Chapter 20

CHAPTER TWENTY

A month at Never Keep was long enough for me to have learned most of the hidden ways between the sections of the sprawling fortress that I was allowed free access to. But it hadn't done much in the way of allowing me into those I wasn't.

The low chanting of the Reapers washed over me as I knelt, pious and observant at the Astral Sanctuary, worshiping from the front row of conscripts, the picture of the favoured top tier neophyte which I knew Dragor would expect from me.

This part of the ritualistic prayers to the stars always used to have me battling sleep, but in this place, it left me tense in the vulnerable position with so many of my enemies close at hand. My palms were flat against the cold stone, outstretched on either side of me, my forehead touching down on the ground too. It was the one place where I had taken to braiding my hair back, simply so I could see out the corners of my eyes in case any of the bastards skulking nearby thought to strike at me.

This main worshipping chamber was arranged in similar fashion to all the Astral Sanctuaries I had visited during my life, an echoing dodecagon-shaped space with twelve walls encircling it, each one decorated in worship and celebration of the star signs in order of rotation. Today, with the shifting of the moon, we had finally turned away from the watchful eyes of Virgo to direct our prayers towards the justice offered by the scales of Libra.

There had been a few mutters of malcontent from the Stonebreakers and overloud praises from the Skyforgers, but I remained silent as always in this place, observing the strict rules of worship, showing no favour to one star sign above another, though of course we all favoured those of our individual elements.

Silence reigned as we remained in place, the scent of stone and sweet incense filling my nostrils while the Reapers slowly paced the outer edges of our enormous congregation, chanting in that low, rumbling tone.

I was supposed to be opening myself up to the stars in hopes that they might deign to speak with me, but twenty-one years of receiving nothing but silence in these places had made me rather cynical about the entire debacle. If the stars wished to converse with me, I doubted they needed me to prostrate myself in silence before a stone effigy.

Minutes rolled into an hour and finally the twelve doors set into the twelve walls groaned open, revealing the offering chambers beyond.

"Waste of fucking time," someone muttered several rows behind me, and I stilled as a strange desire prickled against my skin. A Fae there wanted something with a keen desperation and my gifts were so in tune with the wants of those surrounding me, always in hunt of a source of magic, that I had instantly picked up on it.

I turned my head slowly, seeking the malcontent but finding a sneering Flamebringer too close to me for comfort. His desire was all too clear, bloodlust and…well, he would certainly have enjoyed the chance to kill me in private.

I met his eyes, simmering with the raw power of fire, my head tilting back because he was all kinds of tall – though in fairness there weren't many Fae I didn't have to look up at. It was a fact that had bothered me once. But I'd since realised that the only time it mattered to be looking up at someone was if you happened to be bleeding out at their feet.

I knew this Fae. He called himself The Cobra because he had a reputation for striking without warning and using lethal force. Not particularly impressive to me, but he was on my list and this was the closest I had managed to get to him.

The knife carefully bound within the confines of my waistband itched against my skin, but I couldn't strike at him like that here.

I gave a contemptuous scoff, wrapped my gifts around his desires then turned away, and strode towards the door which opened beyond the roaring visage of Leo, depicted as an enormous Lion mid-pounce, sharp teeth bared and eyes wild.

Soft muttering broke out at my chosen destination – we were encouraged to show devotion to each of the star signs, but no one had yet taken the opportunity to enter the temple of a sign which wasn't linked to their own element.

The Grand Maester looked to me as I approached, my position in the front row of worshippers making me first to select a temple to lay my offering in, and he smiled approvingly.

Such a good little witch, so pious in my devotion to the stars.

With every step I took, I tugged on The Cobra's desire for blood, more, more, more. His hatred was a truly vile thing, I could feel it coiling around me, could taste the sadistic pleasure he gained from killing. He wasn't just a soldier – he was in this war for personal gratification and a free reign to explore his own twisted desires.

I reached the door to the Temple of Leo and gave up on any pretence of subtlety, bolstering his desire for my blood until I was certain he would combust with the force of it.

