Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
SAMMAEL
Something was terribly wrong.
The mirror that sat above Gadreel’s dresser—the one he had taken as the spoils of war centuries ago—had a twin that Sammael kept locked away in his scrying room. The very last thing he needed was for Gadreel to get his hands on the matched set.
Sammael had embedded a location-specific spell in the rune-stone he’d given Azazel, with instructions to hide the stone as close to Gadreel’s mirror as he could.
The spell would force the mirror to do Sammael’s bidding, rather than Gadreel’s; he was its rightful owner, after all.
When Gadreel peered into it, he would see what Sammael wanted him to see; and then, thanks to a particularly tricky bit of magic, it would act as a portal to take him there.
It was quite an accomplishment, if Sammael did say so himself.
The archduke had returned, flush with success; the Dark Angel of War’s palace had been a wreck, he’d shared with no little glee, and as vacant as Hell’s sauna.
He’d tucked the rune-stone in the back of Gadreel’s top dresser drawer, behind any number of unspeakable items, made off with a painting he’d always coveted, and arrived back in Sammael’s domain, radiating victory.
The venture had cost Sammael a bottle of his finest Soulfire Reserve, as the archduke had blathered on about his adventure over drinks for some time. But it would be worth it, to see the look on Gadreel’s face when Sammael interrupted his upcoming tête-à-tête with Dimi Ivanova.
Sammael hadn’t been entirely truthful when he’d told Elena he had no means of determining what took place aboveground.
He had this: a mirror that showed him whatever he most needed to see.
Of late, though, it had become capricious.
Even stubborn, refusing to reveal anything even when Sammael offered magical inducements.
He had never known it to act this way before, but with the rise of the Darkness, nothing was behaving as it ought. Why would his mirror be any different?
Frustration gripped Sammael as he braced his hands on his desk and peered down at the mirror’s obscured surface. He needed to know whether his plan was working, before he decided to act.
It was complex but well thought-through, all things considered. Sammael had made a list:
Have Azazel plant the spelled rune-stone near Gadreel’s mirror, opening a portal to the shores of Lake Svetloyar.
Rely on Gadreel’s impulsive nature to lead him through, without questioning why his mirror had suddenly taken on qualities it had never possessed before. Knowing Gadreel, he would simply believe the world had tilted in his favor.
Wait patiently while Gadreel lurked in the woods, anticipating Dimi Ivanova’s arrival on the lake’s shores.
Naturally, when the Dimi and her party arrived, Gadreel would attack, seeking to kidnap Katerina Ivanova and use her to drive the Darkness back—but also, to kill her companions, who would only get in his way.
Step in and ambush the lot of them, under the guise of helping the Dimi.
Under siege by Gadreel’s forces, she would welcome Sammael’s appearance and his offer to fight on her side.
Together, they would conquer Sammael’s oldest enemy, and then Dimi Ivanova and her cursed Shadow would set about returning the Darkness to the Void, there by the shores of a lake whose protections were among the strongest in all of Iriska.
If Niko Alekhin were to perish in that final fight, well, such was the collateral damage of war.
Then Gadreel would be gone, Dimi Ivanova would be grieving but grateful, the Darkness would be vanquished, and Elena would be herself once more.
Not to mention, Sammael would be hailed as a hero from one end of the Underworld to the other, and all of Gadreel’s territory would now be his. Truly, it was a win-win for everyone.
Well, perhaps not Niko Alekhin, but that was what ballads were for.
Humming to himself, Sammael sat at his desk and traced an intricate klyuchi rune on the mirror’s enchanted surface. “Show me Lake Svetloyar,” he commanded. “Show me the Dark Angel of War.”
The surface of the mirror rippled, then cleared, revealing Volshetska’s stone edifice, set on the banks of a massive tidal lake. He smiled in triumph; all he needed now was to wait and watch, choosing the perfect moment to attack.
But then he peered more closely at the mirror, and his smile dimmed.
The image had faded, then solidified again, revealing a map of Iriska and the Underworld.
Overlaid atop it was a three-dimensional rendering of the veil between the worlds.
It was frayed in spots, and torn in others.
Inside Volshetska, a source of energy vibrated, the likes of which he had never seen.
But Sammael had little time to investigate this, because above the spot that marked Gadreel’s realm, a pitch-black funnel swirled, sucking Light into its depths.
Horror gripped Sammael’s stomach. It was one thing for the Darkness to break free from the Underworld and seep upward; it was another entirely for it to rob the world aboveground of its Light.
