A bloodcurdling scream filled the chamber, burnt flesh mixed with the moldy stink of the grey mist. In the center of the room were the captured family of the Regents Benld. Drenth burning and occupied. Gargantua hovering nihilistically overhead. All crying, whimpering, and afraid. All but one, the Regent’s heir. Emre. His curled hair was drenched with sweat, his dark eyes bruised and swollen, portals into his soul that spanned chasms, a rage simmering within.
Valeria held the babe tight, they always broke, the strong ones.
Emre! Cadrianna tried to scream, but she was locked in a memory that wasn’t hers. Her mouth formed the words, but only frost came forth. Nocturne, she was so cold. Her entire body shivered. Was she dead? Was this her fate for doing the work of the Fallen? For forsaking her vows to Emre and sharing a bed with Lu Har?
Lu Har, resplendent in a bloodred robe, glided around the young thrashing man. Try as she might, Valeria couldn’t help but be mesmerized by him. Even now, nigh on five centuries after the Fall of Eminence and his subsequent rebirth, she still couldn’t break the hold the Fallen had over her. It wasn’t romantic love, no, not even platonic. It was something else. Spellbinding, he was.
Spellbinding? That can’t be. The cold seeped into her very soul. Like a lake covered in a sheet of ice, cracks started to form. But the cracks were her protector and shield. The cold was trying to break in.
Valeria’s hand touched the lump buried in the inner pockets of her robe. Heirloom, it was, to the greatest city ever known to man. A key. No, the key to all life. Stolen and replaced by a deft replica with the help of Thestile. It was Valeria’s recompense for falling in love with Solanine and helping the Fallen defeat Canlon.
Waiting, she was, until the moment true. She just needed to stand firm until the heir faltered, hoping her resolve wouldn’t waver. The babe cried softly, and Valeria shushed the cherub-faced girl with raven-black hair and pearl irises.
White… no… it can’t be. This can’t be…
The cracks became gullies now. The cold chipped at the stone fortress she’d constructed the day Emre betrayed her. Why now? Why this? The frost burrowed deeper into her soul, wrenching its way in the darkness within her.
The heir wept; his head bowed but still his eyes smoldered. His wife cried uncontrollably as the bodies of the Regents Benld lay discarded, their corpses consumed by void aetheurgy. The babe cried.
Lu Har glared at the heir. “Where is the Seal? You won’t like it if I have to ask again. Where is it hidden?”
“Never,” the heir said defiantly.
Why couldn’t he just answer? Cadrianna sobbed. Why? Cadrianna cried, cried as both Valeria and as herself. Reliving it over afresh, the wound rent open, blistering ice filling the voids.
Valeria tensed as the next sufferer was Efan Nightingale. The man’s clothing ripped; his ice-blue eyes fearful.
This was the pure power of Life and Death itself. The power of Soul Form. Of aether. The man bore the blood of the Gods, his ancestor was the First Wife. It was his seed that carried the Godsblood, passed on to Cadrianna, finally onto the baby girl in her arms.
The reason for all of this, the invasion, the murders. All for the Godsblood in her arms.
Cadrianna, Valeria knew, would be taken by the Fallen, initiated into his coven if she survived the trials channeled under the ancient eye of the Divines. As would the babe in her arms, the one named Brynn.
Valeria was determined to not let that happen.
The baby. Brynn…
“Where is it?” the Fallen asked calmly.
“Please,” Cadrianna’s father, the lineage of Nightingale, implored through strangled sobs.
Emre Benld, last of his line, held his tongue, though tears streamed down a face of stone and steel. Valeria’s heart went out to him. He would hold strong until the end, she now knew.
She mustn’t let him travel the Meadows just yet. A new hope reared within her. He could help bring ruin to the Fallen, she realized. With him, she might just yet find her path to redemption.
It would all fall upon her old friend, the wardkeeper of Drenth. Tevun. Dare she still believe in their relationship after all she’d done?
It was possible.
“Tell him!” Cadrianna screamed to her beloved husband, begging for it to end.
Fight it, Cad. Fight it, she urged herself. This memory… no… I can’t take it… stop it! Stop it!
The cracks became an abyss, thrown asunder, her soul lay bare to the cold. Like the opposite of burning aetheurgy, this feeling was utter permafrost. The same pain filled her as the aether burned, but this contained a lack of hurt, just the pain. No warmth, only floe.
The orcirish torturers lingering in the shadows grabbed Cadrianna and lifted her from the chair as if she weighed naught but the measure of her bones and dress.
That’s when Emre broke.
He told Lu Har exactly what he wanted. “The Seal of Terris is in the desert,” he said dejectedly. “Deep in the desert, within the mines lies the Temple of Mother Marrow. There is the Seal, as is the Forgemistress’ Hammer.”
The Fallen was pleased, the task complete. He snapped his fingers. Valeria turned, pulling the swaddled babe closer to her breast as one of the hulking orcir sliced Emre Benld’s throat from ear to ear.
Cadrianna, the true Cadrianna, couldn’t hold back the tears. Downed they flowed. O, how she sobbed. The tears steamed down her cheeks, toward a dam at her lips, something stopping the wetness. The steam crystallized at this mystifying dam. Nocturne, she wanted to wake. To end this nightmare.
Now was Valeria’s moment, the time of her redemption had come. With a somber glance toward the dying Benld, she stepped forward. “Master Lu Har, what of the babe?”
“These Nightingales reek of Canlon’s stink,” the Fallen snarled. To Valeria, “Bind her. And take this one for my flock. If she learns, if she obeys, then the babe lives.” He gripped Cadrianna’s chin hard, eliciting a yelp. “If not, the babe dies.”
She nodded, her heart pounding. It was time to pay her tithe.
Her boots echoed on the worn stones below the Regent’s Tower in Drenth. Torches sputtered and cast shadows. A low layer of grey mist circled after, flowing in gossamer rivers of poison. Quirking and alive with aether, its fingers reaching toward the babe in her arms. Towards the Godsblood.
“Where are you going, love?”
Valeria had to breathe deep to compose herself. Turning, she noticed a man approach. Hair the color of sunset grey at the temples, a bearded face. The voice she knew, but the face was new.
“Solanine, my love, I see you’ve taken new scales,” Val whispered. Solanine broke the plane of sputtering torchlight, a second person, a woman—much, much older and blind—leaned upon Solanine’s arm. “Matron.”
