Chapter 28
Iwoke in the embrace of silken sheets, the light of the setting sun spilling in through the window. Head groggy, I sat up, memories resurfacing from a deep fog.
Someone had dressed me while I slept. My hair was tied with a neat ribbon, and I wore the pale blue dress patterned with flowers. Sliding out of bed, my feet touched the cold floor, and everything came back to me at once.
My breath came in jagged spurts, and my hand trembled on the bedpost as I stood. Heart weighed down by worry, I ran to the door and grabbed the knob, expecting to find it locked.
But it wasn’t. The door swung open freely, revealing the quiet hall of the lord’s estate. Nervously gnawing on my lip, I stepped out, every muscle in my body tensed as I quietly padded down the hall, wondering if the night before had been but a dream.
We’d been drugged, hadn’t we? Should I not have woken in a prison?
“Awake already?” Phaedrus’ voice came from behind. Startled, I spun around to see him leaning in a doorway, light faintly shining on his back. “I thought you might be out until tomorrow.”
“What did you do?” I sputtered.
“Come.” He beckoned. “We have much to discuss.”
He ducked back into the room, and I peered inside. A fire crackled in the mantle, casting cozy light over an opulent parlor decorated with soft white couches and an elegant silver and gold rug. Phaedrus leaned on the back of a chair, beside a table set with a jug and two small glasses.
Had I caught him in a moment of weakness? Strands of his fiery hair escaped his bun, and his collar was unbuttoned and hung open. Shadows darkened his eyes.
“The others are fine.” He said, preempting my question. “Confined to the dungeons under tight watch, but unharmed.”
“So, you’re the masked nobleman,” I said, fingers digging into my arm. “Are you some kind of actor? Familiar with dying your hair and using different voices?”
“You could say that,” Phaedrus lifted the jug. “We had the same teacher, you and I.”
My breath caught. “That’s how you knew Ainwir. But you’re a nobleman! Why would he. . .”
“How little you know about your master.” Phaedrus poured amber liquid into the two glasses.
“Ainwir was House Cynthus’s spymaster, long ago.
I learned a great deal from him.” He lifted a glass.
“But we aren’t here to talk about him. You want answers, and I have them. Answers Seraphim would never give you.”
Overwhelmed, I stepped back, bumping into the wall. “He was your spymaster? Why? When?” Questions tumbled from my mouth. “Do you know where-”
“Questions for later,” Phaedrus said sharply.
Swallowing, I bit my tongue. Trapped in a nobleman’s estate with no allies. . . what would Ainwir have told me to do?
Closing my eyes, I recalled his face. The harsh gaze above a hawk-like nose.
Resistance and ugly words earned ire and death. Amicable cooperation lowered their guard.
“Alright,” I said, approaching Phaedrus. “You said you’d tell me everything. Let’s start with this: you helped Seraphim flee to Duath Nun after her experiments came to light. Why, if you intended to betray her?”
“I didn’t, back then.” Phaedrus swirled his drink, staring into the liquid. “My sister and I were united in our beliefs, even if I did not like her methods. I wanted her alive and safe. We had every intention of reuniting, down the line.”
“So, what changed?”
Grabbing the second glass, Phaedrus offered it to me, and I accepted. Sniffing the liquor for any unusual scents, I took a sip. A warming burn ran down my throat. Phaedrus watched me carefully.
“Everything changed.” He said quietly. “I was neither chthonic nor psyche when my sister left.” He turned a hand over, where a scar glinted on his palm. “One extraordinary event is rare enough, but two? I realized then, the gods had long abandoned us, and only their cursed magic remained.”
“You suffered tragedy.” I guessed. “That doesn’t explain why you seek to undermine your sister’s efforts.”
“Not undermine,” Phaedrus muttered. “Undo. Prevent.” His eyes traced the flowers stitched into my skirt. “Here stands the one creature who can brave the Empty. Who can control it. Seraphim would risk your life to seek a cure when you should be used to ensure its finality.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The Empty should not be stopped, Aethra,” Phaedrus said harshly. “It should be welcomed with open arms. Cruel is its slow approach, its torturous spread. Let it swallow the world in one fell sweep.”
“But, I can’t-”
“You can, Aethra.” He said firmly. “The psyche can imbue happiness and sorrow. The muse can create sweet music and dreadful screams. Chthonics can shape both terrifying weapons,” he pinched his palm with his fingernails.
Scarlet seeped from the cut, gathering into a blooming rose in his palm, “and declarations of love.”
Nostalgia and unease plagued me near the Empty. Fear of the abyss, and a beckoning to become one with it. He was right.
