Brimstone By Callie Hart - 4

THERE WAS A new tattoo on her chest: a thin black line that marked her skin from one shoulder to the other, right below her collarbone. Just a simple line, but somehow striking. She was breathtaking as she turned and faced the hall, her eyes lit with a galaxy of stars. She was the center of that galaxy. I gravitated toward her anyway, but after what she’d just done—she had no idea what she’d done—my cock was the hardest it had ever fucking been, and I could barely think straight.

Gods, that fucking dress . . .

As Ereth climbed the steps of the dais, approaching her, I watched Saeris take in her surroundings, wide-eyed, and I knew what she was feeling. The euphoria was running through my veins, too. I should have been more careful when I’d told her to drink. She couldn’t have known what would happen if she stilled with her canines inside me and didn’t drink, though. It was my own fucking fault. I should have told her. I should have explained. My cock throbbed relentlessly as I turned around to face the hall.

Ereth reached the top of the steps and bowed reverently, dipping low before my mate. Saeris barely noticed that he was there. My poor Little Osha was reeling from the effects of the bite, but not me. I had years on her. I knew how to shove the high aside. I did so reluctantly; it would have been nice to float on that sea of pure bliss with her, but Ereth had encouraged her to bite me for a reason. Likely, he’d hoped the experience would put her on her ass. He probably hoped having Saeris feed from me would dull my senses and make me lower my guard, too . . . but Ereth didn’t know me. He’d never faced me on the battlefield. Never visited me when I was trapped inside Malcolm’s maze. He had no idea who I was or what I was capable of and, therefore, had no clue what heinous crimes I would commit to ensure my mate’s safety.

The beak-nosed bastard raised the golden diadem he carried in his hands, gently placing it atop Saeris’s head. Her eyelids fluttered as she came back to herself, and my reality sharpened to a knife’s point. She was vulnerable with him standing so close. Too vulnerable. I bristled, my fingers prickling.

Patience , the quicksilver whispered.

Ever since Te Léna had partnered with Iseabail to tease the quicksilver out of me, the whispering in my head had been less frantic. Sharper. Easier to understand. Together, healer and witch had achieved what neither had been able to accomplish alone. The thread of quicksilver that lingered inside of me no longer made me feel like I was hanging on to my sanity by my fingernails. For the first time since it had infected me as a youth, I had begun to think of the quicksilver as more of a blessing than a curse. It urged caution now, as I watched Ereth like a hawk. Wait. Wait. Be patient . . .

Patience had never been my strong suit. The maze had changed that for me. I held my position, giving Ereth the benefit of the doubt. I knew very little of him. It was unlikely that he would move so quickly after—

Nope.

I was right.

I fucking knew it.

The blade that appeared in the Lord’s hand had a handle wrapped with a leather thong. It must have been causing him serious discomfort this whole time; he’d been keeping it inside his cloak, tucked away against his side. The blade was vicious, needlelike, and flashed bright silver: the perfect weapon for a vampire noble, inexperienced in the art of fighting, to drive through their enemy’s eardrum and straight into their brain.

Ereth moved quickly.

I moved quicker.

Saeris reacted, too, the dazed gloss to her eyes fading away. She reached for the dagger I had given her, but I was already there, slamming into the Lord.

Ereth made a guttural guhhhhh! sound as he flew back, the air rushing out of him. He crashed down hard on the dais steps. Raising the hand with the blade in it, he went to throw it, but—

I reached over my shoulder.

My hand closed around Nimerelle’s hilt.

In a beat, the sword was gone.

I hurled her with all my might.

The honed metal cut through the air, spinning end over end, arcing at the last minute and slicing straight through Ereth’s torso on a diagonal, cleaving him in two.

Nimerelle landed point-first, juddering, the blade burying five inches deep into the obsidian dais.

Thunk.

Thunk.

Ereth’s body was much less graceful when he struck the floor. His insides were black, his organs necrotic, the ichor that oozed out of him thick and stinking of tar. Death had perched on this monster’s shoulder for so long that he wasn’t going to waste much time claiming his prize now. Nimerelle was a god sword, after all—laced with silver and the magic of the gods. I might not have decapitated Ereth, but the bastard was lying in two pieces on the ground. The blow would kill him.

To my left, three high bloods wearing black tabards with bloodred dragons depicted on them writhed on the steps. They’d come to their leader’s aid, it seemed, only to be felled by someone else’s hand. Taladaius stood at the base of the dais, hand outstretched, expression blank as he unleashed his magic upon the vampires. There was a reason the previous king of this court had made Tal his second in command. He never flaunted his magic, but the male was powerful. Even before he’d transitioned, Tal had been able to manipulate most liquids. All liquids, in fact, apart from quicksilver. Blood was a liquid . . . and right now, he was boiling the blood in the high bloods’ veins.