"No!" The Cobra snarled, his voice echoing in the eerie silence of the sanctuary. "No air vermin should step foot in there."

"The worship of all star signs - and indeed all celestial beings - is not only encouraged but demanded by the heavenly deities which govern us," the Grand Maester replied in a low tone, and I continued into the temple without so much as glancing back.

A small, dark, stone corridor led deeper into the bowels of the sanctuary, guiding me down a tightly curling stairway with only a single torch bracketed on the wall to light the way.

At the base of the stairs, an archway opened into the Temple of Leo where countless depictions of the star sign cluttered the space, lit in a deep orange light by the fires which burned behind grates lining the walls. Statues, paintings, wooden carvings, tapestries, idols and metallic symbols. So many lions that, had this been a den of living beasts, I knew my meagre body wouldn't have come close to sating their hunger.

Shouts had broken out above me, The Cobra seeming to have lost all sense of himself in this holy place. I bit my tongue to keep from smirking, knowing there were Reapers close at hand even if I couldn't see any.

No doubt he would be placed in the iron gibbet, the cage barely big enough to hold a Fae warrior, suspended from the refectory ceiling for several days. It served as both punishment and a warning to others what they might suffer for rule breaks.

I had found several clandestine ways to reach the refectory from my tower in the dead of night and was confident I could make his death seem like a freak accident – a result of some underlying heart defect that would only be discovered at breakfast time - which I would be certain to attend late enough to avoid all suspicion that might have been aimed my way.

I made it to the largest of the stone statues in the room, placing my hand against the nose of the lion and leaning in close to offer it my prayer.

"I thank you for your ruthless nature, I claim it for my own. May the world feel the sharpness of my claws just as they do yours," I breathed.

I withdrew my hand from the cold stone, raising two fingers to my mouth and painting the six-pointed shape of the star across my lips while allowing my eyes to fall closed, in a gesture of worship to the stars.

I had expected the sanctuary to have grown quiet again by now, but there were still shouts and cries echoing down from above, more voices raised, not in anger but…something keener.

Releasing a slow breath, I moved on, trailing my fingers over the various idols and relics, making my way through the temple towards the exit where the stifling heat of the room gave way to the hint of a fresh breeze.

"I hadn't expected this until the blood moon," a rough voice muttered somewhere to my right and I stilled, concealed behind a wooden carving of Leo which was so large that it blocked the view of the shrine surrounding the exit.

"You think the Grand Maester will act?" a more feminine rasp replied.

"You seriously think he might not?"

Silence followed for several seconds but my instincts held me in place.

"The neophytes won't be coming through here now. Let's witness it for ourselves," the male voice suggested, and I inched to my left just far enough to spy the gold cloaks worn by the Reapers.

Their hesitation was brief this time.

"Yes. I'll lock the doors."

Her footsteps scuffed my way and I ducked down, flattening myself to the flagstones and rolling beneath the belly of the carved beast before shuffling into the shadow of a towering statue behind it.

I watched as the gold cloak of the Reaper whipped past my hiding place, her feet slapping against the ground before the sound of a door closing heavily and a bolt being drawn across followed.

I waited until she'd passed me again then smoothy rolled out of my hiding place, curiosity driving me after her.

The other Reaper locked the door which led to the exit from the temple, and I watched from the shadows as the two of them withdrew into a dim corner where a lacklustre tapestry hung against the wall.

They slipped behind it and I forced myself to wait for a count of ten before following. This was insanity. If I was caught spying on the Reapers, then who knew what the punishment would be? They were beyond the laws of Stormfell, beyond the laws of any but themselves. And yet my feet continued to whisper across the flagstones, my breaths silently fluttering between my parted lips.

The Reapers made no real attempt at silence as they continued through the narrow passageway, but they had a good lead on me and were no longer conversing so I had to focus on every thump of their feet against the floor. I didn't want to get too close to them but neither did I want to risk losing them in this network of passages. I'd already passed two branches in the tunnels that the Reapers hadn't taken, and I had no idea how many more there were.

I moved silently, years of training with the cut-throats who moved through the shadows in Stormfell paying off as I slunk through the darkness like a wraith.

