A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire(41)

Lurching forward, I clamped my hands over my mouth to silence the shout building in my throat. Elijah made a move toward the Lord, but he drew up short as several of the knights pulled their swords.

With wide, disbelieving eyes, I watched Lord Chaney lift his hands. Mrs. Tulis crumpled to the ground in a boneless heap at his feet. Even after seeing the underground chamber with all those names, I couldn’t…I couldn’t have prepared myself for what I saw. He’d snapped her neck. Just like that. He’d killed her as if she meant nothing, as if her life had no value. Slowly, I lowered my hands.

“Why?” Magda said, her fingers pressed to her rounded belly. “Why would you do that?”

Lord Chaney stepped over Mrs. Tulis’s body as if she were nothing, absolutely forgettable. “Why would she go unpunished for lying?”

Oh, gods. A shudder racked me. She hadn’t been lying. Magda knew that. All of them knew that.

“Unless it was you who is lying,” he said. “And the only reason I can come up with for that is that several of you—or all of you—are Descenters. Like the one you accused of lying. After all, she once lived in Masadonia but disappeared along with her husband and son shortly before the Rite and after their very public request to refuse the Rite was denied. Her death was quick and just.”

Her death was just? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. And how had he gotten ahold of her when she had been in New Haven? And where was Tobias?

“But back to the issue at hand. The Maiden is very important to the kingdom. Worth more than every single one of you,” Chaney addressed the line of people. “Where is she?”

No one spoke.

Chaney looked at the only knight who spoke. Without saying a word, he lunged forward, thrusting his sword deep into the belly of a man standing in line.

Horror seized me as Casteel jumped up but stopped, growling under his breath. The air around him vibrated with rage, and my senses swelled as the man’s agony rippled out across the yard. My throat tightened as I fought back the nearly overwhelming urge to connect with him. I couldn’t allow that. It would be too much.

The man staggered, but he didn’t scream. He didn’t even shout from the pain. I imagined a giant pair of shears snipping away at all of the lines my gift was trying to connect to him…to Casteel…to all the others. Rage coated the air, falling heavier than the snow had, and I trembled with the effort to shut it down. To lock it all away before the need to ease the man’s suffering and the fear and anger of the others overwhelmed me.

Before I made things worse.

Not a single member of the keep standing by twitched a muscle as the man lifted his head and spat in the knight’s face.

The knight twisted the sword before tearing the blade free. Red spilled out of the man’s stomach, thick and ropey as he went down on one knee.

“Fuck you,” the man gritted out.

The second thrust of the sword was more of a swipe, cleaving the man’s head from his shoulders. There were gasps. At least I thought there were, but the blood was pounding too heavily in my ears. It could’ve been me who reacted.

Casteel rose once more, his hands opening and closing at his sides. A muscle flexed along his jaw, and then he stretched his neck to the left and to the right before returning to kneel beside me.

Bile crept up my throat as the knight wiped the spit from his cheek with the back of his free hand.

“I will kill that one,” Casteel vowed quietly, his voice colder than the air we breathed. “I will kill that one slowly and painfully.”

One of the other knights stepped forward, grabbing a boy—the one who’d run from house to house when we first arrived in New Haven. He pressed the point of his sword under the child’s chin.

My heart stopped.

“This is what they are truly like.” Casteel curled his fingers around my chin, drawing my gaze to his. “That is what you once believed would be easier to manipulate, to escape.”

I shuddered.

Casteel’s gaze searched mine. “I know. I understand. Even after everything I’ve told you about the Ascended and what I’ve shown you, seeing it is still a shock.” His voice softened, loosening some of the ice. “It’s always different when you see it.”

It was.

Chaney had turned back to the line. “If you’ve hidden the Maiden somewhere, you only need to tell me where. If others left with the Maiden, then you simply need to tell me where. Tell me where she is. It’s that simple. Prove to me that you value your lives.”

“And then what? You will leave this place? As if you’d let us live if we told you,” Elijah snarled. “I may have moments of profound stupidity, but I’m not that dumb.”

Chaney chuckled. “I believe that is debatable.”

