The three scourges tensed, only Cadrianna dared look at the aetheurgist. The blooddrake smiled to reveal straight white teeth that should be pointed like a drake’s but remained hidden under the scales of this woman on the throne. Chants formed on the mortal lips, whispered so Cadrianna couldn’t hear. A wave of Aere into the center of a mini storm. Black lightning of the void raged inside the mist, Solanine snapped the scales’ fingers and broke the spell.
But the blooddrake’s smile did start to make Cadrianna angry. Angry that she allowed such swine to live all these years after the sack of her husband’s city.
Brynn… I did it for you…
“NO, CAD, YOU DID IT FOR YOU. TO PROTECT YOURSELF.”
All I did was for Brynn!
“AND YET, YOU STILL DON’T WANT TO BELIEVE THE TRUTH IN FRONT OF YOU. PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF YOUR DAUGHTER, OPEN YOUR EYES.”
I… they…
“I had her surrounded, scourge,” Solanine said, words directed toward Cadrianna. “In fact, I had her right in my sight, my fingers ready to reach out and hook her. But you, you wasteful whore, had to confront your past. Had to step in and take matters into your own biased Nightingale hands. Hands that never should have been graced with blood.”
“Forgive me,” a rote response came forth.
“Your little outburst destroyed our one chance at bringing the Godsblood into the fold. For Lu Har to take his rightful place upon Eminence. The willfulness of your Nightingale blood may have ground his plans to a halt, daughter of the beast.”
Cadrianna held her tongue, holding firm. Try as she might, it just didn’t make any sense. It couldn’t be her. Could it? What is so important about the blood of the Nightingale line? Strix, what does Solanine mean by ‘daughter of the beast’? That’s the second time using that phrase.
A long pause by the daemon, one that didn’t sit well with Cadrianna. Finally, “CAD, YOUR BLOOD. THE TIES TO YOUR NIGHTINGALE BLOOD.”
I don’t understand. Strix?
“SOON.”
Solanine’s words to Ratko and the scourges broke her concentration. “Since the girl has evaded you, it seems she’s had help. Evander,” the big, bald man came forward. An imposing man, but Cadrianna feared him not. He bowed reverently. “Show what you’ve discovered.”
“As my master commands,” the man named Evander said. A fire tainted by Void Form burned in him, Cadrianna could see. He held out his hand, and within was something resembling a scrunched ball of fabric. Pink and clearly from a stola.
Brynn’s dress? It couldn’t be her; she can’t be here. She’s still in her prison. I saw her before leaving!
“CAD, I TRIED TO WARN YOU. ONLY LIES WERE YOU TO MEET.”
Ratko and the others took a closer look, Cadrianna was rooted like a tree. “This was the girl’s,” Solanine said, “Found in front of a spire not three blocks from this very location. Gone during the flight after the Gutter King blew my anchors. Fled from Lu Har’s grip. He is not pleased. Nor am I.”
“We searched, O greatness,” Ratko said. Cadrianna looked his way, confused. “Just as you commanded. She must have escaped via glider.”
“Not possible,” Solanine said. “None have seen her, or one resembling her.”
“What of the one airglider that es—”
“Enough, scourge. Whoever helped her, will suffer my wrath.” Eerie was the proclamation, as Solanine’s bloodstained face portrayed death. Foreboding even. “This Godsblood is more than meets the eye. She is imbued with Nightingale blood. That wretched blood of the First… bah… she cannot have gotten far. She must be found at all costs.”
“Perhaps the girl is dead.” The words trickled out before Cadrianna could contain them. Part of her hungered for confirmation of this girl’s identity, but the other part of her feared the truth. If it was Brynn, then everything she’d ever known was nothing but a lie.
“So much death,” Solanine acknowledged. “Immortality does not come from the proliferation of Life.”
“But upon the wave of Death,” the three scourges said as one, Cadrianna silent.
“It would take more than that to kill a Godsblood. You saw her firsthand tonight,” said a voice nearby.
A coldness overcame her, a cold so deep that it drew the warmth from her body and of the room. Her eyes snapped up in fire. The bikrome who had betrayed her beloved husband was watching her intently behind a veil, waiting to see what she would do. Cadrianna remained still but the mist deepened and roiled. Her fingers dug into the stone.
“Temper that anger. You’ve still many uses, Cadrianna Nightingale,” said Valeria Dunleith, traitor and betrayer. “The Seal of Terris has been taken.”
Taken, how? Was this Emre’s plan all along? Strix?
“I KNOW NOT, BUT IT ADDS UP. THE SEAL WAS ALWAYS BOUND TO DRENTH AFTER THE FALL. TO A DRAKKEN WARDKEEPER. TO THE BENLDS. YOU KNOW THIS IS WHY LU HAR CAME TO DRENTH.”
I didn’t…
“The girl has evaded me for long enough,” Solanine said as the blooddrake slithered off the throne toward the bikrome. “Scourges and gangland thugs be godsdamned. It’s time for something else.”
The blooddrake drew a small dagger from the folds of the mortal’s outfit, slicing across the scales’ fleshy palm. Solanine squeezed crimson from the wound, not the blackish ichor of a blooddrake, but red of humir. Going to knees, Solanine’s head bowed, golden-red locks fanning out. Chanting in the language of the Pit, the blooddrake drew a circle in streaks of red upon the ground. Solanine’s bloodied hand began to move in a formation of symbols, ancient symbols wrought from the Pit of Nocturne. The pendant of onyx flared around the aetheurgist’s neck, black eyes glowing obsidian.
“O NO,” the Strix muttered, a knowing tone. “THIS IS NOT GOING TO BE GOOD.”
What is it, Strix?
The daemon blade hissed.
The symbols hovering in the mist, started to blossom an eerie pale. A glow, as tiny as a pinprick, surged in brightness as Solanine’s chants grew in intensity, expanding. Mist of the opaquest black Cadrianna had ever seen poured out of the light, a wail of deathly sorrow. The mist snaked around Solanine, gnawing at the bare skin of the scales’ arms, tiny wisps fizzling. The blooddrake threw the stolen head abaft and cried out, a shriek of the void.
Cadrianna shielded her eyes as the pale intensified, radiant now like Zenith’s sun. Her body was cold, devoid of anything but the fervor of the light. She forced herself to look at it.
The mist churned around Solanine aggressively. It savagely cascaded from the light, a gateway, Cadrianna now saw, from Nocturne’s Pit, linking the Pit to the world of Life. A gateway that grew in size by the heartbeat of the blooddrake, the blood and soul linked to that of the void.
