Chapter 56 | Sephania
Sephania
Skartovius portals us to the nearest living shadow on the highest level of Sutlis Spire.
It’s an unfortunate young vampiress guard named Zefyra. Whistling tunelessly to herself, she turns to confront her torch-lit shadow and finds the empty hallway she’s been guarding has five tall people there, all squeezed together and towering over her.
“Fuck my Damned ass!” she gasps, jolting with a start. “You could have given a girl some warning.”
“Shadowwalking doesn’t work like that,” Skar says dryly.
I turn around in the hall and recognize the room behind us. How could I not, when I spent an entire fateful evening in there weaving a handy tale to Kleora the Chronicler, shortly before fireballing her face, throwing her out a window, and escaping Lukain’s clutches with the help of my mates?
It brings up bad memories, but they’re not all bad.
I wrinkle my nose as I step inside the drafty room.
It’s almost exactly how we left it. The desk I sat behind, with Kleora on the other side, is in ruins on the floor.
Some pages of my not-entirely-truthful tale curl at the corners of the room, flapping under wooden table legs.
I was certainly not a reliable narrator for Lukain’s former bloodthrall.
I think the same thought I’ve thought numerous times now: I always return to where I started. Surveying the unimpressive prison room, I scoff, “They couldn’t even board the damned windows? It’s cold as a Faithsucker’s taint up here.”
“Aramastun has been scouring the room for clues about you,” Zefyra says. “Wanted it left how it was. Construction is imminent, I think.”
“Clues? There aren’t any huge secrets about me.”
She pops her hip. “Your Loreblood was a secret to everyone for two decades, sister.”
“Hm. Suppose that’s true.”
Still fixed in the pose, she lifts a brow. “You seem oddly . . . comfortable . . . considering you might be walking into your death.”
“That’s what I said,” Skar quips.
“It’s my way of coping, okay?” I snap.
“Says she’ll unravel if she thinks too hard about the implications of our mission,” Vallan says seriously.
I scoff again, incredulous. “I never said that!”
“You thought it, little honey badger,” Garroway says with a smirk, touching a finger to his temple.
“I hate all of you,” I whine. Puffing my chest out, I lift my chin defiantly. “My father always said to face death with a smile. So that’s what I’m doing.”
“He did?” Skartovius asks.
“I don’t know. I never met the awful prick.”
Zefyra turns to Lukain, who appears to be deep in thought as he roams the small room. “How does it feel to be back at the scene of the crime, Overseer Verant?”
Lukain sighs. Thinks a moment longer. “Depressing. I thought I lost my little grimmer forever when I watched her leap out that window.” He turns to Zefyra, his lips nearly curling into a smile, though not quite.
“To think that you, a nameless guard in the prison I watched over for years, were a double agent, and had a hand in replacing Seph’s shackles with silver ones?
I’m impressed with what you’ve accomplished, Sister Zefyra.
I think I owe you a debt of gratitude for doing it.
Made my life hell for a bit longer, but I’d say it all worked out. ”
Zef blushes, or as close to it as a vampire can, and slaps him across the back. “You’d best not harp on it much longer.”
“True.” Lukain’s face pinches with sudden anxiety. “I had to kill my mother to get here, too. Maybe it didn’t work out for everyone.”
“Our mother deserved it,” Skartovius points out.
“Also true.”
Zefyra faces me. “He’s waiting for you”—she points toward the ceiling—“up there. Very dramatic like.”
“What an arrogant ass.”
“I like him more already,” Skartovius drawls.
When I think we’ve gotten all the jitters and jokes out of us, I turn to my men. “We ready? For anything? Altogether now? No big speeches to give?”
No one says a thing. The grandiose speeches won’t do here. The nerves are clear on their faces—not anxious for themselves, I know, but for me. Even if this is the end of the road for us, there’s a sense of accomplishment threading between us, through the bond I share with them through my Loreblood.
We’ve come this far, and now there’s only a little further to push.
“No ambushes up there, that you know of?” I ask.
Zef shakes her head. “He wanted you alone. I think he’ll be disappointed you have friends and he doesn’t.”
Garro quips, “Well, we can’t help him there. It’s a personality fault, not ours. He seems to be an extremely unlikable man. And that’s coming from someone who was Skartovius Ashfen’s bloodthrall for sixty years.”
My mates snicker. Even Vallan shows a hint of a smile behind his beard. I love these stupid fucking vampires, and I’m going to do everything I can not to get us all killed.
It’s too bad I can’t control our fates.
A winding staircase leads up to the rooftop of Sutlis Spire.
If it was drafty in the prison room, it’s positively frigid up here, and the wind is strong.
The landing is higher than I’ve ever been, overlooking the entirety of Olhav in all its glittering, multicolored splendor.
The clouds almost look eye-level with us.
To the southeast, pockets of fires and smoldering smoke still rise in the sky from the Faith Ward.
Northeast, the gray hub of the Intelligence Ward is quiet as always, lacking a spy network and leader.
Southwest, the Commerce Ward shimmers like a rainbow, but the little vampiric ants are running amok because the mercenaries Liolen hired are on the loose and also leaderless.
