I place my hand into the vicar’s and fight the bile rising in my throat. He helps me from the carriage, and two lines of waiting curates lead us into the Grand Chapel of Mercy. My head spins as every fiber of my body rejects what’s coming—rejects the notion that I am at the whim of Vicar Darius.
Above ground, the chapel is technically just one story tall, but its roof soars daringly high, taller than four stories. Every pointed spire impales a sculpted dragon, their mouths fixed in agonizing snarls. People of stone, dressed in the armor of the Mercy Knights, scale walls, ready crossbows, and skewer dragons with lances of carved lightning and steel.
“I want two daggers on each of them at all times. If they so much as even look the wrong way, kill them,” Vicar Darius instructs the Mercy Knights. Pia, Dazni, Myla, and Ember are taken from the other carriage and follow behind as I am escorted past two rows of praying curates in the square in front of the chapel.
Never has the Grand Chapel been so empty. There are none uttering prayers. No curates performing rites. No offering before the statue of Valor.
The late afternoon sun bleeds through the tall windows, stretching long lines of crimson across the empty pews. Thestatue of Valor at the far altar is emblazoned in golden light, holding a sword aloft—the sword said to be the weapon by which the Elder Dragon will be defeated.
“What are you going to do to me?” Terror makes my voice softer than I want. I am trying so hard to keep my courage even in the face of the twisted man before me.He needs me, and I will use that against him, somehow, I remind myself.
“I waited for so long for your power to mature…but I cannot wait any longer. Now it is time to meet your destiny, and that isnotas Valor Reborn yourself,” he says gently, patting my hand as if in condolence. The Mercy Knights stream in with the five ashborn. I try to glance back toward Lucan, but I can’t find an opportunity while the vicar’s attention is on me alone. “You are the catalyst by which the true Valor Reborn will return to this world.”
My heart hammers in my chest with every step closer to the altar—and the statue of Valor. I realize that it is not just the sunlight, but the elegant blade is actuallyglowingwith Etherlight. Are there sigils hidden on it? Within it?
The magic dances in the air around it, gnarled and contorted. It’s Etherlight, but it moves in ways I’ve never seen before. Ways that feel unnatural.
That’s when I see it. Something else. Magic that vibrates in tight knots of crimson, wrestling against the threads of Etherlight. Magic the same shade as dragon’s blood—as the scourge.
Ethershade.
“You were chosen by fate and guided by me.” Vicar Darius drops my hand and ascends the altar. His fingers close around the grip of the weapon, and he pulls it down. The Ether seems to revolt at his touch. I can almost imagine it screaming. “Sacrifice is rarely pretty. But it is always necessary.”
“What do you want from me?” I refrain from stepping back ashe descends with the weapon in hand.
The vicar merely smiles. “For you to die.”
Without warning or hesitation, without another word, he plunges the blade into my stomach, impaling me clean through.
65
A scream lodges in my throat. The blade cuts more than flesh; it’s as if it tears through a part of my raw essence.
Air leaves my lungs as little more than a gurgle. I can’t breathe. I can’t eventhink.
In the distance is a dull scream. Lucan? It’s so hard to hear. I feel as though I’ve been plunged underwater.
The sword pulses with power that vibrates against my insides. As though it’s alive and pulling itself even deeper—knitting itself into my being. My hands go to the hilt, but I can’t find a grip; it’s too slick from my own blood.
Then the ground beneath me flares with light.
Etherlight, golden and pure, so brilliant and potent that it lights up the entire cathedral, rushes out in jagged fractures from under my feet. It webs away from me in jagged cracks that seem random until they begin to connect. Until the lines merge and a pattern begins to show.
“Wh—Wh—” There are no words. I keep trying to grab the hilt, but my hands don’t have the strength. My fingers tremble violently as my whole body begins to shudder. The only thing keeping me upright is the blade.
The vicar’s voice cuts through my terror. “It took me years to assemble the pieces required to activate it again. But assemble I did. Valor’s greatest work, the most magnificent artificer sigil ever conceived, will be the foundation by which your power is given to me. There is nothing gained without sacrifice.” The vicar looms over me for one moment longer, as though admiring a masterpiece. And then he releases the blade and turns, strolling casually as though I’m not dying and the room isn’t awash in the golden light of Ether.
I collapse to my knees. My vision blurs, and when it comes into focus again, he’s climbed the altar steps. There, he lies upon the altar before the statue of Valor, a tether of Ether flowing directly from the sword lodged in my body to his supine form. There must be some kind of sigil upon it as well, something to connect it with the sword… I’d figure it out if I wasn’t about to die. Distant screams rise—identical to what I heard in the Font.
Straining against the pain, hand still on the bloody sword hilt, I look back. One of the Mercy Knights is wailing, holding his gilded eye. Molten gold drips between his fingers and fades into stardust before it hits the ground. It’d be beautiful if it were not horrifying. More sounds of agony rise from beyond the entry.
The ashborn look on in horror. All except Lucan. He stands perfectly still, eyes on me, shining as though illuminated by their own Ether. Pure terror on my behalf fills his expression.
My lips part, and I want to cry out. To reach for him. But I can’t move. I’m going to die, and I don’t want to die alone.Was this how Saipha felt in her final moments when I pushed her away?
The thought guts me as violently as the sword.
I look back to the vicar, but it’s hard to see him now through the surge of Etherlight. The world blurs and fades away as Ether overwhelms my consciousness. It is the same feeling as when the Font exploded, but more complete. As if my body has been taken into a different time and place where the pain has vanished, as has my physical form.
