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My resolve hardened, a shield against the fear. This was for my friend, and I would tear down any realm, any god, that stood in my way.
The jester awaited us at the archway, his skull-topped cane clutched like a scepter. He said nothing. I just turned and began the descent into the waiting darkness. Remiel followed, his silence the kind that left bruises on the soul.
My mask was the first casualty of my decision. As we stepped into the spiraling stone passage, I clawed at its clasps. They felt tight, almost fused and digging into my scalp. When I finally ripped the mask free, it came away with a faint wet suction sound—though my skin was dry. And the moment it was off, a strange heaviness inside me ebbed, leaving my skin raw and tender.
For the first time since I stepped out of the car, I almost felt like myself.
The shadows stirred. Their voices were low and urgent. Never do that again.
A chill threaded down my spine. Do what? I thought back, bewildered.
Never silence us.
The weight of their words made my hands tremble. I stared at the mask, suddenly aware that the gift was not an ornament but a shackle. With a sharp breath, I hurled it through the tower’s fractured walls, and the metal vanished into the ruined night.
I turned back to glare at the vampire. Valden stood where I had left him, his hands clasped behind his back. Only the slight curl of his smile betrayed anything at all—contempt veiled in amusement—as though he had expected this. As though my defiance was part of his design.
My heels rang against the worn stone steps like distant bells, each footfall fainter than the last. I could not get out of there fast enough.
All I cared about was an escape.
Like rot, the air of the broken cathedral clung to me, and every instinct screamed for distance. The vast cathedral hall spread open before us like an ancient wound. The altar’s sanctity had long departed, leaving it cracked. Gently, the chandeliers swayed in the draft.
Remiel’s footsteps shadowed mine, never quite catching up yet never falling too far behind. We passed beneath the gaze of glass saints whose names had long since been forgotten.
I felt his eyes on me. Like he always had. Like he didn’t know how to stop watching, judging.
At the great doors, the other two jesters pushed them open with a theatrical flourish. The November air slapped my face, sharp and wet with the promise of more rain.
Outside, the mortal world exhaled around us. Cobblestones, slick and black, gleamed under the weak city lights. Pregnant with a storm, the sky hung low and bruised.
The car waited, a black scar against the gray. Remiel reached the rear door before the driver could open it. He didn’t speak. He just opened it, his long coat slightly flaring in a sudden gust of wind.
I met his eyes, just for a heartbeat. They were still burning gold, but there was something else there too: confusion, resentment, and a flicker of that damnable, unwanted concern.
I slipped inside, and he slid in after me. Close but not touching. The air in the confined space crackled with unspoken words, with centuries of shared history and raw wounds.
Smoothly and silently, the driver pulled away from the curb. The broken cathedral loomed behind us for a moment, a silhouette stitched from regret and shadows, and then was swallowed by the night.
13. Remiel
How had I ended up there again, tangled in her suffocating chaos? She was at its dark beating heart.
Cassia sat beside me in the oppressive silence of the car, a crimson shadow, a queen without a crown but radiating an authority that brooked no argument. Outside the window, the Romanian hills unraveled into bleak hues of rain-drenched shadows, the trees skeletal sentinels against the late-autumn gloom.
The car glided over the winding road like a specter, each turn taking us deeper into an uncertain future. Neither of us spoke. Yet this silence wasn’t soothing. It was a battlefield of unspoken accusations and unresolved torments.
When Malakar had summoned me two weeks ago, he’d masked his urgency with layers of cold ceremony. But I wondered now what the truth was. Who was the seraph to Malakar? Was he connected to Lysanthe? Why Prague?
I risked a glance at her. Her gaze was fixed on the passing landscape, her expression inscrutable, a mask more formidable than the one she’d discarded. The faint reflection of her face flickered in the rain-streaked glass—pale, sharp, and etched with a weariness she’d never concede, a vulnerability she’d die before admitting.
I leaned back against the worn leather of the seat and closed my eyes, the celestial light in my veins feeling heavy, almost sluggish. It didn’t hum with the clean white frequency of Heaven anymore. It churned, dense and gray, reacting to her proximity or perhaps to my failing resolve. My skin felt too tight, my bones too heavy.
I reopened my eyes, hoping the mundane act of observation might tame the tumultuous storm within. She sat beside me, an exquisite, forbidden masterpiece. A creature who might have been banished from sacred temples for being too beautiful, too severe. The crimson silk of her gown clung to her form, catching the meager light filtering through the skeletal trees and igniting fleeting sparks across her flawless skin. Her hand, devoid of any adornments—no gloves, no rings—rested casually on her pale thigh, elegant and utterly, damnably untouchable.
I would have given anything in that moment to feel the warmth of that hand, not out of raw lust, not entirely, but for the desperate, foolish hope of being soothed by her fire. Of being convinced, just for a moment, that she was still within reach, that some part of her was not lost to me. Yet self-imposed penance, the chains of my making, proved to be its own merciless cage. So, I remained where I was, fists loosely clenched in my lap, and stole covert, hungry glances toward her, a yearning I scarcely acknowledged even to myself.
Then she moved, and time itself seemed to slow, to hold its breath. Her slender graceful fingers rose, reaching back to gather the heavy fall of her hair where it framed her face. She extracted a series of delicate gold pins, each one falling into her lap with a sequence of soft, deliberate clicks against the silk. And then, as if from some inexhaustible, hidden reservoir of moonlight, her hair cascaded down in a smooth blond endless river. It unfurled over her shoulders and down her back, spilling over the antique leather of the seat as though animated by its own hidden, silken life.
