Chapter 26
In his memories, the castle was a proud structure of glimmering stone standing in the middle of a pristine lake. At night its windows had been filled with golden light, while during the day the colorful pennants that spoke of the Royal House of Elden and their allies had flown high overhead. Music had rolled out over the lake more often than not, and the causeway that connected the castle to the mainland had been filled with the bustle of movement as the people came and went.
What he saw before him was a desecration.
He and Liliana had come out of the forest on the opposite side of the lake to the causeway, but even from this far he could see the foul creatures moving about along the narrow stretch. They appeared agitated, their anger vicious. But their presence was, in many ways, the easiest to bear. As for the castle itself…
Enough sickening yellow light spilled from within that he could discern the black slime mold crawling up the sides of the stone, see the monstrous vegetation. His mother’s gardens, her fruit plants, were all gone, dead. To be replaced by putrid plants akin to those in the forest behind them.
The lake was in no better condition—slow moving and polluted, with a thin film of grease overlaying the surface, it appeared lifeless. But it was not untenanted. “What are those?” he said, catching the eager movements beneath the slime.
“The flesh-eating fish I told you about,” she said with a shudder before nodding to a small wooden boat that lay pulled up on the verge not far from them. “If we try to take that out into the water without my father’s sorcery to protect us, the fish will eat through the hull to get to us.” Staring at the water, she said, “I’ve been thinking. My blood is close enough to his that I may be able to fool the fish, get us safely to the castle—otherwise, we’ll have to breach the causeway.”
He tasted her fear, knew her father had terrorized her with the bloodthirsty fish in the lake. But they weren’t the only beings beneath the water.
You must always treat them with respect, Micah. They are the guardians of this place.
His father’s voice, stern and yet kind to a young boy who’d been flushed with his own power after summoning one of those great guardians from the deep, for his was the magic that spoke to the earth and its creatures, whether on the land or in the water. Perhaps the guardians were long dead, poisoned by this filth, but Micah didn’t think so. They were beings of vast and ancient magic who slept far, far below, under the silt of the lake bottom itself.
“No, Lily,” he murmured. “Save your strength, your blood.” Heading to the boat, he told her to get in. “You must trust me.”
It didn’t surprise him that she entered the boat without another word. She was his. Of course she should trust him; he would’ve likely growled at her if she had not. Putting his sword in with her, he knelt beside the boat, his hand braced on the bow, and went to brush the water with his fingertips.
Liliana pulled his hair. Hard. “Those fish can swim in the shallows. They’ll bite the tips of your fingers right off.”
He glared at her. “That hurt.”
“It’ll hurt more when they’re nibbling on you.”
Scowling because she was right, he considered the situation. “I must touch the water to do this.”
Liliana scrambled out of the boat to run into the forest without a word. Spinning, he ran after her to see her sawing away at one of the “tongues” he’d hacked off near the edge of the trees. It infuriated him that that black blood was touching her, but he helped her in her task and, together, they dragged the piece back to the lake.
“If you put this in front of your fingers,” she said, sliding away her knife, “the fish will go for it first. It’ll last perhaps ten heartbeats at most.”
“Are you sure? I quite like my fingers.”
“So do I.” A sinful smile so unexpected it made his own lips curve. “The plant is a delicacy to them—my father uses it as a reward after they take care of another enemy.”
“Back in the boat,” he ordered, and waited until she’d scrambled inside before taking the hunk of dead plant and dropping it in the water. As the hideous white fish, their eyes a dull pink, swarmed in a frenzy, he dipped in his fingers into the shallows and whispered, “Your help I ask, one guardian to another. It is time to wake.”
Teeth grazed his fingers just as he wrenched them out of the water. Liliana cried out in dismay when she saw the blood running hot and slick down his—still whole—finger. “You may kiss it better later,” he told her, his eyes on the lake.
The surface remained placid, the fish having calmed.
“Micah,” Liliana whispered, her eyes on the watch she wore around her neck. “It’s almost midnight.”
“Patience.” There. A bubble of water too big for a fish.
Running to the back of the boat, he began to push it into the lake, jumping in right before it would’ve been too late. “Row, Lily!”
Tiny crunching sounds came from all around them and Liliana knew the revolting fish with the pink eyes were eating away at the boat. A cold sweat broke out along her spine as she lifted her oar out of the water to dig it in again and one of those foul creatures appeared, teeth clamped on the wood as it flopped in the night air. “Micah.”
“We’re almost to the deep.”
That didn’t reassure her, since it ruled out any possibility of escape. But she’d promised to trust Micah, so she continued to row with frantic determination…and almost dropped her oar when a giant tentacle appeared, curling over the side of the boat. Another gleaming tentacle appeared on the other side.
She felt a tug, realized Micah was taking her oar and putting it on the bottom of the boat. “Hold on,” he warned, just before the water began to churn and they crashed over the lake at a speed that had her fingers going white-knuckled from the force of her grip. Around the lake, other mysterious creatures rose with a haunting song, their bodies so immense as to be incomprehensible, their jaws massive as they swallowed up her father’s evil creations with slow dives that rippled throughout the polluted water.
