24. Hale
Hale
Asha has fallen asleep with her face on a book that is probably as old as she is. She looks peaceful, so I leave her and flick another page. It’s late. We all missed dinner, and my stomach is growling like a fucking fiend.
“Just go, will you?” Tobin snaps eventually. “Find a stale sandwich or some cold pasta and shove it in your piehole to shut that noise up.”
“Well, excuse me for needing the calories,” I whisper-snap at him, trying not to wake Asha.
Tobin doesn’t look up from the ledger. “You are excused. Leave.”
Leith sits on the floor by the wall with three open books around him, silent and pale under the library’s green lamps. He hasn’t moved much in the last hour, which means he either found something awful or he’s communing with doom for fun.
Asha breathes softly against the page, one hand curled near her cheek. A lock of blonde hair sticks to the corner of her lips. I should move it.
I don’t.
If I touch her, she’ll wake. If she wakes, she’ll pretend she wasn’t asleep. Then she’ll get angry because her body betrayed her need to keep fighting. Then I’ll have to be the sensible one again, and I’m done with that shit for the night.
“I’ll be five minutes,” I mutter.
“Take ten,” Tobin says.
“Miss me already?”
“Deeply. Go.”
I glance at Asha one more time before I put the book down quietly and rise. Taking the stairs two at a time down from the third floor, I glance over at the front desk. Verne sits there all innocent and bookish, and I narrow my eyes at her. She doesn’t even look up.
I head for the library doors and shove them open, stepping out into the soft rain. It hisses as it hits my skin. I don’t like libraries. Too much dry paper. Too many things that think silence makes them superior. Give me a battlefield, a training pit, Hell. Anything with noise.
Hell.
I breathe in through my nose and exhale slowly as I make my way across the grounds to the dining hall.
Hell answers in my blood before I can stop it.
The pull of home, deep and grotesque, stirring under my ribs because Blackridge had to mention it with that flat fucking voice of his. Hell is one of the realms that opens if the eclipse completes. My mother will know. If she doesn’t already, she will soon.
And if she finds out I’ve pledged myself to an exiled goddess from another realm, she’ll have opinions.
Violent ones.
I cross the courtyard with rain smoking off my shoulders and try not to think about the last time I stood in my mother’s realm.
Three years and not once have I missed it.
I absolutely do not want or need it clashing with SilverGate—the one thing that is mine—by bleeding its contents onto the ancient stones.
But the thought that struck me after the chat with Blackridge is needling at me, and I can’t seem to stop it.
If all the networks are connected enough that if the gates drop, all the realms become one, does that mean Hell is connected to StormGate somewhere, and if so, can Asha reach it through my realm?
The dining hall is mostly empty when I push inside. A few students sit scattered at the far tables, hunched over cups and late plates, pretending they don’t notice me. They notice. Everyone fucking notices. That’s the point.
“Prince Hale,” a vampire called Rayne drawls, pausing to suck on a cup of blood. “Packless tonight?”
“Never, so step closer and find out the kind of mood I’m in right now.”
“That wasn’t a threat,” he says.
“Everything is a threat when you say it,” I tell him and head for the serving counter.
Rayne gives a quiet laugh behind me. “Touchy.”
“Hungry,” I correct. “Different problem. Same casualty list.”
The kitchen staff have left out the sad late-night offerings. Cold meats, bread, cheese, some congealed pasta that has lost the will to exist, but I can heat it up and call it acceptable. I grab a tray and load it until the plate threatens structural failure.
I reach for a jug of water when the flames under my skin gutter.
Every instinct I have slams awake.
I set the jug down slowly.
The dining hall lights dim. Conversations stop. Rain batters the high windows, but the sound recedes until only one thing remains.
A low bell.
Not SilverGate’s bell.
Mine.
Hell calling blood to blood.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
Rayne stops halfway through lifting his cup. “What’s that?”
“My mother,” I drawl, and with a heaving sigh, I turn around to see her flame in, short, red-haired and green eyes glowing.
She is alone.
“Mum,” I say with a short smile. “What brings you here, and does Blackridge know you are here?”
She preens. “He does now. Hug?”
“Not even slightly,” I say.
Her smile widens. “Still rude.”
“Still trespassing.”
“I am the devil. I don’t trespass. Places receive me.”
Rayne makes the fatal mistake of moving. My mother’s eyes cut to him, and the vampire freezes with his cup halfway to his lips.
“Drink or put it down,” she says. “Hovering is unattractive.”
He puts it down.
I pick up my tray because I refuse to let her arrival ruin food. “If you’re here to drag me home, you can save the dramatic speech. I’m not going.”
