Solanine leaned toward the babe. “My, but she’s a pretty thing. Those achromic eyes of a Godsblood. A beauty she no doubt will become.”
Valeria fought the urge to pull Brynn away. “That she may.”
“The Divine’s guile upon us,” the Matron proclaimed, her voice the sort that sounded like a rusty dagger on a whetstone. “He guides us strong. Guides us true.”
“The way to Eminence will be ours once more,” Solanine said, one of the scales’ fingers toyed with Brynn’s little hand. “And Master Lu Har will reactivate the Crystal of Life, releasing our master into the world of Life. And Eminence’s glory will return.”
No, no he wouldn’t. Not without the true Eye of the Soul, heavy in her pocket. But she had to withdraw now, lest her plan fall to ruin. “He will.”
Solanine smiled sweetly to the babe, a peal of child laughter.
“The Strix has long since been dormant,” the Matron said through her gritty rasp. “Will she of Nightingale’s blood be enough?”
“Godsblood she be,” Valeria said, uncertain if Cadrianna could master the weapon of the First Wife. She hoped the woman would never touch the blade. “If she is, your gracious tutelage awaits, Matron.”
Cadrianna choked as the permafrost began to lessen. She cried out, the first sound to elicit from her frigid lips. “NO!”
The vision spurred her forward once more, the bikrome in a rush.
Minutes achingly flew by before Valeria crept out of the crypts and out one of the many secret entrances in the outer shell of Drenth. She eased open a small panel of stone, exiting into the Sea of Mist. It was still nightturn, the moon the softest shade of crimson, the mist taller than she. A blood moon. Visibility was near absolute negative.
Wetness fell upon her shoulders. Rain pierced the mist. It struck her face, but it didn’t taste like water. Coppery. Blood it was.
“Cyan!” Valeria called. She feared her voice would carry.
There were far more dangerous things in the heavy mist than Imperium soldiers and the Fallen’s aetheurgists. Even within the mega-city. Daemons prowled in the aftermath of the conquest.
She plunged into the Sea, naught but sandy dunes underfoot to swallow her. “Cyan?”
Valeria could barely see her hand stretched out in front of her, it was that dense. Her foot tangled within a low brush, one of the few types of bushes that called the desert home, a prickly thing tearing a slash in her robe. Brynn giggled. Valeria cursed.
What is she doing?
“CAD, THE TRUTH.”
There, deep in her heart she felt something stir. It wasn’t from the vision, it wasn’t from the memory of the past, but something new, something foreign. Cold as frozen rivers but not as cold as before. Strix?
“I’M HERE, CAD. THIS IS THE TRUTH IN WHICH YOU’VE BEEN DENIED. NOT AS YOU REMEMBERED. SEE IT. SEEK IT. I’M HERE FOR YOU. ALWAYS.”
But the Strix felt different. Still the same essence, but not like the daemon she knew. No, felt more primal. More ancient. A being of aether.
“Cyan?”
“Here,” a response came from the mist.
Valeria crawled over a sand dune in the direction of the voice. The gates of Drenth crashed open, aetheurgists and worse flowed out into the Sea. Hand coated in gritty sand, finding her way through the Sea until she found her man seconds later. He grabbed her wrist gently and pulled her under a withered hunk of tree.
“Never thought you’d show, bikrome.” A young man in his prime, handsome in a rugged way behind the glass shield of his leather-breathing mask. He wore the cassock of a Scattered Shards vicar.
“VALERIA!” The honeyed voice of the Divine as spoken by the Fallen.
“This is where we go our separate ways, Cyan.”
“VALERIA! I CAN SMELL YOUR BLOOD. THE FEAR WITHIN. NIGHTINGALE CRIES FOR YOU. YOU’VE FORSAKEN EVERYTHING. FOR WHAT? CANLON CARR?”
Valeria held out the child. “You must take her. Prophecy has this child marked.”
Pentax, no, Cadrianna begged. But this can’t be true. Brynn is locked within Gargantua. Locked in the darkness, without me.
A pressure upon Cadrianna’s lips, they, too, were cold. Frozen even. The sensation ran down her neck.
“CAD, HEED THIS.” The Strix had pierced the vision somehow, someway. “THE TRUTH IS HERE BEFORE YOU. IT WAS ALWAYS HERE, LOCKED IN THE PAST. LOCKED IN THE SPELLS THE FALLEN HAS WOVEN AROUND YOU.”
Cyan nervously looked about. Shapes began to close in on them. Large shapes. “Daemons,” he hissed.
“VALERIA! THEY COME FOR YOU. THEY WANT THE BABE. THE GODSBLOOD WILL ALWAYS CALL TO THEM.”
Valeria Dunleith drew a golden blade, the faint moon shimmered upon its polished face, dripping with bloody rivulets. “They are after me, they know not about you. Take the child, Cyan. She must live at all costs. Please, Cyan. Take her and go. See her to Icterine. They will not follow you. I’ll see to it.”
The stinging cold coursed through her veins, freezing her blood, stopping it dead. Brynn must live. What she’d always told herself. Told herself why she did what she did. For the Fallen. For his coven.
But lies they were.
“LIES, CAD.”
You knew?
“I…”
