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“What kind of test?”
Both hands cupped his face, and she planted a kiss to his forehead. “Someday, I will speak more freely. Someday, you will better understand. Solomon will help guide you in the meantime.”
“Solomon? The church organist?”
“Yes. He is much more knowledgeable than you can imagine.”
“Why would you trust someone so closely associated with the Pentacrux?”
“I promise you, someday, when you are ready, truly ready, I will tell you everything.”
He gripped both her wrists, desperate for the answers he’d spent his entire life pondering. The oddities that had never made sense to him. He wanted to know everything. Every peculiar detail about himself. “I am ready now.”
“No, my son. Your journey has only just begun.” It was strange, the way she could look both sad and happy at the same time.
“Do you love my father?”
Lowering her hands from his face, she pushed to her feet. “I have certainly tried.”
“I have no love for him. If that holds true for both of us, then, why do we stay? Let us leave this place. Leave him.”
“It would certainly be easier.” A small and wistful smile withered to a frown. “I am here for reasons you cannot understand quite yet.”
He lurched forward in his chair, the dismissal in her tone grating on him. “You are ill. He has made you ill, and tomorrow you will be more ill than today.”
“As difficult as the coming days will be, I am asking for your trust. Know that, if I thought for one moment that I could escape freely with you, and that I could keep you forever, I would not hesitate. But that is not what my path demands of me. Our fate lies here.Yourjourney begins here. And so you must promise me, no matter what, you will surrender your will to faith.”
With a resigned huff, the baron slouched back in his chair. “I promise.”
9
JERICHO
Fuck.
Fuck!
Drink in hand, I paced my office, ignoring the bone-splitting visuals of Farryn at the mercy of my father. I wanted to crush something. Kill it and bring it back to life, so I could kill it again. The rage moved through me like an electric storm. I threw back the entire glass of absinthe and, deciding it wasn’t strong enough, reached for the chthoniac.The urge to drive my fist into every wall had my knuckles tingling.
I had to stop thinking about it. Farryn was just shy of four months into her pregnancy. There was still a bit of time to figure something out, yet I knew all too well the way time could torment. Friend one moment, foe the next. At the very least, I would bind myself to her, which would give me the legal right to destroy any overlord who laid a hand on her, including my father.
I’d have claimed her right then. Dragged her out of bed for our own little binding ritual. Except, the physical changes she’d undergo might’ve put the baby in harm’s way. It wasn’t just that my blood would merge with hers, that our hearts would sync together, or that our skin would be primed to crave each other’s touch. It was that she would also become immortal. All the cells in her body would harden and calcify to sustain life for eternity. While it wasn’t entirely painful, it was exhausting, and potentially dangerous for a growing baby, so I’d have to wait until after she gave birth. Which left me a ball of nerves.
Combing my surroundings for some distraction, I found it in a newspaper article lying on my desk. In the bottom corner of its folded edge, I could just make outCondemned For Death.
Every week, the neighboring towns collectively put out a list of prisoners sentenced to punishment or exile to Ex Nihilo. I unfolded the paper to view a list of headshots for all of the prisoners. A quick skim through the list, and I paused on a familiar face.
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
Vaszhago.
It had to have been a couple decades since I’d last seen him.
Vaszhago had once been one of the Noxerians most savage sell-swords. One whose talents in tracking I’d come to know of firsthand, when he’d been sent to assassinate me after I learned of Farryn’s rebirth and abandoned my knighthood to seek passage back to the earthly realm. As a Knight of the Infernal Order himself, he’d made for one hell of a rival, not only possessing the skills to fight, but the proficiency to wield the unique powers that had secured his place within the Order. My own, of course, was the very power that I now lacked.
According to the newspaper’s accompanying article, Vaszhago had brutally murdered an overlord, which was a no-no in Nightshade. Bold, really, as it was unlikely that anyone who murdered a lord got away with it, seeing as the tribunal never offered mercy and went out of their way to hunt the killers down. His punishment was Ex Nihilo, scheduled to be carried out the following day at dusk, in the neighboring city of Velthrock.
Still holding the paper in hand, I fell into my chair and leaned in toward one of the cabinets on my desk. Placing a hand against its surface unlocked it, and opening it showed a few trinkets stored inside, one of which was a black leather box with the Knights silvery emblem–serpents entwined around a dagger, with wings at either side. I set the box out on the desktop and opened it to one of the most finely crafted daggers ever to exist in the five realms. Holding it in my hand brought back memories of having fought side by side with Vaszhago–a history that spanned centuries, and worlds apart from where I’d eventually ended up. From warrior to the demon equivalent of a Wall Street grinder, brokering souls between Heaven and Hell.
