“She tricked them. Both of them. Your mother and your father.”
The vault’s stagnant air felt especially heavy then, and Damien only glared back, allowing him to go on.
“You were probably too young to remember the taste, but I do. I can still taste it sometimes, especially when I look at you.” Xander frowned, but Damien could feel it wasn’t really for him. “The plan was to feed us the Elixir Eternea and convinceyour precious mother we were dead so she would take us out of Aszath Koth. There was no other way, she had to be the one to do it because of that stupid, fucking orb. Mother told me it was just a little prank we were playing. You didn’t want to drink it—you were such a fucking baby.” Xander snorted out a laugh. “But I told you it would be all right, and you did it.”
“That’s why Diana insisted we were dead.” Damien’s throat went dry, eyes shifting back to the crystal, noxscura climbing out of him to wrap around it.
“You remember being in Eirengaard after, don’t you? You told me you did anyway. Birzuma only knew where to find us because she was the one who squirreled us away. Only after she convinced Zagadoth that your mother had actually stolen you, and he needed to march on the capital. But by then it was too late. That human loved you so much that when she thought you were dead, she let her weak, little mind be completely enthralled by that temple. Zagadoth didn’t stand a chance against her once she was brainwashed into fighting for the crown against him. And then Aszath Koth was finally left to Birzuma. Sure, she lost it again, but she did have it, for a short while, and all it cost was your family.”
Crush her.
Damien swallowed, feeling the tendrils of magic squeeze Birzuma’s crystal. He could obliterate the demon into nothing, completely wipe her from existence. And knowing the truth now, he could free Zagadoth, he could free his mother, he could piece Aszath Koth back together, he could—
But Amma.
“Sanguinisui, free Birzuma.”
Xander’s mouth fell open, watching as Archibald took a final step toward the crystal and began to cast. There was magic in the vault then, but of a very different kind. Divine magic, but it was also slow and precise. It filtered through the chamber, and itcrept over Damien with a slippery discomfort as it worked.
Xander felt it too, shuddering, but then he frowned at Damien again. He didn’t lord his win over him, he didn’t even grin, he just looked utterly broken and said, “You reallydolove her.”
“Of course I do,” said Damien.
Like he tasted the bitterness of the Elixir Eternea, Xander’s tongue stuck out and he scoffed. “Well, I suppose it’s time to explain this little misunderstanding to Kitten.”
CHAPTER 34
THE USEFULNESS IN LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH
There wasn’t darkness or cold or floating, but colors, a temperate feel to the air, and slightly springy ground underfoot—odd, considering Amma didn’t really have feet anymore.
She gazed down at the thing that was herself. It looked like a body, but she knew that had been left behind. There should have been blood though, and a lot of it. She felt the knife go in, though she didn’t know it at the time. It had pierced her heart from behind too quickly and completely for her to have known anything except what she felt seconds before: an unbridled fear and rage and desire to kill.
Amma gasped. “Oh, that jerk.”
“Ammalie Avington, Baroness of Faebarrow, The Eclipse of Destruction and Heart of the Earth’s Blood.”
A woman stood before Amma. She hadn’t been there a moment prior, or maybe she had, it was difficult to remember. She read from the book in her hands, so thick and old it seemed like it should have been difficult to hold, but she did it with ease, tips of long fingers curling around its edge. There was something familiar about her, the crimson to her hair stunningly deep as it floated about her shoulders and cascaded over the black cloak she wore. She was pretty—very pretty—too pretty to be human.
Beside her was a doorway. It grew up out of the ground but instead of wood or stone, a thin linen hung from the unanchored threshold, moving gently, shadows roving beyond it.
Amma blinked about at the place she’d appeared, somethinglike a forest, but it couldn’t exactly decide what time it wanted to exist in. Past the odd doorway, dying golden light streamed through thin branches, autumn on full display with leaves of maroon and auburn and saffron bending in a swift wind. That bled into a mound of snow just to the left. The trees there were pine, boughs covered in blankets of white that shimmered blue under the darkness of a night sky. Amma felt none of that cold, though, instead a gentle breeze at her back carrying the smell of roses. At her feet-that-weren’t-feet, a sprawling of white and pink blossoms glowed with dawn’s light, wet with morning dew. And to her right, the brilliance of a forest stood under full sun, intensely verdant and buzzing with unseen life.
A river ran through it all, encircling the place where Amma stood with the woman on an island of sorts. It was nearly frozen to her left, bubbling delicately behind her, raging on her right, and far off amongst the golden foliage it slowed.
“Why am I in the Everdarque?” The question came out before Amma’s mind caught up, but she intrinsically knew where she was, having seen the woman who stood there before. She was one of the Autumn Court’s fae, with her flaming hair and pallid skin, though they hadn’t been introduced at the gathering.
“Well, you’re dead,” the fae said with a sort of sympathetic smile and an uncomfortable laugh. “Sorry, by the way, it’s a pretty big bummer to most, which I really wasn’t counting on when I came up with it.”
Amma swallowed, eyes flicking to that odd doorway. She was afraid of that. “Oh, but still, why am I here?”
“This is where people go when they die, technically, this spot, where the courts come together.” She pointed to the doorway. “But you’ll end up in there. I made it. Isn’t it pretty?”
The gossamer linen did have a beauty to it, shimmering with many colors, but it instilled a sort of dread in Amma too. “What’son the other side?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” The fae smiled, and it was too wide. “We don’t die, so we’ve never gone through, and nobody ever comes back out.”
“Ammalie? Is it really you?”