My fingers tightened around the glass. “Are you mad? The last thing I’d ever do is help you kill everyone.”
Drinking heavily from his glass, he slammed it onto the end table and stalked to the fire, eyes ablaze. “Come here, and I’ll show you why.”
My stomach dropped. What did he intend to do? I felt like a lead ball weighed me down as I joined him by the mantle. He took my hand gently, pulling me to his side.
“Think of your companions. Take the bard, for example.” Phaedrus brushed back his bangs. “Did he ever tell you why he’s tainted?”
“No,” I whispered. “I didn’t want to pry.”
“Nor should you have.” Phaedrus lifted his chin. He slowly twisted my hand.
Aches grew in my joints, and my muscles throbbed. Despair raked at my brain, whispering my time was running short. I stared at my palm, terrified it would disintegrate and be gone.
“I read his thoughts,” Phaedrus said. “When he learned of his illness, his slow decay? When he learned he had been condemned to a short life of suffering, he did what any sane man might do. He sought a quick, painless end.”
A hollow formed in my chest. The distress and desperation passed into apathy. I wanted everything to end. Wanted the pain to go away. Wanted anything but to suffer and suffer until the gods decided to cease my torture.
The Empty beckoned. A simple, instant end. Painless. All I needed to do was step forward into its shadowy embrace.
Fear twisted in my gut. I couldn’t go through with it.
I wanted to live.
My heart flipped. Phaedrus was a psyche. He was controlling my emotions—making me feel what Percy did.
“But this is perhaps the kindest tale,” Phaedrus said in a hushed tone. “Reflect on the path you took to reach this place, and recall the thread connecting each day.”
My memories whirled past, like the pages of a book flipping in a stiff breeze. The heavy emotions Percy carried with him lifted from my soul as Phaedrus took them away.
“Your tale began with a wretched young woman,” Phaedrus laid his blood rose atop the marble mantle.
“Enslaved. Forced into a life of servitude, allowed not even the glimmer of hope. Your sorry tale would have ended when a deal went wrong, and a client you should never have crossed slit your throat.”
“You’re probably not wrong,” I agreed.
His hand tightened around mine. “Seraphim buys you from your owner, offering you freedom in exchange for your life.” He paused. “I need not say what punishment some think my sister deserved. The lives she took.”
Pain laced through my lungs, stealing my breath. Tears glimmered in my eyes as grief like I’d never known ripped through my entire being. I wanted to sob, to expel the anguish, but my throat went dry.
“The world took first her wife and child, but refused to stop there.” Grabbing a log from the edge of the mantle, Phaedrus tossed it into the fire, showering sparks across the stone.
I flinched from the rush of heat. Pain flared across my back, as though from the sharp sting of a whip. A horrible sinking sensation swallowed me, as though high walls confined me within their grasp.
Stuck. Tormented. Denied an end.
Gasping through the pain, I tried to meet his eye. “Shouldn’t you want to help her?”
“I do.” He said earnestly, tilting my hand. “Just as I imagine you want to help that poor scholar.”
Rage bristled through my veins, like fire setting me alight. I wanted to scream, to tear out someone’s throat. But beneath the anger, frigid sorrow encased my heart.
Disoriented under the assault of foreign emotions, I tried to back away from Phaedrus, but he only pulled me closer.
I wanted to kill him. I wanted her back. I should have protected her. Words that didn’t belong to me circled in my head.
Loathing consumed me. For him. For myself.
I would make them all pay. Their lives belonged to me. Under my control, the sinners would become sacrifices for the worthy.
Were these Eleos’ emotions? I bucked under the weight of his fury, of the unrelenting terror at what he’d become.
“And the assassin?” Phaedrus’s sage-green eyes narrowed. “Do you know anything about him?”
A different emotion bloomed inside my heart. Love. I felt it so deeply it ached. The sudden rush of a pleasant emotion took me off guard, and I looked up in surprise.
Warmth tucked me in its embrace, like wings folding around my shoulders. I was loved. Safe.
A grimace twisted across Phaedrus’s mouth as his fingernails dug into my skin. A cold hand reached into my chest and ripped the warm love from my heart, tearing it to shreds, leaving nothing behind but a gaping hole.
I bled out from wounds I couldn’t see, wracked by the misery of grief.
I whimpered, and it almost looked like Phaedrus took pity on me. The agony relented, patched up by bandages that did not mend my wounds, but staunched the pain. Love once again warmed my soul, like a soft caress, like a radiant sun.
This was a different kind of love. The first had been innocent. Desire surged beneath the passion—desire for her, and her alone.