24. Chapter 23

Chapter 23

E laine's legs nearly buckled beneath her as the glowing firelight settled over the long rectangular room. Hundreds of stone slabs lined the space, each one bearing a corpse. Every single body was carved apart, the chest split open, skin peeled back. The rancid odor choked the air, curling her stomach into knots. Bile burned like poison up her throat, searing the back of her mouth. She swallowed hard but it surged up again, defiant against her fight. She pivoted sharply and vomited all over the ground. Shudders rippled through, each time the ache pinching in her belly until tears pricked the edge of her vision.

A warm hand settled low on her back, rubbing small circles. No words came, but the presence remained all the same.

"I'm fine, Aya," she said as she stood up, wiping her mouth. "Don't—"

It wasn't Aya at her back but Tobias, eyes soft. Elaine's gaze quickly flicked beyond him. Aya was already moving, pulled like a moth to a flame. Sometimes, Elaine forgot just how strong the pull of death was to her lover. She wandered as if in a dream, floating a hand over each body, in a way that made Elaine wonder what was turning through that mind of hers.

She considered calling out but sensed it might be a futile endeavor. Straightening up, she shoved aside the stench, and the sheer sight of so much death, then moved to the closest body. Alexios joined her, freezing as they looked upon the body. A young man with ashen skin and empty, gray eyes.

"I know this one," Alexios murmured.

Elaine's brow shot up. "Who was he?"

"A young vampire. Fell for a human but she got sick and refused to be turned. After she died, he wasn't the same." Alexios gently wiped his hand over the boy's face, closing his eyes. "He went to an apothecary in the Dusk Quarter and procured a poison. We found him in his bed two days later."

Understanding dawned. Elaine was going to be sick again. Marisol had been trading in the dead, but they hadn't figured out where the bodies went, what happened to them. They now had answers to one of the questions. The why still gnawed at her mind. The fact no one was trying to keep them out of the ruins told her this was done by Honoria before she died, that it seemed no one was carrying out any further work.

So how did the bodies tie into what was happening to the shield?

She raked her mind over the texts she'd read and what she knew of spells. Old blood magic used, well, blood to fuel spells. It was considered greatly offensive in just about every temple, for witches saw their blood and skin as what bound them to the gods. Only a handful of rogue Arcan temples ever dabbled in the practice.

The majority of blood magic was about prolonging life or breaking the fundamental laws of nature, defying what was permitted by the gods. If Honoria was using blood magic as a way to bring down the barrier but also shield her people from death after they lost their marks, then she wondered if perhaps they were too late. The spell was already cast, the damage done, and the barrier was slowly weakening.

Elaine studied the body again, inspecting the mess that was his chest again; skin peeled back, like some kind of horrid gift, unveiling the tangle of organs within. A little frown drew her brow down. She leaned in and gently prodding the lungs aside when she saw it—or rather what was missing.

"His heart is gone."

She staggered back; turning sharply, ignoring Alexios calling her name, she dashed over to the next table. The girl there was the same. She checked the next one, and the one after that; after twenty bodies, it was all the same.

The hearts were removed.

Her mouth tightened into a thin line. The hearts were important in some blood magic spells but those were from living hosts, whose hearts still beat with fresh blood when cleaved from the body. These souls had been dead before their hearts were taken.

So what did it mean?

Far across the room, Aya stood before a metal door. Tobias was with her, their heads bent together in conversation.

What if this wasn't a witch spell but one from a necromancer?

Was it even possible?

Aya was the last of her kind. She said so herself, told her of the horrors her people endured when they were hunted down. And no witch had ever—to her knowledge—ever been able to channel Akaria's magic. Simply for the fact Akaria never blessed someone who wasn't of her blood.

Unless she had?

She shook her head. There was too much unknown. This room felt like one step closer to the truth but four back into the darkness.

Hoping Aya had some answers, she headed over. Halfway across the room, a sudden pressure nudged at her mind. Elaine stopped dead.

Beware of the one who commands the dead.

"What do you mean?" she muttered.

"What did you say?" Aya's voice ripped her back into focus.

