Chapter 38 What was promised
Daphne
What was promised
Ilistened to the slow beating of his heart. My body ached in a warm, pleasant way. Sleep tugged at the edges of my mind, but I fought it. I didn’t want to miss a single breath, a single second beside him.
His fingers traced slow circles on the bare skin of my back as if memorizing me by touch alone.
Before sleep claimed me, I caught one last glimpse—his silver-gray eyes reflecting the stars beyond the window. A furrow shadowed his brow. He looked lost in thought, distant, unreachable.
And yet, he held me like I was the only thing anchoring him to this world.
It was too quiet when I woke up.
I blinked, disoriented, scanning the dim room—trying to name what had pulled me from sleep.
Then I felt it.
The chill.
His warmth was gone.
“Get dressed, Daphne,” he whispered, a dark outline against the starry abyss beyond the window. “Something’s happening.”
A sudden thud coming from the outside made me jump. A black bird—a raven—hit the glass and disappeared into the night.
“Hurry, Daphne.”
My limbs were still heavy with sleep. I threw my petticoat on and quickly wiggled into my dress. Something was off. I stood for a moment, listening.
The rhythmic purr of the steam engines was gone.
The ship stood still. Only the sea lapped against the hull.
“The undyne?” I asked, an icy blade piercing my stomach. He helped me close my buttons, his fingers hasty. “No. something else. Come with me. I cannot leave you alone.”
“You bet I’d rather be with you than be a sitting duck here.”
He planted a soft kiss on the top of my head and lingered there, taking a deep breath. “I’ll keep you safe, Miss Daphne. Like I promised.”
I swallowed my question. Stashed it away for later. Miss Daphne. After what we had done, it was ridiculously inappropriate.
We slipped out of the cabin. All corridors were empty. The ship was deep asleep.
“To the deck,” he said.
My pulse hammered in my ears. “Could it be some technical problem?” I asked, my mouth dry. He shook his head and pushed the door to the deck open.
The crisp salty air tingled my nose. Heavy fog coiled up to my waist.
Emrys frowned. “This mist is not natural. It’s here to hide something.”
Well, great. I stayed close to him, seeking safety in his warmth.
Darkness pressed in, the only light a faint silver trickle from the moon above the fog. Emrys stood still, listening.
Something was wrong.
I couldn’t name it—not at first. It was like hearing an off-key note in a symphony. Subtle. Wrong in a way it stirred some primal unease.
There was no wind. Only the hush of waves.
But even that sounded… off.
They weren’t just lapping against the hull. They were breaking against something else—something solid.
Was it land?
Or was something massive just beyond our sight?
His fingers touched my hand. “This way, Daphne.” The fog swallowed the sound of our steps as we crossed the deserted deck.
“Where is everyone? Shouldn’t there be a crew on duty?” The more I thought about it, the less I liked it.
The bridge’s light faded behind us. Emrys shot out an arm to stop me. Shadows spilled down his shoulder blades, solidifying into two massive black wings. Even at this moment, I couldn’t help admiring them.
“Do you see it?” he asked. We’d reached the railing. Looking down, I expected nothing but more mist or black water, but no—
There was a boat. Dark and abandoned. I peered closer.
“La Clémence,” I read the peeling letters. It looked like a narrow fisherman’s barge well past its prime.
Emrys raised a finger to his lips.
“What is it?” I asked, trying to peek over his shoulder.
He let out another curse in that strange, lilting language he spoke sometimes. “Hollowborn.”
“How many?” I asked, my blood turning into ice. He didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed on the dark boat, around a hundred feet away. Sparks of unseen colors gathered around his hands.
“They’re coming,” he said. “They’ll flank us from the sky.”
Terror clenched my gut when I saw the shadows rising from the barge. They gained shape when they hovered above the mist—the moon revealing their carved-out eyes and leathery wings.
God, there were so many.
“If I don’t stop them, no one survives.” Emrys’s wings spread, beating the mist.
I drew a sharp breath. “This will turn into a massacre.”
What if they swarmed the ship while everyone slept?
That night in the alley flashed through my mind—the woman in the mud, her body torn open, entrails steaming in the cold. The image was etched into me, permanent as a scar.
Something cold coiled in my gut. I could already see it: blood on the walls, flesh ripped apart, screams swallowed by the dark.
Hell. Hell would break loose.
Emrys’s massive wings spread wide, slicing through the low mist. Gone was the violin player, the clothes thief, the prisoner of Duskmere Manor. Before me stood an immortal warrior who had once turned armies into dust.
