This Dark Descent, page 30
One of the guards said something to her that she didn’t hear.
“Shira,” she said.
“What?” The guard’s hand went to his revolver. She tracked the motion, burning verillion on instinct, but she’d used it all up in the fight with Kyvin, and all that replied was an empty echo.
“Shira.”
The other guard said something and disappeared into the pub. A moment later, Shira Adair returned with him. Without a word, she took Ari’s arm and led her inside.
Ari saw nothing of her surroundings. One moment she was standing in the dark of night, and the next she was sitting in a plush armchair by a crackling fire in a loft above the pub. She could still feel the squelching sensation of the stake sliding between Kyvin’s ribs, the hot splash of blood against her cheek. It was still there. She could feel it dry and cracking against her skin.
Something soft and warm pressed against her hand, and she looked down to see Shira offering her a damp cloth. Ari took it, her movements mechanical as she wiped the blood first from her face, then her hands. It stained the cloth crimson.
For a moment, she simply stared at the stains.
Blood on her hands. Blood on the walls.
She sucked in a sharp, shuddering breath. Shira said nothing, only slid onto the wide arm of the chair and laid an arm about Ari’s shoulders. Ari didn’t even think, she just pressed her face into Shira’s side and cried.
Sunlight was trickling in through the wide windows of the loft by the time she stopped. Some part of her knew that she had to pull herself together. That the final Illinir race was that afternoon, and Damien was still in prison, and Mikira didn’t know what was happening, but her body felt hollow, nothing but a marionette with its strings cut.
She sat beside the fire now, a cup of tea going cold on the table. Shira had sent people to deal with the body, then brought fresh clothes that Ari had changed into like a ghost slipping out of its skin. The wound on her side had scabbed over thanks to the verillion, but it still smarted with every breath.
Shira didn’t ask her what happened. If Damien was a vault, his sister was the iron that formed it. She could have sworn the woman lent Ari her sheer force of will, and Ari clung to it like driftwood in a storming sea. Everything inside her turned and turned, flashing images through her mind: Rivkah screaming, her Saba’s cold, dead eyes.
Shira looked up from the book she’d been reading sprawled across the armchair. Ari felt the weight of her eyes, so much gentler than her brother’s, but just as strong.
“Do you feel up for a short walk?” she asked.
Ari followed Shira out a back entrance and onto a quiet street. The shops were still closed, windows shuttered against the night. A newsboy rode by on a bike, tossing papers at doorsteps. Mikira’s face stared up from them alongside images of the other Illinir finalists, the headline announcing the race’s conclusion to come that day.
They turned down a narrow side street that emptied into a tranquil courtyard wrapped in trees. A fountain trickled quietly at the center, surrounded by wooden benches, and a set of low steps led up to a white-stone building on their right.
A Kinnish temple.
Ari stopped walking. “I can’t go in there.” She felt dirty and coated in blood, though she’d washed the last of it away hours ago.
Shira looped her arm through Ari’s. “You have nothing to fear.”
Words twisted and stuck in Ari’s throat, but she didn’t fight as Shira led her up the stairs and into the temple.
Lacquered cherrywood benches gleamed in the morning light trickling in through the stained-glass windows, illuminating the high arched ceilings and delicate gold decorations of the ornamental ark housing the holy texts. It was by no means garish, but it was rich with life and care, the sort of place that felt like coming home.
It was empty, the morning service not yet begun. It was strange to step inside and recognize the significance of the paintings of the Harbingers on the walls, to see the individual Arkala gathered in the shelves by the door, their covers worn away by countless fingers. She knew more about her people than she ever had, and yet she felt farther away than ever before.
“Sit.” Shira slid onto one of the benches.
Ari followed, feeling lost and out of place. Sensing her discomfort, Shira laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to do anything, Ari. Just sit here.”
She did.
She sat and listened to the silence of a holy place. She let it weave through and around her, let it fill her up like a deep breath after a lifetime without air.
And when she let it out, the whispered words came with it. “I killed him.”
Shira let her talk.
“He told me to leave the book alone, but I didn’t listen.” Ari curled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms about them. “I just wanted to know what was inside. But once I opened it, I couldn’t stop. I would sneak out every night to read from its pages, though I had no idea what the words said. They still felt familiar, like a word that’s been misspelled, but you still know its meaning.”
The first day she’d opened the spellbook had been like stepping from shadows into the sunlight. Its touch had made her feel alive, and she’d craved the feeling ever since.
She expected the voice to say something about that, but it was quiet inside the walls of the temple. Ari didn’t know what to make of missing it.
“I found a page he’d translated.” Her nails dug into her forearms. It didn’t feel odd telling all this to someone she barely knew. If anything, it was easier, like talking to the gods, or the ocean, or a wind that would carry her words far, far away. But tell her she did. Of the golem, the attack, of Rivkah running to the sound.
“I couldn’t take the fear and blame in my parents’ eyes,” she finished. “So I ran.”
Shira’s expression didn’t change. She took in all of Ari’s story without reaction, letting her empty the fear, the guilt, the pain. And when Ari finished, she didn’t look at her any differently than before.
