Chapter 53 | Sephania
Sephania
We funnel our burgeoning army into the southeastern tunnels that feed out of the Olhavian Peaks and into Nuhav. The same tunnels the Trueheart scum have been using to send their wayward flock to the Faith Ward in Olhav, for whatever diabolical purposes Valenthia Yurlyth wanted to use them for.
Before daylight springs, as the sky turns gray and orange with a soon-to-be sun, we return to the Firehold. Bruised, bloodied, limping. But victorious. Triumphant. Hardly a man can keep their head from lolling with exhaustion upon our return.
The army disperses into the city with their recovered children, relatives, friends, and citizens. Our leadership team descends into the Firehold, back where we belong in the darkness.
I can instantly tell something is off when we descend the ladder. My mind is hardly working from tiredness, everything feels hazy. But it sharpens into focus abruptly once we’re inside the main circular cave that leads deeper into the hold.
There’s tension in the stuffy air, heavier than usual. None of the usual greeters like Aleth or Tecca are here to welcome us home as champions. There’s a smell cloying sweetly, and it feels powerful and unwelcome.
My mates notice it as quickly as I do, glancing at one another with consternation, drawing their weapons slowly, preparing for the inevitable as we stalk the halls into the underground.
As we make our way into the main warren, the vast expanse that shoots off into other passages and tunnels—the place we simply call the “eating room”—I can hear crying coming from different rooms. Soft tears, sobbing, groaning. Scared. The main room is empty.
It’s never empty. Not completely.
My heartbeat kicks up a notch and I call out, “We’ve returned from battle! What is going on in here?”
A head pokes out from one of the side rooms, eyes wide, face grimy. It’s Tecca the dhampiress, a sweet brat who could easily be mistaken for a full-blooded human. “Oh thank the Damned it’s you!” she squeaks. Over her shoulder, she yells, “Girls, it’s Lady Lock!”
I hurry over. My mates are two feet behind me. When the young half-blood rushes forward and swaddles me in a hug, I know something is deeply, terribly wrong.
My stomach sinks, knowing our victory will be short-lived.
“Oh, Lady Lock, it’s awful. It’s . . .” She shakes her head, rubbing her teary eyes with the sleeve of her dirty tunic.
“It’s what, Tecca?”
“No, I can’t.” She nudges her chin down the way, into the snaking northern halls that lead past the eating room, past the sparring room, and to the individual dwellings. “It must be seen, not spoken about. Or we risk it coming back.”
My pulse pounds in my ears while I creep down the hall cautiously. The sliding of my mates’ boots tells me they’re in battle stance, ready for anything.
I swallow hard past a dry throat, coming to one of the only wooden doors in the Firehold—the primary residence of the leader of the Grimsons.
The door is slightly ajar, which is odd.
A small mewling sound passes through my lips involuntarily, or maybe a whimper, and I slow. “No,” I whine, pushing back, back—
Bumping straight into Vallan’s stone wall of a chest.
“Silverblood,” he murmurs in his deep, gravelly voice, resting his large hands on my shoulders to still my shaking body. “Be strong.”
I push the door open fully, skittering back like a coward as it creaks open—
And my world tilts on its axis. Dizziness rushes through me in a great tidal wave that crashes against the banks of my psyche.
Antones is lifted, feet inches off the ground, body pressed against the back wall of the room.
Spread-eagle, arms stretched in a grisly T, head dipped chin to chest. Crucified with nails keeping him up.
He’s been stripped, torso carved open, with a circle of gore at his feet where his innards sit in a pulpy heap.
My old friend’s heart is missing. I can see it even from this distance.
It’s gone from his chest, and his ribcage has been pried open.
The corpse is gray, lifeless, inert. There’s a waxy, statuesque likeness to Antones now, without any of the colorful exuberance and propriety he had in life. A shell.
Next to him on the wall, just under his outstretched right arm, appears to be scribblings in a deep color. There’s a lit torch nearby to enhance the dramatic effect of our discovery.
My eyes burn fiercely with sadness and rage. In my most recent act of recklessness to recover the missing humans from the Faith Ward, gathering the impromptu army and marching on Valenthia Yurlyth, we left the Firehold exposed.
Antones was assassinated because of my negligence and carelessness.
My shoulders sink as a sob rips from my insides.
This is one of the humans I’ve known the longest, ever since my childhood.