“I know,” she says lightly.
That stops me.
My mother walks further into the dining hall, her six-inch heels clicking against the black floor. The flames that brought her here vanish, but the heat remains in little flickers at her heels.
Rayne stays.
I look at him. “Really?”
He picks up his cup and stands. “I value my continued existence.”
“Then fuck off faster.”
He does.
Mum rolls her eyes as I stride past her to a table and sit.
She joins me and sits back, staring first at my face and then at my food. “Who is she?”
“Who is who?” I ask, blasting the pasta to heat it up with a low-level hellfire flame.
“The one who took you away from me.”
I give her a look that makes her chuckle. “Her name is Asha, and yes, we are bonded.”
“You look happy.” She says it with obscene satisfaction.
I stab a fork into the pasta. “You came here for gossip?”
“I came here because Hell’s border wards are singing in a language your grandfather hasn’t heard since genocide was a diplomatic tool.” She taps one black nail against the table. “So you know how long ago that was.”
“Nine hundred and sixty-two years?” I ask with a smug smile.
Her eyes narrow. “That is one accurate guess, child of mine. What do you know?”
“Enough to know everyone is panicking too late,” I say.
Mum’s smile fades.
That is never a good sign. My mother enjoys violence, drama, political ruin and formal executions. She doesn’t enjoy being late.
“Tell me,” she says.
I eat a forkful of pasta first because I’m starving and because irritating her is one of my oldest hobbies.
Her eyes glow brighter.
I swallow. “An eclipse is coming in three days. Every gate between adjacent realms opens for around forty minutes if it completes.”
Her power goes flat and still, and every flame in my body pays attention.
“Who told you?” she asks.
“Tobin found the calculations in the Astrology Tower.”
“The witch?”
I nod. “And Blackridge confirmed it.”
“There is no such thing as an eclipse in Hell. Why have we been dragged into this?”
“Because somehow the ‘network of realms’ is all connected and the veils will drop, the gates will open, and there will be monsters running amok.”
“Sounds like a party.”
“It isn’t. It is likely to get us all killed.”
She frowns. “Less of a party.”
“Exactly.”
“And this girl?”
“Goddess,” I correct. “Ruler of StormGate, exiled, murdered, sort of, stuffed into the creation of a low-level witch by the creature who wants her real body.”
“I see.”
“Have you heard of StormGate?”
“I have not. So what is the plan to stop this event?”
“You’d have to ask Blackridge. The four of us won’t be here by the time it happens.”
Her gaze sharpens. “Meaning?”
“We are making a plan to get Asha—not her real name—back into her real body and back where she belongs before the eclipse.”
Her eyes don’t move from mine for a long moment. The glow behind them intensifies, calculating, sorting, filing. I know that look. I grew up on the wrong side of it.
“Before,” she says finally.
“That’s the plan.”
“And if you fail?”
“We won’t.”
She drums one nail against the table twice, then stops. “Where is she now?”
“Library. Asleep on a book.”
My mother’s expression sharpens. Her eyes lock on mine, and I see it—she knows exactly what this means. “You’re watching her sleep and eating reheated pasta in an empty dining hall at midnight because you needed to think.”
“I needed food.”
“You needed to breathe without her seeing you do it.”
I eat another forkful and say nothing, because she’s right and I’d sooner swallow the fork than admit it.
Mum leans forward, both elbows on the table. “Tell me about this other creature. The one who wants her body.”
“Yseld. Old, dead and bitter. She was the original goddess of StormGate. A syphon, who used her power to accumulate all the power she needed to rule.”
“Rude.”
“Very. She is now hell-bent on getting Asha’s body so she can return and rule. I dissipated her with hellfire.”
Mum sits back and studies the table surface with a stillness she gets when she’s categorising a threat. I’ve seen it before, in the moments before she ended the careers of creatures who thought they could walk into Hell and negotiate from a position of strength.
“And if Yseld reconstitutes before you manage that?”
“Then we deal with her.”
Mum is silent for a moment. Then she says, “Do you need help?”
I shake my head. “No, we’ve got it.” I shovel more food into my mouth, chew and swallow before I say, “But thanks.”
She smiles. “I should go and see Blackridge.”
“He’s behind you.”
She smirks. “Figured.”
Blackridge stands near the entrance with his hands behind his back, with the expression of a creature who found the devil at a student table and decided he still has administrative authority.
Bold.
Mum gets up, and I wave her off. “Have fun,” I mumble.
“Eldris is the opposite of fun.”
“I know,” I drawl. “Bye now.”
She saunters off, leaving me to polish off the entire tray load of food and I sit back for a moment, contemplating our next move.