Exhilarated, she wiped away the filthy water spraying onto her face and held on tight as they headed straight for the shore—and the back of the castle. The tentacles slid away as they reached the shallows, but their momentum crashed them right onto the rocky edge, the boat falling apart on impact.
Scrambling onto the rocks with Micah behind her, she looked out over the churning surface of the lake. “My father’s creatures are vicious,” she said, able to see the flesh-eaters clamped on the tentacles that waved in the air. “They’ll hurt the guardians.”
Micah was already leaning back down to touch his fingers to the water, the fish too distracted to pay him any mind. “Sleep once more,” he said. “Wake when the lake is pure. You have my thanks.”
The lake began to calm an instant later, the guardians diving to the deep, where the flesh-eating fish could not follow. “They survived,” she whispered. “All this time while my father thought he had this land cowed, they survived.” A fierce happiness bloomed in her heart. “If they survived, so must others.”
Micah grinned at her, and it held the lethal chill of the Abyss. “It’s time to destroy the monster, Lily.”
A screeching cry overhead interrupted her response. Looking up, she saw the scorching form of a firedancer. It dropped flames as it flew, and only then did Liliana become aware that parts of the island were ablaze. “The menagerie!” she called to Micah as they began to scale the rocks to the castle. “The bird must’ve escaped!”
She heard the trumpet of a great tusked mammoth an instant later, followed by the stampede of smaller creatures. “My father trapped them to bleed,” she said, wiping her damp face with her equally damp sleeve. “They aren’t creatures of evil.”
Nodding, Micah raised his arm.
And the firedancer arrowed down to rest on his gauntlet, its entire body flaming, from the long fanned-out tail of flickering red, to the equally bright crest on its head, to the inferno of its eyes.
Mouth agape, Liliana stared. “How?”
“I called and it came,” was his simple answer, before he leaned closer and murmured something to the bird.
Liliana swore the bird cackled before flying off toward the Dead Forest—which began to burn not long afterward. Giving in to a smile, she continued on toward the narrow back entrance almost no one ever used. “I can sense his blood here. He must sense me, too.”
“It seems he has other problems so he may not be paying attention.”
The door was unlocked—and guarded by a spitting three-headed serpent.
Micah sliced the beast in half before she could reach for her magic. Stepping around the remains leaking blood as black as the plants, she continued down the passageway. She could hear trampling feet overhead, cries and yells, and hoped that part of her vision had held true. If the other heirs had arrived this night, dividing the attention of her father and his forces, then Micah and Liliana might have a hope of defeating him.
Exiting from the passageway, Liliana found herself face-to-face with a tiny snapdragon, so-called for its liking for biting. “Duck!” She and Micah both fell to the ground as the creature—the size of a five-year-old child—belched fire before making a scared sound and running in the other direction.
Micah was grinning when she glanced back. Shaking her head at him, she proceeded with care down the corridor littered with paw prints and the debris from crushed tables and broken vases, heading for the stairs that led to the tower room. The guard on the second step wasn’t an escapee from the menagerie—he was one of her father’s own creations, a giant yellow centipede that he’d fed with his own sorcerous blood until it grew to monstrous size, its pincers like two enormous knives slicing in the air.
“No blade will penetrate its skin,” she whispered as they came to a halt several feet away—the centipede wouldn’t leave its post to attack; its only task was to guard the stairs.
She sliced a gash across her palm before Micah could stop her. “This is the easiest way to bypass it.” Because her father had fed her blood to the creature, too. Many times.
Micah’s eyes glittered with anger. “This is one more thing we’ll discuss later.” In spite of his fury, he allowed her to paint lines on his cheeks with her blood, to touch it to the backs of his hands.
“I’ll go ahead,” she said, flexing and unflexing the hand that she hadn’t cut.
“No.” Micah pushed her behind him, sword held out in front. “If it’s a question of blood, I’m now covered in yours.”
“But—”
“Do not tell me that you want to go ahead because you aren’t sure the plan will work?” A silken question. “I’m very definitely locking you up in the dungeon when we get back home.”
“Stop threatening me with the dungeon,” she muttered, though the word home was one that made her throat burn. “Or maybe I’ll lock you in there myself.”
“I have the only key.” He prowled across to face the centipede, Liliana protected behind his armored form.
The creature’s malformed antennae waved with eagerness as they came close, one tendril reaching out to brush against Micah’s cheek. Liliana was sure she saw the vile thing open its maw in anticipation of a feed, but it allowed Micah to pass. However, when Liliana would’ve followed, it blocked her path. Hearing Micah’s sword whisper through the air, she shook her head. “Wait.”
The centipede curved its long body down to suck at her wound, a horrible sensation that made her want to vomit, but it was a violation she could bear. Pulling away her hand after it had had a taste—with a firmness she’d learned during the times her father had thrown her into the pit with it as it grew—she curled her fingers into her palm and walked past.