“It won’t happen.” His voice was a dark promise, and I believed him.
“Nothing gets past me, Miss Daphne. Nothing will get to you. Not as long as I breathe.” He turned to me and placed his hands on my shoulders.
“Listen to me carefully. I want you to run to the bridge and raise the alarm. Tell the crew that pirates are attacking.”
My eyes darted between him and the horde of devils swarming the night sky.
“You’ll… leave me here?” I rasped.
“I don’t want to leave you,” he said, voice rough. “But if I stay by your side, they’ll reach the others. I need to draw them off. Please, Daphne.”
I glanced back. The bridge was behind me, its light a promise of safety.
“Okay. I’ll get everyone who can shoot on deck.”
Warmth flashed in his eyes when he smiled at me. And something else.
“Run, Miss Daphne! I’ll hold them off.” He shot into the sky, throwing one last look over his shoulder at me. Then his magic sliced through the first Hollowborn.
I ran, the sounds of the battle behind me—growling and the thunder of magic—fading.
The bridge shimmered like a pale winter sun in the mist ahead.
“Hello!” I shouted, banging on the thick glass with my fist. “We’re under attack! Pirates!”
Where was the damned door? That stupid fog! I pressed my face against the cold glass. “Hey, let me in!” I shouted. When I peeked inside, my knees buckled.
Six uniformed men stood motionless, their backs turned as if talking to someone invisible.
“Captain! We’re under attack!”
The man standing closest to me twitched and turned around. He was young, wearing a thin mustache. His neck popped when he stretched it to see me better. His leg twisted at an unnatural angle as he moved to the door.
I covered my mouth and stumbled backwards. Something about these moves seemed disturbingly familiar.
I had seen this in the catacombs of Paris.
They were all looking at me now.
Distorted pale faces. Decay flashing beneath. Gaping mouths.
Possessed. Twisted into something unnatural.
The men lunged to the door, moving like one.
Panic tightened my throat. Had Emrys sensed them, too? Who would help him now?
I needed to find someone—
The restaurant! Surely, there were still some crew or guests awake. Someone might have a gun –
I ran to the restaurant entrance. The handle was in my hand when a sound made me pause. Steps behind my back. Not a Twisted One. Human.
“Daphne?”
No—
The world spun around me, my breathing turning erratic. How, in the name of everything holy, was that even possible?
“Arthur?” I turned, blinking. He stood ten feet away from me. “What are you doing here? How—” My mind was still struggling to grasp the truth. Maybe I was fast asleep in Emrys’s arms, and this was all a nightmare.
“I came with them, Daphne.” He pointed his thumb behind his back, where that fisherman’s barge was, where Emrys was tearing through the ranks of Hollowborn.
I shook my head in disbelief. “Impossible.”
“I came to visit you in St. Dismas,” he said. His voice was flat — oily. “But you were not there. Instead, I found a miracle.”
He stepped closer. I narrowed my eyes, trying to see his face. Something was different about him.
“I came here on the wings of his loyal ones. One day, I’ll be like them, Daphne. Cagliostro showed me his magic. He chose me.”
Cagliostro –
No.
My God. He stood before me, the scarce moonlight trickling over his short hair.
“Come, Daphne. Time to bring you home.”
“Arthur—” My voice broke. This was surely some trick of the Hollowborn?
He stretched his hand. I could see him clearly now.
This was no illusion. It was my brother, wearing his favorite gray gloves and the mustard-colored scarf Charles had given him the previous Christmas.
I saw his thick blond hair graying at the temples, the scar over his upper lip, the left shoulder higher than the right one.
But instead of his amethyst eyes, there were two terrifying black holes.
Dried blood caked his face like grotesque tears.
The urge to bend over and retch was so overwhelming that I had to press my hands to my mouth.
“Arthur,” I said, “who did this to you?”
He swept his arms wide like a magician, unveiling the final act of a dark, impossible trick. “I did it myself, dear sister. There’s only one way to bask in the Grandmaster’s glory. And I don’t need any primitive senses for that. Seeing his light with my eyes would’ve burned them.”
“Arthur! What have you done?” I pressed my back against the door leading to the restaurant. Would I still have a chance if I ran fast enough? But something was keeping me here, filling my limbs with lead.
His blood-smeared grin under his trimmed mustache had never been more terrifying.
“He showed me the light, Daphne. He showed me the truth. Miracles beyond my understanding. And he’s waiting. Now come.” He tapped his boot impatiently, and I bristled. “I’ll take you to him.”
