I left Lithan and Qentos to the birds, and made my way toward the pavilion. I paused as I approached, studying the foremost arch, the one I usually stood under to await the instructions of the Impartial Ministers. There was something tethered to the column. My heart started to race uncomfortably and my mouth dried.
I continued to walk forward, feeling like my legs were moving of their own accord, because there was something unsettlingly familiar about the shape tied to the pavilion—something that my brain was slow to recognize, but that my body had instinctively reacted to. I did not want to come closer. I did not want to see.
My stomach heaved.
I stood before a red cloak, wrapped in swathes around its owner who was tied with coarse rope to the Hellswan arch. Dumb in death, Commander Varga stared down at me. His throat had been slit.
I removed my sword from its sheath, cutting loose the rope that bound him. I caught his body before it slumped to the floor, and then held him in my arms for a few moments before laying him gently on the earth. His body was cold and stiff. All the life had seeped out of it, and I stared, uncomprehending, at the face that would no longer break into infuriatingly loud barks of laughter.
No.
This could not be the end for him.
I stepped back, no longer wanting to look at the form of the man who had once been my only friend. The only man on this earth I had ever truly trusted.
Where his robe had fallen onto the grass, I saw the lines of a mark, a thin trickle of blood. I had failed to notice it earlier, but as I stood back, I could see that blood had been dribbled in a deliberate and crude marking of a rune. One I had seen before. It was the same one Hazel had shown me on a scrap of parchment.
I could hear the panting breaths of Lithan and Qentos behind me. One of them inhaled, about to speak.
“Don’t,” I commanded.
I did not want to hear what empty platitudes they wished to say. I became vaguely aware of the Impartial Ministers and the other royal members appearing at the Pavilion. As soon as they saw what was left of Varga, their mutterings fell away to silence.
One of them approached me, coming to stand by my side.
“Leave,” I growled, not caring to see who it was.
“I cannot,” the voice replied. It was King Memenion. I regarded him wearily, fractionally more willing to listen to what he might have to say than any of the others.
“You must know that Commander Varga dined and rested at my castle the night before last. Did you see him since?” the king enquired.
“No, not since the fires.”
“He left us in the morning. He was to accompany the human girl, Ruby, to Hellswan castle.”
“Have you seen her since?” I asked.
“No, I believed them both to be with you.”
I nodded. Commander Varga had never made it back to the castle. I wondered where that left the human girl. Had she been slaughtered somewhere too?
“Do you recognize this?” Memenion pointed to the rune.
“The Acolytes.”
He looked at me sharply.
“Then you know what is coming. I have heard whisperings that the cult had reformed, but I refused to believe it. That is not possible now.”
I thought of the old temple, where Benedict was being kept. I could no longer doubt a connection between the rise of the cult and the growing strength of the entity. I had known all along that the Acolytes worshiped some great, unknown power—I had never thought it would be the entity. My father might have set the rise of the entity in motion by removing the first stone, but somehow the Acolytes were assisting its growth to power.
“We need to halt the trials!” Memenion called out to the ministers. I looked up to see them whispering among themselves, glancing back and forth from me to the body of Varga.
“Nonsense!” Queen Trina cried. Suddenly, I was roused from my shocked stupor.
I stalked toward the Pavilion, Memenion hot on my heels. Shoving the ministers aside, I headed straight for the bejeweled queen. I grabbed her by the throat, hoisting her up against one of the columns.
“Vile witch, was it you?” I bellowed in her face, our lips almost touching as I fought to restrain myself from ripping the skin off her skull.
“N-n-no Tejus…please!” she stammered, her hands weakly pawing at mine. My fingers tightened, squeezing the muscles of her throat and cutting off the air.
“If I find the slightest shred of evidence that this was your doing, I shall end your miserable life. It will be slow and it will be painful, and you will scream out to your entity, but it will not save you,” I hissed in her ear.
“Tejus!” Memenion barked. “You forget yourself.”
I smiled at the fear in Queen Trina’s eyes, and then released her. She fell forward, gasping for breath.