CHAPTER 1
HUMBLE ALTRUISM AND WHAT IT ENTAILS
The most superlatively good being to have blessed the realm of Eiren was Evangeline Temperance Virtulios, more colloquially known as Eva the Congenial. While there were other, good beings who were spoken of in Eiren’s history, the descendants of dominions, conquering kings, priests to any of the one hundred and seventeen gods of goodness and light, there was no argument that Eva held the highest-ranking place for three reasons: one, it was well established by the Holy Order of Osurehm that her deeds had been monumental, selfless, and, most importantly, in the interest of serving the gods; two, there was a song about her altruism and consequently the death she suffered for never wavering from her morals which was quite popular amongst school children and those seemed to really stick; and three, she had in fact been dead for almost one thousand years so couldn’t ruin her own ranking by slipping up and saying something untoward on a bad day.
The legacy of Eva the Congenial was often taught to children in theology as a way to both define good behavior and instill great guilt at considering taking part in that which was bad, so it was perhaps not strange that Ammalie Avington, Baroness of Faebarrow, thought of the holy figure as she walked toward a dark tower in the middle of the Accursed Wastes beside not one but two blood mages. Amma had just faked her own abduction, and it wasn’t even the first time she’d done that, but the most recent performance did have an awful lot more death and destruction, and that made wonderful fodder for the guilt that roiled in her belly. Eva the Congenial would have never trusted one blood mage let alone a second rival demon spawn, so Amma couldn’t really help measuring herself against the well-known deeds of the realm’s most virtuous woman and recognizing that she was coming up significantly short.
But considering Amma’s upbringing, all of those shameful thoughts were perfectly normal and expected. What was perhaps strange and unexpected, however, was the next thought that popped into Amma’s head about the legendary, infallible figure, which was really more of a dawning realization that should have perhaps hit her a few years earlier and not at the ripe, old age of twenty-five: Eva the Congenial was a complete and utter fabrication.
Because if she actually had existed in the exact way the religious scholars said, the stories about her life would have been significantly more fraught with doubt. In her tales, Eva was routinely faced with a moral quandary and consistently chose the path of goodness and light as if she were a hound and virtue smelt of treed raccoon. While knowing exactly what to do and always having the perfect path to follow didn’t make for particularly good stories in theinterestingsense—and likely contributed to Amma’s boredom with theology—Eva’s conflict-less decisions did make for good stories in themoralsense. But they were only stories, Amma realized, as having that easy answer every time just wasn’t realistic.
Not that there was a parable in which Eva had been faced with the decision to hitch her cart to a blood mage who intended to slaughter the king, free his demon father from prison, and call up infernal vengeance on the entire realm, but if there were, Amma was sure Eva wouldn’t have chosen to help the man who had just unleashed an undead army on her hometown. Then again, if Eva had seen how that blood mage looked when doing it—andfor hernonetheless—she might have actually surrendered all her virtue on the spot.
Amma surely would have if they hadn’t been interrupted.
Damien Maleficus Bloodthorne’s muscled but exhausted form strode along at Amma’s side, violet eyes set forward and unblinking, black hair mussed and falling in his face, hard, clean-shaven jaw clenched and unreadable. He had smartly used a stone imbued with a translocation spell to take the two of them away from her home in Faebarrow where he had just unleashed the Army of the Undead. The stone was the quickest escape, certainly, and if any enterprising Holy Knights or priests tried to suss out the magic left in the stone’s wake, it would all match the lie he had told, that he was a different blood mage who was stealing Amma away.
Slightly less smart was the fact they were now actually standing in the Accursed Wastes, the place Xander Sephiran Shadowhart, Damien’s archrival, made his home. But Xander had been delighted to see the two of them, especially since they had successfully stolen and were carrying the Lux Codex, another bad deed to heap onto Amma’s growing moral predicament, and a truce was struck between the half-demon blood mages.
Xander’s tower was all obsidian and sharp and just looking at it made Amma’s skin feel pressed against a blade on the verge of being sliced through—not cut exactly, but just nicked to be painful in only the most annoying ways. The tower stood stark and tall amidst a flat field of red and grey, dried claylike soil scattered with rocky outcroppings on the horizon. The clouds overhead were heavy, but the air was dry, and a violent wind swept them over the dual moons and many stars.
But despite the troop of imps at their back and Xander leading them inside, Damien didn’t appear worried. There had been a flash of fervor at Xander’s offer that they begin working together, and then a pall of apathy settled over him. In the pallidness of his skin and dark circles beneath his eyes, he was only just wearing the exhaustion from what he’d done in Faebarrow Keep: releasing the Army of the Undead, commanding them, trading spells and swords with Cedric. The Brineberth occupying force had surely been staved off, perhaps even wiped out, by the skeletal soldiers he had called up from the infernal plane, taking back Faebarrow for its own people.
But that…that wasn’t why Damien did it. Not really. He had, of course, told the army what itwoulddo, that they would drive out Brineberth troops and protect Faebarrow, but he had also, explicitly said, “fuck the barony,” and told Amma she was going with him when it was all over because it wasn’t safe for her to stay there. Amma had been willing, there was no questioning what her heart and body wanted, but what Damien truly wanted with her—that was still curious.