A soft grunt alerted me to the Reapers far closer than I had expected and my hand met with cold stone where the passage should have continued. There was no real source of light in this place between places, only the odd glow seeping in from the rooms outside this passageway, small vents and holes between the mortar, nothing substantial enough to give me a real view of what surrounded me.

I stilled, uncertain of my path, disoriented in the dark but then I heard the grunt again and my head snapped up. I ran my hands over the cold stone walls that surrounded me, reaching out until my fingers brushed against a wooden rung. I curled my hand around it, testing it with my weight before silently heaving myself up and reaching higher still before finding a second rung. A ladder.

I smiled to myself and began to climb, hauling my body onto the ladder then scaling it quickly, hurrying after the soft scuffs of fabric and muttered curses sinking down to me from the Reapers above.

Light grew around me, dull at first but growing to a lighter grey which I recognised as the dulcet tones of dawn that Never Keep welcomed most mornings, the light growing against the snowy backdrop before the sun crested the horizon itself.

I tipped my head back, watching as the Reaper clambered off of the ladder and slipped into a passageway to the left of its peak.

I hesitated, the growing light meaning I was no longer shrouded within the shadows.

A distant sound of voices echoed up to me from below, urging me on and I continued to climb, moving faster now, my pulse picking up.

I made it to the lower edge of the precipice where the Reapers had climbed free of the ladder and eased myself up to look over the edge.

A long passage expanded away from the two figures who had paused half way along it, leaning towards the righthand wall where a series of star-shaped holes had been carved into the brickwork in a pattern which ran the entire length of the passage, allowing the light to shine through them freely. I recognised that pattern, the carved stone reflecting what I had taken for little more than decoration in the Heliacal Courtyard at the centre of the Keep beyond the training amphitheatre.

Voices were hissing through the space outside, a clamour of noise which could only be made by a thousand neophytes whispering at once.

"Are we too late?" the female Reaper rasped, pushing her face against the stone as she peered out.

A scream of agonised pain ripped through the air and I stilled, my instincts barking at me to move, to draw a weapon, to do anything at all other than cling to this fucking ladder and wait for them to find me. I dismissed the urge, my gaze flicking to the holes in the wall, but from my angle I couldn't see anything.

"Come. The spectacle won't last long," the male Reaper said, a hint of urgent excitement to his voice. "If we hurry we can make it to the vestibule before them."

The voices were growing closer beneath me and I cursed internally as I looked down into the shadows below, knowing I would be seen all too easily if another Reaper arrived to climb the ladder.

The two in the passageway hurried on and I forced my pounding heart to steady as I slipped over the edge, silent as a summer breeze, my eyes fixed firmly on them in case they looked back before turning down another passageway.

A second scream came from the courtyard beyond this hidden passage, a collective gasp colouring the voices of the mostly silent crowd. What could be taking place which might shock a group of Fae who had been raised in bloodshed?

The Reapers took a left at the end of the passage and I hurried to the closest set of holes in the wall.

The backs of a few thousand neophytes blocked my view so I moved on, the light from outside casting stars across my skin as I moved from one hole to the next, checking both the higher and lower vantage points and finding nothing but turned backs until-

I fell still, my eyebrows arching as I took in the sight of The Cobra suspended with air magic high enough for the entire crowd to see as the Grand Maester drove bolts of iron through his flesh and another Reaper cast chains of flames to burn the skin from his bones. The Reapers had been clear that execution would follow for any Fae who murdered another in this place, so had The Cobra killed someone in the sanctuary? Certainly the brutality of the execution suggested the Reapers were beyond incensed and I imagined spilling blood in the sanctity of their place of communion with the stars would achieve that. Even so, I couldn't help but be shocked by the barbarity of the pious Reapers as it played out. They had always seemed so above the bloodshed of war, but this proved they were creatures just as capable of it as the rest of us.

The Cobra screamed in agony as a third bolt sped for him, hitting his chest and causing him to cough up blood as it punctured his lung.

