26. Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Six

Evelyn

S now showered outside Evelyn’s window, for once replacing the gray land with bright white. Dense flurries obscured the view of the rest of the castle, too, locking Evelyn from the outside world further.

Isolation made her reckless, and she chanced one more glance towards her door as she eased open the hidden passageway, careful to grate the stone gears slowly.

The week since discovering Riven’s study had inched by, the frustrating sameness of her captivity lightened only by one surprising change. Tala had agreed to let Evelyn teach Belle magic, and she watched their daily efforts with an often-suppressed smile.

Tala’s lenience a mystery, like so many other things she’d discovered—Riven’s study and the symbols there, his dead family, the confirmation he possessed allies. Not that the discovery of these things offered any answers to her many questions. There existed no connection that she could see between it all.

And time was running out. Maybe? She had no idea when Riven planned to use her blood for the spell. She had no way to communicate with Kade, no way of knowing when he would arrive to break her out of this damned prison either.

The unknowns left her unsettled .

The only solution was to explore at night. A risk, especially without Belle helping, but Evelyn was willing to take it. She crept down the hidden stairwell, determined to explore the second door this time. Snow flurries twirled, trapped in the tower as she descended on tiptoes down the steps.

She passed the door to Riven’s study and went down another flight to next door below. Her toes and fingers tingled, her breaths shallow. Without hesitating, she faced the stones and pushed against the loose ones, readying to handle whatever waited beyond the door.

Dust plumed from the creases where the door pushed inward. It moved slower than the last one, as if older and stuck in place. The debris filled Evelyn’s lungs and tickled the back of her throat. She coughed, covering her mouth with the oversize maroon sweater she’d dug up in the wardrobe.

Unlike the other doors, it didn’t open wide. Wool knitting caught on the rugged stone as she squeezed through. More dust lay on the other side, like a gray snowfall had blanketed the space.

A destroyed, wrecked room.

A curtain rod hung halfway down the window, curtains ripped and tattered. The bed on the left-hand side had been turned over, pillows and quilts in a pile and dusted in place. The pieces of a shattered armoire littered most of the room, and Evelyn had to tiptoe over jagged piece and loose nails.

An energy, not dark and not light, marinated in the air. Lost, weary, timid. It clung to the walls like the dust clung to the surfaces. Without her magic, Evelyn couldn’t fully sense what it meant, and nothing she came across—no books, papers, or items—suggested anything other than an abandoned room.

Except the destruction lay in a circle, the center of the room untouched. Curious, Evelyn wandered inward and peered up at the cobwebbed chandelier. She shivered, a creep traveling up her spine as spiders scurried across the crystals, magnifying their bodies. Backing up a step, the soles her feet scuffed against the wooden floor, and underneath her toes, black paint shined through .

Evelyn furrowed her brows, sliding her foot across the floorboards again, revealing more black paint. She ran over and tugged the curtain, ripping a piece off and using it to brush away the rest of the dust. A black, painted mass sat in the center. No shape. No symbol, just a blob of nothing. Evelyn frowned, her mind racing.

What did it mean? Who had the room belonged to?

Snow flurries from a broken window escaped through the cracks, tumbling across the floorboards before they melted into grooves. No—Evelyn studied the lost snow again, the tiniest of puddles left behind, resting atop scrapes in the wood. Carvings peeked through the paint.

Evelyn backstepped, trying to decipher whatever lay underneath at a new angle, but whoever had covered the area with paint had also scratched through the carvings.

A letter lay untouched at the top, an a or e , Evelyn couldn’t be sure with how it’d been etched into the wood. Aggressively. Quickly. The penmanship a mere scribble. She moved down the scratches and counted lines, one after the other. Her breath hitched on a certain stanza, the lines left untouched. She ran her hands across, splinters catching on her fingertips, but Evelyn didn’t feel it, her heart thudding in her chest and stomach twisting into knots.

She had to learn the words. With no regard to consequence, Evelyn dashed back to her room, grabbing pencils and paper from the writing desk she’d mostly ignored. Back in the wrecked room, she used the charcoal and etched it across the paper over the words. The letters were so big, she went through ten pages of parchment. But the words became clear on the cream material as Evelyn laid them out.

Words she’d known all her life.

The truest of unions between the third-borns of the Sun and Moon will defeat the darkness.

On her hands and knees, Evelyn crawled back up and down the destroyed floor as if another word she found would make it clear why her prophecy, the one referring to her and Kade, had been written into the floorboards of Drystan Castle. She tried to make sense of it, tried to soak in more of the room and where this was in the castle, but nothing clicked.

Nothing made sense.

