Chapter Eight
Avelina
“You want to rob Parandor?” she hissed softly under her breath as they marched through the sticky swamp toward the docks.
Avelina should have been studying her surroundings, memorizing the maze of trees and haunted looking homes on stilts.
She should have had her eyes on an escape route.
That kiss was a mistake. He was a monster, a down to the bone, horrendous person and likely going to skin her alive at some point for a nice warlock coat.
Yet it was the best fucking kiss she’d ever had.
It awoke something hungry in her. Gnashing teeth that craved scraping over his flesh and supping on the blood that pooled in its wake.
That overactive imagination reared its ugly head, and she was left dizzy on the bathroom floor.
She turned that kiss into heated, passionate sex against the wall where the wood groaned with each sharp thrust. That image folded her up like a pretzel in his arms, their kiss nasty and sloppy till he left her used and dripping on the floor ‘to clean up’.
The thought disgusted and invigorated her.
Her skin buzzed still, even as they clambered up moldy wooden steps.
“Sure do!” Callum—she’d now learned his name—tossed over his shoulder.
A wooden raft sat by a lonely dock that stopped her in her furious tracks.
All thoughts of heated passion and robberies left her as she finally digested her surroundings.
The sun was high in the sky, but its rays barely permeated the swamp.
Golden daggers pierced part of the canopy of heavy foliage from woven trees covered in moss and spots of molt.
Mushrooms pushed up through parts of the muck along with rocks, all a sickly color.
She spun to watch little clouds of gnats fly out of bubbling pockets in the mud, only to be eaten by frogs that were too big.
Their croaking mixed with the screaming of insects were a background soundtrack to the horrifying hollow echo of Gloomsdale.
“Come on, Darlin’,” Callum called out.
She skittered across the dock, trying not to jump out of her skin when she hit spots that creaked or bowed beneath her boots.
In a matter of seconds, she was sat in one of the boats alone while Callum sank only his tail into the water.
The young, murky-haired guy from the house earlier hopped into the boat with her.
He was a helfen, horns and all. She hated his toothy grin as he steered the boat with only his hands.
The water rippled around them and pushed them steadily across a lake of dark water.
“Is the water sanitary? Should you be in there?” she blurted out, eyeballing Callum.
“Why? Worried my scales will fall off?” He tossed a knowing smirk over his shoulder. Her concern instantly dropped off her face.
“I could care less about your scales, just so long as you don’t catch anything contagious.
I won’t let you kill me with some infested, skin-eating mite or something.
” She crossed her arms over her chest and focused all her attention on Rat instead.
He snickered to himself. And what is he laughing at?
Screwing up her face at the center, she did her best to ignore the itch at the back of her neck where Callum’s hand had been earlier.
She could still feel the tingle of his lips against hers.
How is it the only person capable of making me feel something…is the most rotten bastard in all the land?!?! How’s that fair?
“It’s not.”
Avelina blinked suddenly. Involuntarily.
And it was no longer Rat across from her.
No more mosquitoes whizzing around her ears, nor the screaming of insects deep in the trees, simply quiet.
She sat in a rickety boat on a river of pure midnight with no light except for the candle between her and Catalysta.
The goddess tilted her head to the side, her shroud pooling around her in the boat. She stared at Avelina through that shabby lace. The crown of bones atop her head didn’t move, didn’t even settle to the left as Catalysta studied her warlock.
“Why did you leave me back on the train?” Avelina hissed, leaning forward. The candle’s flame danced sharply. She shifted backward, afraid of putting it out.
“I have not left you. You are still bestowed with my gifts.”
Avelina bunched up her skirt in her fist. Breathe.
Catalysta’s voice was raspy, a whisp of wind tickling her ear as if she didn’t speak with her mouth.
Her lips, encrusted over and blackened with burnt skin, were sewn shut.
Avelina hadn’t paid enough attention to her father’s sermons, or maybe she did and they never detailed why it was that the Mother of Delirium’s lips were forced closed.
But maybe I’m starting to understand?
“What do you want with me?” Avelina changed the trajectory of her questions, knowing that fighting with the goddess over semantics when she was clearly told to run was a losing battle.
“I have already received what it was I desired. Now is only the pure delight in watching you sow seeds of my chaos.”
Avelina’s heart skipped a beat painfully. The feeling of her organs being shunted, it turned her stomach and she was glad they’d not actually eaten anything yet. She gulped down air. “What is it that you desired?”
“The unraveling of the Paladins,” she grinned, stretching the twine around her mouth painfully tight.
“That’s not possible,” Avelina blurted out.
“No, The Last Phoenix is not known for dying. Her embers will still burn. There will still be her faithful, the ones who follow her light. But those who were armored for the power, for the title, for their tower of bones? They have begun to topple. And all it took was taking the child of one of their beloved elders. They see the rot…and it will fester. It will creep into all their streams until they drink their own poison. You will be my instrument through which I fix this world.”
“No,” Avelina choked out.
The cackle that filled the endless abyss chilled her to the bone.
