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29
When at last I made it to the manor’s basement holding cells, my arms were covered with new scrapes and gashes, but there were five empty canine corpses left in my wake.
Rosetta blinked up at me with bleary eyes, both hands locked in iron mitts that looked like clubs.
“What took you so long?” she asked icily as I tried to force my knife into the locking mechanism on her binds, but my hands were clumsy in the dark. “And where’s Onal?”
My movements stopped. “Gone.”
Rosetta’s expression tightened, but she nodded.
I asked her, “Where’s Zan?”
She said, “Taken.”
“Arceneaux came for him a few hours ago,” Kellan said. “We haven’t seen him since.”
I tried to keep my face impassive as I kept working the lock, even as my heart twisted.
“Could you hurry it up?” Rosetta asked.
“I’m trying,” I said before finally giving up. If picking the lock wouldn’t work, there were other ways.
“Don’t—!” Rosetta tried to stop me, but I’d already made the nick on my finger.
“Occillo,” I said, letting the blood drip onto the metal. Break.
The mitts fell off just in time for Rosetta to roll over and retch in the corner of the cell. When she turned back again, she was glaring at me, muttering, “Starsforsaken blood magic.”
I let a second drop of blood fall onto Kellan’s manacled left hand. “Occillo,” I said again, and the iron broke with a clink and fell to the floor.
“They were holding my brother with everyone they rounded up from the village,” Kellan said.
“I went through the village,” I replied. “I didn’t see Fredrick. But Elisa . . .” I shook my head. “She didn’t make it.”
“They must have moved him,” Kellan said. “We have to find him.”
“There’s no time,” I said. “The manor is crawling with clerics, and the eclipse is going to happen anytime now . . .”
“Would you leave Conrad in the hands of the Tribunal?” Kellan asked. “Fredrick’s my brother.”
I relented. “All right. We find Fredrick, and then we move toward the Stella. Arceneaux thinks she’s going to become the human vessel for the Empyrea—that’s where she’s going to be. That’s where she’ll have Zan.” I glanced at Rosetta, who was stretching her fingers. “We’re probably going to need your magic. Are you ready?”
“I just spent ten days in irons and had a blood spell used on me. So, no. I’m not. But what choice do we have?”
Kellan knew the manor best, so we let him lead the way. On the first floor above the holding cells, we encountered two clerics. Kellan broke the neck of the first while I slit the throat of the second. He dragged both bodies out of the hall but didn’t leave them behind until he’d borrowed one of their swords.
“Feel better?” Rosetta asked as he tossed it back and forth between his hands.
“Yes. Much.”
We moved on stealthy feet, dispatching anyone wearing a black coat who had the misfortune of getting in our way.
We found Fredrick under guard in the manor’s grand hall, surrounded by brass candelabras, each holding five lit candlesticks. He was sitting slumped in the chair meant to act as the interim throne during the king’s residency at the manor. He looked ill, with purple bruises under his eyes, his cheeks gaunt and sallow.
“Kellan, no—” I tried to grab his arm, to keep him back, but he was already bounding into the fray. Within seconds, he’d brought down the two clerics closest to him, while the others ran to engage.
Rosetta and I exchanged pained looks. Then she shifted into her fox form while I readied my knife, and we both went in after him.
