Cadrianna began to cry again. She fell into his arms. “I tried to save her, Emre. They tortured her, kept her from me. I couldn’t even protect her. Lu Har, he… I couldn’t get to her. He made me kill to stay his hand.”
“That wasn’t her, Cad,” he soothed, his fingers combing through her hair. “She was far from his grasp.”
“And never knew us.”
“It was the only way to protect her.”
“She was meant to be with us. The three of us. Family. And we failed her.”
“If we didn’t do what we both did, then she’d be dead. There was no other way to save her. At least now, we’ve given her the chance to fulfil her destiny. She’s going to do it; I just know it.”
“I just want to hold my girl.”
“You will. Bliss has spoken to Val. The Ideal Daughter says we will have ours back. Soon.”
Cadrianna looked at him, searching his open soul. “What aren’t you telling me?”
A smirk. “Never could get anything by you, even when we were children.”
His wife instantly became the scourge, what once had been raw emotion was now blank emptiness. Her shield sliding back into place. He knew it far too well. “What’s going to happen to her, Emre?”
“Nothing she cannot handle. Trust me, Cad. Bliss has seen her future, and it does not end here today.”
No, not Brynn’s, but other blood will be spilled. To Cadrianna, he said no more, unwilling to put it to words.
L
Cyan the Defiant
“WHERE IN THE bloody void is the godsdamned latch?” a voice came from outside the darkened room.
The amount of pain lancing Cyan’s neck as he lifted his head was nigh on unbearable. “Hello?”His voice was ragged and raw.
But that paled in comparison to how his soul felt. Failure would kill him sooner than the loss of blood. Amaranth…
“Uh… hello?” A woman’s voice. “Little bint, that you?”
It was dark wherever it was Cyan was held, claustrophobic even. They were in some sort of room, but he didn’t know where or how big it was. He didn’t know how long he’d been there.
The pain was all he knew.
Harlequin’s head lolled back and forth; the young woman was still unconscious. He could barely make out the Bloodless’ form in the murk.
There was a series of curses by the unknown woman before the wall parted and an aethecite lamp pierced the obscurity. A womanly figure filled the doorway.
“What in the bloody dark of Nocturne’s rearhole happened here?”
Cyan squinted against the sudden influx of light. “Who… are you?” It wasn’t Solanine, and relief washed through him.
A larger shadow overtook the woman and Cyan realized it was a very large man. At first, Cyan thought it was the bald man who had been with Solanine, the man who spent a great deal of time torturing him and Harlequin after Amaranth had been turned into a daemon. But it wasn’t him as this man was more fleshy, less bulging muscle.
The woman had shaggy brown hair, and she wore a tailored suit. Something flashed in the light as she smiled, and Cyan guessed it was gold. “Your pissing rescuer.” She turned toward the big man, “Roland, get your one-eyed backside in here, hear?”
The big man, Roland, squeezed through the door. It wasn’t large, by any means, really nothing more than a closet with a basin at the floor. It reminded Cyan of a bathroom with the basin acting as a tub. Like artwork, Cyan and Harlequin were chained to the far wall, their arms bound with inch-thick manacles, their feet hanging limply above the floor. Both were naked, their vicar cassocks tossed in the corner. Their bodies were rent and stained with dried blood. Both were bruised from head to foot.
Cyan glanced at his acolyte in the newfound light, she was hardly breathing, her red curls limp around her face. “Help… us,” he forced the words out. “Solanine…”
“Solanine did this?” The woman moved beside the big man and tested the chains. Cyan knew they were inscribed with the same runes that painted the basin floor with their blood. “Roland, can you break these?”
Roland grabbed at one where it met the wall and twisted. Nothing. He then drew a knife and shoved it into a link and tried to snap it but nearly bent his blade instead. “I can’t, Neenah.”
“Voidspeak,” Cyan breathed, his words barely audible, “the runes are voidspeak. Only the Arbiter can break such bonds. The axe…”
“Shoulda brought those godsdamned twins,” Neenah said as she set the lamp down on a table, “they know voidspeak.”
On the table, next to a number of vials and bottles that contained powders and liquids, lay his Gauntlet and Harlequin’s axes, as well as their breathers with their mist canisters.
“Our breathers… aetheurgy… heal us.”
The woman, Neenah he supposed, grabbed their breathers and placed them over their heads. Harlequin groaned. A whine of released mist fogged up their breathers as the pair inhaled. Sweet aether filled Cyan’s lungs, his breathing came quicker and heartier, the magic of the gods healing him as it burned through his body.
Thank Justice.
Hefting one of the axes, Neenah said, “Alright, stand back.”
“Cap’n, they’re chained to a wall, where you want them to go?”