“People always want to blame someone when horrible things happen,” Shira said. “But sometimes they’re no one’s doing. Sometimes they just happen.”
Rivkah had tried to tell her that. She’d tried to say it wasn’t Ari’s fault. But Ari had been terrified she might hurt one of them again. Terrified of herself, of the thing lurking inside her mind.
“What about the times when you make them happen?” she asked. “When you answer bad things with more bad things, but instead of canceling each other out, they just create more darkness?” They multiplied, like shattered glass crumbling underfoot, a single piece turning into thousands.
“It is easy to lose yourself to even a fleck of darkness,” Shira replied solemnly. “Each new thing you do doesn’t seem that bad because it’s not much worse than the thing before. But eventually you look back to the beginning and you realize how far you’ve drifted.”
She held Ari’s gaze as she spoke. “And if you stop, if you stand still for even a second, it catches up to you. So you keep going and going, until it consumes you.”
Ari was suddenly sure they weren’t talking about her anymore. This wasn’t the first time Shira had considered this, perhaps not even the first time she’d had this conversation.
“And what if it already has?” she asked quietly.
A surprisingly gentle smile pulled at Shira’s lips. “Do you know the term chet?” Ari shook her head. “It is an archery term used to describe when an arrow has gone astray. It is the same word Kinnism uses to describe sin. Because that is all sin is, Arielle: a straying from the right path. You can always find your way again. But first you must find forgiveness.”
Ari shuddered. “They’ll never forgive me.”
“There are many types of forgiveness,” Shira replied patiently. “The forgiveness between yourself and the gods. That between you and another. And the kind that comes from inside yourself. The strength to forgive ourselves is often the hardest to find.”
“What if I can’t?” she whispered.
Shira placed a gentle hand on hers. “You can. To forgive is to make whole. Only once you forgive yourself can you make whole the rest.”
She stood, running her fingers along the back of a bench. “All you can do now is keep moving forward. It is only when you stop that you lose the path.”
She offered Ari her hand. “Now, if you’re feeling up to it, my brother needs you.”
Ari didn’t hesitate. She let Shira pull her to her feet, and like a shadow snipped from her heel, she left the weight behind.
CHAPTER 37
ARIELLE
THE ANTHIR HEADQUARTERS were a squat, gray stone building in the Wrenith District. Ari was aware of every step she took inside, from the cold foyer to the monochrome waiting room. This was where she belonged. She should be in a cell right beside Damien after what she’d done.
You protected yourself, said the voice. Nothing more.
Where have you been? Ari thought back, but only silence answered.
Shira barely set foot in the place before someone was at her side, asking if they could help. Ari’s attention strayed to the wall of faces to her left, depicting criminals the Anthir were hunting. Their crimes were printed beneath sketches or photographs. Most of them simply said REBEL.
“Arielle.” Shira’s voice pulled her back. “This way.”
They entered a corner office with a plaque on the door that read INSPECTOR ELRIHAN.
The inspector was a broad-shouldered man with tawny skin, a thick black beard, and bright eyes. He sat behind a desk that took up most of the small, windowless room, the surface stacked with endless piles of paper.
Damien had told her about his friendship with the inspector, how he’d listened as the man, several drinks in, detailed how understaffed they were. How he felt trapped in his small office and longed to do something more meaningful, more recognized. In turn, Inspector Elrihan had accepted a generous donation for staffing and a renovation on the precinct due to start next month, and always had a minute to hear the Adairs out.
“Lady Adair.” Inspector Elrihan leaned back in a too-small wooden chair. “I apologize for Lord Adair’s treatment. If I’d known he was here earlier, I’d have seen to him immediately, but the paperwork has yet to be filed. I can assure you Sergeant Haraver will be suitably reprimanded.”
Sergeant Haraver, she thought. Talyana. The same name as Mikira’s friend. Had Reid told her what was happening when he delivered her father’s message? She hoped that was where he was now.
Shira waved away his concern. “Not to worry, Inspector. The sergeant was only doing her duty. But I have someone here who can provide my brother an alibi.”
Ari stepped up beside her. “I was with Damien at the time of those men’s disappearance.”
She expected the inspector to question her, to tear apart the lie that Shira fed her, but he only nodded. “Of course. I’ll see him released immediately.”
“Before you do,” Ari cut in. “I’d like to talk to him.”
A constable let her into the hall, where the pale light of dawn cast a blue sheen across the rusted bars of the cells on either side. Dark shapes shifted inside them, but Ari paid them no heed, even when they called to her.
We can silence them, said the voice. We can silence them all.
I know.
At the end of the hall, Damien paced the short length of his cell like a caged lion. His hands had been cuffed before him, his jacket unbuttoned from where they’d taken his guns. Even his curls were a mess. It was the most unkempt she’d ever seen him, and when his eyes locked on her, the look in them was nothing short of feral.
“What did he—” he began.
