Page 67

I walked down the stone steps and pushed the heavy doors open, stepping into Prague’s drizzle. Passersby gave me a wide berth, probably sensing the violence radiating from me like heat. But they did not scream. They only saw a woman who looked as if she had walked out of a grave.

A taxi idled at the corner, the driver smoking a cigarette with the window down. I wrenched the back door open and slid onto the cracked leather seat. I met his gaze in the rearview mirror and commanded him to drive to Houska with a voice that was still too deep, too hollow.

He stomped on the gas, and the car lurched forward, though he argued in Czech as he gestured at the darkening sky and at the thinning road. I did not argue back but placed a roll of damp bills on the front seat, the money stained with dark smudges. Which made him shut up.

We drove north out of Prague as the city shed its skin layer by layer. The trams and soot-stained apartments gave way to gray suburbs that dissolved into fields stripped bare by winter before the forests of Kokořínsko finally swallowed the road.

I sat in the back with my trembling hands resting on my knees. I stared at them, willing the skin to remain smooth, the claws to stay retracted.

It took monumental effort to keep the monster in the cage. I touched the bare skin of my ring finger, realizing Valden’s gift was still at the flat.

The trees pressed close to the road as sandstone rocks jutted out from the earth like broken teeth. It felt as though the air was growing colder and heavier.

The taxi slowed as the road turned onto a dirt track rutted by heavy trucks. Before stopping at the base of a steep hill and refusing to go further, the driver muttered, “Konec.”

I got out and let the cold bite through my thin blouse, though I did not feel it over the furnace in my chest.

I walked up that hill.

Houska Castle sat on a limestone cliff, looking less like a fortress meant to keep enemies out and more like a heavy lid meant to keep something in. It was an ugly, squat, quadrangular block of peeling yellow plaster and gray stones. The roof of red tiles gaped as if it had missing teeth.

Weeds choked the path to the rusted iron gate, which stood slightly ajar, and I stepped into a courtyard silent with the held breath of history. My shadows stretched out across the dirt and gravel, hissing against the stones, as I called Valden’s name, my voice echoing off the walls.

Something pulled me toward the small chapel within the castle’s confines, so I walked there. The door opened, revealing the oldest part of the structure and the gateway, which was built directly over the pit.

The air grew thick with sulfur and hot copper as I walked deeper into the chamber. Faded frescoes of demons fighting angels and beasts tearing at the damned covered the walls, their ancient paint peeling away like sheets of dead skin. A section of the floor emerged from the shadows, its stones smooth and untouched by the surrounding ruin.

Valden occupied the pristine center. He wore a heavy coat collared in dark fur, a king presiding over his rotting throne room. A human hung trapped within his cruel embrace. The victim possessed no discernible gender, reduced to a hollow, ashen husk slipping into oblivion. A dying aura bled from the fragile frame, pulsing in weak, fading tremors of silver light before dissolving into the dark.

Valden kept his jaw firmly latched to the mortal’s throat. His predatory eyes locked onto mine over the weeping wound, and he seemed completely unbothered by my arrival. Tribunal law strictly forbade feeding from the vein. Shattering those ancient agreements carried a singular brutal implication. This direct consumption of blood meant he was preparing for war.

I halted about ten steps from the scene before me. The wet sound of tearing flesh echoed through the cavernous vault. Intimidation found no purchase in my mind. Pure blinding rage ignited in my chest, burning away the cloying stench of death. I held his monstrous gaze and demanded he release the mortal.

Valden kept his teeth anchored in the throat. A wet, mocking smirk stretched his lips around the torn flesh. He savored a last swallow of life before pulling his jaw free with a sickening, visceral sound. With a singular dismissive sweep of his arm, he launched the drained husk into the shadows. The fragile body struck the far wall, shattering bones against the ancient stones with a resonant crack. The ruined human collapsed into a tangled, lifeless heap on the dust-covered floor.

Fresh blood painted Valden’s chin. His smirk widened into a cruel grin across his pale face as he dragged a dark sleeve over his mouth, smearing the gore across his cheek.

I stepped closer to the slaughter. “Where is Serion?”

“Gone.” He licked his lips. “His part is done now that he has prepared the vessel and extracted the components, so he has returned to his high perch.”

“You both killed her.”

But he corrected me to say they had used her, claiming there was a difference because she was a tool that had served her purpose beautifully. He then told me to look at myself, at the power radiating off me. I stepped forward, promising myself that I was going to kill him.

“You can try,” he said, “but you won’t because you want to know why.”

My hesitation grew as I understood that the direct feeding was now improving his mind-reading abilities, leaving me completely exposed. But I could now control my thoughts as easily as he could read them, thanks to the newfound abilities of the void. So, I did just that, and the annoyance on his face was priceless.

I demanded to know why they tortured her, why they turned me into this. He had the smile of a wolf, as if he was watching a lamb realize the gate was locked, and pointed a gloved finger at the floor beneath his boots.

“Hell,” I said.

“A passage.” His gaze drifted to the newer stones beneath his boots. “A direct line to the Crimson Keep.”

I open my mouth to continue my story, but a sharp rap of knuckles against stones shatters the memory. I blink, the cold chapel dissolving into the dusty archive.

The keeper is leaning forward, its skeletal hand resting flat on the obsidian table. Its hourglass eyes are churning, the sand moving with agitated speed. “You are skimming, Cassiel. The archive does not want a summary. It wants mechanics. Valden did not just tell you it was a passage. He told you the laws.”