CHAPTER 1
HOW TO EULOGIZE YOUR SISTER
Delphine Delacroix was dead. For most who had known her in life, this was a relief, which isn’t a particularly nice thing to say about a dead woman, but Delphine had not been very nice herself. There was really only one person in the realm who would mourn her passing, but as that person stared at the noxscura-entwined brambles covering the disused temple that was the place of her sister’s untimely demise, rather than sad, she found herself confused.
A message had come to Celeste Delacroix many moons prior through the arcanely connected crystals the sisters shared. The messaging crystal had been quiet for some time, and though she had been at first relieved by the silence, Celeste had grown trepidatious of the lull. Each passing day weighed more heavily in her gut, telling her without words that she had been wrong for running away and shutting out her only living family. Celeste wrote, of course, and she sent the post with all manner of agreeable creatures, ravens, spiders, vipers, but she never heard back.
And then the blustery, autumn day came when the crystal pulsed with arcane communication. Celeste had gone for it so quickly that she knocked the slippery thing from its hallowed spot on her side table. It bounced better than any crystal had the right to do, shooting beneath her cot and falling through a crack in the floorboards of the bedraggled inn she temporarily called home. After an embarrassing conversation with the elderly man who occupied the room below hers and used the opportunity to berate her for daring to walk across his ceiling twice a day, the crystal had been retrieved, and she finally holed herself up in her tiny, rented chamber to listen to the message that would surely say her sister wanted her to come home.
But when Delphine’s sharp voice cut into Celeste’s mind, her cautious relief was torn to shreds like a skirt caught on brambles amid a reckless escape. There was no heartfelt yearning in her sibling’s voice—though she was probably a fool to have expected anything akin to sentimentality—only the impatient snapping of a woman who was perpetually disappointed by everyone in her life, especially her little sister.
Only this time, Delphine had apparently been so disappointed, she decided to up and die to get her point across. She was nothing if not dramatic, but dying wasa lot, even for her.
If you are hearing this, sister, I am no longer amongst the living. Yes, that is correct, your only kin left in this world, struck from the plane. Been murdered most likely, so thank you very much for cruelly abandoning me and providing none of the protections that you’ve enjoyed at my expense all these years. However, I know what kind of company I keep, so I arranged for this message to be sent in the wake of my passing.
I’m aware this will be a monstrous undertaking with your limited abilities, but if you can find it somewhere within that blackened heart of yours to do me one last, small favor, I’ve left a list of necromancers in the sepulcher of the temple. Dark gods know I’ve written the instructions simply enough for someone with your dearth to their faculties to follow, but if you do find it too overwhelming to bring me back, ask Damien for help. If you’re pathetic enough, and I’m sure that will be no trouble, he will assist. If he’s in one of his moods and resistant, then you know what to do.
I suppose this is goodbye, for now, so—
The message had cut off there. Celeste chose to believe it was simply a failing of magic that left Delphine’s last, potentially affectionate words forever left up to her imagination, but it is perhaps relevant if dismal to say that this was indeed the message’s true end.
It had taken Celeste the entire winter to work up the courage to return. At first, she questioned whether the message was even real, fearing some enemy’s ruse or even a trick by Delphine herself. Things had not ended amicably, after all, and Celeste had yet to not take the blame and subsequent retribution for each and every familial falling out.
But as the days and then moons passed and there was no follow up to betray that it was a trick, the dread in her heart thickened, so when the first thaw came, she boarded a ship and crossed the Maroon Sea for Eiren proper. There was nothing for her on their ancestral island of Clarriseau anyway, just as Delphine had predicted, and in the end, the prospect of a more familiar ridicule and coldness won out.
Traversing the mainland realm was not as quick as by sea. She purchased passage on merchants’ carts over well-traveled roads northward, though the last leg had to be made on foot—no one, it seemed, wanted to go to Briarwyke. Not even Celeste, really. Yet by the time the roads were their muddiest and the air was still chilled but didn’t threaten snow, she made it back to the place she had last seen her sister alive with the intent to be very sad about the whole thing.
Only, if Delphine really were dead, there was still quite a bit of her left swirling around, and so in place of sadness, Celeste was simply, as stated, confused.
Noxscura ran through the dried-out thorns that wound themselves up and over the desecrated temple. Delphine used arcana to protect the building and convince villagers it was simply cursed, but she had never done it quite like this, never so visible and imposing. The temple was set off from the village it was meant to serve, down a winding path through the forest to the north, and so Celeste pushed back her hood in the seclusion of the wood. She circled the exterior of the fence twice, shoes sinking into the mud until her soles were soaked. There were only a few places to peek into the shadowy barrier, but no passing through it. Well, no passing through for most.
