Page 52 of Level Up for Love

Chapter

Fourteen

In a burst of sparkling glass, bats swarm into the chapel.

Hundreds of furry black bodies flood through the broken stained-glass window. Every prayer candle and lantern is snuffed out under the rush of their wings, pitching the chapel into darkness. The screeching that fills the space is so loud that Sindra thinks for a moment her eardrums will burst in her skull. Tiny claws and teeth catch in her hair and prick at her skin; dozens of wings bat at her body. She nearly draws Brightmorn, but what good would that do? In the darkness of the swarm, she’s just as likely to kill Mortimer again as she is to kebab any of these terrible creatures. She drops to the floor with the others, folds her arms over her head, and crawls to the druid’s side.

“Moss!” Sindra hisses.

“What?” Moss’s head snaps up from where she huddles on the ground under the protective arms of Vera, who darted over to shield Moss with her body.

Sindra tucks that interesting piece of information away for later.

“Can’t you calm them down?” Sindra pants. “Talk to them or something?”

“Oh!”

Moss snaps her fingers, emitting a spark of green light into the darkness of the swarm. When she starts to shriek, Sindra’s sure something went wrong—until she realizes that the druid is simply speaking the bats’ language.

Through the gaps between beating wings, Sindra watches as Moss’s eyes screw shut and her jaw goes tight. “They—they have a message for us,” she says through gritted teeth. As the bats continue to screech, Sindra can only imagine the way their speech must overwhelm Moss. “They come with a message for all of Zaska—all of Moros.”

The shrieking rises in pitch until it’s one unbroken, inharmonious note. Suddenly, they go quiet, making no sound other than the rush of their wings as they surge out the way they came, an undulating ribbon of shadow winding its way up toward the sky.

For several long, fraught moments, all Sindra can hear is the frantic thump of her own heart in her ringing ears.

Mortimer summons a tiny flame to his fingertips and gingerly relights the nearest candle with a shaking hand. As flickering light illuminates the drawn faces of the party, Sindra sees the message Moss spoke of.

The floor is littered with tiny scrolls.

As the others each pick up a handful and break the blood-red wax that seals them, Sindra moves to stand defensively in front of the broken window, for all the good that will do. “They’re all over the ground outside,” she reports. “Hundreds of them.” Already some townspeople have warily stepped out of their houses to pick up the scrolls from the muddy cobblestone streets.

Priests, rebels, and refugees sheltering inside the chapel study the text, their faces creased with warring emotions; bright spots of anger turn Antoni’s neck red, and Vera’s expression grows grim. Moss and Mortimer look at each other, their eyes wide with shock.

“Perhaps he’s solved the issue of the crown after all,” Mortimer murmurs.

Sindra whips her tail restlessly behind her. “Well? What does it say?”

Vera frowns, her fury cutting deep furrows into either side of her lips. “It’s an invitation to Vadrien’s coronation,” she says stiffly, “in a week’s time.”

The party’s arguing continues late into the evening, until Sindra slaps her palm against a wall and begs for them to stop and resume the conversation after they’ve all had time to think and—gods willing—actually sleep through the night.

At Antoni’s request, Zevor leads them back downstairs, through a series of tunnels that must surely lead to catacombs at some point, and shows them to a few rooms with neatly made narrow beds. Now, on the opposite side of their shared room, Moss snores cheerily, having slipped into sleep the moment her head hit the pillow. For Sindra, sleep is harder to find, and she spends hours replaying the events of the day in her mind. The memory of waking up to the warmth of Vadrien’s lips on her neck, and the cold horror that followed…Only Antoni’s assurance of the chapel’s barrier against all undead—Vadrien included—gives Sindra enough comfort for bone-deep exhaustion to finally carry her under.

But she should have expected that bad dreams would haunt her in a place as cursed as Moros.

Sindra stands shoulder to shoulder with a handful of strangers on a raised platform in a town square, the scattered crowd spread out below watching them. It takes a long time for her to recognize the town as Zaska, with the way the sweltering sunlight from a cloudless blue sky fills the square. Sweat trickles down her forehead, and she reaches up to wipe it but freezes at the sight of her hands tightly bound before her—hands she does not recognize. The skin is pale and missing the hard-won calluses she earned through years of training. She raises her bound wrists and feels at her face. Overgrown stubble covers her cheeks, and her oily hair is bound in a matted knot at the back of her neck. Her clothes are filthy and ragged and match the bland uniforms worn by the others arranged on the platform.

Who am I?

Several guards stand before the platform, and one with thinning ginger hair holds out a scroll.

“You are accused of plotting conspiracy against your king, Ursan Callaster the Second. You have been tried and found guilty.”

“Conspiracy,” the man to Sindra’s right scoffs under his breath. “Is that what they’re calling it now? Just trying to feed my family?”

Sindra tries to dig into the memories of this body that’s not her own. But thoughts slip through her fingers like water, impossible to catch hold of. Only a few flashes surface: Images of a nobleman stealing from her shop, of her arrest when she tried to protest. Of her father, shivering on this very same platform not even a year ago—the last time she saw him.

Not her father, of course—but her bitter resignation and rage toward the memories that are not hers feel real enough.