rigid he must be forcing himself not to reach for me. I can almost feel his hand gliding across my cheek as if to smooth over the vicar’s offending touch.
Dragon-burned hells, I wish he could touch me.
“I am hurt, angry… And I could hate you for it. Maybe I should. But that doesn’t mean I want you dead.”
“Do you hate me?” Desperation creeps into the question.
“Hate you? Of course not.” I catalog his face like it’s a sigil. I want to remember him perfectly for however much time I have left. “Lucan, I…”
The words evaporate on my tongue. Every notion I can come up with is inadequate or incomplete or both. How can I name this feeling that’s sprouted like hope in a scourge-filled wasteland? It’s as though my heart has run off the map of everything I’ve known and straight into uncharted territory.
What is the word for this?
It’s not love. Not yet… Love is something more. At least I imagine it to be.
This feeling is like a blossom—a possibility. Fragile and precious. It could be love one day. It could be love with enough apologies and explanations and forgiveness on both sides… Perhaps, it would be love, if we had time.
“You?” Lucan hangs on my unfinished thought.
My heart aches. It doesn’t skip or shudder. It simply hurts in its yearning for him.
But there’s no time. The vicar climbs into the carriage, and Lucan leans away and settles into the seat. The door closes, and with a spark of Etherlight, the carriage lurches forward, the only sound the grinding of the wheels on gravel.
The vicar finally breaks the silence with a dramatic sigh. “I must admit, this is…disappointing. I invested so much in both of you.” He has the tone of a loving father, not the monster that we both know he is.
I nearly lunge for him. It’s almost impossible not to throw my hands around that wiry neck of his and squeeze until he stops breathing.
“You both had so much potential. You, my Valor Reborn”—his eyes shift from me to Lucan—“and you. You were to be my successor. Once I had ascended, you would lead the Creed—my army, as my mortal hand.”
“I would rather die.” The Lucan I saw in the Tribunal is on full display. This is the man who loathes the vicar. Who has bitten his tongue for half a decade. Who has played his part time and again even as he made his own movements in the shadows.
“That will be arranged.” The vicar smiles, eyes shining with crazed brutality.
The carriage halts. The ride between Mercy Spire and the Great Chapel is short. The vehicle hasn’t even stopped rocking when the door swings open.
The vicar steps out and extends his hand back to me. “Come. It is time to meet your destiny.”
The urge to slap his hand away is nearly overwhelming.
“Unless you no longer value their lives?” the vicar chides ominously, voice low.
I glance back to Lucan, who sits unflinching, face unreadable. Minutes ago, he was full of hope, promising to get us out of here. Now, he’s as trapped as I am.
I place my hand into the vicar’s and fight the bile rising in my throat. He helps me from the carriage, and two lines of waiting curates lead us into the Grand Chapel of Mercy. My head spins as every fiber of my body rejects what’s coming—rejects the notion that I am at the whim of Vicar Darius.
Above ground, the chapel is technically just one story tall, but its roof soars daringly high, taller than four stories.
Every pointed spire impales a sculpted dragon, their mouths fixed in agonizing snarls.
People of stone, dressed in the armor of the Mercy Knights, scale walls, ready crossbows, and skewer dragons with lances of carved lightning and steel.
“I want two daggers on each of them at all times. If they so much as even look the wrong way, kill them,” Vicar Darius instructs the Mercy Knights.
Pia, Dazni, Myla, and Ember are taken from the other carriage and follow behind as I am escorted past two rows of praying curates in the square in front of the chapel.
Never has the Grand Chapel been so empty. There are none uttering prayers. No curates performing rites. No offering before the statue of Valor.
The late afternoon sun bleeds through the tall windows, stretching long lines of crimson across the empty pews. The statue of Valor at the far altar is emblazoned in golden light, holding a sword aloft—the sword said to be the weapon by which the Elder Dragon will be defeated.
“What are you going to do to me?” Terror makes my voice softer than I want. I am trying so hard to keep my courage even in the face of the twisted man before me. He needs me, and I will use that against him, somehow, I remind myself.
“I waited for so long for your power to mature…but I cannot wait any longer. Now it is time to meet your destiny, and that is not as Valor Reborn yourself,” he says gently, patting my hand as if in condolence.
The Mercy Knights stream in with the five ashborn.
I try to glance back toward Lucan, but I can’t find an opportunity while the vicar’s attention is on me alone.
“You are the catalyst by which the true Valor Reborn will return to this world.”
My heart hammers in my chest with every step closer to the altar—and the statue of Valor. I realize that it is not just the sunlight, but the elegant blade is actually glowing with Etherlight. Are there sigils hidden on it? Within it?
The magic dances in the air around it, gnarled and contorted. It’s Etherlight, but it moves in ways I’ve never seen before. Ways that feel unnatural.
That’s when I see it. Something else. Magic that vibrates in tight knots of crimson, wrestling against the threads of Etherlight. Magic the same shade as dragon’s blood—as the scourge.
Ethershade.
“You were chosen by fate and guided by me.” Vicar Darius drops my hand and ascends the altar. His fingers close around the grip of the weapon, and he pulls it down. The Ether seems to revolt at his touch. I can almost imagine it screaming. “Sacrifice is rarely pretty. But it is always necessary.”
“What do you want from me?” I refrain from stepping back as he descends with the weapon in hand.
The vicar merely smiles. “For you to die.”
Without warning or hesitation, without another word, he plunges the blade into my stomach, impaling me clean through.