Northwest, the yellow Military Ward is stoic, silent, and the four watchtowers that nearly rise to Sutlis Spire’s height seem uninhabited.
The running motif is that it, too, has no one to lead it.
And then there was one, I think.
Aramastun Wyvox wanted to do it all. He wanted centralized power . . . and now he has it. The problem with that, and with the deaths of the other four Ministers, is that now he is sorely lacking in allies.
Perhaps the Night Judge is not as cunning as everyone feared he was. Or perhaps this was his plan all along.
Overlord Aramastun waits at the other end of the roof.
It’s a large expanse, encircling the entire tower of Sutlis, reaching perhaps two-hundred feet across in every direction.
Still not very large for people who like moving around a lot.
We’re relegated to this square to face off against our ageless nemesis, with the wind slapping us.
Aramastun turns to us long before he can hear us.
He’s a towering figure, made even larger and more imposing by the black leathery wings that spread across his back, the webbing of which flaps in the powerful breeze.
He wields his thorny whip in one hand and a thick blade lodged across his right shoulder with the other hand.
His long, straight black-and-gray hair flutters in a single direction across his left shoulder, helping to make Aramastun a very beautiful, very intimidating, very scary figure.
But like I told my boys: We’ve fought demons before. We’ve been doing it our entire lives. This is just one more very beautiful, very intimidating, very scary notch in our belts.
Behind him, Jinneth shivers. My mother is seated on her ass, chained at the neck. Currently, Aramastun is not holding the other end of that chain. The loop rests next to his boots. He doesn’t exactly need to hold it though, does he? Where can she go other than a long ways down?
“Sephania Lock, in the flesh,” he calls out.
We’re maybe fifty feet from each other by the time I stop, with my line of mates alongside me: Skar and Lukain to my right, Vallan and Garro to my left. Battle-hardened, pissed off to be up here in the cold, and ready to end this one way or another.
It’s the height of hubris that Aramastun Wyvox has decided not to ambush us. I’ll never understand it, other than to say he maybe wants the credit for ending the most powerful rebellion his people have ever faced.
We’re the only true threat the vampires of Olhav have ever had, and judging by my aforementioned thoughts on the surrounding Four Ministries, I’d say we’ve done a pretty damned good job of executing.
“Heard you have no friends,” I call out. “So I brought you some of mine.”
He smiles wickedly. The man could be related to Skartovius in another life, or maybe that’s just how all noblebloods look: haughty, self-important, and ridiculously attractive. There’s also the small detail about his crude dragon-looking wings that separate the two.
I put my hands on the handles of my swords, tapping the pommels. “You’ve been up here waiting dramatically for my arrival for . . . almost two nights?”
He looks suddenly shamefaced, ducking his head. “I went downstairs during the days.”
“For shame, Overlord.” I splay my hand out toward them. “And you didn’t even give my mother a coat?! It’s freezing up here!”
Jinneth smacks him in the back of the leg. “Ass.”
“Quiet, sow,” he growls, cracking his whip. Facing our row, he spits out, “Her comfort is no concern of mine.”
I bend my knees. “We’re going to make it a concern of yours, fuckhead.” I bare my teeth in a snarl. “You should be thanking me, you know.”
“Is that so, Hellwhore?”
“Aye. We took out the four other Ministers. Now it’s the One Ministry. You got your wish: all the power in Olhav. So you’re welcome.”
He barks a laugh, flaring his wings with a heavy beat. “You’re not the scared cunt I thought you’d be.”
I bend my knees lower, getting ready to spring. “Oh, I’m definitely a cunt.”
Aramastun prepares in a similar stance, bending his knees. I know those wings will bring him to us much faster than we can get to him, so we’ll need to be ready.
All the back and forth between us served a purpose, of course. Up here, moonlight shines brightly on the entire rooftop. The shadows cast by us are long and spindly.
With the loud wind and our raised voices, it’s allowed Skartovius to weave a shadow portal behind Aramastun ever-so-gently, ever-so-quietly, with the demon’s very own shadow. Now he gives a faint nod of his head to Jinneth, who has just started to notice the gateway undulating mere feet from her.
She gets to her knees to crawl over—
And her neck jerks with a froggy gurgle as Aramastun kicks the end of the chain up into his hand and lifts her off the ground in one fluid motion.
My mother is a heavy, tall woman. She squirms and wobbles and kicks in the air, hands going to her neck as her face turns red and Aramastun holds her in front of him effortlessly, her bare feet inches off the ground.
“You fucking bastard!” I scream. “Let go of my mother!”
I charge . . . recklessly. Drawing my swords, screaming into the swirling wind, hair whipping, heart racing, stomach jostling.
Aramastun pumps his wings once, lifts into the air with my mother in mid-strangle, and hovers in the sky ten feet above us. All in an instant. He pumps his wings once more and backpedals, throwing a wave of wind at us. My mother swings in the air, croaking.
He now hovers with gently lapping wings, comfortably out of range of my swords, five feet off the edge of Sutlis Spire and hundreds of feet off the ground.
His sneer is dark and rictus. “A poor choice of words, Sephania Lock. But I’m obliged to agree.”
And he releases the chain holding my mother.