Brimstone By Callie Hart - 40

BLACK.

Stinking.

Foul.

The blood on the ground was an inch deep and slippery as hell. I barely kept my feet beneath me as I raced for a thrall who was stooping down and pressing something to a female high blood’s lips. The female’s eyes flashed with silent recrimination as she batted his hand away, rejecting the salvation he offered her, even as she drowned in the putrid blood she had stolen.

“Here, give it to me!” I held out my hand, waiting for the thrall to pass me a vial from the leather bag it was carrying, but the thrall shook his head. “Not for him,” he said. “He told us not to.”

“I don’t give a fuck what he told you.” I snatched the bag and turned back to where Tal was on the ground, kicking and shaking . . . but Foley was already there, jamming his fingers between Taladaius’s teeth.

“Fair . . . turn around,” he gritted out. “I told him I didn’t want to come back as a vampire. Well, now he doesn’t get a choice. He’s coming back Fae whether . . . he likes it . . . or not !”

Taladaius did not like it. He raged and he spat, but in the end, Foley forced the clear contents of one of the vials down his neck and massaged his throat until he swallowed.

The vampire stopped vomiting, then . . . but the blood was replaced by an awful white foam that frothed up from his mouth, forming a bubbling pool on the ground. I couldn’t decide what was worse.

There were others lying on the bloody floor, foaming at the mouth. Not as many as I might have thought. One in eight high bloods? No, less. One in ten had made the choice to live and face the consequences of their years in Ammontraíeth.

Foley stood, panting as he watched Tal shiver on the ground.

“How are you all right?” I asked him.

“He told me not to drink the wine. I thought he was warning me about the blood in it. I could already smell it. I—I wasn’t going to drink, anyway.”

“He made sure none of the thralls gave us wine with blood in it,” I added, rubbing my forehead. “He—fuck, this is why he wanted to disavow me!” I closed my eyes, shaking my head. “It’s all linked. The blood, I mean. Malcolm’s blood turned these high bloods. It must be some kind of magic.”

“Not magic. A spell,” Fisher said. “Something to affect Malcolm’s line. He severed you from his blood so that it wouldn’t affect you. He’d already done the same with you a long time ago, Foley.”

“And . . . what about me ?”

I rounded on the voice, my mind fighting to make sense of what my eyes were seeing: Zovena, not as she had been earlier, when I had used her as a footstool. There was color in her cheeks. Her eyes were blue. I could hear her heart beating from where I stood, ten feet from her. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she flared her nostrils, staring down at Tal. “He dragged me into an alcove while you were dancing. I wasn’t feeling well. I was dizzy. I . . .” She blinked. “He took me by surprise. I tasted it, whatever he tipped into my mouth, sour and . . . sweet, and then my eyes were full of stars. I woke up and . . . and . . .” She looked at me , as if I might be able to provide an explanation for what had happened to her.

I had none to give her.

Tal hadn’t mentioned a word of this to me. Not a peep.

“He’s having some kind of seizure,” Foley said.

“Give him something to bite down on,” Fisher fired back. “Make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.” He was busy scanning the floor of the Hall of Mirrors, looking for something; whatever it was, he couldn’t seem to find it. Turning to me, he said, “You’re okay? You’re feeling okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“Good. Can you wait here for me? Please? Help Foley with Tal?”

I nodded. “Yes. I—”

He whipped around, grabbing Zovena by the arm, and charged up the length of the hall, picking through the bodies as he went.

Everything was happening so quickly. Hundreds of vampires lay dead or dying on the ground. The air was thick with cloying copper, the scent so pungent that I wanted to throw up. Lying on his side, Tal’s body trembled violently; his eyes were rolled back into his head. His pale skin was spattered with blood, his beautiful dove-gray suit ruined.

“Is he going to be okay?” A stupid question. Absolutely idiotic. No, of course he wasn’t going to be okay. Tal had not wanted to drink the contents of that vial. He’d orchestrated this literal bloodbath, and he hadn’t wanted to stick around to see how it played out.

