Jett nodded, affirming he’d understood the order, and to my relief, he kept his emotions in check.
Sirro’s gaze lazily worked its way to mine. “With me.”
Jett moved ahead, his pace slow.
I shortened my leggy stride to match Sirro’s, confusion running rife through my mind. This whole meeting with Sirro, from Byron, to Aldert, to his fondness for my mother, was disorienting, and I wondered what the Horned God was up to, whether we’d inadvertently stepped into quicksand, led to the exact spot he wanted us—sucked under by cloying machinations.
The hallway was like a wind tunnel. Not currents of air, but of immense power, bottlenecked and thrumming against the bone-lined walls, buffeting against my flesh as it swept all around me. The pulse of Sirro’s dark might matched my worried heartbeat. As we passed beneath each hanging lantern, the light crackled and flickered and fizzed.
The sound of our footfalls clattered against the long hallway curved with the bones. They were from some ancient beast, or maybe it was more correct to saybeasts. The mottled bones, differing in size and color, didn’t quite match as they would have done if they had come from a single part of a creature. As I’d done on prior occasions, called to a meeting at his private residence, I wondered if he’d killed these creatures and if these were his trophies set in a morbid and strange display case.
As we neared the point where the hallway ended and the threshold of the atrium came into view, Sirro slowed his pace.The otherworldly threads linking him to his Familiar, trailing behind, churned and rippled like smoke.
I adjusted my stride, shooting him a curious look.
“I want something else. Someone else. A creature that’s hidden from me for some time in Ascendria. You’ll need a hunter. Take that friend of yours, Mela Vaduva, with you.”
Mela.
My only true friend outside my family.
But she’d be a shattered soul after what Sirro had done back at the temple. Elyse, the girl she’d finally dared to share her love for, had been exposed as a fire-torch, another. And Sirro had slaughtered Elyse’s parents for defying the canon of the Horned Gods by hiding their daughter’s true nature.
There was nothing you could do against a Horned God. I knew that better than anyone else.
Sirro’s voice lost its polish and became roughened. “His name is Yezekael. Find him and bring him to me.”
Whoever orwhateverYezekael was, I doubted Sirro wanted to invite him over for a friendly catch-up. I raised a brow, hoping for more information than only a name.
He changed the topic, jarring my thoughts. “The Witches Ball isn’t far away now.”
“Three months.” The whereabouts of the ball was still unknown to everyone. When the forerunners of the wandering spirit of Cernesse crossed the skies, the Horned Gods would discover the location of the event.
“Plans are afoot for those creatures creeping out from dank cracks and crevasses. Offerings will be needed to keep their gluttonous appetites in check.”
Stolen souls. The reason so many Hunters were attending this meeting. Not just mortals, but lesser creatures of our world too.
Most of the witches, those Horned Gods that crafted spells from obscure ingredients and an ancient language holdingpower within its words, were reclusive to borderline paranoid and kept their identities hidden. Some of those dark creatures gorged themselves at the Ball and then slumbered between events.
Sirro drew to a halt at the edge of the hallway. With the open-spaced atrium before us, we could see Byron walking between the seated rows of Heads, issuing duties to the Houses. His stride purposeful. His tone iron.
A cluster of small spiders crawled across the shivering web strung across the glass ceiling. Wraith-wolves prowled, their strange eyes aglow and fixed on those attending.
Jett glanced over his shoulder and saw that Sirro and I hadn’t entered the atrium. Perplexed, he stopped walking, his hand briefly massaging his wounded side. He stood a polite distance away, but with his keen hearing, he’d be able to listen in to my conversation with the Horned God.
My gaze drifted over the four main players here. The short, stocky Battagli who cleaned our illegally earned wealth; Dimitre Zielenski, who was in charge of the brothels; the gambling arm overseen by Lukus Reska; and Yoran Novak ruled the crime syndicates that distributed our magic-infused drugs, created by the Pellans or, as Sirro rightly said, by Lower House Simonis.
But the rest of the attendees were hunters and sat in rows facing each other.
Byron strode between them. His gray three-piece suit was the same shade as his salted, tawny hair. He clenched his square jaw as he spoke about the different mortals and lesser otherworldly creatures he wanted the Houses to hunt, the numbers needed. He wasn’t a man who smiled much. I’d only seen that side of him when I spent my obligatory days with Nelle over the past year. He loved his daughters and had barely tolerated my presence.
Despite always thinking my claiming Nelle was straight-up revenge, last night he finally understood exactly what my familywas after. Tucked away in Byron’s treasury was a small piece of a god that had been Zrenyth’s Warlord, whose power lived and breathed in an ancient relic. Brangwene’s Hjarte.
We needed it.
Desperately.
Pulling my phone from my pocket, I flicked my father a quick message informing him of Sirro’s advisement to keep quiet about Jett and the Gestelt bolt.
