Chapter 9
Fear-fueled adrenaline that did not belong to Madan dumped into his veins.
It choked him from where he stood at the camp, watching his brother vanish on the back of a dragon.
If Azriel failed, he would lose two siblings in one fell swoop, for Ariadne would be worse than dead by the time Madan got to her.
What Ehrun and his cronies had done to her would pale in comparison.
Because Madan knew precisely how Loren Gard tortured someone.
After living through it, he’d been granted but one positive: he couldn’t remember most of it.
What he could recall, however, was nothing short of horrific.
Loren didn’t just cause pain—he reveled in it.
The agony of others made him grotesquely enthused.
“Azriel’s on his way,” he told Brutis, shuddering at a sudden spike in Ariadne’s heart rate that radiated through him like the gong of a bell. “We’re working on Ehrun.”
At first, his bondheart didn’t respond. When at last he did, it was accompanied by carefully tamed emotions from Ariadne’s connection to Almandine. No doubt the dragon was just as bombarded as Madan. “Do you think that’s a wise place to begin?”
Madan turned to Phulan, who read over what he’d written down from the ritual. Her magic surged through the air, palpable and familiar to a part of him caged by the curse of night. “He’s the only one we can try it on.”
“Whelan?” Brutis suggested.
But a rumble of discontent made its way through the vinculum, and Oria chimed in at the same moment she touched down beside her dhemon bondheart, “I won’t have anyone testing a god’s ritual on him.”
Before Whelan could climb onto Oria’s back, Madan hurried to his partner—no, his mate—and wrapped his fingers around the curve of a horn, bringing the dhemon’s perfect face towards his own. “You don’t have to go. Not after—”
“He is my King,” Whelan murmured back and shook his head. “I’m pissed at what he did to you.” His eyes flickered to Madan’s neck, and a fire burned in their depths. “But I also understand that in his right mind, he never would’ve done that.”
“He won’t do it again,” Razer promised, and Madan briefly wondered if the dragon kept Azriel from overhearing their conversation. “We’ve come to an understanding.”
Oria’s interest piqued. “Is that so?”
Images of Razer throwing Azriel into the air and letting him plummet down deep valleys before being caught again flashed through Madan’s mind.
His brother, trapped in a circle of endless dragonfire, popped up next.
The dragon literally shoving him into a cave and sitting in front of the only exit as he taunted him followed.
Madan couldn’t help but laugh despite himself. Of all the dragons, Razer was the one who would actually act on each of those threats, and there was no doubt in his mind that Azriel knew it, even if he pretended his bondheart would never.
Giving Whelan’s horn another tug, they both refocused on each other. “You come back to me.”
“Alhija…” Whelan pressed his lips to Madan’s. When he drew back, his lips curled into that heartstopping smile. “I would crawl back from the depths of the Underworld for you”
Without giving Madan a chance to reply, Whelan stepped away and swung up onto Oria’s back. He adjusted the sword strapped to his back, winked down at Madan, and disappeared behind his bondheart’s wing as she launched them both after Azriel.
Madan watched as Oria’s deep green scales caught the earliest signs of morning light before flickering out of sight over the trees.
Their respective vinculums tying them together had him aching to follow, but he knew better than to call Brutis back from his post flying over Lake Cypher just to turn around and expect him to go into battle.
The dragon was exhausted and had to keep Almandine close by in case Ariadne needed to communicate out.
“We need to move quickly,” Phulan said. Her words dragged his attention back to the present, to where she had the ingredients they’d gathered dancing through the air around her.
Each item—black leaves from the Keonis Tree, Anwenja’s spring water, the moonlight flower petals—turned on a current of unseen magic as her amethyst eyes swept over the page again and again. “Help me, boy.”
Stepping past Emillie to look back at the page he’d scribbled on, Madan grimaced and shut his eyes tight, trying to summon the words from the page that he hadn’t yet gotten to write down. “We know it’s a tattoo.”
“But which parts need to be together?” Luce pressed.
He shook his head, opening his eyes again. “All of them?”
Zeke raised a brow at him. “You need to be more specific. How much of each?”
“It didn’t say!” Madan gestured at the page. “This was most of it. All we’re missing is…” He reread his words and cursed under his breath.
“Is what?” Emillie asked, pushing up next to him to read it.
Glaring at the sky, Madan shook his head. “Is the incantation to evoke Keon.”
