Page 16 of Antiletum (The Nocturne #1)
Fuck.
I wonder if it will accept something formerly dead and brought back to life? It’s worth a shot.
Abandoning my clothing on the floor, I make the final trek into the adjunct holding cell.
Rot is thick and cloying, like something alive and creeping, wanting to slide in your mouth and close off your throat. Bodies are always promptly disposed of, but blood takes root in the porous floor. It’s caked thick and sours as badly as a corpse. A maggot crunches under my replaced boot.
Couldn’t quite bring myself to go barefoot in this chamber of decay.
A frail body lies splayed, limbs twisted at awkward angles, and I smile.
What a perfect way to start, raising him from the dead in such a painful position.
Ideas flash through my mind, a glorious montage of violence and blood.
It has been so very long. The urge to torture, kill, and raise him again for hours is incredibly tempting.
My smile slips away. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to savor his pain tonight. And who knows how the Heartstone and Ellden clocks may protest that magnitude of using magic outside of my bond. None of the clocks have strained since Delaney tried to reach Rainah, but they’re about to now.
No, Parliament has us very well trained.
Hurrying along, my wife will be wondering where I am soon, and I am more anxious to return to her than I am to satisfy my bloodlust.
It’s quick work, straightening the corpse’s arms and legs to be lying in a more comfortable position when he rises. He might not even scream.
Crouching next to the body, the particles of death that cling to life scratch at me. It’s not even a thought to collect the invisible dust, to call it to my hands and condense it within myself into something absolutely vital . Thriving . It’s instinct. Natural.
Already, I can feel the resistance of my bound magic, tugging at my cells and trying to eat away at my flesh like a parasite as payment. But the antiletum stops it, calms it back into submission. Necrosis is soothed away into its void hole to wait for another chance to claim me.
A hand sweeps over the cadaver’s chest, commanding those particles back into his body, telling his heart to beat, his lungs to breathe, his blood to flow like a raging river once more.
With a gasp, his eyes shoot open, the inside corners cobwebbed with bloody red.
He gurgles, trying to speak, his voice broken from where he slit his throat. Clearly his knife went deep enough to damage his vocal chords.
Not as obtuse and unprepared as I thought.
Before I can even begin to formulate a plan for yes or no questions, his cheeks bulge, a deformed bladder inflating. Whatever is inside rolls around, like a baby within the womb, while his terrified eyes stream.
“What the fuck?” My whisper is barely audible.
Something pokes between his cracked lips: a small foot .
With an ear shattering death rattle, his jaw cranks open wide—far wider than is humanly possible.
From his open mouth, a red eyed lemming appears. Possessed. A sickening crack echoes around the cellar, making my stomach churn. His jaw falls with a clatter to the floor, teeth breaking loose and scattering against stone. A nice, friendly game of dice.
He falls dead, whatever was placed inside eviscerating him from within, working beyond even my necromancy that demanded he stay alive until I say he can die.
Not a spy or assassin at all, but a messenger. Someone who shouldn’t have has learned my secret.
I can’t decide if I’m humored or offended by the lemming.
It isn’t much of a physical threat, it’s the symbolism behind it that matters.
Possibilities run through me of who might have sent it.
Roarke and his father would certainly have reason to want to topple me from where I stand.
But whose magic could have made this particular message possible? What else might they know?
No matter where it came from, it has to be disposed of. A demon rodent scuttling through the halls of The Citadel would certainly raise questions. The lemming scurries up the wall, across the ceiling, casting horrifyingly long shadows of itself in the thin gas lamp light.
With a sigh, I go to the lamp control, turning it all the way down.
Black swallows the cellar whole, a comforting absence of color. Night has always been my friend. Its steadfast companionship wraps around me like a hug.
With wide open eyes, I hone in on my senses, dissecting the darkness for my prey.
A single, breathy gasp is all it takes to fully reinvigorate my elation after such an unfortunate derailment.
Very little convincing was needed for my wife to sneak away from the cavernous ballroom, dazzling with garlands of flowers and decorative lights hanging from the ribbed vaulted ceilings. She was quietly intrigued when I mentioned plans for us at breakfast.
