Page 34 of Divine Fate (Cursed Legacies #4)

33

EVERETT

“I cannot believe I actually miss hearing you scútráchae inside my head,” Silas mutters. “It would be useful right now to telepathically communicate with Crypt, but gods only know I have enough moronic input bouncing around in my skull.”

“And then there are all those pesky voices you have to deal with,” Baelfire shoots back, gripping his own head with a growl as we stalk through this snowy, tree-filled landscape.

I don’t bother jumping into the usual banter. We’ve been away from Maven for almost an hour, but already, it feels like my lungs are slowly collapsing. I pause in our trek to brace my frost-covered hands on my knees, trying to breathe as I spiral.

What if the wards on the castle fail, and all the people clamoring to see a demigoddess in the flesh manage to get inside? What if she realizes we excluded her from this and thinks it’s because we doubt her abilities?

I remind myself that this is necessary. We needed to get her heart as soon as fucking possible, because the thought of her holy magic suddenly running out and her dropping dead again is strangling me.

Unless…

What if it’s already happened, and this time I’m not even there to hold her while she dies?

Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods, oh ? —

“Hey. Breathe,” Baelfire says, gripping my shoulder to pull me upright. “In. Out.”

“I know how breathing works,” I manage as snow begins to fall even thicker around us.

Felix is at the front of our group and pauses to turn around, calling, “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” Silas says quickly. I don’t think he’s aware that he steps slightly in front of me to keep Felix from seeing my spiraling hyperventilation. He's clearly still paranoid about our quintet being perceived as weak. “Mind your business and continue following the trail.”

Silas is still holding one of Maven’s sweatshirts that he used to performed some kind of necromantic tracking spell to lead us to her heart. That led to Felix transporting us here, to the colorless outskirts of the ever-spreading Nether border in West Virginia.

I’ve been here before. In fact, I think we’re close to one of my more shameful battle sites.

Felix mutters something under his breath about how vile it is to be around necromantic magic, but he waits for us. After a moment, I can finally breathe again as I shove down every thought and focus instead on the asshole we’re hunting.

Dagon.

According to Silas, he used to be Amadeus’s head necromancer who experimented on Maven, torturing her for years until she became a revenant. Before Crypt slipped into Limbo to scout ahead, he briefly mentioned that Dagon often appears in Maven’s nightmares.

He didn't give details, but he didn't need to. As much as we all want to bring her heart back, killing that twisted son of a bitch is also pretty fucking high on our priority list.

We continue trekking through this snowy terrain as Silas and Felix follow the magic Baelfire and I can’t see. Sometimes Silas talks to people who aren’t here, and Baelfire’s head is obviously in pain, but at long last we get to the top of a big hill—and there it is, down below.

The small town I froze solid, people and all.

Baelfire blinks down at the macabre, ice-coated display. “Holy fuck. That’s a lot of not-ice-sculptures.”

Some humans are frozen while trying to run away. Others are encapsulated in ice inside their cars, or rushing out their front doors, or any number of things. Houses and town roads gleam under a thick layer of ice that is slowly being covered in a fresh layer of snow.

Felix looks at me, still expressionless, but there’s no missing the accusation in his voice. “I heard about this. You seriously didn’t even have the decency to unfreeze these innocent people?”

I wish I could.

I didn’t mean to freeze anything. There was an unexpected surge of shadow fiends near this area months ago, and when I came with troops to defend it, things got ugly. I was injured badly and then hypnotized by a Nether siren whose song hooked deep into my brain, feeding off my emotions and compelling me to wreak havoc.

I don’t even remember using my abilities. I woke up later with Asher Douglas tending to my injuries and an entire town of innocent humans frozen in time. The siren song must have affected my abilities somehow, because no matter how I’ve tried to melt the nevermelt, it stays.

Maybe if I had control of my abilities, I could undo what I did here. But even then, I don’t know the survival rate for being trapped in nevermelt for months.

“Come on,” I mutter, turning in the direction we were headed before.

