Chapter 7 Irene
IRENE
Mateo had attempted to stop her, calling after her, but Irene had ignored his desperate pleas as she stormed out of her room and burst into the corridor. She needed a moment to think. A moment to wrap her head around what she had just learned.
Wren Loughty is the prophesized destroyer of Blackwood?
The mere thought made Irene want to bend over in a fit of laughter.
That pious, self-righteous little princess could barely stomach cheating on an exam, let alone disrupting the entire balance of the afterlife.
There was no possible way. No conceivable world in which—
“Irene.”
At the sound of her name, Irene nearly tumbled to the floor as she abruptly came to a halt, spinning on her heels to find Samira standing behind her. What was with this girl? Couldn’t she simply let Irene be?
“Samira.” Irene cleared her throat. “Hi.”
“Are you all right?” Samira slinked closer, hands tucked behind her back. “You seem a bit…flustered.”
“I’m fine.”
“Actually, I’m glad I ran into you.” Samira dipped her voice lower, a mischievous grin lifting onto her berry lips. “I’m about to head to the bacchanal. Care to join me?”
Irene groaned internally. Dammit. She’d been hoping to go alone. Use the solitude to mentally prepare herself for what she might find at the party. But given the fact that the last thing she wanted to do was raise Samira’s suspicions…
“You know what?” Irene sighed, feigning a tight-lipped smile. “Screw it.”
Samira squealed, clapping in delight. She hooked her arm over the crook of Irene’s elbow, tugging her close.
“You are so going to thank me later.”
Irene didn’t even have time to register the relocation spell. One moment they had been standing in the middle of one of the Ascended Quarters’ swirling corridors, and the next they were outside, enveloped by the darkness of night.
Irene blinked, adjusting her vision, and tried to make sense of where the other girl had taken her.
They appeared to be standing in front of the rusted metal gazebo that sat a few yards from Elysium Hall, the first few steps shrouded in ribbons of mist. A web of slithering vines and tree roots shrouded the ground, crawling their way around the metal structure.
“Here we are.” Samira motioned toward the gazebo. “Go on.”
With a sigh, Irene walked up the steps. Samira trailed right behind her, whistling softly beneath her breath. Once the two of them were standing on the gazebo’s main platform, Samira snapped her fingers and a small crimson flame sprouted from her fingertips.
“This is always my favorite part.”
Irene cocked her head in confusion. “What is—”
A low, hissing sound cut her off. The noise seemed to echo all around them, consuming every particle of air. And then something shifted beneath her, a figure moving within the shadows…and that was when Irene saw it.
A snake.
She yelped, staggering away from it in horror. The snake was a deep umber color, about five feet long and covered in intricate symbols. Its eyes glowed, a golden sheen breaking through the darkness.
Samira giggled. “Oh, relax. It’s not real. It’s just an enchantment.”
The snake slithered between their feet, gold eyes flicking between them.
“The passssssword…”
“It spoke,” Irene whispered, swallowing hard. “The magical snake spoke.”
Samira rolled her eyes, bending down toward the snake.
“Heavenly heretical.”
As soon as she spoke the password, the snake curled into itself, disappearing in a puff of golden sparks.
Moments later, one of the stone slabs beneath them shifted, sinking into the ground, revealing what appeared to be the top of a steep, narrow staircase.
Irene could only see the first couple of steps.
The rest were completely swallowed by darkness.
Irene placed the bottom heel of her boot upon the first step and ventured forward. Samira followed after her, extinguishing her flame with a snap of her fingers.
As they began to walk down the stairs, a muffled noise echoed in the distance, a rhythmic pounding reverberating in the air. After a few more seconds, Irene realized that it wasn’t just noise…but music.
The deeper they descended, the louder the music became, a deep resounding bass thumping in her chest. Seconds dragged into minutes, and just as Irene was beginning to lose the last shred of patience she had left, her foot hit something solid.
Behind her, Samira snapped her fingers, illuminating the narrow space with a soft flame and revealing the arched door in front of them. She stepped ahead of Irene and glanced over her shoulder, pearlescent teeth gleaming in the darkness as she opened the door.
