“Oh, I bet!” Beatrice’s eyes glimmered. “The way they talk about him during meetings, it makes him sound like a god! I can’t believe it— our Hidden King, finally here to lead us into a new era. I’ve been waiting for this moment for decades, and it’s finally coming true!”
Beatrice spent our time together babbling about Elijah, most of which was fabricated nonsense. I felt bad for her, getting her news directly from the acolytes and nowhere else.
We spent the rest of the day cleaning, until dinner. At this point we were escorted to some sort of large lunchroom, and served a cold supper of bread and cheese. I found my friends at an isolated table in the corner, and slid beside them.
Alexei appeared completely miserable. Kiara threaded her fingers through his and asked, “Are you okay?”
He scowled. “I hate it here.”
“We’ll be gone as soon as we retrieve the stone,” Kiara said, but with a wary glance at me, she didn’t look entirely convinced. Getting out of here was no small task, even if Arthur and the rest of them came in to provide back-up.
“Did any of you hear rumors?” I asked. I poked at my stale bread and gave Emma my cheese, seeing as how it was the only thing she could eat.
Emma shook her head. “We haven’t found a thing.”
“Maybe we made a mistake, and the griffin stone isn’t here,” Alexei worried. “Maybe we’ve damned ourselves.”
“Don’t say that,” Kiara insisted. “We can’t give up.”
Alexei appeared on the verge of doing so. As the lunchroom doors opened, more people flooded in.
“There are a lot more people here now than there were before,” Emma said as she watched all the fae march in. “Where’d they come from?”
“The Black Claw owns a couple of businesses secretly, in the city,” Alexei explained. “Cultists are escorted there by the higher members to work for free, to bring money back to the cult.”
“They don’t even get paid?” Emma asked.
“No. They give their wages as an offering back to Droga, but we all know it goes into the pockets of the acolytes. And since the businesses are owned by the Black Claw, trying to leave during your shift is near impossible. They have supervisors watching at all times.”
I shook my head in disgust. So many in the cult were ordinary people being exploited by the evil doers at the top. I’d thought anyone who was a part of the Black Claw was evil, but clearly, that wasn’t the case. The group was mostly made up of victims, with a few perpetrators and their bullies running the show.
Still— as full as the lunchroom was, there weren’t as many cultists here as I’d estimated there would be. The cult was clearly dying. They didn’t number in the thousands like they had when they’d attacked my father onPallenoc—theNight of Burning Skies. Judging by the beds we’d seen, the cult only had a hundred or so members left. And I bet the acolytes at the top were the ones murdering people, keeping all the power.
Callista slid into the seat next to me. It made me bristle. “Hey, guys,” she said in a cheery tone. “How’d your first day go?”
Her friendliness was fake. She’d been assigned to watch us.
“It was fine,” Emma said with a shrug. Alexei stared down at the table, and I hoped he kept it together long enough for Callista to leave.
“I know the menial work is boring, but trust me, it won’t last forever,” Callista said. “Once you earn their trust, you’ll be assigned to therealwork.”
“Meaning?” Emma asked.
“I’m recruiting students from the school to come join us. That’s why they let me come and go,” Callista said. “The acolytes trust me. If you four work hard enough, they’ll let you go back to the school too, to convert others. It’s our most important mission.”
“How did you know you were doing the right thing by joining?” Kiara dared to ask.
Callista swallowed her bread. “It’s normal to doubt, when you first sign up,” she told Kiara. “But without the Black Claw, nothing is ever going to get better for the Unseelie fae. The acolytes can be mean sometimes, and some say they go too far, but they have our best interests in mind. It’s better than being hunted down in the streets by a Seelie.”
A shifter at the corner of the lunchroom caught my eye. His face was muddled with bruises, and he walked stiffly, as if he had broken limbs. He appeared overly grateful at the food the other cultists placed on his tray.
Callista nudged me, and pointed at the poor-looking shifter. “He just got out of Custody. It’s where we keep all the traitors,” she noted. “Tried to run away and all that.”
Her meaning was clear. They’d beaten and starved him until he complied.
She shrugged. “I mean, he knows better. The punishment for trying to leave is set. Alexei knows that.”
Alexei paled. Kiara trembled, about to stick up for him, but Emma cut her off before she could reveal too much.