Foley’s dark expression said all of this and more. But there was a grim determination in his eyes, too. One that said he wasn’t about to let the Lord of Midnight go without a fight. “He’s calming now,” he said through gritted teeth. “He’s coming through the other side of it.”

Was this what it had been like in the maze, after Malcolm had attacked me? My blood, staining the ground. Tal, undertaking dire actions to save me? Yes, it must have been like this, in a way. But . . .

Fisher had acted as my proxy. He had given consent on my behalf. Here we were, forcing an outcome onto the silver-haired male at my feet explicitly against his will.

I didn’t care.

I wasn’t about to let him go, and neither were any of his friends.

Tal let out a wheezing gasp, back arching. His eyes snapped open, and Foley fell backward onto his ass, covering his face in his hands. The confidence he had spoken with just now must have been for show, because the strangled sound he made was all relief.

“What . . . did you do?” Tal croaked. His eyes rolled wildly up at us, though his body was at last still. He pressed a hand against the ground, ringed fingers sticky with blood, as if the room was spinning and he was worried he might not be able to hold on much longer.

“You can’t just do—do this . . . and then leave! ” My emotions were all over the place. Any moment now, I was about to start sobbing. A part of me saw the carnage that surrounded me and was glad. The vast majority of Sanasroth’s high bloods were gone. They had accepted their true death, rather than return to what they once were. But we’d had a plan , damn it, and Tal had gone and made his own plan without telling any of us.

“Why?” I crouched down beside the male and brushed his silver-spun hair out of his face. “Why do this ?”

But Taladaius only closed his eyes, as if I already had the answer to that question and he could not bear repeating it. A tear formed in the corner of his eye, crystal clear as water, welling before it rolled over the bridge of his nose and fell into the blood. “You have to let me go. I can’t stay,” he whispered.

“Hypocrite.”

Tal’s eyelids opened again, his eyes the same thunderhead gray they had always been. He looked at Foley, despair carved into the lines of his face. “You don’t understand—”

“I understand perfectly,” Foley spat. An anger had come upon him, swift and unforgiving. He shunted himself forward so he could take Tal’s jaw in his hand and force the male to look at him. “You told me time and time again that becoming a vampire doesn’t alter the foundations of who you are, only highlights them. Look around you. These bastards are crumbling to ash right now because they’re evil down to the festering marrow. They choose death over life because they don’t want to lose their power. There was no oath forcing them to carry out the atrocities they committed. It was in their nature . You—” Foley broke off, shaking Tal’s head, forcing him to focus when he tried to turn away. “You are blameless. Whatever horrors you committed were forced upon you. Malcolm knew how much it would tear you up inside.”

Tal closed his eyes, more tears cutting tracks down his cheeks, his features crumpling. “You have to let me . . .” he whispered.

“You’ll forgive yourself,” Foley insisted. “You will . And in the meantime, you can take that misplaced sense of guilt and use it to make amends. Help fix what Malcolm used you to break, Tal. There is still hope .”

Taladaius’s head kicked back. Another seizure gripped him, twice as bad as before. He shook, face contorted into a rictus of pain.

This was worse than watching my friends in Zilvaren die. There was a tangible enemy there, but it seemed as though Tal’s own body was his enemy, and there was nothing I could do to fight that. “Why isn’t he getting better? The others . . .”

There were other high bloods, former high bloods, picking their way through all the death. They bore the stunned look of sleepers woken from a bad dream. They stepped over the bodies of their lovers and their friends, frowning in confusion at the scene before them. They seemed fine, aside from the fact that most of them were sobbing. But Tal had started foaming at the mouth again. He flinched, clutching at his chest as if he were in agony.