Heat burned along her cheeks realizing she'd asked the question out loud and that everyone was staring at her. She wished the ground would swallow her whole. Aya's face pinched in the way it did whenever she was trying to unravel a puzzle. And this time, Elaine was the one. She quickly smoothed over her face and hurried over.

"Just talking to myself," she said by way of explanation.

The silence that followed suggested no one believed her but, for whatever merciful god was present, no one asked. Elaine loosed a little breath and glanced at the door. There were no symbols marking it and there was a menacingly large handle on it.

"Guess this is how they got the bodies in here," she said, reaching for the handle. "I don't sense any magic. Shall we see where it goes?"

Aya's gaze drifted beyond her to the bodies, darkening to near black. The shadows nudged in closer around them. By Aya's command, she realized.

"Are any of their souls here?" she asked.

"No." Aya jerked away from her vigil and twisted the handle of the door.

The door screeched open, the sound splintering off into the room with ear-splitting echoes. As it settled open, Elaine strode through first and lit the way with a flame. A tunnel greeted them, the walls constructed of stone bricks. Iron torch cradles hung along the walls at regular intervals, and interspersed between them, a little sigil she hadn't seen before.

Aya froze.

Alexios stumbled into her back, then joined her as he stared, wide-eyed at the symbol.

"Vesmir?" he whispered, looking to Aya.

At the mention of the name, Elaine's heart stopped. Vesmir. The name of the royal family responsible for the murder of the necromancers. She didn't believe her eyes. There was no rational explanation as to why the symbol down was there. From the aged metal, worn nearly smooth by time, it wasn't exactly a recent edition.

So how the hell had it gotten down there?

"Let's keep going," Aya whispered.

Elaine didn't have the chance to walk with her. Aya kept several paces ahead, maintaining the distance no matter how much any of them tried to close it. After a while, everyone let her be as they moved along the tunnel. As her own mind turned over the discoveries they made, Tobias fell in beside her.

"We're going to have to bring the council in on this," he said conversationally. "The bodies…"

She'd seen the look on Alexios's face. Of course, they had to report the body discovery to the council, return the dead to where they rightfully belonged. However, she wondered if that was playing their hand too soon.

"What about the traitor?" she inquired.

Tobias was silent for a moment before he answered. "I suspect if they were heavily concerned over the chamber we just found, there might have been more effort to conceal it. Or at least keep us away."

A chill settled in her bones.

"What if what we have found is keeping us distracted and they're not worried about us discovering anything because that's not where they're working."

"It's possible," he conceded. "But we can only work with what we have and that isn't much at this point."

"It is a lot, however, but I can't make sense of how any of this is connected. From the murals made by Zari, who claims they have no idea who their mysterious commissioner was; to the fact Aya sensed Akaria's magic within the stone and then there is the chamber."

"And the Vesmir symbols," Tobias added. "It does make me think this conspiracy is far more complicated than we ever thought. That it's far beyond just simply freeing a goddess."

The ground eventually sloped upwards and transitioned into steps carved into the hardened earth. Stale air yielded to a warm damp that pressed against her skin. It grew warmer until sweat gathered along her brow. She wiped it away, wondering just when this god forsaken tunnel would be over with. How the hell had someone ferried so many damn bodies the whole way into the tunnel?

"I see light!" Tobias proclaimed.

She dimmed the flame in her hand and there it was. The faint glow of daylight spearing through the darkness. At the top of the stairs, Aya pushed open another door and strode through. Elaine quickly followed, stumbling out into the woods. Ancient trees towered on either side of her, nearly devouring the thin scraps of light piercing through the dense canopy. The warmth still lingered in the air, reminding her of the warmer cities she stayed in on the run.

Damp leaflitter strewn across the ground, piled among the dense undergrowth. Earthy notes perfumed the air, caught with notes of flowers and hints of ash. The forest looked nothing like the woods around her home; there the trees were smaller, clustered tightly together, and the dead wandered the shadows. This, however, felt different—older, somehow.

"Do you know where in Purgatory we are?" she asked.