“No,” Felix snaps, though his expression remains inscrutable. “Those are innocent people. It’s wrong to leave them like that. Whatever you asked me to bring you out here for, you need to go down and undo?—”

Crypt materializes in front of us, blowing reverium smoke into the Nether caster’s face as we all startle. “Don’t bother with the lecture on morality. I found him,” he adds, addressing the rest of us.

Felix coughs, waving away the smoke. “Him? Him who?”

“Dagon,” Baelfire growls like he’s already envisioning ripping the necromancer’s head off.

For the first time, Felix’s face morphs into something besides composure as he rears back. “Excuse me? You could’ve mentioned we were coming out here on a damned suicide mission. I would never have left Kenzie’s side if I knew he’s what you’re out here for.”

“Kenzie Baird?” Baelfire asks, confused before he catches on. “Oh, shit. You must be the missing caster in her quintet. Congrats—I didn’t hear about that.”

“Of course, you didn’t. You’ve been too busy burning down the north as a winged monster,” Felix huffs, turning to glare at me next. “What is this about? Revenge? Because, as much as I’d love to see Dagon or any of the other necromancers from Amadeus’s court meet their end, you’re all hardly in the best condition to take him on. I’ve only seen Dagon in person one time, and that was when a bunch of humans from my compound were forced to watch him sacrifice someone who manifested magic and bring them back as a lich. And by the way, bringing someone back as a lich requires an incredible amount of power and magical fortitude?—”

“We get it,” Baelfire yawns. “He’s scary. Big whoop. No need to keep yapping.”

The Nether caster rolls his eyes. “You’re as bad as Maven. She once threatened to sew my mouth shut with my own shredded tongue if I didn't stop talking, and I’d barely even said ten words to her.”

Crypt sighs wistfully, looking out over the white winter landscape like he wishes he could be at Everbound right now. “That's our girl.”

“So damn violent,” Baelfire grins.

“Unhinged,” I agree, my cheeks warming since I can’t help thinking about last night.

Felix throws his one arm in the air like he's had enough of this. “Gods above, you all really do belong together. Fine. If you’re set on getting yourselves killed and turned into Undead puppets, I won't try to stop you—but I’m not risking my happily bonded life for this idiotic plan, so I'll be waiting here. If you die, I’m leaving.”

Crypt stomps out his cigarette, shrugging. “Fair on all fronts.”

He starts to say something else, but his markings light up brightly before he breaks into a sudden coughing fit, grimacing as he drops to his knees. His next cough sends a spray of bright red blood across the white snow.

I swear. So does Baelfire. Silas crouches beside the incubus as his coughing fit winds down. Crypt bats Silas away when he tries to help him up, and as he does, I can’t help noticing that the swirling light and dark markings on his hands are gone.

Felix doesn’t bother hiding his surprise. “What’s happening to him?”

Crypt is…dying.

My other quintet members and I exchange solemn looks as that truth becomes more obvious than ever.

When we were younger, I could never figure out the Nightmare Prince’s curse. Sometimes I thought maybe he didn’t even have one. He was inhumanly ruthless, stronger than most incubi ever dream of being, and didn’t give a shit about anything. Basically, he was untouchable.

But now, seeing him struggle to get to his feet as his curse wracks his body?

I almost can’t watch.

“You good?” I check quietly.

Crypt wipes blood off his mouth, completely ignoring my question and everyone’s concerned looks. Instead, he gestures in the direction Silas’s spell was leading us.

“The prick’s in an abandoned cabin that way,” he rasps. “Before we pop in, I’ll weaken him.”

“Enough with the blasted singing!” Silas hisses at one of the nearby trees before he frowns at Crypt. “Weaken him, how?”

“Wisps. Keep up, but don’t go in until the screaming stops,” he offers vaguely before vanishing back into Limbo.

Felix stays there as our meeting point to travel back, but the rest of us continue to follow the tracking spell that only Silas can see. As we trudge toward a cabin in the distance that I can barely make out through the snowfall, a low croak nearby makes me look around.

Three ravens just perched on a nearby tree to watch us.

Those beady-eyed birds used to torment me. I loathed them and saw them as a sign that the gods were mocking me.