“Come on. We need to get out of here.” Fisher had returned, Zovena with him. He pushed the blond forward, and she staggered, nearly losing her balance. She’d lost her shoes at some point, and her beautiful red dress was torn and filthy. “I can’t find Algat anywhere,” Fisher said. I’ve searched high and low. I saw her in the hall not long before I pulled you off the dance floor, though, Osha. She didn’t have time to leave before Tal’s little stunt came to fruition.”

“Which means . . .?”

“Which means she probably drank from a vial and isn’t a high blood anymore,” Fisher said. “And trust me, if you thought she was bad as a vampire, you definitely do not want to run into her as a witch.”

Tal’s ring; Zovena’s ring; a golden chain bearing the Briarstone family sigil: three new relics, made in the blink of an eye.

No jokes. No secrets. No memories.

The quicksilver had bound to the jewelry as if doing so was the most natural thing in the world. Tal was unconscious when we entered the pool, so Fisher carried him. Foley clamped a hand around Zovena’s wrist and held on to her tight as they disappeared into the silver. I followed, casting a look over my shoulder, allowing myself a moment to second-guess all of this. The residents of Ammontraíeth were Fae now. They were confused. Even down in the Cogs, the high bloods were all dead, and disoriented Fae wandered the streets, not knowing what to do or where to go. Was I still their queen? Was this still their home? I couldn’t wrap my head around any of it. Leaving right now did not seem like a good idea, but what else was there to do?

Cahlish’s armory was deserted save for a handful of chickens, which scattered, squawking in surprise, when we emerged from the quicksilver. My head was spinning, and Zovena’s relentless sobbing made it impossible to think.

The night air bit at my face as we crossed the yard toward the house. The manor stood proud as a sentinel, blaring light out into the dark, and my pulse picked up when the front door came into view. A part of me felt—foolishly—that everything would be okay as soon as we were inside. That wasn’t the case, of course, but I let myself believe it. If only for the next twenty-four hours, I had to let myself believe it, or I was going to crumple under the weight of everything that was happening right now.

Taladaius was still convulsing. He would wake for a minute or two and struggle to speak. He kept gasping at the air, as if he’d forgotten what it was like to breathe. But then, I supposed he had forgotten. It had been over a thousand years . . .

Zovena sniffled behind Fisher, occasionally letting out a mournful sob, but she otherwise hadn’t said much. She was wobbly on her feet, exhaustion making her unsteady.

Fisher opened the door and gestured for me to enter first, which was probably for the best—the moment I stepped foot into Cahlish, I came face-to-face with my brother, who was brandishing a heavy poker from one of the fireplaces.

His eyes widened as he took me in. “What the fuck happened to you?” He frowned. “What are you wearing ?”

We’d fled Ammontraíeth as quickly as possible. I sure as shit hadn’t bothered to get changed before leaving, although I had taken a moment to grab Edina’s book. “It’s a dress , Hayden,” I said tiredly. “Where’s Carrion?”

“He’s upstairs. He sent me down here to fetch something for him. I heard the noise at the door and thought someone was trying to break in. Why are you wet , Saeris? Is that blood ?” My brother looked more and more dumbfounded as everyone piled into the house—Fisher first, whom he obviously recognized. But then Tal, shaking in his arms, and Foley, and finally Zovena. We all looked like we’d had the tar beaten out of us. “Well, this doesn’t look good. I thought you were going to a party .” Hayden closed his grip around the poker, as if he wasn’t quite sure whether he needed it now or not.

“Where’s Te Léna?” I asked. “Have you seen her?”

“I think she’s still in the dining room. We just got done with dinner. I was on my way to bed,” he answered.

“Bed? Yes, that’s probably a good idea.” Gods, it wasn’t even midnight yet. The hands of the tall grandfather clock in the hallway showed just past eleven thirty, but Hayden probably didn’t even know that. It had taken me a while to get used to Yvelian clocks. The sun dials we had in Zilvaren were far less complicated than a Fae timepiece, but also far less accurate. “Why don’t you go on up and . . . we can chat about all of this in the morning?” Why did I sound so strange? So stiff ? I hardly recognized my own voice.