“Perhaps,” Elijah replied, and I could practically hear the smirk in his tone. “But I’m not the one hiding behind a child.”

The Ascended grew very still as the hairs on the back of my neck rose. “Are you suggesting that I’m a coward?”

“You said it.” Elijah unfolded his arms. “Not me.”

Casteel tugged my eyes back to his as he reached for his boot with his other hand. “I wish you’d never had to see any of this.”

He didn’t give me a chance to respond. Rising so quickly, he was already near the edge of the trees in the blink of an eye.

It took me a moment to realize that the space where he’d knelt beside me wasn’t entirely empty.

Lying on a cushion of dead leaves and snow was a blade the color of blood, and a handle made of smooth, ivory bone. A wolven dagger—my wolven dagger.

Slowly, I picked it up with a trembling hand, the weight familiar and welcomed. I looked to where Casteel moved like a shadow between the trees. How long had he had it with him, and why had he given it back to me now?

Because bloodstone could kill an Ascended.

He’d left me with a weapon that I could use in case the Ascended made it to me.

“You’re looking for the Maiden?” Casteel called out, and the Lord spun around. Several of the knights flanked him.

Chaney tilted his head as Casteel walked into the clearing. “Who in the hell are you?”

“Who am I?” Casteel chuckled as if this were all a joke to him. “Who do you think I am?”

Rising slowly, I pressed against the base of a tree before moving around it. I stopped when I saw a flash of fawn-colored fur from the area of the stables. Kieran. He slunk along the side of the building, disappearing into its shadows.

“I don’t know,” Chaney replied. “But I’m hoping you’re someone who can answer my question. I would hate to see such a young life cut short.”

My fingers tightened around the bone handle of my weapon as I crept forward once more, my gaze swinging toward the knight. Could I get behind him before anyone saw me? Before Lord Chaney gave the go-ahead, and another life was ended? All it would take is one nod, and that child’s life would be over.

The soft crunch of dried leaves whipped my head to the right. A large white wolven brushed against the tree I’d just been hiding behind, nearly blending in with the snow.

A sudden memory surfaced—of me lying in the cell after the attack Jericho had led, bleeding out. A wolven with white fur had nudged my cheek and then howled. I’d thought it was Kieran, but it had been this wolf.

It had been Delano.

He looked at me, his pale blue eyes bright against the tufts of white fur. He made a soft chuffing sound as he drifted over to where I stood. His head reached beyond my hip, and I had the strangest urge to reach down and scratch his ear. I resisted, though. It didn’t seem appropriate.

Casteel stopped in the middle of the yard, his arms at his sides. “I can answer your question. The Maiden is here.”

That stopped me dead in my tracks.

“Is she?” Lord Chaney clapped his hands as he looked around the yard, to those lined up. “Now, how hard was that? I asked a question, and I received an answer.”

“You should ask how he knows that the Maiden is here,” Elijah said with a chuckle, and I saw Magda take a small step back.

Well aware of Delano at my heels, I moved forward as Lord Chaney stared at Casteel. I reached the last of the trees, stopping when Chaney demanded quietly, “You didn’t say who you were. You going to answer that?”

“I am born of the first kingdom.” Casteel’s voice carried like the wind and snow, stroking over the knights, who all turned, one by one, to look in his direction. “Created from the blood and ash of all those who fell before me. I have risen to take back what is mine. I’m who you call the Dark One,” he said, and chills danced across my skin. “Yes, I have the Maiden, and I’m not giving her back.”

Lord Chaney changed.

Gone was the veneer of civility. His face contorted, cheekbones sharpening as his jaw dropped open. Those eyes burned like coal—like a Craven’s. I stumbled back, bumping into Delano as I saw—

I saw the truth once more.

The Ascended bared his fangs as he hissed like a large serpent, dropping into a crouch.

“Mine are bigger than yours,” Casteel responded in turn, prowling forward.

Then the knights changed, at least half of them, exposing elongated canines as their lips peeled back. It felt like the ground moved under my feet, even though the entire world seemed to stop. There were Ascended among the Royal Army. That…that was unheard of. Only the Royals Ascended. That was what we’d been told—