Page 14 of Hallowed Games

“No.” I didn’t trust a single person around us to hear what I was about to say. I cupped my gloved hand and leaned in close, taking care not to brush my lips against his ear. I whispered, “Not far from here, at the Derunis River. It’s five miles east of Penore. Meet me under the moss-covered bridge that spans the river. Do you remember where we went fishing last summer? Stay hidden, and meet me under the bridge.” I pulled away from him and smiled brightly. “Just think of today as an adventure. Something you could write about someday.”

He stared at me. I could see the worry written on his face, but he kept his questions to himself.

Even at the age of eight, he knew better than to trust strangers.

CHAPTER 7

I gripped Leo’s hand as the sun rose higher above the town square. On the cobblestones, surrounded by crooked buildings, the people of Briarvale pressed together, each of us hoping we could float away like ashes on the wind.

The middle of the crowd seemed the safest space to be. Lydia and Anselm stood a few feet away from us, holding each other’s hands. The Baron’s shoulders were squared, defiant, as if he still commanded the village.

Towering over the square, a stone platform cast a shadow over the crowd. They’d set up witches’ pyres, with wooden stakes jutting up to the skies like bony fingers. When Leo asked me what they were, I told him they were stocks where people would be pelted with rotten vegetables. He’d never seen stocks before, so he might believe it. But he was a clever boy, and he might have wondered why stocks would require driftwood, straw, and kindling at the base, or why all the Luminari on the platform held torches in the daylight.

They probably wouldn’t burn anyone today, but they wanted us to remember that they could.

My gaze swept over the Ravens, landing on Maelor. The torchlight danced over his masculine features. My breath caught in my throat. For a moment, I was sure he looked directly at me, and a shiver ran up my spine.

Beside him stood the Magister Solaris. I recognized his authority by the sun pendant around his neck. He wore a black cloak, too, but his was a rich velvet, an almost sensual material. Given the broadness of his shoulders, I could tell that under his cloak was the powerful body of a soldier. And like a soldier, he wore a sword slung around his waist.

I stared at him, and his terrible beauty sent a shiver down my spine. He reminded me of the Serpent himself—a sensual face marred by the cruel gleam of violence in his eyes. Maelor had the pale blue eyes of the heavens, and the Magister was a shadowy warrior from the abyss.

The Magister’s eyes scanned the crowd—strange amber eyes so bright, they almost looked like gold. And they were the only thing about him that moved; the rest of him was as still as the marble statues in the Dome, lending him an otherworldly presence. Had I seen him before? In a nightmare, perhaps? In the old Tyrenian style, he wore his long hair pulled back, with just a few wisps escaping to his strong jawline. He looked like a warrior who’d traveled through the centuries to be here, with a cold beauty that made my blood turn to ice.

Maelor and the Magister stood taller than the rest. Two of the most powerful men in the entire kingdom. Really, they looked exactly how I’d always imagined the old gods in the myths would look, the divine conquerors who demanded sacrifices and seduced mortals to ruin. Celestial and infernal alike. Was that why the Order had chosen these two to stand front and center? To remind us of our inferiority?

Fear slid down my skin like cold rain, and my thoughts flashed with a buried memory—blood spattered across bone-white wood anemones. I inhaled a shaky breath. Was I remembering a nightmare?

I blinked, refocusing my attention on the village scene. It wouldn’t do any good to let my nerves get the better of me.

Overhead, the skies had clouded over to an iron gray. A fierce wind whipped through Briarvale, whistling through the alleyways and tearing at our hair and cloaks. A few of the Ravens’ torches were snuffed out in the gale.

All around us, a wild hum of whispers filled the town square.

I smiled down at Leo, feigning nonchalance. “Everything will be fine.” I wished to the Archon I actually meant it.

Anselm stole a quick look at me. His forehead creased in worry, and I knew what he was thinking: both of the women he loved were Serpent-cursed. Lydia glanced at him, and she hugged him more tightly.

Dark panic hung in the air like a miasma, making it hard to breathe.

“You know me as your Magister Solaris, commander of the holy Luminari army.” The Magister stepped forward with an unnerving grace. “The Pater Sanctus has ordered a Finding to purify our kingdom by the divine will of the Archon. All around the kingdom, we’ve been finding dead, bloodless bodies. We know who to blame.” His deep, smooth voice seemed to float on the wind, carrying over the crowd. In fact, the timbre of his voice was deceptively soothing for a death knell. When he spoke, he rolled his Rs faintly—an accent I couldn’t quite place. “The Order depends on you to identify evil among your neighbors and root out the dark poison of the Serpent. As the Archon has taught us, we must resist the Serpent’s temptations. Power. Greed. Lust.” He delivered that last word in an almost velvety tone that made me wonder exactly how much he’d thought about lust in all his chaste days with the Order.

The Raven Lord stalked forward, scanning the crowd with his torch aloft. “And most of all, the Archon forbids magic that humans were never meant to wield. That power comes from the Serpent. But we are fortunate that the Pater Sanctus is here with us today so that he may restore us to grace in the eyes of the Archon.”

A frantic murmur rippled through the square, and the crowd started to part. The Baron held out his hand protectively before Lydia, and the two of them pushed back against me. From behind the Baron’s shoulder, I watched the Pater Sanctus slowly process toward the platform. My heart slammed hard.

Unlike the others in black, he wore a long, white cloak embroidered with the gleaming gold insignia of the Archon. Beneath his flowing cloak, burnished armor gleamed. The sound of his shifting metal hinges was the only thing to pierce the silence. There he was, killer of kings, the man who’d spread a gray mantle of death over the kingdom to suffocate us all.

Unlike the Magister and the Raven Lord, he looked ordinary—about fifty, with a close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard and rugged features. His dark, silver-streaked hair reached his chin. His thick black eyebrows knitted together, and he kept his gaze locked on the platform completely, as if the crowd didn’t exist.

In his white-gloved hands, he gripped an aged copy of the Luminis Codex as he climbed the stone steps toward the stakes. When he turned to face the crowd, he held his gaze above us. He might want to kill us, but he didn’t want to have to actually look at the rabble before him. The Pater clutched his codex against his chest with one hand. With the other, he signaled to the Magister.

The Magister’s gold eyes slid around the crowd. “We’ll have the names, now. The Pater wants twenty accused from Mistwood Shire.”

It made no sense to have a predetermined number of the guilty, but no one ever accused witch-hunts of excessive rationality.

Silence met the Magister’s demand.

The cool wind whipped over the platform, and the gleam in the Magister’s eyes looked almost predatory. “We shall have to begin persuading you, then.”

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