“Uh, no.” Amma scratched her head. “Sometimes I have astick though. Except for when priestesses blow it up.”
“Oh, right. Apologies. Who exactly are you anyway?” Diana hopped down from the bed and was striding again so quickly that Amma had to jog to keep up.
“She’s Master Bloodthorne’s trollop,” said Kaz as he followed behind.
“Kaz, my son does not have a—” Diana halted her march back through the temple’s study room and clicked her tongue. “Oh, gods, I haven’t been around; he very well might.”
Amma stomped past her and swung around. “My name is Amma, andyour sonabducted me after losing his enthrallment talisman under my skin. A talisman that was meant for King Archibald because he planned to destroy the whole realm with it by releasingyour husband, a demon. He’s stuck in a crystal, by the way, which is probably why he didn’t come to get you. And whether I’m a prostitute or a baroness or a witch or whatever, it doesn’t matter, because all I’m interested in being right now is the person who protects Damien and puts a stop to all this eclipse nonsense which needs its own, huge explanation, but I’m only talking if we’re both moving because we need to get to Eirengaard, and it’s half a day away. So, are you going to help me or not?”
Diana blinked back at her, and the corner of her mouth ticked up into a smirk. “Oh, I am going to help you, Amma, but I hope you are prepared for a little destruction, if need be.”
“To get him back?” She scoffed. “I’m prepared to destroy the entire realm myself.”
CHAPTER 30
THE DARK DAY OF THE SOUL
When Damien came to, he knew it was bad. And not the good kind of bad. Not even the bad kind, really. This was a wholly new measurement of bad, one he hadn’t experienced before despite thinking all along he was the epitome ofthe worst. But Damien Maleficus Bloodthorne had been wrong.
He’d been wrong about a lot of things, a dose of truth that did him very little good when he was tied to a stake, but at least his maturing cognizance represented growth, and what more can one ask of a human man?
“Sorry,” he mumbled, the word still rattling around in his head. He wasn’t sure what for, but he knew he should have been, or he was, or would be later. It was as inevitable as the fulfillment of the prophecy.
“This isn’t that Caldor asshole.”
Damien lifted his head to see two blurry figures standing before him.
“He got himself killed,” said a voice that was slightly familiar. Erick? No—Damien squinted—Kaspar Solonedy.
“I thought they were tricking that idiot brother of his into taking his place?” asked the other man.
“Guess not.”
The air was stagnant and cold, smelling of wet earth and brimstone. Damien was someplace familiar, yet he’d never been exactly here. A tortuously slow turn of his head allowed him to gaze out over a muddy field and the tiered seating that surrounded it, an arena, but he’d never seen one so empty, andcertainly never standing in its center.
Across the field, there were two other figures, and amongst the stands, an audience of only two more. The shadow of the otherwise empty seating crawled away from where Damien was trapped in the arena’s middle as dawn broke beyond its high wall. He’d lost the entire night which meant—
Noxscura coursed through Damien, jolting him completely awake. For once, he let it come with abandon, desperate for escape. The bindings on his arms and chest and legs strained as arcana clouded his vision, his thoughts, stealing his breath and stilling his heart.
And then it was gone, sucked away even quicker than it came, dragging at Damien’s limbs and his mind. If he weren’t bound to a pole, he would have been pulled to his knees as the noxscura was drained down into the earth.
Kaspar and the other man recoiled, only then realizing Damien was conscious. The stranger went for his sword, but Kaspar stilled his hand. “Look.”
At Damien’s feet, the earth had gone black.
“Oh, fuck me,” Damien grumbled.
The sun continued to climb, filling the sky with a bloody-colored haze. Kaspar and his companion backed away as the other two neared, Roman Caldor’s hulking form amongst them, and soon four men were staring back at Damien with the kind of disgust Damien would have normally reserved for them instead.
Young, pretty, smug, the four wore crests from whatever places they lorded over across the realm, each dressed so cleanly that the mud of the field was especially offensive on the hems of white cloaks and shined boots. Sons of noble houses, they were clearly impressionable, entitled, egomaniacal, stupid. It was like leering into a pool and having four reflections sneer back.
“That’s a blood mage, huh?” said the shortest amongst them, chest puffed out, louder than he needed to be and makingDamien’s ears ring. “Doesn’t seem so dangerous.” He came closer, hand raised, and there was a flash of golden light as he flicked Damien in the forehead. A spike of pain drove into his skull followed by the smell of burnt flesh.
Damien gnashed his teeth and struggled against the binds, noxscura flaring up once again. Hazy darkness surrounded all of them, the short man actually crying out and jumping back, and then the arcana was drawn down into the earth leaving Damien utterly drained.
“He was dangerous. Once.”
Damien managed to rouse his head, tunneling vision honing in on the final two as they joined the others. Gilead, the mage who had played at serving Cedric, had his hood back, weathered skin warm in the red lights of a tumultuous sky. Beside him stood Archibald Lumier, divine mage, warden of his father, King of the Realm. Damien wasn’t sure who he hated more.