Micah’s body was a stone wall, his eyes pinned on the centipede. “If that creature doesn’t die when your father does,” he said in a tone that whispered of the Abyss, “then I will take it home and feed it to the basilisks myself.”
No one had ever stood up for her. No one but Micah.
Heart a knot of pain and love, she wiped off the blood from his face and hands using a damp but not wet part of her sleeve. “The tower room, where he does his magic, is at the top of these stairs.”
“You sense him?”
“Yes.” They scaled the steps at top speed—if she knew her father, he wouldn’t have bothered with booby traps, secure in the knowledge that nothing could get past the centipede.
She was wrong.
The sharp metal spikes exploded out of the wall three steps from the door to the tower room, skewering her to the opposite wall. Micah, a step ahead, roared, shaking the stone of the castle itself as she looked down at herself to see massive spikes through her stomach, her chest, her thighs, arms and shoulders. It didn’t hurt. But it would. Blood seeped slow and dark against the damp black of the footman’s tunic.
Her. The trap had been tied to the blood of the only other person who could control the centipede. If she hadn’t wiped the blood off Micah, this would’ve been him. “Thank you,” she whispered to whatever fate had saved him, saved the man who was her heart.
Hot, rough hands on her face. “You. Will. Not. Die.” An order.
Blood bubbled into her mouth. “Go,” she whispered, so happy he was alive. “Don’t let him win.” It was getting difficult to breathe, to speak, but she had to make him move. “If he wins—” liquid trickling down her arms and to the floor “—everything is lost. Your brothers. Your sister.”
Micah didn’t care about anything, anyone, else. Only Liliana. But then her eyes flickered to his back, and the mute horror in them was enough to have him turning around in time to slam up his armor over his neck and face as a skeletal-thin man with cadaverous skin threw dozens of carnivorous beetles at him. They fell off him, headed toward Liliana’s vulnerable, broken body.
No!
He crushed them all, but it took time, allowing the Blood Sorcerer the opportunity to throw up his arms, and chant an incantation that swept chilling cold through the staircase as twisted souls were ripped from where the sorcerer had trapped them.
“Kill him!” the Blood Sorcerer screamed.
Fighting the souls with his power, Liliana protected at his back, Micah tore apart their shadow selves, but there were many and he was far from the Abyss. Their icy fingers penetrated his armor to touch his heart and he had to use every ounce of his strength to keep them from closing those fingers around the organ.
Then he heard, “Leave.”
Screaming, the ghosts were sucked back from whence they came, Liliana’s blood sorcery powerful…because so much of her life’s fluid stained the ground, stained the wall. The Blood Sorcerer screamed in rage and whirled back inside the tower room. Not following, Micah turned to cup Liliana’s face. “Do not do the death spell. Trust me one more time and do not cast the spell.”
Tears shone, turning her eyes into a shimmering mirage. “I won’t let you die.” Blood-soaked words.
“One more time, Lily,” he repeated. “Don’t leave me.”
“Go,” she whispered. “I won’t be able to stop him until the moment of death.”
No. “Not unless you promise.”
“Elden—”
“Means nothing without you. Promise you won’t do the spell.”
A tear rolled down her cheek. “I promise.”
Turning, Micah slammed into the door to the tower room, breaking it to pieces as, from the corner of his eye, he saw the snapdragon crisp the centipede to help out two mountain trolls who were currently bashing it with hands heavy as hammers. The tiny being began to scamper up the steps.
Watch over her.
It was instinct to issue the command, to reach in and touch the snapdragon’s mind. For it was of Elden, and Micah’s magic knew it. Not waiting to see if it obeyed—he knew it would—he walked into the magic room, the feared Guardian of the Abyss once more, with his armor that covered every inch of his flesh but for his eyes.
The Blood Sorcerer lifted his glistening red hands from the body of the man he had just butchered—one of his minions from the look of it—and laughed. “You’ll get no power from the land. It’s mine!”
Micah strode forward, only to slam into an invisible wall. No matter how hard he hit it, it refused to break. Reaching for the ancient power that had slumbered where the Blood Sorcerer could not reach, the power that was of his blood, he drew it to his armored fists and began to pound at the invisible wall. Cracks appeared, sizzling red across the surface. Hissing, the Blood Sorcerer began to chant an incantation.
Micah punched through—to find himself assaulted by a tornado created of blades so sharp they cut through his armor, drawing blood. Slamming aside the blades with a snarl, he reached for the sorcerer who had hurt his Lily.
Liliana’s father, drenched in the lifeblood of the man he’d killed, smiled and pointed with a hissed command…and Micah’s armor disappeared, leaving him acutely vulnerable to the blades that began to whirl again. As his blood flew to speckle the air, he continued to stride forward, but the man who had eyes as reptilian as his Lily’s were warm, laughed. “You’ll be cut to pieces before you ever touch me—and I will bathe in your blood. Such powerful blood. Like your mother’s.”
Micah’s rage was such he almost didn’t hear the whisper in his mind. Still, Micah, still. The voice of a ghost.
Liliana’s voice.