To his utmost surprise, Luce laughed. When he turned to her, incredulous, he realized with a jolt of shock that her laughter was actual mirth—not her usual disdain, to which he’d grown accustomed over the past few nights.
She stepped forward, rolling her shoulders back as though preparing for a fight.
“There is no one way to evoke a god,” she said to him before turning to Haen and Pol. “Make the leaves and petals into a paste.”
Without question, they used their fae magic to pluck the two items from Phulan’s rotation.
The mage’s eyes lit up in surprise as they did as they were instructed, without batting an eye, turning their respective ingredients into floating pools of sludge.
While they worked, Luce took in the rest of what Madan had written.
“Phulan,” Luce said, “add the springwater slowly until it’s the consistency of…well…”
“Ink?” The mage’s lips curled with amusement, and she nodded. “Very well.”
The water shifted through the open space between them, picking up the leaf and petal pastes and weaving them together as Luce spoke, “Silve, grant me grace as I call upon Keon, Lord of the Underworld and God of the Damned, for his children. Father of Dhemons, hear me.”
Madan held his breath as the magic-wielders worked together, combining each ingredient with care. He opened his mouth to ask how they would know if Keon listened, but Emillie jabbed her elbow into his ribs and gave him a single shake of her head.
“Hear us all,” Luce continued, the excitement in her eyes never dimming. “Come forth as we honor you with this ancient practice. Let us reignite the hearth fire that links our worlds so that we may shepherd your children back to the light cast upon us by you and cherished Anwen, the Mother.”
Emillie grabbed Madan’s amputated arm firmly, her quiet gasp dragging his attention from Luce to his sister.
Following her line of sight, he gaped. The water, still shifting slowly at the whim of Phulan, had begun to glow.
As it picked up more and more of the leaves and petals, the tone fluttered from white to pink.
“Keon,” Emillie whispered. “He has not abandoned us.”
Words failed Madan as Luce’s mouth split into a wide smile. This was familiar to her, then. She’d done it.
“For millennia, your children have suffered,” Luce continued, “and now it is time to end their pain.”
More and more, the three parts of their ceremony mixed. More and more the celestial glow radiated, shifting now from pink to crimson. Like blood, it churned through the air on the phantom wind of the fae and mage.
“Walk amongst us, Lord Keon,” Luce pressed on, “and grant your blessing to that which we create in your honor. The journey to kneel at your feet has been completed.”
Crimson light surrounding the ink bled into a deep garnet.
“We have gazed upon that which is most sacred to you.” Luce wordlessly pointed into the shadows where Ehrun sat and crooked her finger in a silent command.
Without needing clarification, Madan took the small silver key from Phulan and stalked over to the dhemon who watched with carefully tempered interest.
“On your feet,” Madan hissed.
Ehrun tilted his head back to glare without moving.
“Fine.” Channeling the command silently, the key in his hand warmed a touch, and at the same moment, Ehrun winced. Moving like a puppet on a string, the dhemon shoved to his feet, the hate radiating from him in waves. Then he moved towards the fire, one jerky footstep after another.
“We have honored your heart,” Luce was saying as Madan returned with the captured dhemon. “Now we ask for your help in guiding the lost souls to rest back where they belong in the sanctuary that is your light.”
At that, the glowing of the ink shifted once more into a shade of deep onyx, its haze undulating like shadows as the mixture came to a halt in the air before Luce.
Beside Phulan, Ehrun made a face that distinctly said that he was not a lost soul and that he certainly did not wish to be within the light of any god.
“Ink him now,” Zeke said quietly to Phulan.
The mage nodded once and swept the ink through the air with a flick of her fingers. Ehrun jerked back before his body seized up at Madan’s command. Still glowing that strange black light, the mixture pierced the dhemon’s face, just below his eye, without a needle.
“Keon, God of the Underworld,” Luce continued, turning her rapt attention to Ehrun, “welcome Ehrun, husband of Rhana and father of Thavii—brother of Kall. Show him your mercy.”
Blood trickled down Ehrun’s cheek as the ink punched through his epidermis again and again, embedding itself there at Phulan’s will.
Madan watched the process, his heart thundering in anticipation.
In hope. For if this worked on a full-blooded dhemon now…
nothing could stop them from connecting anyone on Keon’s holiday, Noxidium.