Page 99 of The Crimson Walls Of Algorath

Melia’s answering laugh was like chimes in the wind. She sipped her drink and shook her head. “His time will come, same as them all.”

A very different attitude than the last time they had spoken. What had happened to the morose Desmo who had appeared so very heartbroken over the fighters she lost in the Pits? This was the Melia they had warned her about. A viper who did not care for the souls she shepherded toward death.

“The dhemon?” Ariadne asked, forcing curiosity into her tone. “He was not here last time.”

Phulan shook her head. “The poor girl had been so interested, she almost spoke to him. I caught her just before the whole ordeal. Who knows what he would’ve done had she been the one in his way?”

With a scoff, Melia’s smile slipped into an eyeroll. “There’s a reason I keep that brute locked away. It’s for everyone’s safety. He’s bloodthirsty, and I’m shocked anyone chose him for such…activities.”

Ariadne bit back the scream rising in her throat. She spoke of Azriel as though he were a monster.

I hate you more than you hate yourself.

Gods, she had been no better when she learned the truth about him. She had seen a monster, a beast, when she had looked upon his dhemon form. But so much had changed in so little time. From frightened Golden Rose to the Caersan who trained with the enemy.

“Bloodthirsty?” Ariadne pressed, praying her question sounded innocent enough.

“Do you not find all dhemons to be so after what happened to your parents?” Melia quirked a brow. “He is imprisoned for a reason.”

She curled her shoulders in and shifted her gaze to the floor. A quiet, meek Caersan woman with a past still too fresh to discuss. “I did not mean—”

“Of course not!” Phulan wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close. “Don’t think on it.”

Yet when she looked up again, Melia studied her with a sharp eye. The silver glinted as she drank again, not so much as blinking as she did so. “Apologies.”

She did not sound the least bit apologetic.

“If you’ll excuse us,” Phulan said and steered Ariadne away before Melia could respond. “We should go.”

The mission for the evening, after all, was forfeit. There was nothing left for them to accomplish. With Azriel not in his right mind and doing—gods, she could not think about it—they would be forced to rework their plan. Seeing the evils of the Pits and the parties only lit a fire under Ariadne.

If they did not act quickly, there would be no one left to set free.

Chapter 23

Emillie could not sit still. Not with the wedding mere days away. The last time her nerves had gotten so terrible had been in the nights following Ariadne’s abduction. That marriage provided the same level of anxiety as believing one’s sister was dead? She certainly had not anticipated it.

So she threw herself into what she had done during those long nights of wondering what had become of Ariadne: she read. First, she devoured the classics on medicine. Those always soothed her immortal, quick-healing, and illness-barren soul. Learning about salves and tonics never failed to ease the tightness in her chest.

When she finished with medicinals, she moved on to history. To start, she poured over the same texts she always enjoyed. Comfort reads of sorts. Lineage of the high fae, the advancements of the avians, and even the ancient texts on the pantheon who ruled over Myridia.

Eventually, however, the tried and true tomes that once provided comfort were but a blur of ink on paper, no longer holding her attention for long. Perhaps she had read them too many times, and the repetition had burned through her.

So she looked to editions she had never before entertained. One in particular drew her interest with its plain brown leather binding and black lettering that spelled a title in an ancient language she did not know or even recognize. Her father was one for refined extravagance. To have a book that did not fit his typical aesthetic was a curiosity.

Emillie hefted the large tome from the shelf and sat on the library couch with it in her lap. The weight pressed down on her thighs as though attempting to pin her to the cushions. Though she would rather tuck her feet under herself to read, the awkward size of the book kept them firmly on the floor.

At first, she feared the text itself would be written in the strange language, and while much of it was, enough of the notes in the margins shed light on what was written. The beginning notes were as she remembered in her governess’s history lessons, matching the information she had read enough times on her own to have memorized.

Vampires, once plains mages who roamed in clan-like communities, never settled for long in any one place. It was on the Steppes of Sora that they collided with the desert mages. They traded spells and rituals, potions and secrets amongst one another while mixing families and settling into sedentary villages.

Until, of course, several plains clans merged and sought to rule the Steppes. The desert mages, having just as much claim to the land and its bounties, retaliated. The Mage Wars not only stripped the Steppes of its natural magical qualities but ripped families apart as they chose sides in opposition to their parents, siblings, and friends.

Emillie had never seen a written account of the ritual the desert mages used to bring down the vampires’ presumptuous ancestors. Whenever she inquired after how it happened, the response had always been the same: mages across Myridia forbade such practices, therefore losing the incantation and process to time, along with the potential to undo it. How, then, had her family come to obtain a book with its secrets?

Nonetheless, she consumed the information with morbid curiosity. A curiosity, she would not admit to herself, borne of the desire to reverse the vampiric curse and reclaim the daylight for herself. Instead, Emillie absorbed each word due to the slim likelihood that any other vampires, Caersan or Rusan, had ever read it. She dared not waste the opportunity to read and then reread the text in order to commit it to memory.

The ritual had taken place at the height of a midsummer solar eclipse. With twelve dozen mages, desert and allied plains alike, gathered wearing a stone called a Noct, they began an incantation. The words summoned their collective power to not only bind the attacking mages’ magic but to curse them to remain in the sun’s shadow for eternity.

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