Except she did know one thing now for certain, revealed by Xander: Damien intended to release a demon in Eirengaard in order to destroy the realm.
Up the main stone steps that circled the exterior of Xander’s tower, they were finally brought inside, out of the whipping winds and dry air, and into a grand and imposing receiving hall. Damien’s violet eyes darted around though the rest of him remained stoic. The shadow creatures that had followed them all at a distance remained outside, the doors shutting behind. Xander’s too-light and cheery steps guided them into a smaller chamber just off the main hall, a receiving parlor of sorts, where a cozy fire was already lit along a curved wall.
With a small flourish, Xander pulled a chair away from a table in the room’s corner, motioning to it as he stood over the back. “Kitten, please, have a seat.”
Amma hesitated, glancing at Damien. When he nodded, she went to it and sat because despite now knowing his treacherous plans, even tangentially, she still trusted him. Xander, though, she trusted much less, and when he stepped around the chair and gave her a look up and down, she shivered, squeezing the Lux Codex tighter against her chest.
“I’m very flattered the two of you have dolled yourselves up so much to come see little, old me.”
Amma took a hand, dried blood smeared across it, to the fluffy skirt of her dress, the hem of the light blue tulle dusted heavily with red soil. It felt bizarre that only hours earlier she was sitting uncomfortably as her hair was done, her face painted, and her body cinched into the gown. She’d been sweating, yelling, and even forced out a few tears during their charade as she pretended to be Damien’s unwilling abductee from her own home, so she knew her face must look a wreck now, blonde strands falling free from the curls piled atop her head.
Damien, similarly, was also “dolled up,” as Xander said, in a dress uniform common to Faebarrow. It was a look Amma was familiar with, but she’d never been so attracted to it as she was now, the military-style jacket pulled open at Damien’s collar and exposing his chest where he had cut into his own skin to cast blood magic. His hair had been pushed back at one time, but it had predictably fallen in his face. The face that was growing more severe by the minute, jaw interminably clenched in Xander’s presence, even the long scar running from his forehead to cheek looking angry.
He had been so similarly angry when he fought Cedric, but there had been a moment before all the madness when his face was softer out on the balcony. When he said all that mattered was that she knew he was doing all of this for her. And then there were other moments when he addressed the assembled, when he played the part of a villainso well, when he said he would destroy everything and take her with him, when his face was wild and wicked. Amma couldn’t decide which was the real Damien. Maybe none, maybe all.
Xander took one of the two seats before the fireplace, folded his hands in his lap, and slung a leg up over the other. He sat his thin form back too comfortably, an amiable smile across his lips. In stark contrast to the other blood mage, Xander’s white hair was pulled into a knot at the back of his head, his sharp features were clean, and his dark eyes were filled with elation. The fire flickered across his tanned skin, warm and full of life, and he gestured for Damien to take the seat across from him.
Damien remained unmoving for a moment, staring at Xander and then the empty chair. His throat bobbed with a swallow, a bead of sweat dripping down to his collar, and he finally sat, hands on his knees to bolster himself. It was then Amma realized he was injured, but he never let it show on his face, pushing the pain away to sit up fully.
At her feet, Kaz scurried up in his true, imp form. He’d curled his ruddy tail about himself, fiddling with its pointed end in his claws, little, leathery wings pulled in. Sidling up to the leg of her chair, she could feel heat off his body, his eyes wide, never blinking. Kaz was almost always nervous, but never had he taken solace in being close to Amma, and that only heightened her own unease.
Damien sat back, tipping his head down, narrowing his eyes, and glaring at Xander as if he had been insulted. In return, Xander’s placid smile curled up on one side and his fingers steepled, knuckles cracking as he pushed his hands together. Damien cocked a brow at him, frowning deeper and huffing out a hearty sigh. Xander tipped his head to the side, the foot propped on his knee bouncing lightly.
Behind them, the fire crackled, the room’s only light, their forms growing more shadowed, more sinister with each passing moment as they continued to do nothing but just stare at one another as if it were some unspoken contest. The light fell into their deeply hollowed cheeks, reflecting in their eyes like the very pits of the infernal plane burned there. Neither spoke, simply trading half-smirks, wicked glares, and increasingly aggressive poses in the stiff-backed, too-elaborate, probably uncomfortable chairs. What in the Abyss were they doing?
“I can’t take it anymore!” Amma squeaked, and both men jerked toward her, thrown from their ridiculous game. “Someone say something!”
Damien snorted, a flicker of amusement on his face until Xander looked back to him. “I’ve blackened your name,” he said, delivering the news with a satisfied lilt. “The Army of the Undead has been unleashed under what has been declared as your order. The forces of Brineberth March of the realm of Eiren have been, by now, decimated. I expect the crown will consider it treason and put a call out for your head.”
Xander stared back, unmoving, hands folded again, and then his lips twitched until he broke down into a full-bellied laugh. “I would expect nothing less from you, Bloodthorne. Basest beasts, the Undead Army? No one’s used that thing in centuries! Skeletons are sort of blasé, though, don’t you think? They’re not my style anyway, but they sure do make a point, I suppose.”
Amma leaned forward, jaw hanging open. Xander waslaughingat the fact Damien had blamed the treasonous act on him.
