“Understand what?” she whispered.
I touched her face. “I know why we’re here. And it’s going to be fucking fantastic, Istral. I’ll make you so proud.Just watch.”
1. Hell’s Wedding
SOUNDTRACK:Him & Iby JDM Music + Sound and Kimera Morrell
~ YILAN ~
Gripping Melek’s hand in mine, I hurriedly drew him around the corner of the dark, hidden tunnel underneath the Nephilim palace. We huddled, shrouded in the black shadows, just outside the pale glow of the lanterns which were carried by cloaked servants walking deeper and deeper.
The darkness here was the thickest I’d ever walked. It was nearly effortless to bring Melek with me—yet bile rose in my throat with every step through the tunnels because I couldfeelthis blackness beckoning the Nephilim forward. As if the darkness had a mind of its own. The sentient capacity todesire.It sucked at the Nephilim, anticipated their arrival in the hellish chamber at the end of this perverted procession. Yet, as the mortal hearts and minds were dragged by the claws of thisdark, it expanded. I would have sworn it wasthrilledby their presence.
I’d never felt anything like it before, and prayed I never would again.Somethingwas here.Somethingwith power. Could they all feel it? Or was it only me?
‘Can you feel that?’I finally asked Melek.‘That… pulling?’
‘I feel a weight, and a presence,’he responded.‘Evil is here.’
I nodded, though I still couldn’t grasp what it was. The sensation was so tangible, and so fucking sickening, I swore every hidden step would be my last. But we couldn’t abandon this mission.
Melek and I had secretly followed Jann and the other Advisors, all wearing cloaks with hoods so deep they obscured their faces entirely. But that wasn’t what made my already increasing nausea roil and surge. Amidst this group of powerful men striding through the dark, my sister stumbled forward, her cloak just as thick and long as the men’s, but hers was unforgiving, bleached-bonewhite.
As if that weren’t enough, each Advisor clutched the leash of a different woman in his right hand, yanking on the supple, shimmering ropes as the slaves grew increasingly reluctant to follow.
The women varied in every way. From one very young woman, barely in her teens to another around my age. They differed in hair color, skin color, height— in every way, except one. They all cowered and shivered in fear. And the closer the men drew to the chamber at the bottom of this maw, the more the women wept, eventually resisting their captors, being dragged until their feet scraped raw on the frigid stone as they begged for release.
All of them, that is, except one.
Jann’s leash ended on Diadre’s neck.
Even in this terrifying dark, my dearest friend managed to walk with some semblance of dignity. She didn’t grip the leash in white-knuckled fingers and fight, forcing him to drag her, as the others did. But I wasn’t deceived by her apparent air of detachment. Fear flashed in her bright eyes. Her chest rose and fell too quick and shallow. Her movements, usually as lithe as a cat, were as twitchy as a bird that sensed the gaze of the predator on it.
My friend was afraid. No,terrified.And fighting every instinct to stop herself revealing it.
Then they rounded a tunnel corner so sharp, Melek and I lost sight of the end of the line for a moment. I was washed in equal parts fear and relief. I hurried forward, only to stop dead the moment we cleared the corner and the blackness opened like a monster’s maw, the tunnel mouth opening up and out to a cavernous space illuminated by flickering torches and lanterns so high on the walls, they could only have been lit by a sorcerer’s power.
The stone floor—a shining, onyx black—was etched with a massive circle embracing a sharp, five-pointed star. Each point of the star had been painted with runes and symbols I didn’t know, yet the sight of them raised the hair on the back of my neck. Then, at its center, a fire was already lit, the light from it not extending as far into the chamber as it should have because somehow, impossibly, the flames themselves wereblack.
Flickering with silver and ruby, the black tongues of fire crackled and reached for the towering height of the chamber, so tall, the shadows obscured its ceiling from view.
Hidden at the mouth of the chamber, my blood ran like ice in my veins. I wanted to flee the weight and viscosity of the dark in this place. But I couldn’t abandon Istral, who’d been directed by one of the men to the center of the star, alongside the flames. Or Diadre, led by Jann to stand at one of the points of the star,and ordered to place her feet within the jagged lines of a rune that somehow conjured images of a woman screaming whenever I looked at it. The other Advisors and their slaves took places, either at a point of the star, or along the edge of the circle, until the only movement in the space was the sway of hair when a woman dropped her face into her hands, or the impatient twitch of an Advisor’s hand to silence a weeping slave.
Trembling on the other side of the star, Diadre lifted her eyes to find me, her gaze bare pinpoints of light reflecting those impossible flames. She wouldn’t see my form, but her skill in shadow walking would allow her to sense my presence and location.
Her courage would be eroded if she felt me leave.
With a hurried prayer to God to keep us all safe, I grasped Melek’s hand and drew him through the deepening shadows at the edge of the chamber, to a point at the side where the walls edged closer to its center, where we could crouch in the molasses-thick shadow.
The darkness there sank into my skin and wanted to turn my blood black. I’d never experienced anything like it. As if the darkness itself was the predator.
Melek squeezed my hand.‘Breathe,’he sent through the mindlink of our growing bond. I exhaled suddenly, unaware I’d been holding my breath, thankful that one of the men shrouded in a cloak chose that moment to raise his voice and address the chamber, his voice ringing through the massive space.
“King, O King! Your servants offer themselves in supplication to present your Heir, and his bride for your approval. You are welcome here, O Lord. Come! Come among us!”
There was no way to describe what happened next, except to say the chamber expanded, then contracted, like the ribs of a great monsterbreathing.The flames fluttered and snappedsideways in the wind of it, and the women cried out, covering their heads.
One moment, Istral was alone at the center of that godforsaken star. The next, two men towered over her—one as bright and sunny as a summer day, though dressed in unrelenting black. The other only slightly darker in his complexion, but with a haughty, golden gaze that landed like molten steel on the skin.
