Page 25 of Heartless Prince

Finally, the man in the front instructed us to remove our blindfolds. Then he stepped out of the car and opened the doors for us.

The night sky had no stars, so it was almost pitch black out here. From the glow of the car’s headlights, I could see we were standing on the edge of a forest. The smell of decomposing leaves and loamy earth filled my nostrils, and the darkness of the woods ahead made me feel claustrophobic even though it seemed to stretch for miles.

The man in the suit turned on a flashlight and nodded for us to follow him onto a narrow path. It was hilly and uneven with knotted roots crossing over it, and it branched at regular intervals. Man-made, but old.

I followed the path, shivering with each step. About a hundred yards in, I spotted a warm, flickering glow in a valley below. Voices drifted up to us, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

My nervousness and trepidation increased the closer we got. What if Mellie was wrong? What if these people were actually dangerous and they caught me sneaking in under false pretenses? The thought of what could happen made a chill swirl through me, and my hands turned cold and clammy. All this over a damn paper, just because I was determined to get an A. It was a stupid idea. I should pretend I felt sick and ask to leave right now, before I got in too deep.

And yet, I couldn’t. My feet kept following the suited man’s path through the woods, as if that strange magnetic pull I felt earlier was still drawing me along, dragging me ever-closer to the mysteries of Crown and Dagger. As much as I knew it was probably a bad idea, I couldn’t back out. I wanted to see what they did out here, wanted to see if it was just as silly as Mellie thought, or if there was something more to it that she was unaware of. Something darker, something more sinister.

The path turned downhill, and we drew closer to the valley. A huge portion was delineated with tall burning torches that filled the area with a warm orange glow. In the middle of that area was a semi-circular Roman-style theatre made from ashlar stones with stacked seating around the auditorium and a large raised rectangular slab in the center of that. Along the straight edge of the semi-circle was a wide stage, and behind that was an imposing building with carved stone columns and a pavilion on the other side.

To the left of the outdoor theatre, way off in the distance, I could see an enormous metal statue of a bull. In the shadowy ground in front of it, lit with the flickering flames of only two small torches, were nine deep rectangular holes. They each looked large enough to fit a coffin in.

Creepy.

We were led over to the pavilion and into the building, and a rhythmic drumming started up not long after we stepped into it.

“Holy shit,” I breathed, gazing at the wondrous sights inside. Mellie was right: the event really was like a carnival. Everything moved so quickly with such chaotic visuals, wildly-flashing lights and a cacophony of sounds that I could barely take it all in as we walked through the various rooms.

Upper-level society members in masks and robes milled around, drinking, talking and laughing. Actors who’d already started their shows were getting right into their roles. Some of them were funny, others were downright creepy.

In one room, five hooded figures dangled a man dressed in rags and chains over a pool of dark red fluid while guests watched him beg for his life. In another, a man dressed as the Devil jumped around, letting out deep-throated shrieks and calling out unfamiliar Latin words. The next room had no fire or candles, but was lit with the glow of hundreds of fireflies instead—or at least something that appeared that way—and actors dressed as heavily-bandaged mummies were trudging around and moaning.

Yet another room had men dressed in elaborate golden Aztec-style outfits with shimmering feathers and jewels along with golden beaked masks. They were dragging laughing first-level Crown and Dagger members into stone seats and tying them up before forcing them to drink from skulls. I hoped they were fake…

From everything I was seeing, I assumed this interior carnival was something the first-level members had to go through before being allowed outside to complete the second-level initiation ritual in the theatre. It seemed like they had to experience each one of the rooms, with the final one being the skull-drinking gold room.

The suited man led me and the other girl into a quieter back area of the building.

“About fucking time,” grumbled a short curly-haired woman when she saw us. She hurried over to us and quickly inspected our dresses and makeup. “You’re the last to arrive.”

“Traffic was shit on the way out of the city,” said the man, lighting up a cigarette.

“And yet the others all managed to get here on time,” the woman replied with a sarcastic air. “Anyway, we have to begin soon,” she went on, yanking on my arm and forcing me to follow her. “You girls know the drill, right? When you’re told to go, you head out in single file and line up facing the auditorium, right at the back of the stage. You hold these out in front of you, right hands only.” She picked up two golden goblets and pressed one into my hand. The other went to the girl I arrived with.

A gong sounded from somewhere in the building, and the curly-haired woman’s eyes widened. “Okay, time to go. Come on,” she said, ushering us over to a group of other women in the same flowing white gowns as us.

We walked single file to a curtained area, and then we stepped out onto the concrete stage which overlooked the stone outdoor theatre. The chill of the night sky hit me immediately, but I ignored the shivers and stood with my head held high, holding out the goblet.

My arm began to ache after a few minutes, but I stayed where I was, surreptitiously casting my eyes around. The theatre seats were filling up with society members now. Their dark masks were either beaked or horned, and I could see rings glinting in the firelight on their right hands.

I was too far away to see properly from here, but I knew those rings had eight-pointed stars carved on them. The Star of Ishtar. I’d done some research on what that star meant when I first heard about it. Apparently in ancient Babylonian customs, the goddess Ishtar was associated with the planet of Venus, and she represented lust, fertility and war.

A horn blew, long and loud, three times.

The crowd settled into silence. A tall black-robed man stepped out onto the stage in front of us. He was wearing a golden mask with a cruel, predatory beak, but I knew who it was. Tobias King, the head of the society.

He said a few words in Latin, and then he lifted a hand and clicked his fingers. Heavy drumbeats began to echo around the theatre as several sturdy men in white Grecian robes carried nine coffins out into the auditorium.

“It is time for these men to die and be reborn into the second order,” Tobias called out. “They have passed our tests, and they have been deemed worthy.”

He recited a list of names, and nine men in dark blue first-level robes stepped down out of the audience and haltingly trod toward the open coffins. My heart skipped a beat, even though I knew it was all symbolic. The death and rebirth Tobias referred to was all metaphorical. Still, the idea of getting into a coffin and lying down made my stomach turn.

Tobias recited some sort of speech on the glories of the brotherhood as the nine men lay down in their coffins. Then the drums stopped and the lids were shut. The men in white robes picked them up, two to each coffin, and carried them out of the theatre and over to the giant bull statue in the distance.

I squinted so I wouldn’t miss anything, and I saw the coffins being lowered into the holes in the ground I saw earlier.

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