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CHAPTER FOUR

N ever Keep was a grave and I was buried deep, just a pile of bones stirring to the rising dawn.

The sun was up there somewhere, far beyond these frigid walls, but I was unable to reach its light.

In the dark, I saw my mother’s eyes, I heard her scream, felt her fingers wrap around mine and I remembered what it was like to walk in the sun at her side.

I tried to will the shadows away and turn back the clock, demanding they let me step into that beautiful past of mine.

I’d been scarred during my childhood, but I’d been loved too.

By Mama, by Harlon. Perhaps I’d spent too many days dwelling on the bad, focusing on Ransom and his mutts nipping at my heels instead of all the offerings the stars had laid out for me.

In this world, everyone had to earn their good moments, but I’d never realised they might stop coming entirely. The glimmer of my past was quickly lost to my reality, shattering into too many pieces to catch like fragments of falling starlight.

No, those days were long gone and I was the result of them.

This walking wound of a girl who sometimes felt all too close to falling into the oblivion inside her, never to find a way back.

That darkness was ever deepening, calling me to it and offering freedom within its clutches.

It was whispering a promise; if I surrendered to my pain, if I not only wore it but became it, I might just find the answer I’d long been searching for.

I might just become a creature fierce enough to take down Kaiser Brimtheon, and perhaps far more than that.

If only I would give myself fully to that whispering space inside me, lurking beyond the fissure carved through my soul since my mother’s death, then I might evolve into my darkest truth.

But becoming her meant unbecoming me . I wasn’t sure I was ready to let go of the girl who was loved by Harlon Brook, and who had once been loved so dearly by her mother.

I rose from my bed, lifting my tunic to discover my wounds scabbing over as a result of the poultice Kaiser had painted onto my skin.

A frown creased my brow as I tracked my finger over them, finding just a faint pain left behind.

Whatever that poultice was, it was nothing I’d witnessed in Cascada before, likely something only the rich and noble had been privy to.

This was perhaps as close to healing magic as you could get without a Reaper’s touch.

Kaiser must have really believed his bullshit about me being the Void, because he was wasting his precious poultice on an enemy Raincarver, so more fool him. If he had seen the monster lurking down in that cavern which had been named Void by the Reapers themselves, he would have known the truth.

At the thought of the Fury, the Nightfire burned in my chest and urged me to go to him.

I scowled at the foreign sensation. It didn’t belong to me.

It was the magic of this soul-tie, and I would never answer its call.

My so-called Void power had offered me a moment of defiance last night and it would damn well do so again.

It might have been a small act, my fingers curling against his orders, but I’d seen the strength of it down in that underground chamber.

I could make Kaiser’s Order form recede like turning ice back into water.

I held that power in my blood and it bolstered the stubbornness inside me.

I would break this soul-tie. Just fucking watch me.

I put on the black dress I’d handmade with golden wings stitched down my back, then took the path out of my quarters and climbed the endless stairs towards a new day.

Where there had once been chatter in the halls, there were now hushed whispers.

And I could have sworn the air was colder, the passages darker.

Never Keep was in mourning.

As I made it to the Great Stair where Fae were winding toward the Refectory in their factions, the scent of smoke carried to me, tinged with something putrid. Hesitating on my path, I turned in the direction of that scent.

Many Fae were returning from the Heliacal Courtyard with snow on their shoulders and tears staining their cheeks.

Some looked hardened, angry, others entirely broken.

My feet tracked along the stone, knowing whatever lay ahead was profoundly important, like the stars were awake and whispering, urging me toward it.

Beyond the courtyard, the iron Night Gate stood open, revealing a giant pyre that had been built upon the cliff’s edge. My throat thickened with the stench of the fire, my skin prickling over the certainty of what was burning.

Bodies.

Their forms took shape as I stepped through the imposing gates and the wind changed, drawing the smoke away toward the gunmetal sea.

No attempt had been made to conceal the dead Fae within those flames, arms and legs banded together, enemy upon enemy, none of them distinguishable as their skin gave way to bone under the intensity of the fire.

Reapers stood in a half-moon before the pyre, barring anyone from getting too close. The snow melted in the heated air around me, the white swirl framing the edges of the blazing inferno.

My feet drifted to a halt and shock dug its way into my chest. There was no division here. No fire, earth, water or air. There was only death.

My gaze travelled over every dead Fae within that fire until I realised what I was searching for.

A glint of pink hair. Though of course her hair would have burned away first. If she was here, there would be nothing recognisable left.

And the thought of that pierced something deep inside my chest, the wrongness of her loss not sitting right with me at all.

How could someone so full of life and ferocity be erased from the world over the course of one night?

I had witnessed caskets returning home from war on occasion, but it was a rarity.

Only those with medals and a name well-earned in combat or better yet, a family with plenty of funds, were worth bringing back to Cascada.

But this? There had been no opportunity for mothers and fathers to come here and take their children home for a real goodbye.

It was perhaps the most brutal act I had witnessed of the Reapers, yet the Fae around me only paid their respects and called out their thanks to our gold-cloaked prophets for offering their comrades a sacred funeral at their star-chosen hands.

It was in that moment, I realised I had lost my faith in the Reapers.

After everything I had witnessed beneath the Keep, it was this that solidified it.

There was no love for the four lands here, no attempt to respect the lines that had been drawn between us.

Four fires wouldn’t have cost the Reapers any more energy with their magic, and there had been no invite to this send off.

It was only curiosity that had brought me here, but many Fae hadn’t even risen from their beds yet, their chance of a goodbye stolen from them.

Those among the Reapers who possessed the element of fire were willing the bodies to burn quickly, the remains already charring before my eyes until there was little left to see besides ash.

With a sharp inhale, I touched my cheek, finding it wet with tears. What was I mourning? The Sky Witch? Or my lost faith in the prophets of the stars?

A quick swipe of my hand banished the tears and I let no more fall, my jaw tightening as the heat of that foul blaze washed over me.

One of the Reapers glanced back over his shoulder and my heart jolted, my gaze locking with the familiar copper eyes of my best friend.

Harlon wore their cloak of gold, his hood pulled up and the blonde streak in his brown hair pushed back as part of a too-neat quaff.

I took an abrupt step forward, relief and confusion jarring through me, but the slight shake of his head warned me off, the urgency in his gaze enough to stall me in my tracks.

He was here, not just among them, but one of them. Fully fledged.

I didn’t know what to make of his sudden appearance only that there was no time for questions. So with that, I turned and walked fast back into the Keep.

My heart rioted, my thoughts scattering in a thousand directions, making it hard to pick one to follow.

He was here. He was safe. But he was also out there assisting in that fire, wearing that cloak, standing among their ranks.

It should have come as no surprise that he had joined them but seeing him so soon after I’d been forced to leave him under the Keep left me shaken.

It wasn’t like he could refuse their orders but witnessing him being a part of that fire…it unsettled me.

I headed to the Refectory, following the masses of conscripts while their hushed, subdued chatter swept around me and dragged my mood ever lower.

“This place should be the most secure fortress in the four lands, how the fuck did the Vampires get in?”

“The Reapers barely managed to turn them away.”

“What if they come back?”

“What if even more of them come next time?”

The breakfast buffet was not its usual bountiful display. This morning, there was only a simple selection of fruits and oats to pick from. I supposed whoever prepared our food was preoccupied with more important matters right now.

I filed along in the queue toward the food, my stomach quiet but I’d long ago learned to take a meal when it was available. You never knew for sure when the next one was coming.

My gaze tracked over the tables claimed by each element, studying air the hardest and working from face to face, searching, just in case…

No sign of her.