Aya answered first. "Going off the trees, a little north of the banshee territory. There are mountains up there and it's said to be a little warmer than usual. They prefer the heat."

"But that's nowhere near the ruins," Elaine said. "How the hell have we moved so far so quickly?"

Alexios wandered past her. "Do you think this might suggest Loraina is our traitor?"

"Perhaps," Aya conceded, seemingly with a little reluctance. "But it could also be a misdirect. Banshees were treated almost as poorly as my own people. There is less for them to gain if the barrier falls."

"Unless Honoria offered her something she couldn't refuse?" Alexios returned. "Perhaps an insight how to create a new barrier. The banshees are the most secular of everyone in Purgatory. They might like the idea of a home without anyone else around."

Aya cursed. "We should head back to the chamber—" As she turned, and looked past Elaine's shoulder, her gaze narrowed. "Well, that's interesting."

Elaine turned around slowly. The door they had come through was gone. Only the towering trees greeted them, leaving her to wonder where the hell the tunnel had gone. She hadn't sensed any magic about it, but had she been wrong, blinded somehow?

"So, I guess this means we have to walk back?" Tobias grumbled.

It was nighttime when they finally stumbled into the Dusk Quarter. Elaine was bone tired, her feet aching. She kept pushing magic into her feet to heal the blisters determined to bloom on her ankle and toes. Thus, she was deeply relieved when she followed Aya into their makeshift room and started to strip off. Wasting no time, she quickly crawled underneath the furs.

"We should return home tomorrow," said Aya as she shed her clothes, then joined her.

Elaine yawned. "Good, I miss our bed."

Wearily, she sought out the warmth of Aya's body. Instinctively, Aya slipped an arm around and drew her close. In her embrace, Elaine felt safe, protected from whatever threat awaited them. Even their impending deaths if the barrier fell did not enter her mind.

"Sleep," Aya commanded. "Tomorrow, we deal with the council."

"We really can't avoid telling them, can we?"

Aya sighed deeply. "Alexios can't exactly start returning bodies to his own graveyards. Too many questions would be raised…and…"

"And?"

There was an achingly long silence, where only their hearts danced as one, and their breaths threaded together, before Aya spoke again.

"The dead should be at rest, their bodies given the respect they deserved."

"Spoken like a true necromancer," Elaine murmured into Aya's chest. She burrowed in close, pressing her ear to Aya's breast and listened to the steady thump of her heart. "Are you going to speak to your family again soon?"

Again, a pause. "I don't know."

"What happened?"

Aya shifted back and gazed down at her with a burning gaze, so fiercely protective and heated, she shivered beneath it. Without speaking the words, Elaine understood. Knew what had happened, the truth her family had learned.

"They sensed my magic on you."

She stirred uneasily. Deep down, she knew how much Aya burned to reconnect with her family. To reforge the bond ripped from her. And there she was, breaking it all apart before Aya could do that. Shame crawled into her chest, pacing back and forth like a wild animal bound in a small cage. Heat fanned outward, spreading up her neck and into her cheeks.

"Hey," Aya growled, gently taking her chin, forcing her to look up. "Nothing is your fault."

"But I am the reason you can't be around your family right now."

Aya's gaze remained as unflinching as ever as she spoke. "My family lost everything to the Arcan witches. Their reaction, painful as it is, I expected."

"And what if they never get over it?"

"If my parents truly desire any kind of connection with me, then they will just have to get to know you—as I did. If they are still unable to accept you had no part in their deaths, and were just as hunted as us, then that is on them." Aya leaned down and kissed her.

Heat burned through her, spurring her to deepen the kiss. Elaine hauled Aya closer until she was suddenly pinned. Desperation clawed through her, the hunger taking hold. Claiming her until breathless pleas broke her lips. She writhed and rolled her hips, seeking release. And reading her like a damn book, Aya grinned wickedly. Claiming her mouth again, she felt Aya's hand slide down her breast, and her belly, before it found her slick heat.

Aya paused, dark eyes fixed on her. "Know this, Elaine, you are my beginning and my end. And someday, when this war is over, I am going to marry you."