One look told me the wound was fatal, but the Grand Maester wasn't done. A fourth bolt tore through the air, then a fifth, sixth-

I looked away from the brutally slow execution, knowing precisely where it was headed without needing to witness every drawn-out moment.

Perhaps I should have felt something at the prolonged screams which were fading now into pleas for it to end, but I simply ticked the first name off of Dragor's list in my mind and gave my attention to the Reapers once again.

I had lingered too long. There were muffled sounds drawing closer from the ladder and the pair I'd been stalking through the dark would be gaining too much of a lead by now.

I broke into a run, pausing briefly to check around the corner they had taken then slipping around it myself. Of course the tunnel forked within a handful of steps and I cursed myself as I fell still, straining my ears to listen for him.

The Cobra's screams were echoing all around me, making it impossible to discern anything else so I took a guess and headed right, moving further from the sanctuary towards what I had already discerned to be the living quarters for the Reapers.

If it was forbidden for me to enter the other Vaults then this was bordering on sacrilege, but unless I could find a way out of these tunnels, I had little choice. Besides, I always had been a curious creature.

The light dimmed again as I hurried on, taking turns and once having to double back on myself when I heard the thump of footfalls approaching from ahead. I left The Cobra's screams behind, or maybe they fell silent with his death, either way, I should have been able to hear some sound of my quarry if they were near, but all was silent in the dark.

I pursed my lips, considering defeat and wondering how I might find my way free of these cursed passages when the sound of grating stone made me fall still.

"Heal him," a deep voice commanded, and I flinched from the closeness of it, afraid for a moment that I had been discovered, but it came from beyond the wall to my right. "Just enough to slow his passage."

I edged along at the sound of footsteps, a low groan giving way to a cry of agony just as I found a faint crack in the mortar and pressed my eye to it.

Six Reapers stalked along a long hallway lit by flickering torches, The Cobra suspended with air magic between them, his blood dripping to the ground as they moved.

I watched them go, their route leading them away from me in the opposite direction to the passage I hid within.

I hunted around for a way out, my fingers grazing the rough stone as I moved until finally, I grasped the edge of a wooden frame. The sound of the group was growing faint. I gave in to the risk of exposing myself as I heaved the frame aside and found myself looking into the passage from behind an ornate portrait.

I leapt from the hole, landing in a crouch and taking a moment to replace the portrait before breaking into a run and darting across the wide hall where blood still stained the floor.

I passed the open door the group had entered through, sparing a glance for it and thanking the stars that the Reapers standing guard there had their backs to me.

I hurried along the passageway, taking in the opulent drapes which hung in deep reds and golds from the arching ceiling, seven pairs of them in total, the first six tied open, the last closed but swaying slightly where the group had passed through.

I made it to the thick red velvet and moved to the right, peeking out from the corner of the heavy fabric instead of the centre.

My lips parted as I found myself looking into a room which had likely been as grand and opulent as the previous passage in some past time but now stood in a state of almost complete ruin. The extravagantly carved stonework was cracked and blackened as if by flame and yet it didn't appear to be scorch marks, more like some stain which had seeped into the stone itself.

Rusted shackles hung from the roof, the group of Reapers now clustered around them as they lifted the limp and panting body of The Cobra and secured his wrists into them.

Footsteps sounded behind me and my heart leapt, the only action available to me to push through the curtain.

There was a stone pedestal holding a glimmering golden dagger and a bronze goblet filled with some dark liquid to my right. I flung myself behind it without a second thought, crouching in the narrow cover it provided and holding my breath as I waited for the call of alarm to come. But nothing happened aside from the arrival of more Reapers entering through the curtain, several others already clustering on the far side of the chamber.

I chanced a look around the stone pedestal I was hiding behind just as they finished securing The Cobra and they all backed away from him, pressing themselves to the walls.

They had stripped his shirt from him, marks now scrawled across his skin in his own blood – marks which had to be runes and yet didn't look familiar to me at all.

A narrow window stood open behind me and I glanced at it, noting the route of escape and wondering how long I could risk lingering here before taking it.

I should have been leaving already. Whatever foul ritual this was clearly had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the Reapers, but curiosity - or perhaps insanity - had me hesitating where I was, wanting to see what would happen.

