Chapter 10 | Sephania
Sephania
Sister Zefyra’s pale face breaks into a grin.
The vampiress’ alabaster skin is smudged with dirt and grime, looking like she hasn’t bathed in months.
There’s a new scar across her right cheek, a deep one that runs from the tip of her brow to her chin.
It doesn’t detract from the beauty I see in her red eyes and determined grin.
Before I know what I’m doing, I throw my arms around her. “We thought you were dead. You’ve been gone more than a year.”
“Good thing about me, Sister Sephania,” Zefyra rasps against my neck, “I’m good at being invisible.”
I pull her to arm’s length and run a soft hand across her cheek, feeling the coldness of her lifeless skin and the deep groove from the scar. “What did they do to you?”
“And who is they?” Skar voices.
Zefyra peers out of the shadows toward the Tanmount where she emerged from. “I think this conversation is best taken elsewhere.”
We nod our agreement and she quietly leads us through an alley, to the back door of a building.
As her hand hovers over the doorknob, from the back of the group Vallan grunts out, “Hold.”
He nudges his beard toward Zefyra’s cloak, and I slowly glance over her shoulder to see it’s dark and studded . . . and there’s a strange lump beneath it, between the cloak and her leather armor.
My heart lurches. Gasping, I peel the cloak back without asking—
To reveal a broad-brimmed hat I’ve seen too many fucking times tonight. “No,” I croak.
Hands go to weapons. Vallan’s gloved fingers close on the handle of the war-axe over his shoulder. He’s seconds away from showing Zefyra the same act he showed Zefyra’s lover, Ethera.
Difference is, Ethera’s death was one of mercy because of her blood illness, and to frame her for stealing silver from the North Mines and thus divert attention away from Skartovius’ revolution.
Zefyra’s death will not be one of mercy.
I take a step back. “W-Wait.”
Zefyra glances at the weapons lodged against her, hand closing on the doorknob. Her brow arches dangerously. “It’s not what it looks like. I can explain.”
“You’re a judgeman,” Skartovius says simply. He’s drawn his sword quicker than anyone. “One of Aramastun Wyvox’s handpicked soldiers.”
Her head shakes sternly. There’s no fear on her face—only scrutinizing what her odds are against us—and my heart hurts to see it.
I steel myself. I’ve grown tired of being back-stabbed left and right. “You’d better start talking, Zef.”
“Don’t you dare open that door,” Garroway growls, daggers spinning in his palms. He’s closest to the vampiress and I know he’ll have one against her throat in the blink of an eye. “If a swarm of judgemen are waiting for us in there, you’re finished.”
Zefyra says, “They’re not. I swear.”
“Apologies if we don’t take your word for it.” I backpedal a step. “We’ve had a few recent heartbreaks when it comes to betrayals.” I resist flashing my eyes over to Skar, because now is not the time for a spat.
Heady tension falls over the group.
“This building is empty. Abandoned.” She nods at the door. “It’s a former tavern and a place for us to speak. That’s all.”
“We’re speaking fine right here,” Vall says.
“Aye, until the real judgemen come marching through this alley in six minutes.”
Zefyra is little taller than Palacia, and I respect her audacity to try and go toe-to-toe with my largest mate. But it won’t end well for her.
“Six minutes? How do you know that?” Skar asks.
“Because I keep tabs, Lord Ashfen.”
“How did you find your way in the Tanmount, where you emerged from?”
“Like I said, my lord, I’m good at being invisible.”
“That isn’t good enough. Try not being so vague.” Skar unhands his weapon—seeing my other mates have it well enough in hand—and crosses his arms.
I miss this analytical, tactician version of him he’s fallen into.
Zefyra sighs. To her credit, she’s made no move for the wicked-looking little sword at her hip.
Probably because she knows it’s pointless.
My mates are masters at their craft. “Fine. We’ll have it out here in the cold.
” Zefyra crosses her spindly arms under the front of her cloak.
“I worked under Overseer Verant at Sutlis Spire.”
Lukain reels. “I didn’t—”
“Know that? I’m aware. That was the point, Overseer. I worked under the behest of the Chained Sisters. Iron Sister Keffa ordered me there once I turned. It wasn’t hard proving myself as a new vampiress.”
I inhale sharply. “You replaced my shackles with silver ones. So I could escape Kleora.”
She nods curtly.
“Just as I suspected,” I say with hope building in my chest. The hope dwindles and my short-lived smile flips. “Then you disappeared. Where did you go once I escaped? Obviously not the Chained Sisters.”
“That’s where things get a bit . . . messy.” She gestures toward the closed door. “I assure you, this talk would be better had in the warmth inside. Three minutes before the judgemen arrive. Not long enough to tell my tale.”
I grind my teeth. Look to Skar—though I wish I hadn’t, because he’s looking at me. We’re both grasping for answers we don’t have.
Skar says, “If you have soldiers in there waiting for us, lass, just know that you and everyone you know dies.”