“I’m okay,” she said, but the exhaustion in those words was a bottomless well. Reflexively, she burned a little verillion, seeking its warmth and strength. They’d given her the key to his cell, and she toyed with it in the pocket of her dress.
Damien’s wrists strained against the handcuffs. “I will make him regret it,” he promised, and she knew he would, if she let him. But she didn’t want to let him.
She wanted to do it herself.
“I assume it was your brother who told Rezek I’m an enchanter,” she said quietly.
“Yes.” Damien leaned his forehead against the bars. They looked like the only thing holding him up. “I don’t think he told him that you’re unlicensed, just that you might know how Mikira was winning the race. But for this to have happened … Someone betrayed me, Ari.” He bit the words out, as if they physically pained him. “I promised myself I’d never let this happen again.”
Like it had with Rezek.
She realized then just how much that day all those years ago had broken him. How he’d spent every moment since putting himself back together piece by piece. There’d been no room for weakness, no place for vulnerability. Those things left you dependent on other people. They left you open to attack.
Yet he’d done it anyway.
He’d trusted Reid, and her, and Mikira. He’d trusted someone enough that this deception meant something to him.
But he was not the only one who had been deceived.
Ari traced her fingers along his jaw and said, so quietly the words were nearly lost, “Did you send those men to attack me?”
Damien flinched.
It was all the answer she needed. Her nails curled into his skin, but he did not pull away. Rather he caught her hand between his bound ones, holding it there. “They were never supposed to touch you.” His voice was a low rumble. “They were to take your coin and leave.”
“But they didn’t.”
His jaw tightened. “But they didn’t. And I saw they were sufficiently punished for it.”
He had. But was that enough? Once, she might have been uncertain where she stood with him. Might have doubted herself, unsteady and unsure. But he was looking at her now as if she was the only thing that mattered.
“Forgive me, Arielle,” he said hoarsely. “That was before I met you, before I got to know you and your strength and your mind. Before I loved you.”
He did not hesitate when he said it, though it left him breathless and vulnerable. Her eyes searched his, and he did not look away.
Those men would never trouble her again. He’d made sure of it—for her. She knew that, knew that Damien kept his truths clutched tight to his chest, knew the bars separating them were the very reason why. But if he wanted her, wanted her power and her mind and her soul the way she wanted his, then this would be the last time.
Her thumb brushed across his lips. “Never manipulate me like that again.”
“Never,” he promised, and she set him free.
PART 4
But the Harbingers could not stop what they had set in motion,
and humanity’s hunger grew insatiable.
Then came the Heretics.
CHAPTER 38
MIKIRA
MIKIRA DRESSED FOR war.
At least, that was how it felt wearing the crisp black and silver linen shirt she’d been sent, her riding pants supple leather, her boots polished to shine. She removed the bandages on her arm, bearing angry scabbed skin, and slid her knife sheaths into place, studying the worn handles. Ari hadn’t been able to tell her anything more about their enchantment since the discovery of the bloodstone’s linking properties, but even without knowledge of their power, the blades made her feel invincible.
A note had come with the uniform yesterday morning, informing her that Damien had been released, and though she recognized Reid’s handwriting, he hadn’t signed it.
Had he told Damien what she’d done?
She hadn’t been able to bring herself to visit the manor since the Kelbra ball. Reid didn’t want to see her, and no last day of training would make a difference in the race.
This ended today, one way or another.
An enchanted coach arrived empty at her house that morning, and she felt the extra space inside it as it trundled up the King’s Road toward the castle. First Reid, then Talyana—she’d managed to drive a wedge between herself and them both. Now she hurtled toward one of the most important days of her life, and she did it very much alone.
The castle’s central courtyard was larger than half a city block and filled to the brim with horses and people. One area had been cordoned off for vendors, another occupied by canopied wooden viewing platforms for the nobility. The clouded sky threatened rain.
Thankfully, most of today’s race would be underground.
The tunnels that snaked beneath Veradell began near the castle and emptied onto the Traveler’s Road at the edge of the city. They would be dark, lending advantage to horses with ethereal enchantments, like the ability to never get lost or to sense danger. She had no idea what kind of charms they’d experience inside, only that once they escaped the tunnels, they would follow the Traveler’s Road toward the finish line some three miles away at Kelbra Manor.
Mikira made her way to the saddling area, at once desperate for a glimpse of Iri and terrified of it. She desperately hoped the prince had changed his mind, deciding the horse was too valuable to risk, but she knew Rezek wouldn’t let that happen. The stallion was here, somewhere. She could feel it.
So close to the start of the race, most everyone was already packing up and preparing to relocate to the finish line. Most of the spectators would watch the start, then take a coach to the Kelbras’ estate to await the riders, who had already begun to gather by the starting gate.
“There you are.”
She started at Damien’s voice, whirling to find his arm linked with Ari’s.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
Her heart scrambled. “No—I just, you scared me.” She searched his face for signs of anger and found none. That meant nothing. Damien could be plotting her death this very moment, and she wouldn’t know it. He regarded her with a shrewd tilt of his head. Like the day they’d met all those weeks ago, she felt cut open by the steel of his eyes.