One of the only humans to ever pay me any kindness, despite me being a guttergirl of ill repute.
He saw none of that in me—he only saw possibility, and aided my various quests whenever he could.
Antones was a true steward of Nuhav, despite having to live in its dark underbelly for decades. First as the second-in-command to Lukain, then as the leader of the outcast gang himself.
And now he’s gone. Life cut short. Our recent conversations run through me at a blaring speed.
Lukain is next to me now, staring blankly. His face slowly twists into something dark and menacing—a look I haven’t seen on the dhampir in a long time. It’s the need for revenge without even knowing who that vengeance will be aimed at.
We walk toward the corpse together. The sweet smell I recognize now as blood and death. Something that’s all too familiar to me, especially given the night we’ve had.
As we near the wall, Lukain drapes an arm around my neck, hearing my sniffles. “He’s free from the wickedness of this world now, little grimmer. He always wanted peace. Now he can have it.”
His voice is sad, racked with such emotion I didn’t know a dhampir was capable of. At one point in time, this was his best friend—his only friend and ally.
“Never has to limp another step,” Lukain finishes, adding a humorless chuckle at the end.
I lean forward to the writing on the wall, realizing it’s been painted with Ant’s blood. Another cherry on top of the macabre cake. “This is a message, Lukain,” I whisper.
We lean forward and read it together:
FOR EVERY ONE OF MINE
I TAKE TWO FROM YOU
My face twists with confusion, brow threading, lips firming. I look to Lukain, who appears equally perplexed.
Then our eyes widen, understanding coming to both of us at once.
“Oh fuck me True,” I rasp.
We turn and run down the hall.
I know why the eating room was empty and quiet now. People were either hiding . . . or working.
That work consists of trying to keep one of our own alive, in the makeshift infirmary of the Chained Sisters, who inhabit the southeast tunnels of the Firehold.
I throw back the privacy flap they installed, with my mates taking up space behind me.
I’m instantly greeted by a cornucopia of shouting, running, and clattering.
Some girls pour liquids, fill vials, and speak in hushed tones with one another at the many tables, with only one thing on their minds: Silverblood.
Dozens of Grimsons—the ones too young, old, or untrained to join us in battle—partner with the Sisters to finish their work.
Others run from one cave room to the next, gathering supplies, dropping empty beakers and failed experiments with shattering glass, talking loudly over the constant conversations all around us.
It’s like a different world in here, a lively one removed from the somber silence of Ant’s tunnels and the front of the Firehold.
“Where’s Iron Sister Keffa? Where’s Jinneth?” I demand, trying to stop anyone who will stand still long enough to listen.
Finally, a young girl waddles up to me and points down the leftmost hall. I hurry that way, toward my mother’s and Keffa’s dwelling.
Two rapscallion soldiers stand guard at the door with mismatched armor, oversized helmets. They’re probably fifteen, scared out of their boots.
A line of blood leads just past them into the room, and I follow it, croaking, “Oh fuck.”
I expect the worst as the layman guardsmen part and I pat them on the shoulders for their good work, pushing through, turning the corner into the room. I’m prepared for another mind-numbing, heartbreaking sight like Antones’ chamber.
It’s similar in here yet different.
There’s a headless body slumped against the nearest wall. A pale-skinned body with a slight stature, slender arms placed neatly on their lap. That part is grotesquely similar to Ant’s room, and it makes my skin crawl as I wonder who it could be.
My eyes swerve and I find the head against the far wall of the room, as if it rolled over there only a few minutes ago. It’s on its side, and I recognize the slack face immediately.
“Sister Cyprilis,” I say with a ragged breath.
The poor fucking woman. I wonder if Lukain has another quip that says “she’s in a better place,” like he did with Antones. Because she certainly deserves it.
If I knew Antones the longest of nearly any man here, I knew Cy the longest of any person.
We grew up in the House of the Broken together, as whelps.
While I fled like a coward, she was molested by Father Cullard before getting traded off to heartless sex slavers.
She was raped and bred by the monsters, who forced two whelps from her womb and filled her with a third before trading her to even more vicious Faith Ward vampires.
There, under the blind eye of Valenthia Yurlyth, Sister Cyprilis was kept for years, abused, and turned.
She was never able to see her three children again.
She eventually escaped into Nuhav where we found her.
Now this. Beheaded. Staked through the heart to make sure the vampiress is dead.