Her eyes had gone glassy and her face slightly pink during the time I was gone, her elaborate hair style becoming loose from dancing and laughing, the feathers decorating the curls skewed. Beautiful. I found Delaney and Selise tipsy and giggling uncontrollably about Mallin being a terrible dancer.
Patiently, I waited while Selise shared with Delaney embarrassing stories of us all in finishing school.
That was the first lift in my mood. Witnessing Delaney make a friend of her own.
Her smile was genuine as a photographer halted us upon quitting the party for one more picture, hiding behind his cloth and blinding us in an exploding cloud of smoke and light. She even straightened my hat for me before we posed.
But right now, seeing Delaney’s undiluted joy and awe over where I have brought her …
“What do you think?” I ask softly, though the answer is written all over her lovely face. She doesn’t even know I have a better gift waiting for her in the conservatory, as soon as she’s ready to let me in.
But the spirlinary will do for now.
“It’s beautiful,” Delaney whispers, both hands tucked against her chest. Awestruck by the intricacy of the rose windows. “I wasn’t allowed to see it, during my only time visiting The Citadel. I…” she trails off.
Pulse thumping in my throat and jaw muscles tensed, I wait to see how she finishes that sentence.
“I had to leave before I got the chance.”
This morning, she had shared vaguely with me that she’d only been to Omnitas once before, in her youth. My molars grind. Same as they did during that particular conversation. Holding in a manic outburst. Both then and now.
“Well, now you may come here whenever you like.”
Delaney walks to the stained windows of the spirlinary in The Citadel. The one that now belongs solely to her. Is it selfish to close down the most elaborate place of worship within the borders of the Noctua faction—perhaps even the world—for my wife’s personal use? Couldn’t rightfully say.
Seems reasonable enough to me.
With a slow stroll through the yawning room, she brushes fingertips over the statues honoring Noctua, Vulpes, and Panthera .
Dips them into a burbling feature of moonwater tucked in the corner.
Inspects the altar littered with bottles of more moonwater and bowls and mirrors and feathers and all other manner of items to aid those with weaker magic.
Items Delaney doesn’t need, but clearly used in her failed attempt to speak to her dead sister, hoping it would lead to success .
“I was so partial to the spirlinary at our estate because it was the only place I was allowed to necromance. My parents made it inaccessible to anyone else, when they couldn’t stop me from practicing altogether.
” She stops, offering me a small, sad smile that makes me want to raise her deplorable parents from the dead just so they can meet their end all over again.
Unfortunately, they burned to death and now there’s nothing left.
“Why were they adamant on hiding you? What were they so afraid of?” There’s no point in asking. No matter the answer, I’ll never understand.
I want nothing more than to wrap my arms around Delaney, let her be safe and accepted within them. If only she wanted to be accepted. By me.
“I could ask you the same,” she responds in reference to my own magic not being unveiled until I was seventeen.
With a shake of my head, I answer somewhat defensively. “My father did what he had to. When he found himself in a position to support and uplift me, he did. I owe everything to him.”
Delaney’s eyes turn steely, black eating through those specks of blue as her pupils flare.
“My parents never rose to ranks anywhere near your father.” She scoffs a bitter laugh, finishing her bubbly wine and placing the glass on a pew.
“Rainah’s marriage to a Lord would have brought them to the heights they so wanted to see. ”
My steps are slow, deliberate, coming up behind my wife who has turned her back on me again.
The black bodice of her gown swallows her like a snake, tight in its skin and refusing to shed.
The skirt flares into a perfect halo of black.
Though her face is turned away from me, I can see her gazing at the city below, guessing which direction her stare focuses on.
As if she’s drawn to a particular place.
The exact same way I am.
Delaney doesn’t shy away when I come directly behind her, so close I can feel the heat of her body, reaching for me like a ghost does its purpose—always just out of reach.
My hands find the dip of her waist, cuffing it loosely. She doesn’t resist. “There was no excuse for why your parents sheltered and stifled you as they did,” I say against her hair. “Even before my father made such strides to put to rest the discrimination against our magic. Certainly not after.”
Delaney glances over her shoulder. “My parents were still scared of the prejudice. Of how Parliament would punish them for lying about my showing and saying I was a grower like them all those years.”