Steam poured from their open mouths, their screams silent as they died, and Tal observed their passing with a look of expertly crafted boredom. Scandalized mutters went up throughout the hall—to use such taboo magic against members of his own court was rare indeed, but not unheard of. Rumor had it Malcolm enjoyed watching his subjects smoke whenever they stepped out of line. Saeris hadn’t ordered Tal to act, though. He’d acted of his own volition. There would be consequences, to be sure, but that was none of my concern.

Saeris was behind me.

It only took a second to scan her for injuries. She appeared to be unharmed, but I didn’t trust my own eyes. I needed to hear her say it. Are you okay? I demanded.

Yes. I—I’m fine.

My relief was absolute. Stay there, then. Wait for me. No one else is getting up these steps. Amid the screams of horror and panic that erupted throughout the hall, I slowly stepped down from the dais to the platform, toward where the two separate pieces of Ereth’s broken body lay.

“I bet you’re regretting that ,” I snarled.

Thin black liquid bubbled out of the Lord’s mouth, spackling his lips and his chin. “She is . . . anathema. Cursed,” he choked out. “The g-gods denounce . . . her.”

“Really?” I crouched down next to him. “Is that so?” I was still missing my bracer. I raised my right hand to show him what my armor and Saeris’s gloves had been hiding from view: the extensive tattoos that marked us—and our union—as divinely bound. Ereth had been Fae once. He knew the stories. He had certainly heard tales of couples who were God-Bound. His eyes went wide when he saw the ink circling my wrists. Ink that had formed in the maze, when Saeris had been pulled through the quicksilver and into the realm of the gods themselves. “They haven’t denounced her. They have safeguarded her.” And maybe that wasn’t true. God-Bound unions often ended in death. But Saeris had already died once, and I’d done way more than my fair share of dying back in the maze. As far as I was concerned, Death had taken his due from us. I had to see the marks as a blessing.

Laughter burbled up out of Ereth, the sound a wet rattle. “You f-fool. W-we have different gods.”

And then he was gone.

Between breaths, the monster’s body crumpled to ash.

An enraged scream pierced the air, and there was Zovena, charging not toward me, but toward the sword still embedded in the center of the five-point star mosaic that decorated the platform.

I rose to my feet, baring my teeth. “Touch it, Zovena. Go on, I fucking dare you.”

The bitch stopped dead in her tracks, but not because common sense had claimed her; a streak of silver rippled across my vision, and Tal was there, tackling the female vampire to the ground.

“Stop!”

Saeris’s shout crashed through the Hall of Tears, and at her command, the remaining Lords, Tal and Zovena, and the high blood vampires rioting in their seats just stopped .

“I am ruler of this court, and I will be heard!” She stood at the edge of the dais, beautiful and terrible as a storm, the air rippling and distorting around her. I wasn’t a member of the Sanasrothian Court, but even my ears rang with her authority. It brought a number of the other high born vampires in the front benches to their knees. “From this point forth, whenever you are in my presence, this is how you will greet me: on your knees ! All subjects of the Blood Court of Sanasroth are forbidden from harming, hindering, or killing me, my mate, or any of my friends. Additionally, from this moment onward, no feeder enthralled to a high blood of this court may be used for the purposes of war, malice, or mayhem. I have spoken. It is done!”

A shock wave of power blasted through the hall, pulling at people’s clothes and causing them to shield their eyes.

Saeris had delivered her own edicts. The first laws of a new monarch, passed with force. The first steps of our plan were in place.

The vampires of Sanasroth had no choice but to obey.

“She dosed you? In front of the whole Sanasrothian Court?”

I trudged through the mud, shaking my head at the amusement in Renfis’s voice. He was enjoying this way too much. “I think you’re missing the point. I killed a Lord of Midnight. The coronation celebrations were called off. I had to leave Ammontraíeth before a riot broke out.”

My friend nodded, rubbing at his jaw. “Yeah. Right. Okay. That wasn’t exactly how we’d hoped the ceremony would play out. But honestly, who cares about Ereth? They’ll have a quorum and replace the bastard. I want to know about you getting dosed. Did you tear her clothes off in front of everyone?”

