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He paused, allowing his milky gaze to sweep over the audience as if to assure himself that he had everyone’s attention before speaking again. "Yet tonight, our hearts are heavy, for we also gather in the shadow of a great loss. General Taius, beloved childe of our emperor, a titan amongst us, has been taken by the very darkness he so fervently defended. His life, a testament to the power and resilience of our kind, now becomes legend whispered in the corridors of the night. As we commend his valorous spirit to the eternal embrace of Tenebros, we vow to uphold the legacy he leaves behind.” His raspy voice softened as he added, “Let us now observe a moment of silence to honor his indomitable spirit.”
Movement rippled through the hall as everyone bowed their heads in honor of Taius. Casimir clenched his jaw as his brother’s face filled his mind’s eye. He had wanted to follow Taius into war, but his father had forbidden it—as the emperor’s only heir, Casimir was not allowed to engage in anything that could be considered a threat to his life. His father was ridiculously overprotective for a male who didn’t particularly seem to like his only natural born son—for every word of praise, his father had visited a thousand criticisms upon him, criticisms Taius had defended him from whenever he’d had the opportunity.
And now Taius was gone.
The general wasn’t the only sibling Casimir had—there were three others, including Sarai, who was next to him, Ruslan, who sat on his father’s right, and Darius, who was away on a mission. As the royal spymaster, Darius turned up whenever and wherever he liked, so unlike Taius, his absence was not a red flag.
The one thing Casimir didn’t understand was why his father had not been aware of Taius’s death. While the crown prince himself was not old enough to have sired children, from everything he had heard, the bonds between sire and child were incredibly strong. Shouldn’t the emperor have felt something, even if just a slight twinge, when Taius died? Or was the sensitivity of the bond dulled by distance, to the point that Vladimir had been unable to sense the change?
The High Nexon’s sandpaper voice filled the hall again, rising from the silence like an eerie specter. "Now, let us call upon the dark majesty of Tenebros," he intoned. The congregation began a low, resonant chant that vibrated through the stone beneath their feet, and Casimir joined his voice to theirs, allowing himself to fall into the familiar embrace of worship.
His connection to the dark god had always been a tenuous thing. Other Nightforged, natural born and Turned alike, had told him they’d been visited by Tenebros at least once in their lifetime, through dreams, visions, and even the occasional whispered word of advice. But though Casimir had never experienced such a thing in the countless hours he had spent praying in this hall, something about tonight felt different. The air in the sanctum hummed with the presence of something otherworldly, as if the god of night stalked in the shadows just outside of his periphery, watching his assembled children as they prayed for his dark blessing.
The chant came to a close, and a hush fell over the crowd as the High Nexon raised his arms. “And now, to thank our dark father for all that he has provided, and will provide, we offer him this sacrifice.”
He turned to his left, drawing the congregation’s eye to an attendant leading a human slave up the steps and to the blackslab altar in the middle of the stage. The male did not resist—the glassy look in his eyes and the way his arms and legs dragged told Casimir he was in full thrall, unable to resist even the simplest of commands. But while Casimir had expected this—the High Nexon made it a point to sacrifice at least one human to Tenebros per month, usually picking from the lowest of the slave ranks—he did not expect three more humans to follow after him, their chains clanking ominously around their wrists and ankles. His eyebrows winged up, and he turned to see his father staring avidly at the sacrifices, a vengeful look in his eyes.
“You will notice tonight’s sacrifice is more bountiful than usual,” the High Nexon said, and Casimir looked back to see all four humans kneeling before the altar. “These humans were part of a rebel cell the city guard discovered operating on the outskirts of Umbral. We offer them to our divine father as penance for allowing these agents of the enemy to go unchecked, and pray he will grant us forgiveness in his infinite wisdom and offer us guidance so that we may better execute his dark will.”
One of the attendants stepped forward, offering the High Nexon a shining starsteel axe. Anticipation filled the hall as the rebels were told to kneel, and Casimir found himself on the edge of his seat as he watched the High Nexon lift the axe, preparing to sever the first head. He wasn’t sure what about this situation had him on tenterhooks—it was unusual to offer so many sacrifices, but he’d seen dozens upon dozens of humans beheaded on that black altar. Nothing about this should have been especially interesting.