Hayden made a scoffing sound, at last lowering the poker. “You’re sending me away again, then? Hiding the truth from me some more? Because that worked out so well last time?”

I loved him, I did. I had to. But gods have mercy, did he make it difficult sometimes. “All right. Y’know what, Hayden?” I threw up my hands. “Have it your way. You want to know everything? Fine. Come and learn everything. You’ll be wishing you could go back to living in ignorance very soon, I promise you.”

I was barely awake. Saeris sat pale as a ghost next to me at the table. There hadn’t been time for baths, and so I’d used my shadows to clean us all up. Tal was still unconscious and had been laid out to rest in one of the rooms upstairs. Zovena, who hadn’t stopped wailing, was verging on hysteria, and hadn’t even seemed to notice when I’d used my magic to remove the blood from her dress.

Once I’d kitted everyone out in clean clothing, Archer had shown everyone where they could sleep, and then Te Léna had spent an hour assessing everyone’s injuries. When she was done, the rest of us had sat down at the table, and I’d explained to Te Léna and Maynir what had happened at Ammontraíeth. I was about halfway through the story when Carrion hurried into the dining room, carrying a small blue pot full of dirt and a sharp dagger clamped between his teeth. He stopped in his tracks when he saw the group of us gathered around the table. “I missed something,” he said carefully around the blade. “I definitely missed something.”

“Sit down and listen,” I demanded. Up until very recently, I would have told the smuggler to leave and close the fucking door behind him. But certain thoughts had started to form in the back of my head—thoughts that couldn’t be ignored forever. One day very soon, we were going to have to think about the Yvelian throne, and Swift wouldn’t be any less of a buffoon if I kept treating him like one. I didn’t like it, but his comment back in Zilvaren had struck a chord.

Carrion’s eyebrows shot up. “I was actually just going to take some clippings of the plants out—”

“Sit down, Carrion.”

A smile slowly began to spread across his face. “You want me to stay. You missed me.”

“If you don’t take that knife out of your mouth and sit down, I’m going to personally smash that plant pot over your head,” Saeris muttered in a flat tone.

“Okaaaay. All right. I am sitting.” He winked at Saeris as he set his things down and took a seat. The table still felt woefully empty, too many chairs unoccupied. Lorreth and Danya were with the warriors at the temporary camp. The gods only knew where Renfis was. And we were missing one other person, too. Someone I distinctly wanted to have a conversation with.

She showed up just as I was detailing to Te Léna and Maynir how few of the high bloods had chosen to accept the chance to become Fae again. A thick silence fell as Iseabail entered the room.

There was no pretense to her. No denial or contrition.

I met her gaze and held it.

“Iseabail, come and join us.” Te Léna was always warm, even when the tension in the room was cold as ice. “Fisher was just explaining what happened at Ammontraíeth.”

“She knows all about what happened at Ammontraíeth, don’t you, Iseabail?” I said.

The witch pressed her hands to her skirts, wiping her palms against the material—they were probably slick with sweat, as they damn well should have been. “I do,” she answered in a clear voice. “And I’m sure you want me to be sorry for it, Kingfisher, but I’m not. I can’t be.”

“You put my mate in danger,” I growled.

On my left, Saeris shifted, her attention moving from the red-haired witch to me. She was quicker than most, had already put two and two together, but still she wasn’t angry at the female standing at the foot of the table. Placing her hand on top of mine, she let out an exhausted sigh. “I wasn’t hurt. That was clearly never their intention.”

Carrion propped his elbow on the table, rested his chin in hand, and said, “What in the actual fuck are you all talking about?”

“They’re angry at me for what happened tonight,” Iseabail said, in a calm, even tone.

Te Léna had figured it out. Maynir, too. Both the healer and her husband traded uncomfortable looks. “You didn’t want to come back here and help us, did you?” Te Léna said. No one would have blamed Te Léna if she’d been furious over the witch’s deception, but it was worse than that. She was hurt. She had thought she’d made a friend.