I clenched my jaw, blowing out a hard exhale. “No, I did not tear her clothes off. She barely even got me. As soon as I realized what she was doing, I told her to drink, and then—” But I was remembering the heat of her venom in my veins and my head was starting to spin out again. “Look, let’s focus. I just had to ride out from Ammontraíeth on horseback, and then I had to skate halfway across the fucking Darn before I had access to my magic. How am I supposed to protect her properly if I can’t create a godscursed portal?”

Ren had some color in his cheeks. That was good to see. Ever since we’d moved Layne to the East Wing at Cahlish, his mood had been a little more upbeat. My sister had opened her eyes yesterday, which was small progress, yes, but it was progress nonetheless. He’d always been protective of my half sister. Even when we were younger and she used to tease him mercilessly. He seemed to have taken it upon himself to make sure Everlayne made as full a recovery as possible. He ducked his head as he followed me into the war tent.

“Sounds to me like Saeris is one of the most powerful beings this side of the afterlife. They’ve crowned her. She’s spoken her will and made it law.”

I grunted unhappily.

“They have to obey her, brother. It’s part of the curse of their court. You can thank Malcolm’s paranoia for that. Any vampire born of his line must obey the Sanasrothian crown. Now that the crown sits on Saeris’s head and she’s forbidden them from harming her, she’s basically untouchable. She doesn’t need protecting. They have to follow the edicts. They can’t hurt her. They can’t hurt you. And not only that, but she decommissioned the fucking horde , Fisher.”

He was right. What he was saying made sense. So why, then, did this niggling, sick feeling persist in my stomach? “They’re bound to be trying to figure out a workaround as we speak. Zovena’s incandescent with rage—”

“Screw Zovena ,” Ren muttered.

“—and Algat was grinning like an imp when she trotted out of that hall, so the gods only know what she’s planning.”

“Well, well, well. Look who it is. The wanderer returns.” The war tent was empty save for a lone figure sitting on a stool by the fire, running a whetstone along the edge of his sword. Avisiéth had once been named Celeandor. It had belonged to another member the Lupo Proelia, but Saeris had reforged it and placed it in Lorreth’s hands—the first god sword to channel magic in an age.

“You’re going to polish that blade away into nothing if you’re not careful,” Ren said, taking a seat next to him.

“It gets sulky if I don’t clean it every night.” Lorreth’s tone bore a hint of exasperation. He grinned at us both in greeting. “The damned thing has mood swings worse than a Faeling whose balls are about to drop.”

Ren laughed, nodding up at me. “Funny you mention balls. Ask him how his are.”

I groaned, leaning up against the table in the center of the room. “Gods alive, are you going to tell everyone?”

Lorreth frowned. Stooping, he collected a mug of beer from the floor at his feet. “Tell me what? What’s wrong with your balls?” He took a swig.

“He gave Saeris a new piece of ink. She had to feed from him before they’d crown her,” Renfis said. “And she accidentally dosed him.”

Lorreth spat his beer everywhere. “What?” He grimaced up at me. “In front of the whole court?”

Defeated, I nodded, letting out a sigh. I might as well let them get it over with. “In front of the whole court.”

“How did you keep your shit together? Weren’t you . . .” He looked directly at my crotch. “Y’know . . .”

“Yes, I was harder than that fucking steel in your hands. Is that what you want to hear?”

“Gods, I’m so sorry,” Lorreth said. But he was laughing, which made it very clear that he wasn’t sorry, and, in fact, the piece of gossip was probably the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

I wasn’t laughing. Mainly because I hadn’t had a chance to be alone with Saeris since the coronation, but also because of the situation I found myself in now. I was in Irrín. My mate was not. If I’d had my way, we’d have already murdered every single bastard in the Sanasrothian Court and Saeris would be here, by my side. For once, I wanted to be selfish. Wanted to say fuck it and put my own happiness and the happiness of my mate first. But selfishness was not my lot in this life. As if reminding me of my path, the tattoo on my inner left forearm tingled, the ink shivering beneath my skin. Sacrifice. It pulsed often, even stung from time to time, as if the ink were still fresh. But it never changed. Never spelled out some other, less painful future.

The plan we had concocted since Saeris’s awakening felt pieced together and liable to fall apart at any second. The consequences, should we fail, had kept me from sleep for days.

If Tal didn’t keep up his end of the bargain and keep her safe . . .

If Saeris’s royal decree didn’t hold, or the Sanasrothian leeches found a way to circumvent it and killed her in her bed . . .

If she couldn’t find the information we so desperately needed in the Sanasrothian libraries . . .

If Carrion fucking Swift somehow landed himself in shit and dragged the love of my miserable life into it with him . . .

If.

