Chapter 47
FORTY-SEVEN
The fighting in the eastern wing continues for what feels like hours but is probably minutes.
The loyalists die with the same desperate fury as their companions—screaming prayers, clawing at my armor, refusing to surrender even when surrender might have bought them mercy. I give them quick deaths when I can, efficient deaths when I can’t.
The executioner’s work. I have never stopped practicing it, and it has never stopped costing me.
Smoke rises from a dozen points around the chapel now.
Torches knocked loose during the fighting have found fuel—the wooden pews, the tapestries covering the walls, the dried flowers that decorate the devotional displays.
The flames are spreading faster than they should. Someone must have prepared accelerants.
The devotional art on the walls—preserved bodies posed in attitudes of ecstasy, Bloom flowers growing from their preserved flesh—begins to blacken and curl.
Good. Let it burn. Let everything here burn.
The last loyalist in my section falls with a gurgle. I turn back toward the altar, searching for Arwen—
And find her standing over a body.
Not alone. Circe is there too, the young initiate we saved days ago. She’s shaking, tears streaming down her face, her hands still raised from whatever blow she just delivered.
I cross the chapel floor, navigating around the dead.
“We need to move.” My voice cuts through whatever moment they’re having. “The fire’s spreading.”
Arwen looks up. Her face is streaked with tears and crimson, her expression carrying the hollow burden of someone who has just lost something important. But her voice is steady.
“Maret is dead.”
“Good.” I don’t ask for details. The body at the altar’s base tells the story clearly enough. “The survivors—”
“Are in the courtyard. Cael took them toward the forest edge.”
“Then we go there too.” I reach for Circe’s arm, supporting the shaking girl so Arwen doesn’t have to carry her alone. “Can you walk?”
Circe nods. Can’t speak. I don’t push.
We move toward the chapel’s rear exit. The smoke thickens with every step. The flames climb higher. Behind us, the altar catches fire, the blood-stained marble cracking from the heat.
The chapel is consuming itself. Centuries of horror finally being reduced to ash.