Now that I know it was Maven all along, keeping an eye on me all the way from Paradise…

Godsdamn me, I adore her.

“Maven’s ravens will tell her where we are soon,” I murmur, looking ahead again.

Baelfire barks a laugh. “Maven's Ravens sounds like a band. Don't worry. We'll be picking up this asshole’s charred bones and bringing them back to her before she can try following us into danger.”

Silas jumps through the snow like he's crossing a chasm of some kind. I don't have the heart to tell the lunatic that this is the flattest, safest terrain we've come across so far.

“Why bring back his bones?” Silas frowns.

“Why the hell not?” Baelfire shrugs. “Just picture Maven's face when she sees them.”

That's true. I can already imagine that morbid, beautiful smile curling her lips. Our keeper would love a vengeful, gruesome gift like that.

As we near the snow-lined cabin ahead, Silas holds out an arm to stop us.

“Wait. There are several severe magic snares laid here that I need to disarm first.”

Bael rubs his temples, cursing at his dragon. “You sure they're actually there, or are you just…you know. Seeing shit?”

Silas considers that, stoops to pick up a branch nearby, and tosses it a couple of yards in front of us. The second it touches the snowy ground, it explodes into dust.

“Damn. I’m still not sure,” the blood fae frowns. “If the stick had exploded, I would have had my answer, but it’s clearly unharmed.”

I rub my scarred face. “Fucking gods, we are so screwed.”

Baelfire pats Silas's shoulder. “The stick is gone, Si. Do your thing before the asshole in there stops screaming.”

Sometimes I envy shifters for their heightened senses. I don't get to hear thenecromancer’s suffering from this distance from whatever the wisps are doing to him.

Silas calls blood magic into his hands and makes quick work of the magic snare spells, now and then snapping at the voices in his head or flinching away from nothing. Once he's finished, we hurry closer to the cabin, and I finally start to hear it.

Hoarse, frantic screaming. Glass shattering. And then, after a few more seconds, abrupt silence.

Without speaking, we move as a cohesive team. Baelfire breaks down the door at the same time Silas throws up a protective spell around us for good measure. The second we step into the ransacked, shredded interior of the cabin, I freeze the gray-skinned necromancer from the neck down.

Dagon is covered in lacerations that ooze dark, inky sludge, like his blood is congealed. He's missing an ear that was slashed off. It looks like a whirlwind of knives just blew through here, and I realize Crypt must have let wisps loose in here.

I don't see the incubus, but there are two mummified corpses laying on the massive kitchen table near this living room. Those poor humans probably owned this remote cabin before the runaway necromancer decided to go into hiding here.

Dagon begins chanting in a strange language, sending darkness flooding into the room. Silas throws out a counter spell that pushes back the dark mist, but the other necromancer is already hissing something else that makes the ice around him crack and shatter completely.

Damn it. I tried to make it nevermelt.

Dagon makes a strange motion with his hands, and mirage-like images of him fill the room, ghostly optical illusions that crowd around us as he limps quickly toward a door.

As soon as one of the optical illusions touches me, my skin starts to bubble and blister, my skin darkening. I shout in pain as it starts to spread—but this sadistic freak of nature made a mistake in thinking I'd let him go, after everything he did to Maven.

I'm not fucking around. The metaphorical gloves are coming off.

Before he can reach the door, I swipe my blistering arm through the air, concentrating to make my rampant abilities as accurate as possible.

A wickedly sharp blade of ice cuts through the air. Dagon screams as he falls to the hardwood floor, his dismembered legs twitching nearby.

A wave of blood-red magic surges from Silas, dispelling the mirage copies of Dagon. It clearly takes a lot out of the fae, because his nose starts to drip blood. Meanwhile, Baelfire stoops to grip our now-legless enemy by the throat, dragging him closer.

Dagon reaches up to claw at Baelfire's arm with blackened fingertips. When some kind of dark magic begins gathering in his hands as he prepares to attack again, I decide to nip that shit in the bud and summon a nevermelt blade.