Celeste touched the locket that hung from her neck. It was nearly empty and had been for some time. She never let the magic run completely dry, but hadn’t come across a way to refill it in Clarriseau. Though it was often difficult to find something that one did not seek out.
But now an abundance of noxscura pulsed and purred before her. Too much, really. She worried her lip between her teeth, fingers slipping over the smooth, enchanted metal, then with a swallow, she flicked the tiny latch to open the locket.
Arcana was drawn to the empty space without Celeste’s bidding—a lucky thing because she would probably screw it up on her own. The blackened tendrils broke away from the vines, crawling over one another in the mud, and then creeping up along her legs, coiling around her waist, and filling up the arcane pocket that hung about her neck.
Even colder than the early spring air, the magic bit at her skin, damp and grimy despite her cloak, and her heart thumped like the marching of some far off battalion filled with conscripted youngsters preparing for a war they had not agreed to. It had been so long, she’d forgotten how terrifying it was to harness so much power, how dangerous her body and mind could be made, and how…well, frankly, howickynoxscura truly was.
But the barrier moved quickly once so much of it had been drawn in, and when it finally cleared from the fencing and vines, she snapped the locket shut and ventured through the gates.
It was a mess. A big mess. A murderous mess, in fact, and she was only gazing out over the front courtyard. There was Tempest, Delphine’s favorite pet, in a heap where he’d been slain, impossible to miss even when he was mostly bone. She picked her way across the dried out grasses carefully, like its skeletal jaws might snap at her when she ventured too close. The massive wyvern had never warmed to Celeste, but he’d never managed to take a chunk out of her either, so she’d straddled an uncomfortable reverence and fear for the thing when it was alive.
A human body covered in plate armor, as old and dead as Tempest, lay beside, clearly the wyvern’s undoing as well as his own. The markings on the armor and sword were ornamental, no symbols of any god or region in the realm that she knew. Had this been the man who brought death to every being at the temple? If so, she probably should have been upset, but she’d yet to confirm there was nothing living at all on the grounds. Plus, he was mostly bone as well, and it was difficult to be mad at a skeleton. Apparently, the noxscura hadn’t kept everything out, and the flesh had been eaten away in the four or so moons between Delphine’s message and Celeste’s arrival.
A shadow flitted in the corner of her vision, and she swiftly turned, cloak and hair splaying around her. The temple’s fencing was covered in brown brambles, and a few scraggly trees dotted the yard of overgrown, dried-out weeds. No creatures stirred—no living ones, anyway. She supposed strange shadows and mysterious glints were to be expected in a place so filled with death and dark magic.
Resolving to contend with the skeletons and armor later, she turned for the temple proper. Celeste was familiar with Valcord even if Delphine had never bothered to learn the name of the god whose temple she’d…acquired. There was little room in either of the Delacroix sisters’ hearts for the gods and even less for those who served them, but one had to know these things, and as it was mostly useless knowledge, it fell to Celeste. One of the spring deities who remained in Empyrea, Valcord had a handful of temples dedicated to him across Eiren, but as he was a god that required actual service, there were not many followers.
Briarwyke’s Valcordian temple had, in fact, only two priests when Delphine originally sought it out some four years prior. Celeste was sent up to its doors in a ragged cloak, her hair mussed and dirt smeared across her face. She was meant to get herself invited inside by playing at being wretched and pitiable.Very little playing required, Delphine had remarked before nudging her along. In truth, Celeste had been trembling when she knocked because the prospect of stepping inside a temple horrified her, but her fear proved pointless when the priests turned her away. Maybe she shouldn’t have rubbed the cloak with quite so much manure.
As Celeste stood before the chained doors on the portico again, there was a familiar tremble in her knees, and she could hear Delphine’s voice anew.How in the realm do you get yourself rejected by holy men?It was embarrassing but a relief as she hoped they would give up on the temple, but Delphine insisted they stay because she hadplans—plans that involved violence, death, and arcane research she had never deigned Celeste worthy enough to be told the details of.
Carved into the pitch that shrouded the temple’s entry was a half-risen sun, its rays protruding to the eaves. Crickets, the place was even bigger than she remembered. She dug into one of the many pockets on her skirt and pulled out an old key, surprised when it fit, but at least Delphine hadn’t changed the locks.
Through the quiet antechamber with its lower ceiling and windowless walls, Celeste’s footsteps squished into the silence. It smelled of must with a twinge of sweet decay, but the light through the doorway ahead drew her forward.
The temple’s main chamber ran the length of the building. The grand space was flanked by columns carved with the delicate, divine details of Valcord’s glory, though more than a few apparently had an unfortunate meeting with something smashy. It rose much higher than the entry, and flora had taken over at an extraordinary rate, strange for the winter that had just passed.
