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“We all fought for him,” Nyra said woodenly. “There was no choice. The hold he has over us—” she shook her head. “You cannot comprehend it, the power he wields. I am only glad that I wasn’t forced to slaughter any of my own people. I don’t think I could have lived with myself.”
I looked down at my hands, shaken by Nyra’s story. “And what about the others?” I asked. “Lucius and Sparrow? Do they have stories like this?”
“You’ll have to ask them.” Nyra said. “Though good luck getting Lucius to tell you anything. He’s more private than I am.”
Jinx climbed into my lap as silence fell across the room, and I rubbed her ears idly as I weighed Nyra’s story in my mind. I suspected that if I were to ask Lucius and Sparrow about their pasts, they would have similar stories about how their lives had been crumbling when Maximillian had reached out to them and offered them a way out of whatever purgatory they were trapped in. He seemed to have a knack for finding troubled souls who were down on their luck and convincing them to pledge themselves to him.
That was certainly what he’d done for me—except that he hadn’t made my freedom a condition of his bargain. He could have forced me to agree to the bargain before he freed me, could have used his magic and resources to keep me under lock and key until I accepted his offer. But he’d done none of those things. Instead, he’d given me a safe place to stay and the time and space to recover, adjust, and draw my own conclusions.
The sense of confusion that had been rattling around in my brain since my arrival settled, and I took a full breath as the tightness in my chest eased. I lifted my head to meet Nyra’s gaze as a sense of determination solidified inside me.
“Can I ask you for something?”
Nyra’s brows creased. “What is it?”
“The full moon is tonight, and I need to perform the Twilight Communion.” I swallowed hard, feeling strangely vulnerable. “I need someone to stand in for my sister witches. Both of you, if possible,” I added, turning to Eliza.
Eliza reached out and gripped my hand. “Of course we will,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for weeks—I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Agreed,” Nyra said. “We’d be delighted to help.”
I exhaled a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. “Thank you,” I said, gratitude swelling within me. I’d been so afraid they would say no—if Nyra had asked me to participate in a death god ceremony, I probably would have rejected it on the spot, and yet they hadn’t hesitated. “You don’t know what this means to me.”
“We know exactly what it means,” Eliza said. “Now tell us what else you need from us, and we’ll get it done.”
16
Afew hours later, I stood outside the chapel of Tenebros, my hand hovering over the door handle. I’d never entered one of the death god’s temples before, and a shiver of apprehension crawled up my spine at the thought of doing so for the first time. But I’d been told that Maximillian was in here, and I needed to speak to him. I could still feel the tingle of his forehead pressed against mine every time I thought of him, still see the incandescent rage glowing in his eyes on my behalf. There was still so much unsaid between us, and I couldn’t ignore it any longer.
Gathering my courage, I curled my hand around the raven-shaped handle and pulled. The heavy door creaked open, revealing the intimate sanctuary beyond, and I paused on the threshold, taking it in.
I’d expected the chapel to feel sinister and forbidding, but while it certainly was dark, there was a sacredness to the space that couldn’t be denied, its vaulted ceilings and intricate stonework lending it a sense of grandeur despite its small size. Dozens of candles flickered, lending an intimate glow to the space, andmoonlight seeped through stained glass windows, casting muted patterns of deep purples, blues, and blacks onto the dark stone floor.
A simple black altar sat at the far end of the temple, an intricately carved obsidian statue of Tenebros towering behind it. The artist depicted him as a tall, imposing figure, with elongated limbs and chiseled features. His feathered wings were folded behind him, his broad-shouldered frame cloaked in a flowing robe, and he held the symbol of his sacred office in one clawed hand—a scepter crowned by a closed eye, with a raven perched atop it and a serpent snaking up the rod.
Maximillian knelt before the altar and statue, hands clasped before him in silent prayer. The weight of the world seemed to press in on him as he bowed his head, his shoulders slumped ever so slightly. The moonlight rippled over his storm-cloud colored hair and down the back of his crisp white shirt, and I thought he resembled a glowing star, tucked away in some far corner of the celestial heavens his god had once ruled over.
I lingered by the temple entrance, feeling suddenly awkward. I could only imagine the thoughts going through Maximillian’s head—the rage he felt toward Vinicius, the sense of shame at failing to safeguard the humans snatched off the streets right under his nose, and the betrayal he felt at seeing his own citizens violate his principles in such a flagrant manner. It felt too personal, and I took a step back, prepared to slip out the door again.
“Stay.” The gentle rumble of his voice stopped me in my tracks, and I halted. He rose, the motion lacking some of his usual grace, as if that invisible weight dragged at his limbs. There was a troubled look in his eyes as he turned to face me, dressed simply in a white shirt and dark grey trousers with none of hisusual finery present. Despite everything—that he was a vampire and I was a witch, that we stood in a temple dedicated to a god whose children were responsible for everything wrong in this cruel, terrible world—something caught in my chest at this vulnerable side of him, a side I was sure very few people had ever, or would ever, see.
“Sorry to intrude,” I said as casually as I could. I clasped my hands behind my back as he approached, mostly to keep from fidgeting. Gods, why was I sonervous? “But Lucius said I could find you here.”
“And here I am.” The shadows in his eyes lightened a bit, but his face remained uncharacteristically serious, his usual smirks and teasing expressions nowhere to be found. “Come and sit with me.”
He slid into one of the pews toward the back of the chapel, and I followed suit. Silence passed between us as he looked up at the set of stained glass windows to our left. Each depicted a different arc of Tenebros’s story—his original birth as Astellion, the God of Night, his untimely death at the hands of Phaeros, his brother, and his resurrection as the God of Death and the Father of Vampires.
“We weren’t always like this, you know,” Maximillian said as he stared at a panel depicting Athanasia kneeling before Astellion’s corpse, silver tears pouring down her dark face to pool atop his broken body.
I blinked. “Like what?”
“Cruel. Avaricious. Consumed by lust for blood and power.” His gaze shifted to the panel of Astellion floating in the night sky, a crown of stars haloing his head as his midnight wings spread outbehind him. “Vampires have co-existed with humans far longer than we’ve been enemies.”
I frowned. According to history and legend, vampires hadn’t always been blood-sucking servants of the God of Death. Once, they had been known as the Nightforged, a peaceful race of celestial beings who dwelled in Noxalis, ruling over their subjects with compassion and using their starborn magic to make the world a better place. When Astellion had died, Athanasia, his mother, had used her dark powers to bring him back as an undead god. But in doing so, she had inadvertently cursed the Nightforged, transforming them into the undead creatures they were now.
“That was thousands of years ago,” I said. “Long before even you were born.” I’d looked up the Starclaw family tree on my third day here—Maximillian was close to six hundred years old. Not ancient by vampire standards, but no spring chicken, either.
“Yes, but even after the Chaos War, we found ways to co-exist with humans. Formed mutually beneficial arrangements despite the oppressive terms of the Midnight Accords. It’s true that some of us, like the Sanguis Noctis, engaged in less than savory practices, but we Psychoros vampires have always conducted ourselves with honor. Our ancestors understood that while not all beings are created with equal skill or ability, that we are connected, all part of the great weft and warp of the universe. It is something that we have done our best to hold on to, even after we were cursed, and yet, ever since Vladimir took control…”