“Welcome to the world of the Ascended.”
Irene stepped through the doorway…and entered a debaucherous hellscape.
The entire party was engulfed in a greenish hue, strobe lights flickering in time with the pounding music, the air redolent with the nauseating scent of illusionary magic.
Sweat-slicked bodies congregating at the center of the room danced along to the music, swaying together, arms draped over shoulders and lips grazing hungrily from one person to the next.
Dozens of enchanted trays floated around the room, a crooked mountain of glass flutes overflowing with various liquors and elixirs.
Emerald-velvet couches lined a seating area to the left of Irene, in which she spotted a trio of Ascended dipping their fingers into a fine black powder before sprinkling it into each other’s mouths, licking the remnants from each other’s lips.
“Come on,” Samira said, signaling Irene forward. “Keep up.”
Irene reluctantly followed after Samira, pushing through the sea of drunken bodies filling the room. Irene’s vision warped under the flickering strobe lights dangling from the rafters, her senses overwhelmed by the noxious fumes filling the air.
Eventually, they broke free of the crowd and stepped into a less congested area of the room. There were a few leather couches and chaise lounges, an array of bodies sprawled upon them, drinking under candlelight and whispering between fits of drunken giggles.
“Here. Take this.” Samira handed Irene a glass flute with a shimmering amethyst liquid inside. Truthfully, Irene hadn’t even noticed her grabbing it, too fixated on the chaotic scene in front of her. “It’s just a light euphoric.”
Irene sniffed the drink and—oh. An array of scents washed over her like springtime mist.
Honeysuckle. Lavender. Gardenia. Mint.
As Irene took a sip and the drink trickled down her throat, a weightlessness flooded through her limbs, an all-consuming bliss.
She blinked sluggishly, taking in the room around her.
What had once been a claustrophobic cesspool of inebriated idiots had now transformed into Irene’s personal Eden.
A shimmering light engulfed her vision, a dazzling prismatic ray of colors.
Even the air tasted of lavender, of sweet syrup coating her tongue.
Are the walls sparkling? Irene looked around, dazed and delighted, a dreamlike sensation in her movements.
“Well…” Samira’s face came into view and—wow. Had she always been this lovely? Her features seemed almost regal, her skin petal soft. “…I suppose it was a tiny bit stronger than a light euphoric. I think Petra might have spiked the glass with some Angel’s Breath.”
“Angel’s Breath…” Irene echoed, adoring the way the words tasted in her mouth. She was touching something unbelievably soft. Featherlight. It wasn’t until Samira giggled in front of her that Irene realized she had reached out and begun to stroke Samira’s face.
“You’re so soft.”
Samira laughed and a prism of color trickled out of her lips. “Oh dear. You’re going to have a fun night.”
And she most certainly did.
Time fragmented as Irene lost all sense of reality.
She was dancing, swaying in time with the music, hands greedily roaming the bodies around her.
How long had she been like this? Minutes?
Hours? Days? It was impossible to tell. She no longer cared.
Not when everything felt this wonderfully, perfectly good.
Not when all the pain, all the suffocating grief, had seemingly vanished with nothing but a single drink.
She only existed in that moment, in that song, in that feeling of euphoria.
But then something hurled her back to reality. A flicker in her peripheral vision. A face.
Irene froze. The bodies around her continued to dance, moving against her, but Irene couldn’t tear her gaze away from what—no…
who she saw at the far end of the room. She kept her eyes glued on the face staring back at her as she pushed through the crowd, desperately shoving anybody who stood in her way.
As the strobe lights flickered, the face moved farther away, as though every flicker were carving a rift between them, an invisible set of strings pulling them apart.
“Wait!” Irene shouted, her voice hoarse, lost within the music. “Please…Masika—”
Her words were cut short as someone rammed straight into her, sending her toppling to the floor. Irene fell onto her hands and knees, a dizzying wave clouding her senses. When she got back onto her feet, legs shaking, she frantically searched the sea of dancing bodies, but Masika was gone.