She crawled back up the carved floorboards and backtracked down again, this time noting the number of etched lines. Deliberate breaks after certain ones, like stanzas. Her and Kade’s prophecy was the last. She wrote the numbers down and drew the lines out, spacing where the etchings and carvings stopped.

Evelyn sank to her knees, staring at the length of the poem, song, prophecy—she didn’t know what to call it. Her mind ran wild, leaving her floaty, like she’d woken from the oddest dream. So much of what she knew about vampyrs had been altered, and she wasn’t sure she could handle the prophecy being more than what she believed.

The other lines had been etched so viciously, so violently, as if whoever had done it had wanted to erase them from existence. Running her hands over them, it was difficult to make out the lost words. Her thumb ran across the bulbous script of a letter d . The letter o followed, and an idea struck. Using the spare paper she had left, she ran the tip of her pencil over the letters. One word after the other, she gathered in total five words— dove , unite , seeds , and Light , the l deliberately capitalized—and a single, incomplete line.

Land… in red.

Evelyn scribbled the words and phrase over the mock lines she’d drawn, placing them where they fell in hopes to make out what they could possibly mean. Evelyn’s heart hammered in her chest, her confusion and unease rooting her in place. The visual provided no clues, and out of context, the words didn’t make any sense. Yet, the third-born prophecy had been carved into the vampyr castle.

It felt like something and nothing at all.

The increasing sense she’d escape the castle with nothing of value trickled like the snow outside the window—something she couldn’t stop or control—and yet, a small part of her warred against that doubt. For the first time in a long while, Evelyn’s instinct screamed with hope. She had no threads to connect these scribblings to her and Kade’s prophecy or the curse, but it was more than she’d ever had. It was a start, right?

The wind tossed the curtain into the air. The rippling of paper drummed against the winter’s howl, snagging Evelyn’s attention. She abandoned the black paint and words, discovering a loose brick under the windowsill. Shoved into a crevice, a series of letters flapped from the draft. Evelyn grabbed hold of them, dirt and rock falling away as she pulled them free. Mildew and water stained the envelope, bleeding the ink of the To and From script, but the contents appeared neatly folded and intact.

Intrigued, Evelyn gathered her notes along with the letters and decided to take them back to her room. An eerie draft circled her bare feet as she climbed the stairs, but a constant beat made her pause. She stopped on the step, listening over the snow storm. The beating stopped. Perhaps it had been a trick of the wind stuck in the open tower. Evelyn continued on, but the beating began again, like a drumming in the distance.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

It built faster, faster, then stopped—

The distant cries of a crowd echoed off the stone. Curiosity nipped at Evelyn again. She peered down the stairs, as if the phantom voices crept close by. The secrets and shadows of the castle called to her.

Seeking the noise out, searching for it would be utterly foolish. It was night. Vampyrs were out, and she didn’t have her magic.

But maybe this was an opportunity to learn more about the vampyrs in the castle.

Again foolish, but the scribbles of the prophecy and random words had hollowed her out, made her desperate to learn more. Eager, too. Like she’d tasted sweet promise and craved more. She could read the letters tucked against her notes, but Evelyn couldn’t bare another night in her tower. Alone. Locked away. Waiting while Kade journeyed to save her.

And Evelyn wouldn’t let fear— risk —get in the way of opportunity.

Decision made, Evelyn ran to her room and hid her notes and unread letters. Tomorrow. She’d revisit them tomorrow. She rummaged the closet for boots and a thicker sweater and traveled down the stairs two at a time, letting the distant rumbles of the castle lead her. They resounded the loudest near the door leading to the old servant’s hallway Belle had used.

Darkness and debris met Evelyn on the other side. Skylights had been covered in snowfall, the lighting dim and ominous as she padded downward, continuing to let the beating guide her direction.

Belle’s assessment had been fitting. Abandoned. Eerie. Haunted . The passageway was similar to the room she’d previously explored, destroyed and dusty. Paintings hung at off angles. Mirrors had been cracked, multiplying her focused reflection. Unlit torches lined the walls, scorch marks bleeding into the mauve wallpaper.

What had happened to this corner of the castle? Why had it been abandoned?

As Evelyn rattled questions to herself, answers seem to smear across the walls and floor. Patches of crimson, so old and dark they looked like rust, grew more frequent the farther down the passageway she crept.

And then there was the remains .

Skeletal remains.

Slumped against the walls with empty eye sockets. Others laid at odd angles. Some had been scattered like they’d been torn apart. They all wore purple uniforms, tattered from time. Moths fluttered around them, dust collecting on the whites of their bones.

A shudder went through Evelyn as she eased between two ancient, crumbling bodies. She recognized the uniforms—servants who attended her room wore the same kind. And the blood. So much blood. Even after all this time, it was stark against the mauve and molded carpet. Evelyn grimaced. From the imprint of time on the hallway and those dead around her, Evelyn’s instinct screamed to keep moving, the darkness and ghosts of the castle too still.

