Chapter 77 The Blackest Embrace
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The Blackest Embrace
Loxlure was not difficult to find in a place like Mersina.
It was known by a different name on the isle of mercenaries and mendicants, but the kingpin—was he still a kingpin, now that his empire was ash?
—had always had a knack for languages. A few muttered words into the right ears, a few gentle death threats, and he soon found himself in a dingy tavern that smelled strongly of piss, candied cherries, and nightpoppy.
Levan rolled the glass vial in the palm of his golden hand.
There were many ways one could take loxlure.
It could be ground into a fine powder, which one could either snort, rub into gums, or smoke in an achullah pipe.
But Levan had always preferred to drink it in a deep, dark shot of liquid.
The release was less immediate, since the substance took longer to enter the bloodstream, but Levan loved that.
The anticipation, the tingling, the way the high hit slowly, slowly, then all at once, the blackest embrace welcoming him home.
He unstoppered the cork, lifted the thin glass rim to his lips, and swallowed it down in one. The taste was exactly how he remembered it, as sweet as it was bitter, acrid as smoke yet somehow floral, a little metallic. The scent of nightpoppy, but a thousand times more intense.
He closed his eyes and waited.
The sounds of the tavern dissolved around him, the roar of pirates gambling away their treasures, the bleat of a stringed instrument, the clink of glasses, and the scuffle of footsteps.
It was all so far away.
Senses like sound and smell and taste and sight were all so abstract compared to the pain.
Miret, dead and empty in a heartbeat.
Alucia, alive, snarling, and then killed in front of him.
Saffron, taking his face in hers, peering into his soul as though it were not monstrous but wonderful, and then betraying him anyway.
His father, slain by the Silvercloaks because Levan had trusted the wrong woman—again.
His mother’s dead face illuminated by moonlight, his brother pleading next to her.
His brother telling him, cold and true, that he was beyond redemption.
But these agonies were already softening, swaddled by loxlure. The sharp, scraping horror lost its bladed edge, leaving behind a strange kind of resignation. Surrender. Yet surrender felt curiously like freedom.
All behind him now.
It could just be him and loxlure; the only thing he’d ever been able to count on.
He would never fulfill his mother’s twisted legacy.
Never avenge her death, never win back her throne.
And that was fine. That was good. He’d never wanted the crown anyway.
First thing tomorrow, once the nightpoppy loosened its claws, he would heal the magicless brand on his chest. He would make new. Become something other.
The soft haze became a savage swoosh of release, every muscle in his body slackening, the tension around his jaw and temples easing. He smiled into it, feeling not like a mage or a monster but rather an amorphous entity. The pure, raw pleasure would be next, and he would welcome it with open—
—an unexpected sound scythed through the feeling.
His own name.
Coming from his wand.
“Et vocos, Levan Celadon.”
It took him a few moments to place the voice, but when he did, it was like a shovel biting into crisp earth. Some of the loxlure clouds parted—not entirely, but enough for him to make columns of his spiraling thoughts.
Halant.
The necromancer he’d left behind in the crypt.
The crypt…which was underground, surrounded by ascenite on all four sides.
And ascenite could not burn.
“What is it?” Levan asked, slurring, distant, but straining for alertness.
“I’ve done it,” said Halant, equal parts elated and terrified.
Levan’s vision pitched to one side, his insides turning to ice. “I—what are you saying?”
A loaded pause, in which a thousand new possibilities took seed.
“House Rezaran has Risen.”