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With a sneer, I anchored my attention on the heart encased in glass across the room from me. “I figured as much.”
If I could just stall my father long enough, it would allow Vaszhago to get out of the labyrinth with Farryn. And even if there was no escape, she was out of my father’s clutches for the moment. The longer I kept him occupied, the more time I’d have to think of a way out.
“After your little tantrum in Praecepsia, I was forced to feed my sister the pathetic souls of Infernium to keep her from perishing. Until the guard came to Blackwater.”
It was a story I was already familiar with, but as he proceeded to bore me with his villainous monologue, my head quietly spun out the possibilities that lay before me.
Find a way to get out of the chains and steal Letifer’s heart, risking the possibility of no escape.
Or destroy the heart, kill my father, and close the portal forever. As much as the second option seemed less complicated, it wasn’t an option, at all, because if Vaszhago administered the elixir to Farryn, I’d have no choice but to keep the heart intact.
I lifted my gaze toward the chains above me again. Unfortunately, I couldn’t just yank them from the ceiling. I’d have to find a way to break the individual links.
“I do have one small welcoming gift for you.” He strode toward the door, and opened it to a familiar face, which had me slowly grinding my jaw.
Barchiel.
Or Bishop Venable, as he was known at one time.
“Why am I not surprised to see you here.” Muscles burning with the tension from the chains, I rested my forehead against my bicep.
Bishop Venable strolled up in his robes, hands clasped behind his back. He still wore the band at his throat, which indicated his enslavement as a dojzra. “You have been the bane of my existence, Van Croix. An entire lifetime of vengeful thoughts.”
“Feeling is mutual, I can assure you.”
From the pocket of his robe, he lifted a small, black jar, which he held up to me. “Perhaps you don’t recall the elixir we fed your mother. A rather potent concoction which draws out the vitaeilem from the blood, depleting an angel in much the same way Eradye does. In fact, it is made from the ground-up bones of the Mortunath. To any human, it appears as holy water--a blessing, or exorcism.” He uncapped it and held it up to his nose for a sniff. “Colorless. Odorless.” He splashed it against my skin, and the moment it touched me, it sizzled and burned.
With the prickling of a thousand needles, the elixir absorbed itself into my flesh. Beads of fluid sucked into my skin and pulsed through my veins, like molten lava. I tipped my head back on a growl of pain, and a silver mist expelled past my lips.
It made sense why my mother had looked beaten and exhausted after every session with Venable. He’d put her body through hell.
The sphere made a crackling sound in the center of the room and jagged bolts of electricity lashed out, lapping at the mist, as if consuming it.
Ignoring the pain, I turned my thoughts inward, to where a question loomed on the fringes there. One I didn’t want to ask, for fear of the answer, and as I skated my attention back to my father, my stomach already curled into knots. “How did you know about Lustina?”
The upward curve of his lips tightened those knots, as he exchanged a quick glance with Barchiel. “There were rumors of her curse. Of course, I didn’t make the connection with the Met’Lazan until I followed her soul into Nightshade. To Infernium.” Hands held out to his side, he trailed his gaze over the room. “The great temple of the ancients. And I learned thatallMet’Lazan ended up here. To be cleansed and reborn. For years, I sought out their kind, traveling to distant lands, bartering with the darkest souls for her identity. All that time, she was right there. Right under my nose.”
My jaw turned rigid with the clenching of my teeth. “What did you do to her?”
Hands behind his back, he paced in front of me. “I’ve waited centuries for you to ask that question.”
A toxic rage slithered through my veins, pulling at every muscle in my body, rousing them into a thin wire of tension. The chains rattled. The air thickened. “What. Did. You. Do!”
His pacing stopped, and when he turned with a smile, his eyes burned a glowing red. “The question isn’t what I did, but, rather,didn’tdo to that poor child.”
The poison inside of me boiled over, the pressure rising to the surface. I let it quietly move through me, refusing to give him the satisfaction of my rage. When I got loose from the chains, there would be no mercy for him. “Pray that you kill me.”
“Come now, Son. You know I can’t kill you, not without suffering the same fate.” He circled me, coming to a stop at my back. A long skinny tentacle slid across my neck, tightening over my throat. “But I can make you quite miserable. And I can’t tell you how earnestly I’ve prayed for that.”
The fury inside of me swelled and festered like a raw, pulsing wound. I peered up at my fingertips which had begun to darken. The blackness crawled down my hands, to my wrists, from my chest to my abdomen.
“Well, what have we here!” Bishop Venable remarked, dragging his finger across my shoulder. “Seems I was right about you all along.”
“Fuck off,” I rasped, and he chuckled.
“I’ve got a new toy to show you, Van Croix.” From his hip, he uncoiled a three-pronged whip, its braided tips like the steel fangs of a snake. Undoubtedly designed to hook and tear away flesh. “These will make for wounds you cannot heal.”
Fuck.