There were too many ifs to comprehend. They bombarded me, crushing me under a barrage of all-too-real possibilities while I desperately clung to the promise I had made to have faith . But having faith was like trying to remember a language I had once known as a child. No, it was worse. It was like trying to run with broken legs. My legs could not carry me right now, and so I was dragging myself along on my hands and knees, the word faith a boot on the back of my neck, shoving me down into the dirt.

Ren and Lorreth were still chuckling.

“At least if you’re this wound up, you’ll be ready for a fight,” Lorreth mused, his dark eyes full of mischief.

A part of me wanted to be angry that they could still be so lighthearted in the face of all of this. It was the same part of me that had been trapped in Malcolm’s maze for over a century and had gradually lost hope. Always running. Always suffering. Being eaten, and being burned, and being haunted by the burning corpses of an entire city that I had put to the torch. The same part of me that was still there, running the passageways of that dark nightmare. The part of me that would never be free of that fucking maze.

But the rest of me was relieved that my friends still had laughter in their souls. They had suffered, too. Their losses also piled high. They’d had to watch our people being brutalized, eaten, and turned every day. And if my friends could still find it in themselves to laugh, then I was glad of it. That meant that maybe there was hope for me, too.

I ducked my head, smiling softly as I looked down at my hands. It was pretty funny, when you thought about it.

“Honestly, I think I might be partially responsible,” Lorreth said, turning his attention back to his sword; the metal cast a sustained bright humming sound as he slid the whetstone along its edge. “She asked me about the blood trade back at the tavern not too long ago. I explained it inasmuch as it felt appropriate. In hindsight, I only gave her half the information she probably needed. But how was I supposed to know that she’d find herself turned and in a position to bite you ? I figured you’d explain it all when the time was right, and you wanted to—”

“Please stop talking.” It was entirely unreasonable—the sudden urge I had to wrap my hands around Lorreth’s neck and squeeze until he stopped breathing. But a mated Fae didn’t like another male talking about his mate at the best of times. And I was newly mated. Hearing that he’d spoken to Saeris about the blood trade at all made me want to turn feral and burn down the fucking war tent.

Lorreth chuckled, unfazed by the way I’d snapped at him. He just shook his head, going about his work. Shhhhick. Hummmmmm. Shhhhick. Hummmmmm. Wisely, he changed the subject, though.

“I still haven’t found him,” he said, a seriousness falling over him.

Ren’s smile faded, too. He picked at his nails, staring into the fire as he spoke. “We don’t even know he’s in there.”

I knew who they were talking about, though neither of them said his name. Our friend. Our brother. Foley had been with us when we’d climbed the dragon. Old ’Shacry had shaken him free and sent him hurtling into the dark. The fall had crushed his body, but it was the feeders who had killed him. They’d drunk him dry and left him broken in the snow. It had taken hours to find him. I was free of the dragon’s maw and morning had arrived by the time we discovered him, panting and covered in blood, hiding from the dawn in the mouth of a cave.

He should have become a feeder. Malcolm was the only one of his kind capable of creating other vampires with their personalities and minds intact. At least, that was what we’d believed at the time. We’d thought it was a miracle. Years later, I discovered the truth: that Taladaius had been there that night, overseeing the assault on the mountain.

When asked, he’d said that he had done it as a kindness to me. That he had fed Foley his blood and then drained him, if only so that he might have a choice in whether he lived or died.

Foley had been angry. Confused. We’d stayed with him. Our friend had screamed for hours as he completed his transition. He’d fed before we’d found him and couldn’t stop crying over those he had killed. His horror over what he had become seemed as though it would kill him, though when darkness fell, he left us, fleeing into the night, down the mountain and away.

We heard later that he had fled to Ammontraíeth. There had been many instances over the years when we had reached out to him, but our letters had all gone unanswered.

“He’s there,” I said softly. “He wouldn’t have left. He wouldn’t have trusted himself around the living.”

None of us spoke again for a time.

Shhhhick. Hummmmmm.

Shhhhick. Hummmmmm.

Even though he sat still, gaze lost in the flames, the tension pulsing from Renfis mounted until it became a fourth presence at the fire, hogging all the warmth. “Will you speak, or will you stew?” I asked eventually.

He inhaled sharply, as if waking from a dream. “I have nothing new to say on the matter.”

Lorreth set Avisiéth down at last, leaning back in his chair and resting his cup of ale against the flat of his stomach. “Then say what you’ve said already, and we’ll hear you out again.”

It seemed for a moment that Ren was going to hold his tongue, but then he began. “It’s been hundreds of years. Close to an age. We knew him once, but Foley’s been a vampire longer than he was Fae at this point. Who’s to say he is anything like the person we once fought alongside?”

