Amma was gnawing on the tip of her dagger. “Oh, who knows anymore? Do we stop them?”
Kaspar’s blood dripped to the ground, and the moment it did, the glow that filled the center of the cavern was shrouded in a violet light. If he hadn’t already been on his stomach, Damien would have fallen, a pull from behind his navel so strong he nearly vomited.
“I don’t think that’s wise,” he managed. “And we need the pit to be opened.”
Amma shifted, pulling out the pendant and squeezing her fist about it. Damien was glad—he didn’t want the temptation to grab it from her, though knowing what the darkness below them would become, he couldn’t imagine intervening. He didnotwant E’nloc on this plane, that he knew for certain.
But he did want Amma. Even in this moment, feverish and ill and mind on the verge of being addled, he thought to whisper to her that, if he could love someone, it would be her. It was completely selfish, but the part of him that wanted her to know was growing in the wake of his weakness.
Damien hesitated a moment too long, and the decision to say nothing was made for him when the cavern rumbled. The aura of the pit swelled, that same, forever blackness opening up at the feet of the mages who had circled it. Even as high up as they were, it was imposing to look on nothing, and Damien’s head spun. Fucking E’nloc had a hold on him even like this, even when he cast no magic and stayed away, but then he’d not had control over the noxscura that insisted on seeping out at thoughts of Amma.
There were voices below, agitation in them. Archibald spoke over the din, “Can you contain it?”
And then one answered him that they both were familiar with. “I’ve had practice, Your Majesty. It will be contained.”
“Gilead?”
“The Grand Order?”
Damien and Amma looked sharply at one another.
Amma sucked in a shocked breath. “That’s the mage who served Cedric.”
“I could have sworn, that voice,”—Damien squinted out over the ledge—“it’s so similar to the member of the Grand Order who…who was late.” When they had arrived at Yvlcon, and he had been summoned before the Grand Order of Dread, a member was missing even after making him wait. Was it possible that had been Gilead, too tied up with E’nloc to be on time? “If that is him, he will know we’re meant to be here, but if not—it doesn’t matter. We have to do as the Grand Order requested.”
Amma nodded, sat up, and chucked the pendant. Through the air it sailed, the ugly gem tumbling over itself, chain spinning, and arced downward, headed for the darkness. There was a sizzle in the air as arcana reached back up toward it, and Damien’s chest grew tight, the cave pressing in and pulling at him. He too sat up, needing to see it disappear inside, needing to know it was done.
But a gust of wind at their backs made them both duck, a dark blur sweeping through the shadows above. Wings flapped, leathery and wide, and a scaled creature dove down toward the pit, a rider on its back. Damien gripped the ledge with white knuckles, earth crumbling beneath them. It couldn’t be.
The pendant was snatched out of the air, and a wyvern pulled up sharply to hover above the pit, the darkness below it unchanged, their attempt to stop the chaos bubbling inside thwarted. The creature beat its wings and rose up before them, the woman on its back holding out the pendant by its chain.
“Oh, hello, lover,” she said, and Delphine began to cast.
CHAPTER 20
MISERY PERSONIFIED
Voices chanted from below, and the rumbling of the darkest magics crawled up through the earth, but Amma could only focus on the violet arcana forming in Delphine Delacroix’s hands. The woman muttered a spell, something absolutely horrendous no doubt, and Damien was transfixed.
Quaz scrambled over Amma’s lap and sank his teeth into Damien’s arm. The cat-shaped imp was given a shove, and he tumbled away from the ledge into the shadows, but Damien hadn’t blinked. He could only stare at Delphine, body rigid, the veins in his neck and face flooding with a dark arcana against his pale skin.
Delphine sat atop her hovering creature, the claws at the ends of its flapping wings bat-like, and Amma had recently enough seen a dragon to know that this had to be a wyvern. The woman continued to mutter, a crackling all around her glinting with the same darkness as was in Damien’s veins.
Amma grabbed his arm and shook, but he remained unmoving, trapped. She swore, standing and pointing her dagger out over the pit, eyeing Delphine. “Stop this,” she called, arcana crackling in her own fingertips as it searched for flora in the depths of the cavern.
Delphine gave her only a cursory glance and scoffed.
Amma’s outstretched arm was yanked back, the dagger clattering to the ground, and she was spun. Damien was there, forcing her backward and holding her forearm so tightly it made her cry out, but then her yelp was cut off as her foot slipped on the ledge.
She flailed her free hand and grabbed onto his tunic, stomach flipping as he leaned her back, but he only took that arm too, freeing it of him and bending her away. A quick glance over her shoulder revealed that the pit had formed, chaotic blackness and tentacles seeping out, but this time it was not grabbing and devouring whatever it could find. There was an order to this chaos, the entirety of the assembled below chanting, so intent they didn’t acknowledge what was going on above.
“Damien,” Amma cried, “what are you doing?”
He said nothing, but his veins pulsed with arcana, eyes transfixed on Delphine still hovering on her wyvern. Amma couldn’t even get Damien to look at her as he prepared to toss her into the horrible nothingness below.
“Getridof her!” Delphine spat.
“Gods, no, stop!” Amma thrashed, wanting to break out of his grasp but knowing freedom meant falling to her death. She’d felt like this before, teetering on the window ledge of Krepmar Keep in Cedric’s cold grip, and terror ran through her anew. Every muscle tightened, sweat breaking out over her skin even as goosebumps erupted, panic tumbling in her stomach.