Iseabail’s defiant expression collapsed in the face of the healer’s accusation, but she maintained her stiff-backed posture, chin held high regardless. “I’m sorry, Te Léna. I enjoyed spending time with you and learning from you, truly I did. I wanted to help you find Ren as well, but I needed a reason to stay here at Cahlish. I had to be close for the spell to work.”

“Ahh. I get it now,” Carrion said. “ You’re the one who cast the spell that killed the high bloods. You gave Tal those vials to cure the Blood Court!”

“I did what I had to do. Do you have any idea how long we’ve waited for an opportunity to get inside Ammontraíeth? Do you know how long—”

“You put my mate in danger ,” I repeated.

She bit her bottom lip, looking down at her hands. There were long gashes at her wrists, angry, still dripping blood onto the dining room floor.

I closed my eyes, laughing humorlessly. “As soon as those high bloods were affected by the blood in that wine, they were freed from the Blood Court’s control, weren’t they?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Any of them could have attacked us.”

“Yes.”

“And it was your blood the thralls dripped into their glasses, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Tal brought them to the river, and I marked them with sigils. When they cut themselves, I bled through their veins. A simple transference spell, really. My blood—”

“Your blood is a curse to all vampires. It kills them unless they take the antidote that your clan created.”

“Yes.”

Yes, she answered, again and again, without shame or regret. Shadows began to spill from me, flowing like smoke down the arms of my chair, rolling across the table toward the witch.

“Fisher,” Saeris said. “I wasn’t hurt. It’s all right. We can deal with this—”

“You lied to Tal,” I said.

Iseabail watched the shroud of shadows approaching with growing trepidation. The air hummed with her fear, but she nodded, acknowledging the truth. “I had to. If he’d known that the high bloods might be able to hurt you or Saeris, he would never have agreed to the plan. And I feel bad for lying to him. I do. I would accept whatever punishment he saw fit for my crimes if he’d chosen to be reborn, but—”

“Tal’s alive,” I snapped. “ You might be okay with letting people you consider your friends die, but we are not the same.”

At this, Iseabail’s mouth fell open. She took a step toward the table, her hands forming warding signs to push back my smoke. “He’s alive ?”

“You can’t hold my magic back for long, Iseabail. This is my house—”

“I don’t care, Fisher! Kill me if you like! I knew there would be a price for all of this. It’s a price I was born to pay!” She spoke quickly, her hands shaking as my shadows shoved against her wards. It wouldn’t take long. One firm push from me and I would break through. I’d fucking kill her for what she’d done. “Listen to me. Wait!” she cried. “Is he here?”

“He’s resting upstairs,” Foley snarled. He had kept his peace throughout the entire exchange, but it seemed he could hold his tongue no longer. “He’s still convulsing every five minutes. He may never recover from that shit we had to pour down his throat.”

“No! You need to take me to him. Right now !”

“Like hell we do—”

“Why?” I demanded. Plainly, the witch was spooked.

Iseabail drew in a ragged breath, her hands shaking even harder as my shadows nearly broke through her ward. She met my eyes and held them, speaking urgently. “The sigils I marked the thralls with, they weren’t big enough. Weren’t strong enough. I couldn’t risk the high bloods sensing the magic on them or seeing large marks. I needed a much bigger conduit to channel the spell, one that would then redirect the energy to the thralls and complete the spell.”

“What are you talking about, Iseabail?” Saeris was already getting to her feet; she was following my lead. A grim realization had fallen on me while the witch was speaking—I was already heading toward the door.

The fucking tattoo.

The one I’d seen covering Tal’s chest back in the Hall of Tears, beneath his loose shirt. It hadn’t been a tattoo after all. It was a witch mark .

Fuck.

I tore past the witch, pulling back my shadows. “Will it kill him?” I demanded.

She dropped her ward and followed at a dead sprint. “If I don’t get to him immediately, it’ll kill all of us.”