The Twisted Ones from the bridge circled us: a wall of pale, expressionless faces that glitched when I blinked, revealing the death lingering beneath.
“Come, sister. Let’s not keep the Grandmaster waiting.”
The ring of Twisted Ones was closing around us. I was cornered. Terrified. But fear had ruled me long enough. I straightened, breathing through the panic, and looked into my brother’s disfigured face.
Alone among monsters. Good thing I was used to it.
“Artie, remember the stories about Excalibur you loved telling me?” He stilled for a moment and shook his head.
“If you think that this would work, that you’d appeal to my memories, and I’d let you go, you’re wrong, sister.
You killed our parents!” He shouted the last words, and I winced.
A part of me panicked and wanted to curl into a fetal position, preparing for his fists.
But that part of me was buried deep in the past. I left it behind that night when I climbed down the wall to see La Traviata.
“But I didn’t, Artie,” I said, my voice so loud that he tilted his head, curious.
“There was something in the lake that night.” I peered into the mist behind him and listened to the sound of the sea.
It was changing. A cold breeze brought the smell of seaweed and driftwood.
“Something waited for us in the water.” Arthur raised his hand, ready to strike me.
There was my brother again. The man who hit me every time when the world around him didn’t make sense.
“I didn’t kill our parents, Artie. She did,” I whispered.
She was here. Eager to take what was promised.
Hungry.
The Twisted Ones scattered like roaches as she rose from the sea behind Arthur’s back, majestic and terrifying as a titan from the dawn of time.
I peeled my back from the door and walked to Arthur. He whipped his head from side to side, desperate to understand what was happening. Seemed like the superior senses gifted to him by the Renegade were useless now.
The undyne loomed behind him—a black pillar of churning water, coiling like a serpent crowned in foam. She dwarfed him.
For a moment, the boy I remembered resurfaced. The boy with one shoulder lower than the other, who played with me in the garden and rode the wooden horses Grandfather carved for him.
My eyes stung as years of torment melted away—leaving only a hollow, aching void where love had once lived.
With him, the last one of my family would be gone.
The undyne uncoiled like something made of storm. A goddess who swallowed ships and demanded human sacrifices, who filled the fishermen’s nets and dragged careless children into the deep.
“I came for what was promised.” Her voice thundered like the surf. A tentacle wider than the ship’s funnel snaked through the mist. It wrapped around Arthur and pulled him into the low mist.
Without making a sound, my brother, or whatever was left of him, was gone.
Guilt and pain tore at my chest like something sharp and tangled was lodged behind my ribs.
How many times had I fantasized about my brother’s death in the last decade?
In the beginning, I was planning to escape and tell Scotland Yard the truth about the Draymoore’s heir.
Countless times I’d imagined him locked in a cell, paying for what he was doing to me.
That was all gone.
There was no triumph now when it was done. Replaced by some numbness, as if I’d just lost a limb, and the pain hadn’t struck yet.
No time for grief now. The black pillar of water drew closer.
“It’s time for the real treat now, Daphne,” the undyne thundered. I was next.
I dashed to the left, tripping over something lying on the deck. The Twisted Ones were regrouping, heading my way. They watched the undyne, baring their teeth.
I cursed. The choices I had were death by demons or drowning. Some dark, bitter humor bubbled inside me.
“You all want me?” I shouted. “Then fight for me!” I barked a bitter laugh. The sound was so out of place it startled even the undyne. “Did you hear me, monsters? Fight for me!”
Where the hell was Emrys?
The air shifted. A gust of warm wind brought the scent of crushed violets. The faint hum of wings slicing the air, followed by a thud.
My heart was in my throat. “Emrys?”
The strangest sound rippled through the mist—a female laughter. Soft and pleasant and out of place. “You’re totally crazy. I get what he sees in you.”
The mist parted like a stage curtain, and a woman stepped out, her dark, massive wings dragging behind her like a cloak. Her face…
Her beautiful, heart-shaped face seemed somewhat familiar.
The woman smirked. Waves of black hair cascaded down to her knees.
“Camille?” I whispered. “Camille Monfort?”
Was this another one of the Renegade’s tricks?
She smiled pleasantly as if we were drinking tea and gossiping. “You know me already. How nice. Sorry to crash that little party of yours, but I believe you’d rather be somewhere else.”
Before I could answer, she slung her arms around me. She was far stronger than her lithe form suggested.
My stomach lurched as the deck beneath my feet disappeared.
We were flying.