Zefyra bows her head. “Understood, my lord.”
Our groups sweeps back as she opens the door.
Warmth hits my face.
And nothing else.
At first, it’s quiet.
We go inside and it looks exactly as she says: abandoned, empty. Then she takes us to a second door leading to a hall, where I can hear voices on the other side.
“Zefyra . . .” I rasp.
She swings the door open—
And I reel at the sight of familiar faces.
It’s not the Chained Sisters, who I hoped she’d be hiding in here. No, it’s a bevy of interfolk people similar to Palacia and Zefyra’s deceased lover, all dressed in rags and with the same disheveled, dirty face.
Vallan says, “I recognize at least half these people.”
“That’s because they were all workers at your mine, Taskmaster Vallan,” Zefyra says proudly. She puffs her chest out and sweeps a hand at the tables full of workers. “Might I introduce you to the Gilded Ghosts.”
Some of them are drinking. Some of them are chatting. All of them are peering at us, and we’re gazing at them. They look destitute but alive, proud and loud in this hidden room.
“How?” I squeak.
Zefyra swings her broad-brimmed judgeman’s hat around her back, taps it, and slaps it on a table. “After Sutlis Spire, I went to the one powerful vampire I thought I could possibly trust. Told them my skills at being invisible. They had a job they thought I’d be well-suited for.”
“They?” I croak. “Them? You aren’t talking about . . .”
Zefyra nods deeply. “Overliege Liolen Sesk. The Commerce Minister.”
“The Gilded Liege,” Skartovius mutters, nodding toward the interfolk around the tables. “Hence the Gilded Ghosts.”
The ex-Chained Sister grins with one side of her mouth—the unscarred side. “Quite right, Lord Ashfen.”
“You’ve poached the miners,” Vallan says.
“Aye. Turns out they didn’t enjoy being rounded up into body bags by Alacine Mortis’ spies. The attack on the silver mines did a number on morale.”
“What about your mistress? Where’s Cordea?”
The vampiress who turned Zefyra, I remember.
Zefyra shrugs. “Still at the silver mines as the new taskmistress with your absence, I suspect. She’s with Aramastun Wyvox now, my lord.”
“Bullshit.”
Flaring her nostrils, Zefyra sits with a heavy sigh at a nearby seat. “I’m sure you can see for yourself if you go there.”
I speak up, wanting to pick her brain about things she evidently knows so much about. “What about the people you called home for so long, Zefyra? What about the Chained Sisters?”
“I can take you to them.”
My heart thumps against my ribs.
“Fear not, little Sister.” Another grin. “They’re alive and well. Just not in Olhav. They scattered once word came down that Aramastun was moving on the noblebloods. Knew their cushy existence in that ramshackle hovel was no longer safe. That’s also when I acted on liberating the miners.”
A few of the interfolk in the throng raise their mugs in cheers. Most of them are trying not to eavesdrop, I notice.
I throw my arms out wide, more confused than ever. “But how?” I ask. “How have you done all this? How do you know so much?”
“Because in the year I’ve been gone from the Chained Sisters, Sephania, I’ve networked.
Dug myself into the streams that run this fucking city.
It started with Overliege Liolen. From there”—she taps the tall hat on the table—“he put me into Aramastun’s army, where I act as a spy.
Liolen has been keeping tabs on the Night Judge for months.
Months before Barnabac Craxon conveniently died during a Five Ministries meeting, and Alacine Mortis met her shadowy end. ”
Clearly her intelligence is not absolute, or else she’d know how Barnabac and Alacine died. I have their murderers with me right now.
Still, my jaw nearly hits the floor. Here I thought Sister Zefyra was dead, having never shown herself after the Tanmount incident. I had promised the younger Chained Sisters who missed her that she would return soon, knowing it was a falsehood.
In truth, she’s not wrong: I almost forgot about her.
It’s not that she’s a forgettable person—clearly she’s made something of herself—but she’s not wrong when she says she knows how to blend in, become invisible, and therefore forgotten.
Just the ally we need. Someone who can tell us about Aramastun’s goings-on and Liolen Sesk’s.
This is a huge turnaround. Things are looking up in a hurry. I smile at my friend.
Then Skar says, “One thing. You lied to us.” When Zefyra quirks her brow at him, Skar gestures with his sharp chin at the roomful of Gilded Ghosts. “You said this building was empty. Abandoned.”
Zefyra tosses a one-sided smirk at Skar, which I’m starting to realize is her signature look. She’s much more confident in herself than when I knew her.
She gestures at the group of a dozen-plus interfolk rebels.
“Did I lie, Lord Ashfen? I don’t see anyone.
No people, surely, with the way Olhavians and Nuhavians treat the interfolk.
I only see ghosts.” Her smile flattens, turning into a dangerous snarl.
“Ghosts who are ready to haunt every motherfucker who’s ever tried to hurt them. ”