He was right. So much time had passed. But there was that word again. Faith. Every once in a while, it let me up from the dirt long enough to take a breath. “He was bound to us by blood, as we were to him. He swore to protect our people, along with all the creatures of Yvelia. If you found yourself in his shoes, would you break your oath, Ren?”

Renfis hadn’t just stepped in as commander of the Lupo Proelia when I’d been lost to the maze. He’d become general to an army. He had willingly donned a mantle of responsibility that would have crushed most other warriors, as it had almost crushed me. I knew the core of him. He was honest, and true, and good. But still he was foolish enough to shake his fucking head. “I honestly don’t know, brother.”

“Well, I do. There is no way you’d turn your back on your promise. I choose to believe that Foley hasn’t, either.”

I’d spent hours looking for him, once I’d known Saeris was going to be okay. So had Lorreth. Taladaius had refused to tell me where he was, which hadn’t done much to dull the anger that I still harbored toward him. But, in a way, I’d understood.

Foley had needed to carve out a new existence for himself at Ammontraíeth. At some point, he must have needed to accept his new life and move forward with it. He hadn’t answered the letters any of us had sent to him, which must have been for a reason. And if Foley didn’t want to speak with us, then it stood to reason that he wouldn’t want to see any of us, either.

A long time ago, he would have died for me and I for him. I would still have laid down my life for him if it would save him in some way. But the damage was done, and of all people, Tal seemed to be the only one who could respect that.

“If he is in there somewhere, who’s to say he has any interest in helping Saeris?” Lorreth said. “He has no connection to her. No reason to show her any loyalty at all.”

“Other than her being my mate?”

Lorreth sipped from his beer. “I mean, honestly, that might make him even less inclined to help her.”

I shrugged. “We have to hope. We need him. His grandfather was one of the last Alchemists. Foley knows more than anyone else about Alchemical magics and practices. Belikon burned all the Alchemists’ texts when he seized the crown. The few books that my father collected back at the library in Cahlish don’t explain much of anything at all. So that leaves the knowledge that exists in Foley’s head. If he won’t share that with her . . .”

“Then Saeris will never be able to realize her full potential. We’ll never be able to destroy Ammontraíeth for good. And we’ll never be able to put an end to Belikon once and for all and stick Carrion Swift on the throne,” Ren admittedly grimly. “I suppose we’d all better hope and pray that Foley changes his mind and wants to be found, then. Because I, for one, would love to see peace in my lifetime.”

Hah.

Peace.

What would that even look like? Would any of us know what to do with ourselves? I doubted it. Absently, I realized that I hadn’t put my bracer back on after I’d let Saeris feed from me. I ran my fingers over the two small puncture wounds at my wrist; they were healing rapidly and would be gone by morning. Sighing, I removed the other bracer and set it down on the table, then unfastened the gorget, too, freeing myself of its weight around my neck. I was rolling up my shirtsleeves when I realized that my brothers were staring at me.

“What?” But I already knew what they were staring at. I had been careful to conceal the rune work that stained the backs of my hands and looped around my wrists ever since Saeris had accepted me as her mate. My hands had always been inked. The runes for vengeance and justice had been marked into my skin for a very long time . . . but now there were other runes layered over the top of them. So many runes, in fact, that they were impossible to differentiate from one another. The runes and script that wound their way up my arms—the God Bindings that matched Saeris’s own—were beautiful and terrifying, even to me.

I looked down at it all, staining my skin, and smiled ruefully. “Yeah. It’s a lot .”

“I mean, we knew,” Ren said breathlessly. “But knowing is one thing. Seeing it in person . . .”

“Seeing it in person is wild ,” Lorreth agreed. “Does this mean the two of you are going to . . . y’know.” He seemed to be struggling to get the words out. “Will you perform the rites now? Get married?”

A jolt of adrenaline zipped up my spine. I shoved away from the table, quickly rolling down my shirtsleeves, covering the ink. “No. We won’t be doing that,” I clipped out. “She’s not—”

The war tent’s flap opened, and Danya burst into the room. “Ren! Oh. You’re here.” Her eyes landed on me, full of panic. “You need to come outside now. All three of you. Something’s wrong.”

Ren was already on his feet. “Feeders at the river?” Panic tinged the question; after Saeris’s decree earlier, the feeders had been recalled back to Ammontraíeth. They were to be garrisoned a mile from the Black Palace, far from Sanasroth’s border with Cahlish.

“No,” Danya answered. “Yes. I—I don’t know what’s happening. I can’t explain it. It’s best if you come and see for yourself. Hurry.”