But Casimir felt something stirring inside him, something bright and hot that felt very much like the thing that had awoken inside him when he’d grabbed Catherine last night. He’d almost convinced himself it had been a bad case of indigestion, but ithad been many hours since he’d last eaten—there was no reason he should be feeling this now. Gritting his teeth, he did his best to ignore it, focusing his attention on the axe as it came down with an echoing thunk, severing the first head in a bright spray of blood.
One head. Two. Three. Four. The heads tumbled off to the side, and rivers of jewel-bright blood sloughed across the flat surface of the altar and into the trough carved into the floor just beneath. The entire congregation watched eagerly, their collective hunger rising at the sight of so much fresh blood flowing freely across the stage, and acolytes walked up and down the aisles, offering each member of the congregation a small glass of bloodwine.
“As our dark father drinks, so shall we partake in this communion," the High Nexon proclaimed, taking a goblet from one of his own attendants. “Let us drink deeply, so the divine power that flows through our god may in turn flow through us, and give us the strength and courage to prevail!”
The old priest punctuated his cry by raising his goblet, and the rest of the congregation mirrored the movement, then tipped their glasses to their lips. Casimir closed his eyes as the bloodwine flowed across his tongue, smooth and thick and slightly smoky, waiting for the familiar rush that always followed.
Instead, the hot, bright thing inside him flared so intensely, Casimir doubled over, clutching his chest.
“Cas!” Sarai cried, grabbing his shoulder, but whatever else she was about to say was cut off as an avalanche of darkness crashed over him.
Suddenly, Casimir found himself on hands and knees, staring into a vast pit of darkness that had opened in the middle of the floor. The ground beneath his palms pulsed with a blinding light, but his gaze was riveted on the abyss that stared back at him out of eyes forged of the coldest starlight. A thrill of awe and terror raced through him as a face took shape, contours emerging from the void like a sculpture carved from night itself. Raven hair that appeared to be made of feathers framed the fearsome and majestic visage, and the silhouettes of serpents writhed in the shadows surrounding it.
They said that sometimes when you stared into the abyss, the abyss stared back.
Bit this was no ordinary pit. Or even a hallucination. This was Tenebros, God of the Underworld, Father of Vampires.
The dark god reached for him from the pit, and Casimir cried out as his clawed hands dug into his shoulders. The light seared him, as if trying to repel the deity, but those claws only dug in farther, sending stabs of pain through the crown prince’s body. Inky shadows spilled from the claws, sluicing down Casimir’s arms and spreading across the ground until every inch of white was blanketed in darkness. The only light came from Tenebros’s eyes, which burned into Casimir with divine rage.
“You may be her son,” the dark god hissed in a voice like a thousand serpent tongues, “but you are alsomine. Mine to command, mine to mold, mine to use. Remember whom you serve.”
He shoved Casimir, sending him reeling back into reality. Another set of hands grabbed his shoulders, shaking him, and he blinked his eyes open to see the emperor kneeling over him, his eyes wide with panic. The entire service had come to a halt,nobility from all four houses gathered around to gawk as the crown prince lay on the pew floor. For the first time in Casimir’s memory, his father was staring at him not with anger, or disappointment, or even mild disgust, but with honest-to-gods concern.
Yet in the wake of what he’d just seen, Casimir couldn’t bring himself to care.
30
Casimir
After a good thirty minutes of poking and prodding, the royal physician stepped back with a click of his tongue. “Aside from mild dehydration, I see nothing wrong with the crown prince, Your Imperial Highness,” he said, addressing the emperor who stood a few feet away, his hands and hips braced on the table behind him. As soon as the dark mass finished, his father had dragged him back to his personal sitting room in Spire Invictus, then called the royal physician to examine him. “A few glasses of blood and a night of rest and he should be back to normal tomorrow.”
“Good,” his father said, not even bothering to glance at the physician. His eyes bored into Casimir’s, as if they could penetrate the depths of his skull and ferret out the thoughts lurking in the dark corners of his mind. “Leave us.”
The physician bowed swiftly, then made himself scarce. A heavy silence descended upon the room, and Casimir allowed it to thicken as he stared back at his father, waiting for him to speak.
“Well?” the emperor finally demanded. “Are you going to tell me what happened in there, or do I have to beat it out of you?”