With two flourishes of my wrist, Dagon’s blackened hands drop to the floor, too. He screams and swears in a language I don't understand. When Baelfire roughly shoves the heavily injured necromancer into a wooden chair nearby, I finally get a good look at him.

Dagon is bony as hell and dressed in gray robes like he stepped out of a time gone by. His skin is ashier than Felix’s, and his hood has fallen back to reveal a bald head covered in dark runes. His eyes are sunken and completely colorless, just pale pools of soulless, gleaming malice.

He looks even worse when an unhinged grin bares his sharpened, yellowed teeth. “ In te olfaca palmarius me ume. Im telum ,” he hisses in laughter.

Silas scowls. “He said he can smell his masterpiece on us. His scourge.”

“She's not your anything,” I correct, pointing my blade at his throat.

“She returned,” Dagon manages in heavily accented English, his face beading with sweat as his dark, thick, inhuman blood begins to drip onto the hardwood floor below. “I always suspected she was more than merely mortal. My masterpiece was destined for more than my lord’s plan. I made her what she is.”

Baelfire snarls, “Shut your nasty fucking mouth and tell us where her heart is.”

Dagon just laughs again, the sound an airy hiss as he struggles in the wooden seat.

Crypt appears in the room finally. Shit—the wisps clearly got to him, too. His clothes are pockmarked with still-bleeding cuts. There's a particularly bad one on his chest.

Still, he throws down several items as he stares down Dagon. It takes a second of frowning at the items before I figure out what the hell I'm looking at.

There are a couple of braids of silky black hair. Maven's hair. Beside them are old, crusty, bloodstained bandages that Silas reacts to strongly enough for me to decide they must be covered in our keeper’s blood. There's a vial of more blood, two heavily sketched-in leather-bound journals, a broken dagger, and other odds and ends that Crypt rounded up from this abandoned cabin.

This fucking creepy necromancer has been collecting all kinds of shit related to my snowdrop.

Crypt was right. He’s clearly obsessed with her.

Irritated, I bury the tip of my blade in one of Dagon's upper shoulders. He shouts in pain as I lean down to meet his disgusting eyes.

“Where is the heart?” I demand.

His breath stutters before he starts laughing again, hysterical as he bleeds out. Since he's being difficult, Silas turns and calls more magic to his hands, casting a spell to find it faster. Meanwhile, Crypt stalks over to the limbless necromancer, a dangerous smile on his face.

“Amused, are we? I’ve seen everything you put her through, you feculent swine. The torture. The damned screaming .”

“Such beautiful screams,” Dagon wheezes, still laughing nonsensically. Then his gaze slips to the mummified corpses nearby. “Vivere rursus ad mortem!”

Dark magic pulses through the air, dropping the temperature in this abandoned cabin even further. All at once, the corpses on the table lurch upright, moving with the unnatural speed of the Undead as they dart toward us.

One of them tackles Crypt immediately, bringing down the already-weakened incubus as Dagon collapses. The other Undead sinks broken teeth into my already injured arm. The shock of the pain makes me drop my blade of ice as I struggle to shake off the aggressive fiend.

Crypt shouts in pain just before a bright blast of Silas’s red magic illuminates the space, disintegrating the Undead attacking the Nightmare Prince. I finally kick off the one biting me and scramble to retrieve my ice sword, slashing quickly to cut the damn thing in half. Both of its halves are still trying to get to me, but I ignore them and turn to see that Baelfire is now gripping Dagon by the front of his robes, hauling him high in the air.

“What are the chances we can find Maven’s heart without having to ask this sick fucker another godsdamned question?” Baelfire snarls.

Silas wipes blood from his nose. “I’d say high, because my tracking spell leads into the basement.”

“Good.” A strange sound rumbles low in Baelfire’s throat before the shifter breathes blue fire that quickly ignites the necromancer.

Dagon’s screaming is different this time. He’s in more pain, thrashing helplessly as the flames consume him and a horrific smell fills the room, almost strong enough to turn my stomach.

And the entire time that Maven’s old tormentor burns, Baelfire holds him high in the air, watching with pure, satisfied menace on his typically smiley face.