9. The Oracle
The Oracle
The princess and her princes reached this floor.
No one had ever breached the Glass Tower, let alone reached the vault that caged my essence.
Closer. I begged and willed them.
When they broke into a jog, satisfaction came out of me like a thin sigh, from what was left of a vocal cord an inch above the stump.
No one came to this floor save for Xander.
I’d had no visitors since the Tower rose out of the Rupture, and my captivity was older than it. A century in an underground cell, in the dark. Then Xander had cut off my head and magically preserved it, so he could keep me at hand forever and go on stealing the future out of me.
“That’s how we spend eternity together, Sera,” he’d purred, smiling, and by then it was far too late for me to read what sat under it.
For all the foresight in creation, I never saw my own fate coming.
So my head hung in glass, turning.
“I want you to enjoy the views on every side,” Xander had said, confiding, as though he’d done me a kindness. “Your mental health matters to me, Sera. I want you productive again. You’ve been giving me less and less lately.”
I took in the views of the garden, the skylight, and the vast emptiness beyond the castle grounds, and I couldn’t even hold hatred for my betrayer in my head.
“I have something for you, Collector,” I said. “A new vision.”
“Wonderful.” He smiled. “You can still call me Xander, Sera. You’re still my favorite. That will never change.”
I’d never call him that, but I told him the lost heir had surfaced. His betrothed. Less a truth than a blueprint.
I needed the princess here. She was my only way out.
I told him where she’d been hidden all those years.
I whispered where and when to pluck her friend out of the Scorched Wastes, but I held that piece back until the heirs of the Zodiac Covenant had carried the princess to safety.
Then, step by step, I walked my enemy’s hand to Missy, the little sister.
When every piece sat where I’d put it, I spent hoarded strength to show myself in the princess’s dream, near the DarkVeil. Then I turned to Xander and told him what he was starving to hear.
“Accept the Accord invitation from the Zodiac Covenant. Go and collect your future queen, the child bride promised to you in blood. Mate with her. Let her give you pureblood offspring. When she stops being useful, take her power for your own.”
He swallowed it whole. He’d built his immortality on that appetite. A glutton already vast on the stolen power of others.
Through my sight I watched it happen. Xander reached the princess. The last piece settled. The great wheel turned.
And now she came.
And she would free me.
An end to this, finally within reach.
If I still had a heart, it would have been pounding. Hope, gratitude, regret, and bitterness, all at once.
The princess and her princes stopped in front of my glass vault. My head came around to them and my eyes found hers. She didn’t flinch. There was no pity on that hard young face—something better than pity.
Then the rotation dragged me away again, out across my slow circle, and brought me back. I couldn’t control even that. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t close my eyes.
Not one second of rest.
“Get on with it, princess,” I said. “We don’t have much time.”
She stepped closer. “What’s your name, lady?”
No one had offered me that courtesy in longer than she’d been alive. My name was forgotten by everyone but Xander, who used it to taunt me. This one wanted to know it. She remembered everyone she’d lost.
That was respect. That was true empathy.
“Sera,” I said. “My name was Sera, Princess Morningstar.”
She nodded. Her princes’ eyes had gone soft. Battle-hard, both of them, and still warm underneath. They would never turn into the Collector or his kind. And for all their power, they let her take point. Xander had never let anyone stand in front of him.
“You called me here, Lady Sera,” the princess said. “You told me Xander had Missy. Where is my sister?”
“Vow to free me,” I said, “and I will tell you everything.”
“I vow to free you,” she said. “I won’t leave you behind. I’ll take the others too, once I have my sister.”
“I do not wish to go with you,” I said. “I crave death. End me. I want to stop existing.”
“Can’t blame you, lady,” the shifter prince said. “And we’ll deal with that motherfucker who did this to you.”
If I could have smiled, I would have. My glassy eyes held his green ones until the rotation pulled them off me. Nothing hidden in that one. Fiercely protective.
The vampire heir was worthy of her too. Colder than the wolf, and he kept secrets where the wolf kept none.
I hadn’t had her luck. I’d fallen for the wrong man.
I’d been young once. Beautiful, foolish, in love. That was how Xander used me, then kept me. I believed he loved me back, because he told me so often how precious I was. Right up until he took my head.
Every soul who knew what had actually been between the Collector and me was in the ground. I’d been his lover once, not only his instrument. He’d put most of them there himself. A man who collects everything cannot abide a witness he doesn’t own.
“I vow to end you and give you rest,” the princess said. “Now tell me where my sister is.”
She held my gaze every time it swung past her, steady as a mountain. Underneath it she was terrified for the child. No one had ever loved me like that. Prophecy costs, and I never asked for it. Nothing is fair.
“And you want to know how to break the blood marriage contract,” I said.
“Yes, Lady Sera.” She swallowed her rage back down.
Both princes moved in closer to my vault, as if they meant to pull the answer out of my mouth right then.
“You know the Collector better than anyone alive, Lady Sera.” The vampire prince spoke for the first time, crimson eyes settling on me. He was a monster too. It simply hadn’t made him evil. “Tell us how to break the contract’s hold on her, and you can have anything you want.”
Better than anyone alive.
He had no idea how cleanly he’d cut. There was no wound to show him. Only the stub at the end of my neck. That one didn’t care who he hurt. He would do anything, including monstrous things, to keep his princess safe.
I saw it sitting in his heart, and jealousy went through me, sharp and unlooked-for. It startled me that I could still feel it at all. But for that second, I did, as if I had a body again.
“Beware honeyed words and a handsome face, princess,” I said. “Don’t make my mistake.”
My head turned away on its slow, helpless circle, past the garden and the skylight and the vast emptiness beyond, and came back around to face my guests again.