The curtains were already on fire when we reached the bedroom. The bedsheets, too. The paint on the oil landscape hanging above the bed was blistered and melting, running over the gilt frame and down the wall. Taladaius lay still on the bed where we’d left him, hoping he’d feel better after some rest. His body was engulfed in flames, though his skin wasn’t burning. Not yet. His shirt was gone, burned away, revealing his bare chest and the monstrous witch mark that spread from shoulder to shoulder, spanning his torso from collarbone to hips.

“Zareth save us,” Te Léna hissed, as she barreled into the room behind us and saw the mark. “What the hell were you thinking? The knots on that kind of spellwork can’t be undone!”

The lines of it were woven tight, hundreds and hundreds of spells bound together consecutively, forming a tapestry of sigils that would have taken an entire clan of witches a full month to untangle. Te Léna was right: We were fucked.

“I have to try ,” Iseabail cried. “I knotted them. I can undo them!”

“Why would you do this to him?” Maynir flinched back from the bed, from the heat of the flames, from the cruelty of the spellwork, as if he couldn’t bear to witness any of it.

Iseabail’s hands were flying. The mark lit up in her presence, the spell responding to its creator. She plucked and pulled at the threads of the spell, unraveling them as fast as she could. “He was supposed to take it with him,” she spat through clenched teeth. “He said he was going to die! The spell would have died with him!”

It was too late.

We’d survived the fall of the Blood Court and so many other impossible situations, only to fall afoul of the witch mark to end all witch marks. What a fucking joke.

Foley stood outside the bedroom, the flames raging in his eyes. Next to him, Carrion held the knife he’d been carrying in his teeth earlier as if he were ready to use it, but there was no one to use it against . “What the fuck is happening?” He winced away from the wall of heat radiating from the bed Tal was lying on. “Why’s Tal on fire ?”

“The mark on his chest. It’s borrowed magic. Dark magic. It lends power to the one who binds it. But left unchecked, steals power. Eventually, it will open a gateway that cannot be closed.” Te Léna had to shout over the roar of the fire and Iseabail’s frantic chanting.

“What kind of gateway?” Saeris asked. I had shielded her from the heat with my body, but she had stepped around me now and was moving toward the bed. Her right hand was lit up and blazing like an angry star. “A gateway to where?” Her voice was quiet, but all heard it.

“To the realm from where all dark magic hails,” Te Léna answered. “The demon realm. I will not say its name!”

Iseabail’s fingers plucked, untying, blurring in their speed. But she wasn’t moving fast enough. This kind of mark wasn’t designed to ever be undone. It was a death sentence and the reason Tal had begged us to let him die. He’d known about the destruction he was wearing in his skin, and he’d tried to stop it. He’d tried to prevent this from happening, but none of us had listened.

“I can feel them,” Saeris muttered. “They want to get through. They’re . . . hungry .” Her hair had pulled loose from the elaborate style she had worn for the ball and was floating eerily around her as she stepped toward the bed.

Careful, Osha. The fire’s real. It will take you. I reached for her and regretted it instantly. The second my hand touched hers, the runes that marked my skin, mirroring hers, exploded with light. A pain like no other tore up my arm and detonated inside my head, bringing me to my knees. I couldn’t think around it. Couldn’t breathe. Someone was shouting something somewhere—Hayden, screaming for his sister to get back. Foley was holding him, stopping him from rushing into the blazing room.

I had to get to Saeris. I needed to.

The fire blanketed the ceiling, rolling over the depiction of the night sky painted there, defying gravity and swallowing the stars.

Hell was coming.

Hell was here .

But then Saeris was leaning over Tal’s flaming body, and she was pressing her hands to his chest. Her whole right arm was illuminated brilliant white-blue.

In the space between heartbeats, where my seized lungs tried and failed to take a breath, the glowing filaments of Iseabail’s spell fell apart, and the fires of hell went out.