Ahead, yellow light flickered across fallen boulders. At the end of the hallway, the ceiling had crashed down.

But a sliver of space, big enough for Evelyn to squeeze through, led to the light. She didn’t hesitate, her breath and heart rate even as her resolve hardened like steel. Answers felt in reach, insight to the enemy she’d fought all her life. Her chest and arms scraped against the fallen stone until she popped free. Evelyn blinked in the new light. The echoes she’d followed sharpened and overtook her senses.

Drums. Screeches. Howling and horns.

The cheers of a well-entertained, wild crowd vibrated around her.

A crowd of vampyrs .

Fucking flames.

The path had deposited her into a tucked-away hall. Above Evelyn, rafters of an arena circled a cavern, filled with a hundred vampyrs. Her enemy dressed in silks and velvet laughed above, oblivious to her hiding place as she lurked. Not scáths, not caillte. They were vampyrs like Tovi, Riven, Tala, and Visha. Aside from their fangs and complexions, they appeared normal, like the vampyrs Matilda had described in her texts.

Wine and blood dripped from the rafters. She followed the droplets, down, down, they went, and—

Evelyn’s breath hitched. The entertainment driving the crowd sickened her. She tilted, grabbing onto the wall beside her.

Below, a werewolf fought for its life against to two madras demons. The wolf of the moon and the wolves of darkness sparred. Blood soaked the sands of a pit. Servants hammered at goatskin drums on the first level, beating a rapid tempo to slashing, swiping, and chaos of the blood bath.

Rings .

Evelyn’s memory snagged on Visha’s words. She’d been too focused on the revelation Tovi had a sister and hadn’t considered what that meant.

Throw her in—

Evelyn’s blood heated. Visha had suggested Riven throw her into this arena for them to watch, laugh, and howl over. She searched for the princess and prince. Across the way, the first few rows had been sectioned off, purple banners lining the seats where Riven, Visha, and Ingrid sat. They were tangled together in their seats. The princess laced her fingers through the witch’s blunt bob. Evelyn had yet to witness them together, to see this fated bond they had.

Rage rolled through Evelyn that they could revel in their mate bond while separating her from Kade. Suddenly, Evelyn’s heated exterior froze. Fucking flames , what if… She stared down at the rings. The werewolf had been wounded to the shoulder while one madras demon bit onto its hind leg with unrelenting grip. The werewolf’s grayish fur transformed to a golden-brown like that of her fated. She blinked, her mind playing tricks, fear tricking her.

Had that been why she hadn’t reached Kade? Had he been caught in his efforts to break her out of the castle? Had he been thrown into this ring?

No. No. No. That couldn’t have happened. It wasn’t possible. But an unrelenting cold showered over her, and the wall wasn’t solid enough to hold her upright. It felt like her heart was being ripped from her chest. No. Wouldn’t Riven dangle her fated like a prize? Wouldn’t the prince celebrate such a win and make sure she knew it?

It was the distance. It was the time. It was her snuffed magic.

Yet, her fated’s kind fought below. One was now dead, limp in the sands as the madras fought over their kill. Evelyn’s heart sank. Kade’s people. Being used .

Evelyn’s head spun, her insides twisting. She couldn’t stand by while innocents were murdered. Anger and fear weaved together, and her blood danced though unable to be used. Evelyn took a single step forward —

She stopped, falling back into the shadows. A breath whooshed out of her. There. Seated two rows above Riven, Tala sat with another vampyr female. She glared in Evelyn’s direction, her amber eyes sharp. Had she noticed her?

Evelyn stayed still, heart pounding in her chest as she waited. Tala blinked and turned her attention back to the female vampyr, continuing their discussion. Evelyn slumped against the stone wall, laying her hand on her frantic heart. She shut her eyes, shuddering against the flashes of possibilities. If Tala had caught her…

Foolish.

Kade, Blair, everyone she loved was at risk if she stepped out of line. Riven needed her . Not them. He’d not harm her, not enough to jeopardize the spell. Her loved ones wouldn’t be granted the same courtesy.

Evelyn slunk farther back into the shadows and darkness. She’d give anything to scorch the arena and defeat the wicked vampyrs, but she steadied her breath and found reason. Attacking now would prove rash. She’d learned so much tonight—the rings, the gut-wrenching enjoyment vampyrs found from the death and violence below. She didn’t dare ruin an opportunity to keep learning more about them. Not when she needed to defeat the darkness now more than ever.

Her feet were heavy as lead as she left. She’d wait for Kade, buy time. With reinforcements, she’d come back, she’d save them.

Evelyn returned to her room, her resolve no longer steel.

It was fire.