Page 114 of Bloodgrove

“Do you know which way I need to go?” he asked, but the eyes merely blinked.

He sighed. He was losing his mind—or perhaps the world itself was losing its mind. At last, he raised the candle to his lips and blew it out.

“See? I will not hurt you.”

Slowly, the eyes along one passage closed, while the others stared intently in a single direction.

“Thank you.”

As he looked down the passage, his mind struggled to catch up, and he remembered Elodie’s words—the innocent morning of milk and honey when they had spoken of nightmares. A castle made of flesh and a body without skin. Black night pulsing with red veins. Eyes watching me everywhere, like stars across the heavens.

Thousands of eyes now stared at him from the dark passage, waiting for him to continue. Elodie had worn her nightmares as a costume to the ball. He remembered the dress too well, embroidered with hundreds of eyes. He smiled, and the chains around his heart tightened with longing and pulled him onward.

Slowly, he followed his guides deeper into the sweltering labyrinth. The hotter it became, the stranger the walls grew. Then the eyes’ attention abruptly shifted toward something else.

He heard voices ahead.

Now the walls to either side were made from entire human bodies, stripped of skin and bone, unfolded and fused with the red mass as though they were figures in an anatomical illustration. A tongue twitched inside an empty mouth, and lidless eyes stared at him—these were different from his silent companions. He saw pain and madness in the person’s green eyes and shuddered. Even the heart was still beating.

Quietly, he drew the revolver and pulled back the hammer.

“And what sacrifice do you bring me, my child?” asked a voice older than this hell itself.

Will shuddered and quickly retreated into the shadows. He could see only part of a vast red cavern, its walls made of even more living corpses.

“My husband.” Elodie’s voice was firm and unmistakable.

Elodie was alive. Will’s knees weakened, and he had to brace himself against the revolting wall. It was soft and yielding like muscle, though it left no blood on his fingers.

He did not care. Elodie was alive.

The voice laughed. “He is the love of your life?”

“Your Majesty!” Wilkinson cried, his voice far too soft and oily even here. “She is my wife—I offer her to you. We are married, so the right to become the Red Hand is mine by law!”

“Silence,” hissed the voice, which had to belong to the king.

Will swallowed and clung to the warm wall. Elodie had defeated the Red Hand and reached the king. Pride swelled inside his chest, and he needed to see her.

The King continued, his voice hard now, so different from the way he had addressed Elodie. “You did not kill my servant. You have accomplished nothing worthy of my attention. Bleeding an angel dry to circumvent the curse was a clever trick, but hardly enough when you used it only to enrich yourself.”

Will heard Wilkinson stammer.

“My child,” the King began.

The voice was old, older than the sea.

No, not older than the sea. Not older than the north wind or the salt of the earth. Old as humanity. As the first birth. The winter sea was older. It had devoured life long before humans began drowning in it. The worm inside Will twisted through his entrails.

Will swallowed, his gaze catching on the fingernails embedded in the wall next to him, attached to a boneless body. He pressed the back of his hand over his mouth.

Meanwhile, the King continued. “Would you lie to me? Your warrior’s heart beats for this man, who will not sacrifice a single drop of his own blood? Who drains others to achieve his ambitions? Are you lying to me?”

“Who could be a greater sacrifice than the man I will love until the end of my days? The man for whom I preserved myself and at whose feet I lay everything I possess?”

“Love is damnation. You damned yourself with this man, but not out of love.”

“I have no one else left to sacrifice. My entire family is dead. I gave up everything in my struggle to become the Red Hand.”