The Grand Maester stepped forward, a stone bowl clasped in his palm, his fingers dipping into it before he scattered something dark and glittering across the floor beneath The Cobra's dangling feet.

He was begging, his eyes wild and pain still written into his features as he hunted the hooded faces around him for some sign of mercy. But I didn't think they had healed him because they had any intention of allowing him to live. No, his death was imminent, but what purpose it would serve perplexed me.

"I call upon the dagger blessed by the sun," the Grand Maester rumbled.

I stifled a gasp as he whirled to face me, uncertain if I had made it behind the cover of the pedestal in time.

The golden dagger lying on top of the pedestal that I had chosen for my abysmal hiding place shot from its position as he claimed it with a whip of air magic.

I didn't dare peek out again to see what he was doing with it, but The Cobra's strangled screams gave me a fair idea.

"I call upon the blood of the fallen," the Grand Maester said loudly over the pleas of the dying man and the goblet shot away from the pedestal next.

Again, I didn't dare move, but as The Cobra choked and spluttered, I could only imagine that he was being forced to drink whatever the fuck had been in that goblet.

"And so our offering is made. And so your feast is prepared."

Something changed as those words faded from my ears, something in the very air I breathed and the weight of the atmosphere surrounding me. There was a heaviness to the world which hadn't been present until that moment and a cold sense of dread seeped right into my soul.

My breath began to rise in a fog before me, my fingers trembling where they had curled around the hilt of my concealed dagger. Never, in all the years that I had been at war, had my hand shaken like that.

I realised that The Cobra hadn't been screaming before. No, the sounds issuing from his lips in the moments leading up to this one had been akin to laughter in the face of what tore from him now.

The noise he released was pure agony laced with a horror so deep that I couldn't even begin to imagine what level of hell he must have been enduring.

I couldn't move. Shit, I couldn't fucking breathe and yet…I had to know, had to see.

Somehow, I forced my limbs to cooperate, forced myself to turn, to grasp the edge of the pedestal as though it might somehow prepare me for whatever it was that I was spying on.

But as I looked out from my position secreted in the corner of this hall of nightmares, I found myself unable to see. Or…no…I could see but all around me was a darkness so impenetrable that nothing but the screams of the Fae trapped within it could escape it.

There was movement, power, that terrible weight in the air and sounds which were altogether too much like something…feasting.

Instinct, the need for survival, or fuck it – maybe it was fear – had me sprinting for the window and launching myself out of it without a second thought for whether any of the Reapers might have been able to see me through that living shadow or not.

The frigid air assaulted me, my fingers grasping at a black drainpipe to the right of the window and hauling me upwards. I hardly noticed the immense drop beneath me as I climbed, or the roar of the waves far below. I paid no attention to the yawning hole which stretched away between the black rock walls of Never Keep, not caring that it made no sense for it to be there, not wondering if the pressure of the water slamming into the rocks beneath might explode upwards at any moment and rip me down into it.

I climbed faster than I had probably ever climbed before, my fingers tearing open on the sharp volcanic stone, but I neither felt it nor cared.

The brutal wind threatened to tear me right off of the edge of the Keep and hurl me to the mercy of that drop, but I clung on and kept climbing until I made it to the grey tiled roof.

I broke into a run without even pausing to catch my breath, racing across the rooftops of the gothic building, avoiding spires, gargoyles and the openings punched through the architecture to make way for the courtyards until I made it all the way back to the tower which I had chosen for my sleeping quarters.

My boots slipped against the stone as I lowered myself from the roof, but I kicked the window wide and hurled myself through it.

I rolled on the hard floor, stopping on my hands and knees and panting as I caught my breath.

The creak of a floorboard had me reacting before I'd even fully taken in the damage to my door frame out the corner of my eye.

I ripped the dagger free of my waistband and flung it as I rolled, the rough curse and clang of metal on metal letting me know I'd gotten close, but my opponent had managed to block the strike.

I threw myself beneath my bed, grabbing the short sword which I had concealed beneath the frame and launching to my feet just as the bastard leapt onto the mattress.

