Page 144 of Under the Iron Sky

When Ikarus straightened from his bow, Ramapheal’s black eyes were fixed on the human. The new golden bullet in his army—if Ikarus had done as he’d promised.

“Demon,” Ramapheal greeted coolly, watching the human’s every move. “I trust the assignment today went well?”

“Yes, Ancient One. We did run into a group of Vordellian soldiers and their familiar companions out on a training exercise. We lost most of our team up there, but the human led us right to the crater as instructed.”

Ramapheal’s bloodless lips twisted into a smile. “Is that so? And did she display any more … abilities?”

Ikarus swallowed. “Yes, Ancient One.”

“The same gift as before?”

“Yes. It appears she has blood magic.” Just like the creature before him. The only one out of thousands of Da’rak and fairy and Arakna before her. Why was that?

Ramapheal drummed his claws against the throne’s armrest. “This is … most interesting. And she’ll do whatever you ask while she’s in this state?”

Stones. Those had to be stones lodged in Ikarus’s throat, grinding against one another each time he tried to speak. “I believe so.”

A predatory edge that had Ikarus’s hands clenching into fists entered Ramapheal’s eyes. “Come here, girl.”

The human stayed where she was, staring blankly forward with those black, dead eyes.

Frowning slightly at the whispers beginning to creep over the pews, Ramapheal’s head snapped to Ikarus. “Tell her to come to me.”

The command was a boot pressed against Ikarus’s neck. One he’d felt crushing him down, down, down into the rock beneath for years now. Decades. One he could not refuse, no matter how much he wanted to.

He stepped to her side, relieved for the excuse to. Bending slightly, he let his lips glide to the shell of her ear. “Go to the Ancient One,” he whispered, though the words were ashes on his tongue.

Just like that, she was moving. Ikarus felt as though he was being pulled forward too, not by the Hex but by her, like they were a pair of dolls that’d been stitched together and he had no choice but to follow.

My life is stitched to yours, she’d said in that cave after their fight in the metal graveyard. Why did it suddenly feel like the other way around?

She stopped just in front of the throne, her face that same empty mask, wiped clean of any rage or cunning. All the things that made her her.

“Raise your left hand,” Ramapheal ordered.

The human stared at him blankly.

Again, Ramapheal said to Ikarus, still studying the human as though she were a rare painting, “Order her.”

Ikarus did, and her left hand immediately lifted into the air.

“Tell her to give me her right hand.”

Ikarus did again, and he watched with bated breath as she slipped her hand into Ramapheal’s waiting palm, her delicate skin sliding over those talons that’d butchered thousands without hesitation.

“So, she only takes orders from the one who cast the Hex.” The Ancient One examined her hand, expression gleaming with excitement as though he was holding a piece of the Arch itself. “Fascinating. I wonder though … You are no child of mine, so how did this power get in your veins?” Though he was talking to himself, his voice still carried across the bones of this room. A voice that demanded to be heard. He carefully ran his claws across each spike on her knuckle-duster then flipped her hand over. He slowly lifted his head, watching her face as he cut one of her veins with a quick slice of his thumb.

He may as well have cut a porcelain doll open for all the reaction she gave.

Still holding her wrist, Ramapheal curled his long, spindly fingers to coax a whirl of blood from the cut. He studied the stream in the air, twisting it this way and that with the flex and straightening of a finger, before making a fist and sending her blood straight into his open mouth.

Several gasps from those in the pews. And even Ikarus couldn’t help but stiffen slightly as the Ancient One closed his eyes, then swallowed. He stayed like that for a while, not moving, seemingly lost, until even the spiders on his head started to skitter toward the crimson blood staining his pale lips, eager for a taste of her too.

An eternity passed before Ramapheal finally opened his eyes. Standing, he smiled down at the human. “It is just as I thought.” He turned back to the pews, his voice rising like a clap of thunder in a storm. “The Demon’s blood runs in her veins. As does my own. She can do magic because of her connection to him—because of the blood ritual I used to bind her life to his. When linking her to you, I had wondered if she might be able to siphon some of your abilities—but it seems, as it was my gifts that forged you together, she took some of mine too.”

He lies. There they were again, the seer’s final words, lingering in the corner of his mind like a spiderweb he couldn’t quite reach. Always there. Always bothering him.

The Ancient One was lying now. Because if it was Ikarus’s blood that’d given the human this magic, then why had her leg healed that day on the checkpoint when she was a child?