Of course she’s gone.
Irene felt sick. Everything was too loud, too bright, too wrong. She staggered through the crowd, shoving her way forward, ignoring the hands attempting to pull her back. But before she could make it to the entrance, someone stepped into her path.
Irene blinked, dazed, trying to make sense of what she was looking at.
In front of her stood a figure shrouded in a gauzy white fabric.
Was it another hallucination? The others around her didn’t seem to notice the figure, their revelry undisturbed by the ominous presence.
The euphoric still had its hold on her, its dizzying effects coursing through her body, but there was something solid about the figure in front of her.
Something real.
This isn’t a hallucination.
Just as the thought shot through Irene’s mind, the figure reached out, gripping her by the wrist before she could pull away.
And then, from one blink to the next, Irene was no longer at the Ascended party.
Her eyes shot open and she found herself standing at the center of a dimly lit room.
Twelve figures shrouded in that same gauzy white fabric surrounded her, heads bowed and faces obscured, all standing in a perfect circle.
A reverent silence engulfed the space, the feeling of it washing over Irene’s skin like warm water.
Beneath her feet, right at the center of the circle, was a symbol carved into the wooden floors: the Blackwood emblem, the carcass of an oak tree surrounded by bone fragments.
As Irene’s heeled boots settled on top of the grooves, it was as though a simmering current coursed through the soles of her feet and up her legs, traveling through her limbs until she found she could not move, even if she’d wanted to.
And then one of the figures spoke.
“Irene Manette Bamford.” She couldn’t tell who had said her name, the voice reverberating around the circle, as if somehow all twelve figures had spoken at once.
Irene’s head pounded. Her vision blurred and refocused.
“The Council has seen promise in you. The possibility of greatness. Therefore, you have been selected as a potential initiate. If you pass the test period…you will be initiated into the Council—an honor few will ever get.” A deep hum echoed around the room, and Irene swore it was somehow coming from inside her.
“The test period ends in three days’ time. Do you accept?”
She had done it. She had actually been chosen. A surge of relief rushed through Irene’s chest, though it was quickly snipped by the reality of the challenge. Three days. Irene had no idea how she was meant to prove her worth in three days, but she’d have to worry about that later.
She gave a single nod in response. “I accept.”
Her voice resounded unfamiliarly in her ears. As the two words left her lips, one of the figures stepped forward, revealing a small knife resting atop their gloved hand. Irene stared at it, blinking.
“What is that for?” she asked, eyes darting around the room.
“With an offering of blood, you seal the covenant. Let it fall upon the emblem.”
Irene stepped forward, grabbing the knife from the figure’s hand, and retreated to the circle. She lowered the blade onto her palm, slicing clean through, and squeezed her fist closed. The blood gathered within her palm, a steady stream dripping onto the emblem carved beneath her.
Instantly, the floor began to tremble. The blood on the ground simmered and moved, drifting like a current, until the entire emblem was drenched in it, a crimson river beneath her feet.
And then, as if lit by an invisible match, the emblem caught fire.
And so did Irene.
The fire shot up toward her, engulfing her, the towering flames covering every inch of her skin.
But even though the blood burned—Irene did not.
Her skin remained unharmed. Her body untarnished by the raging fire around her.
Something rose up within her…a hunger. It was a fleeting moment of power, the slightest taste, but Irene was starved, and the feeling washed over her in an irresistible high. She would do anything to prolong the moment—to seize the power and claim it as her own.
“Congratulations,” whispered a voice somewhere beyond the flames. “And we wish you luck.”
With those words spoken, the flames dissipated, snuffed out as if swept away by a sharp breeze. And when Irene’s vision cleared—the figures had vanished, disappearing from one blink to the next.
Irene looked around the room, chest rising and falling as she let in shallow breaths.
The laughter started off as a wavering chuckle. But it wasn’t long before Irene was practically doubled over, overcome with a hysterical fit. It was a torrential downpour—a sweet release.
Because Irene Manette Bamford had done it…she had been chosen.
And now she’d burn them from the inside out.