In Lucifer’s name, what if the mirror he’d sent Azazel to enchant had done this?
What if it hadn’t just created a new way to link their two worlds, but had actively begun to siphon Light into the Void?
What if he, Sammael, Venom of God, had been an unwitting agent of the very Darkness he was working so hard to circumvent?
Or—what if Azazel had done this deliberately? What if he was not the oaf he pretended to be, but a double agent with knowledge of the arcane? What if he’d tampered with the rune-stone before planting it, and in so doing, somehow corrupted the spell?
Either way, Sammael had to find a solution, and quickly. It was bad enough that the Darkness was devouring the world aboveground; if it was drinking down the Light, their time was even shorter than he’d thought.
He drew his hand back from the mirror, which returned to its usual inscrutability, then rippled once more.
Sammael hoped it might reveal Gadreel’s location, or even Dimi Ivanova’s approach toward the Magiya.
But instead, it showed him Elena. Clad in rags masquerading as a wedding dress, she drifted down the streets of his realm—then vanished, only to reappear in the corridor of a prison, where she took great joy in possessing human guards and having them hack off their own limbs.
Where was this? And how had she come to be there? He had entrapped her, confined her, defanged her—
The image dissolved, then re-formed to show Elena in her room, communing with the Darkness.
It hovered in front of her as if listening, then seeped through the cracks around the windowpane and disappeared.
An instant later, the Darkness ripped a hole in the very fabric of the Underworld, creating a portal through the veil.
Hellhounds surged from his own realm into a clearing in the world above, attacking Katerina Ivanova as her Shadow wielded his shades to save her, while Elena pleasured herself and laughed.
Sammael’s hands clenched into fists. The Vila could have destroyed Dimi Ivanova, their best chance of driving back the Darkness. Worse still, she didn’t care. She was as mindless as the Darkness itself, wanting only to destroy and consume.
A third image materialized: Elena kneeling on the floor of her bedroom as birds’ limp bodies slid down the glass, their necks broken. One for sorrow, she whispered as silver-blue blood dripped from her finger into a bowl of water. Two for a dove.
It was a spell of her own making, using the Shadow’s hair. A summoning.
He had been such a fool.
He’d dismissed Elena’s blathering about communing with the world aboveground as hysterical nonsense, intended to irk and threaten him.
But she had been telling the truth. Worse still, he had failed to understand that their bond, the one that had saved her from the Void, was embedded in her very blood.
The magic he’d infused into his palace recognized her, and though she could not override the protections he’d put in place, he saw now that she could subvert them.
She had leveraged her blood-bond with Sammael to escape her room in spirit, and her connection with the Darkness to coax it into doing her bidding. Who knew what she might do next?
All the while, he’d thought the worst danger she posed was to his possessions and his pride. But no. He had brought a threat into the heart of his realm, and now it languished down the hall on a four-poster he’d had built for it, sipping tea like an unhinged princess and plotting his undoing.
Well, that would not stand.
Sammael ticked off the items on his fingers, making a fresh list of what must be done.
He would find a way to destroy Gadreel’s mirror, before it could do any more damage.
If Azazel were a traitor, he would kill the man, and with pleasure.
He would silence Elena, once and for all.
But first, he would ensure his own mirror worked as it was supposed to—that it wasn’t siphoning Light from the world above. Because if so, much as it pained him to shatter a treasure such as this, he would have no choice.
He lifted his hand to touch the glass again, to trace the kyluchi rune for ‘Open.’ But the symbols that formed under his fingers were, instead, the ones he’d placed on Elena’s door.
Entrapment. Silence. Containment.
What in the—
Inside the mirror, Darkness swirled. From its depths, Elena’s face emerged, as if surfacing from the bottom of the sea. Her lips moved, curling into a sneer, before she spoke.
A home ceases to be a home when you cannot leave it, she said, the words echoing off the walls of his scrying room. It becomes a prison.
His own lips pulling back from his teeth, Sammael strode to the door and tried to yank it open. It would not yield, nor would the windows. He pounded on the glass, which trembled in its frame but would not shatter. He called for help until his throat ached, but no one answered.
The truth broke over him, fierce as a storm-born wave: he was trapped in here, and he would lay odds it was the Vila’s doing. Somehow, some way, she had done this.
As the world aboveground drained into the Void, as Gadreel marched on Volshetska, as Elena welcomed the Darkness into his palace, Sammael was helpless to stop it.
And both in the mirror and from down the hall, the sound reverberating as if she stood beside him, the Vila giggled with a wicked, childlike delight.
He was her prisoner, now.