A clash of metal, two weapons skittering across the floor, a flash of dark hair and my back collided with the wall as a heavy body drove against me.

"What the fuck are you doing in here?" I snarled up into Cayde's too pretty face, practically spitting at him as his forearm crushed my chest.

"Maybe I'm trying to figure out your weaknesses so that I'll be ready to kill you when the time comes," he taunted.

"It's probably time you realised I have none and give me up for a bad job then," I hissed.

"Where were you?" he demanded darkly.

"Precisely where my prince needed me to be as always," I replied stonily.

"We're supposed to be allies," he insisted. "You need me."

I scoffed, relaxing my body so that he could think himself the victor if he was dumb enough to do so.

"You know nothing about what I need," I replied scathingly.

"Not true. I pay attention."

"So do I."

"No you don't. Not really. Not to the things that are closest to you or which you deem to be no threat. You only look at me when I have a knife to your throat or if I happen to get within striking distance. I watch you when your guard drops. I watch you when you think you are nothing but shadow and I see those truths you hide so well."

"Oh please don't tell me you've discovered my secret knitting club."

"Where were you?" Cayde repeated, refusing to so much as snort at my jibe.

"I thought you watched me?" I taunted. "Or did you lose focus for a moment or two?"

"I've been tasked with staying close to you," he growled in a low voice and I balked at the suggestion of that.

"Liar."

"Not about that. My orders are to get as close to you as possible. And I don't like losing track of my target."

"Target?" I echoed but mostly I was just buying myself time because why the fuck would the prince assign Cayde to watch over me when he had made it more than clear that he had thought…

I swallowed thickly as I considered the position I had once again found myself in with this bastard, remembering how Dragor had reacted the last time I'd gotten myself into a compromising situation with Cayde like this. Was this some kind of test? Did Dragor think I wouldn't keep to my vow?

I narrowed my eyes then shoved Cayde with enough force to knock him off of me, snatching my sword from the foot of my bed and unsheathing it with a jerk of my wrist before levelling it at him.

"Speak and maybe I'll find my own tongue loosening," I growled.

Cayde looked me up and down in a way which felt utterly invasive and yet somehow unravelling at once.

"You're important," Cayde sneered. "I don't have to like it to admit that it's true. You matter in the war and you matter to the prince. This place is more dangerous than all the battles you have fought in purely because it is nothing like any of them. There are snakes in every corner and enemies at each turn. It's important you don't fall prey to any of them. You matter, Vesper."

I blinked at the use of my name. No one outside of my closest friends and the prince himself ever used that name. So far as I knew, no one even remembered it. Yet there it was, rolling from his silken tongue and wrapping itself around me like a claim of something far more personal than I would have willingly offered.

I considered him for a moment. He was arrogant, infuriating, outwardly hostile and irritatingly good at being all the best kinds of bad. Yet I could admit that everything he had ever shown me of himself right down to our ongoing rivalry was simply honest.

"Fine," I grunted, sheathing my sword and tossing it aside, letting our quarrel end for the moment. "I was somewhere I shouldn't have been and I saw something I should not have witnessed. The kind of thing which could very well result in your assignment failing."

"The Reapers?" Cayde guessed and I narrowed my eyes at him. He was right, he did see too fucking much.

"I don't think they saw me," I said, not denying or admitting to anything.

Cayde considered me for a long moment then sighed. "When you're willing to trust me with the rest of it then you know where to find me. In the meantime, if there is any question as to your whereabouts for the last hour, I will swear on all the stars in the sky that you were training in swordplay with me."

He moved towards the door and I watched him go with narrowed eyes. "Why?" I demanded before he could slip away.

"Because despite how the two of us might feel about one another, sweetheart, we're supposed to be on the same side of this war. So let's at least play the part of allies – until the role of nemesis becomes too tempting to deny."

He left without another word and I turned over everything he had said as though trying to puzzle out a riddle to which there was no answer. Cayde Avior wasn't really the biggest problem on my plate though, so I shoved him from my thoughts as I focused on my main meal, leaving him there in case I found myself hungry for dessert.