Because it was a booming, rattling sound like chains trembling in a violent windstorm.
She tried to pull away, but she went nowhere, her body cemented to the boat.
Even as Catalysta crawled over the boat, over the candle, Avelina was stuck.
The flame licked up Catalysta’s shroud and the dry lace caught.
Whoosh. The goddess burned, cackling as she did so.
Creeping forward till Avelina laid back in the boat, staring into the melting eyeballs of her patron.
“You’ve already started.”
It was the last thing she heard as the candle was snuffed out. Avelina finally sucked in enough air to scream when a hand wrapped around the scruff of her neck and hoisted her out of the boat. Callum deposited her onto her boots and ushered her forward. “Up and at ’em, Darlin.”
An agonizing three hours of checking over her shoulder for moving shadows, and they finally made it to the outskirts.
It was the last village between Gloomsdale and Parandor.
She wouldn’t even call it a village. It was more a tavern and a barn with a massive well dug between the two buildings.
However, they were within an hour of Parandor’s heavily fortified walls.
The Stronghold had three major entrances, and while one was only used for cattle or large forces, the other two were heavily guarded.
A fact that used to comfort her until recently.
“We’re just going to walk inside?” she harumphed in disbelief.
“Simple as that,” Callum beamed. He fished out a handful of coins and handed them to Grahm. “Get us some mugs and actual food, the boys outta be finished soon.”
“You got it, boss.” Grahm bowed his head, ducking away from the table.
A bustling tavern was also a surprise. It shouldn’t have been busy, but clumps of people filled up every table.
They moved from bundle to bundle of folks, sharing stories and laughing.
Avelina searched the crowd for anyone who was obviously staring.
There was no way they just waltzed into a busy tavern, and were flat out ignored.
Someone had to be harboring ill-intent. They were one snitch away from Paladins swarming the building.
A crooked claw curled around her chin and brought her gaze to meet Callum’s. “Relax.”
“How can you relax? We’re…” she lowered her voice, leaning toward him as if there were ears straining to hear. As if anyone could hear in this place! She hissed, sharply, “Wanted.”
“I’ve been wanted a whole lot longer than you have, Darlin’. Wanna know the secret?” He dropped her chin so he could fold his hands and lean over them on the table. She shuffled her chair a little closer. Callum smirked, “Most people don’t give a shit.”
“Bah!” She rolled her eyes.
“It’s true,” he laughed. “Look, ya walk into a place like you belong, don’t make a ruckus, pay the staff well, and no one bats an eye. No one cares if ya come in for a pint and a biscuit. But you walk in, give a big stink? Then people notice ya. Just don’t give them nothin’ to remember.”
“Okay, sure, that works in a place like this, but what about in Parandor?” she growled through gritted teeth.
“You think I ain’t been inside those walls?
” His face pinched, pitying her. Avelina’s heart, stomach, and most of her intestines dropped into her feet.
No, no he—no! Parandor is the Stronghold!
It’s impenetrable! Yet, she kept thinking back to that cursed moment with her patron.
The rot was inside Parandor and all it took was her becoming a warlock.
No, it can’t be that simple. She refused to believe the SunBringer’s palace, the temple for which all of the Paladins were raised, trained, and prepared to keep the continent safe was so easily broken.
Especially when I matter so little. How was she the instrument of their destruction?
One girl who wasn’t even good enough to sweep the temple floors?
A single finger poked against the center of her forehead, and she blinked back to life. She sputtered, sitting back in her chair. Callum arched a brow at her, “Ye alright in there, little viper?”
“Yeah,” she bit out fast, settling her hands in her lap. “Just thinking how this plan of yours isn’t going to work.”
He smirked, big enough to make his fangs glint in the hazy, amber glow of the tavern lanterns. “Wanna bet?”
“No,” she rolled her eyes, returning her focus to scanning the crowd.
“You might think I’m some na?ve little girl, stumbling through life, but I’m not a fool.
Alright. Sheltered, yes, maybe, but I’m not falling for the same trick twice.
Get your kicks or jollies or whatever else off elsewhere. I’m never kissing you again.”
“You kissed?” Rat squawked, eyes darting between them.
Avelina glanced at him, realizing with abject horror that she’d forgotten about him.
Thankfully for her, Grahm returned with a basket of rolls, arm full of ale mugs, and a story he desperately needed to tell them about the fine lady behind the counter.
All conversation about her, the kiss, and whatever was bothering her was smothered as their party grew slightly bigger with three newcomers from the shadows.
She couldn’t help glancing at Callum in random intervals between pockets of conversation to find him studying her.
Always with a discerning stare, sharp and keen, like he could see the darkness welling up in her chest. A putrid, festering evil in the cavity where her heart used to reside, horrors she’d been squashing down in her need to survive finally seeping into her blood.
Sat at the table, surrounded by people, in a humming, muggy tavern full of noise…she’d never felt more alone. Hollow. Cold. Desolate.
Avelina Dalethorn shivered down to her bones.