She climbed up onto him, and he vaguely felt her weight on his lap. “Tell me how.” Her face dipped close to his ear as she grabbed the back of his head and forced him to look on her.
“Combined, the two of us, our powers.” Dry-throated, he grasped at the words, pulling out ones he knew she would like even if they made no sense. “Immortal. W-we could make them immortal. And havesomany more. An entire army.”
“Can we?” Delphine knocked her forehead to his, staring hard into his eyes. This close, he could see the noxscura moving in her irises, could practically feel it prod at him, keeping him awake yet sapping away his will.
“Together, we can do anything. Just like you always said.”
She ground her hips against his. “Thatiswhat I always said.”
Damien took a deep breath. “But these leeches. I need my blood to help you.” He swallowed, sickened with himself but desperate. “With arcana and with…this.”
A deep chuckle rose out of Delphine as she fell still. Even through his haze, he could see the adoration on her face,but then her smile sharpened. “Oh, Damien, your memory is quite good, but you must have forgotten,”—a shock of pain ran through his veins, flooding him with enthrallment—“I’m not that easy.”
The ache intensified, and then it left, followed by the sounds and then his vision, and even his thoughts evaporated as Damien was plunged into darkness.
CHAPTER 23
THE ART OF WAR AND WIRE PULLING
Amma was glad to have avoided Briarwyke on her original journey to Aszath Koth. The sky, the earth, the trees were all grey as if the life had been burnt out of the place and not even in that pre-winter way where pines at least kept their color and red birds still flit. There was a different kind of stagnation there, an arcane one, and it clung like smoke in the air and ash on the ground.
Xander had translocated them to the village at the very foot of Ashrein Ridge that Delphine called home. Briarwyke was small, fallen into disrepair, and half-abandoned. The structures held themselves up with shoddy work, but there were villagers, toiling, trading, and going about their lives, not that anyone seemed very happy about it.
No one gave their group a second look as they strode through town, bizarre as they were. Xander led them, pristine in his white coat against the moody hues of the road. Amma had managed to deeply clean her rosy tunic and shine up the rest of her things while she failed to sleep the night before. Barrett gleamed and clanked in his plate, the annoying bastard, and Pippa’s eyes nervously darted everywhere, a devotional symbol about her neck that she normally hid beneath her robes clasped in both hands. Kori was there one moment and then gone the next, perhaps the least conspicuous, but Amma always noticed when her black cloak reappeared, looking for her chance to reclaim her dagger.
“There is a non-zero chance Delphine felt the pulse ofnoxscura when we arrived.” Xander frowned at the bend in the road ahead that led away from the village, brambles thick on either side.
Amma hurried to keep up with his long strides, Quaz curled up on her shoulder, out of his cat form and a spindly imp once again, another odd thing none of the villagers cared to gawk at. “Will she know it’s you specifically?”
“There are few of us who would willingly come here.” Xander ran his tongue over his teeth. “Then again, she may be so busy riding Bloodthorne that she doesn’t notice.”
When Xander waggled his brows, she only snorted. He had failed to convince her twice more to engage in increasingly debaucherous activities, citing the likelihood of Damien’s disloyalty as grounds. Amma had not said, but while she promised Damien that she was his, his intentions hadn’t been so clear. But even if he’d pledged the world to her, anything that happened under Delphine’s control couldn’t possibly be deemed betrayal, and Xander was disgusting for suggesting otherwise.
Thinking of that woman hurting Damien, though—it did things to Amma. She wrapped fingers around the hilt of her dagger, nails digging into her skin the way she’d like to dig the blade into Delphine Delacroix’s heart. She would cut it out, show it to her, make her watch it slow to an agonizing stop before allowing her to finally die. Amma wasn’t sure if cutting out someone’s heart worked like that, but it did in her gruesome fantasies, and even knowing the sorrowful origin of the nox-touched didn’t make her the least bit sorry for it.
The violent imaginings spurred Amma on, away from the village until they reached a wall of dried brambles that had woven themselves all over a fence. A sickly brown, thorns blanketed the tall bars, but the gate was laid open. The temples of most towns were typically accessible for pilgrims and worshipers, and that was clearly what this had been at onetime, but the overgrowth was exceptionally uninviting, the way in narrow and prickly. Xander brought them to a stop just at its edge.
“As we discussed.” The blood mage turned to Barrett, and the knight unsheathed his long sword. Amma backed herself away, but he had his light eyes set on the gate’s opening.
Arcana crackled at the hilt of his sword, and he stormed inside with a monstrous war cry. So much for any kind of stealth. Bits of dried bramble broke off on his plate as he blindly swung and charged.
Xander closed his eyes and blew out a breath. “Idiot,” he murmured, and for once Amma completely agreed with him.
The blood mage eased himself between the tangles in the wider space the knight had made. Amma followed, Kori and Pippa on her heels. The front of the temple stood tall across from them, covered in more greying vines, and the walled yard went long in opposing directions. Barrett came to a stop in the middle of it, sword brandished, waiting. Wind whipped over the empty space, dead, gnarled trees giving up no sound, but the dried-out grasses hissed, and then a mass of black wings and leathery skin came swooping from around the corner of the temple.
Pippa and Amma pulled back behind the briars, Quaz’s clawed hands wrapping around her neck. Kori disappeared completely, but Xander continued to just stand there, arms crossed, watching. The wyvern Delphine had ridden was fast and screeching. Barrett swung too soon, the moron, but then a burst of arcana pulsed off the sword’s tip. The creature dodged the bulk of it, but its wing was nicked, and it rolled.
Barrett’s victorious cry was nearly as loud as the pained scream of the beast as it lost height and skidded into the earth, kicking up brambles and carving long troughs in the dirt. The knight charged fearlessly, and Amma’s eyes widened; for as much as she hated Barrett, she wouldn’t have gone running at awyvern like that. It was, of course, not in her to remember how she actually had stood her ground before the very same creature when she thought it would have saved Damien.
The wyvern slashed at Barrett, and the knight skillfully dodged, running his sword along the side of the beast, blood in its wake.
“Now, go,” said Xander, and they fled across the open yard to the temple’s front. It was a mad dash, Amma’s blood pumping in her ears as they tripped up the steps and fell against the wide doors of the temple just in time to see the wyvern swooping back into the sky, blood raining down from it. It turned sharply and soared back down, talons first, and the knight was not so quick, clipped on his shoulder and sent to the dirt.
Pippa pushed herself out from below the overhang at the entry doors, but Xander dragged her back by the elbow. “You have a job,” he barked, and Pippa relented though worry creased her brow.
“Over here.” Kori had somehow fled ahead of them, and only a slip of her shadow gestured from around the corner before disappearing again.
Xander went first, and Amma followed, Pippa hesitating before taking up the rear as they clung to the wall while trying to avoid stray brambles to stay out of the wyvern’s sight. Screeches and grunts echoed out in the yard, quieter when they passed around the corner and were hemmed in by the much closer fencing that ran along the wall. Kori was working with two bits of metal at the lock of a door, one likely used by priests when the temple functioned to tend the once-fruiting plants that grew over the gate there. With a pop and sizzle of arcana, the woman snorted a short laugh and swung open the door.
