Page 46 of House of Dusk

SEPHRE

S ephre lunged forward, wrenched by the fishhook of loss lodged in her chest. She dug her fingers into the tiles of the western wall, searching for some crack, some seal, some way to tear open whatever uncanny portal the skotos had used to spirit Timeus away.

Leaving her alone with that challenge. Come and claim him.

Oh, she would. And she’d rip apart every slithering, rotting corpse that tried to get in her way. Once she found the damn door. She slammed a flaming fist uselessly against the western wall, swallowing a curse. There must be another way to get into the underworld. Aside from the obvious.

Footsteps echoed behind her. Gasps of alarm. A ragged cry that she thought might be Beroe. Exclamations and invocations. Dolon’s low rumble, saying something urgent.

The pulse of battle in Sephre’s blood began to dim. She tried to cling to it, to hold onto the focus, the sharpness. To keep running ahead of the tide of grief and loss. Dolon was speaking to her, but the words were part of that grief, and she could not afford to listen.

Then, a faint, wet cough.

“Agia? Can you hear me?” Beroe pleaded. “Fates, Sephre, get over here and do something!”

Hope spun Sephre away from the wall to find Beroe kneeling beside Halimede’s crumpled, bloody form. Dolon stood nearby, while Vasil lingered by the door, holding back a handful of the reds.

“What can we do?” Beroe demanded, her face pale and streaked with ash, her eyes still bright with golden flames. She pressed a wad of Halimede’s robe against the gaping gash in the woman’s belly. It was already sodden with dark red blood.

Sephre’s hope winked out at the sight. Nothing. No poultice or tonic could cure a wound like that. It was a wonder that Halimede had not already slipped away. And yet she could see the rough rise and fall of the woman’s chest. Her mouth working, as if she was trying to speak.

“Agia?” Sephre knelt opposite Beroe.

Halimede’s eyelids fluttered open. The blaze of blue light behind them made Sephre’s breath catch. She seemed to be nothing but flame thinly veiled in mortal skin. “The Embrace...burned away...But I would know her by the signs...by her wounds...”

The words spattered from her lips like embers, each one catching in Sephre’s chest. Halimede grimaced, teeth clenched, sparks dribbling between them.

When she spoke again, her breath came in ashen puffs.

“Your wounds...Must face...what you did...waters . . . remember...you can end this!” A groan.

Blue sparks skittered over her skin like raindrops. Beroe made a high keening noise.

Sephre leaned closer. “Remember? Remember what?”

Halimede’s eyes went wide, drowning her in depthless blue. “Remember!”

And then there was nothing but flame. Sephre flung an arm across her face. Felt a pressure in her ears, against her skin, like some great hand gripping her tight. Then releasing.

Darkness fell. Sephre blinked, and saw only a loose heap of ashes against the stones. Halimede was gone.

But Timeus was still out there. He needed her.

Surely no mortal could survive for long within the Labyrinth of the Dead.

It was a place of spirits, of sorrows, where all the cruelties of a thousand generations had seeped into the stones.

Where the skotoi now ruled, feasting on misery and despair.

Sephre managed to get one arm under herself, shoving against the stones.

Her legs were shaky. “I need to go,” she croaked.

“They took Timeus into the labyrinth. I have to—”

She broke off at the sound of heavy footsteps. The clatter of metal. It was all the warning she had before Lacheron swept into the hall, followed by six of his soldiers. “There,” he snapped coolly, jabbing a finger at Sephre. “Take her. She is a creature of the Serpent.”

“What?” Sephre took a step back as two of the burliest warriors moved toward her. Her palms itched to bloom with fire, but it would be sacrilege to turn the holy flame against the living. No matter how infinitely boneheaded they might be.

One of the men tried to reach for her, moving lazily. Not seeing a threat. She ducked his grasp. Much good it did her. The other soldiers now blocked the door.

Fine. She had nothing to hide. It was Lacheron who should be answering for himself.

“I’m no one’s creature.” She kept her voice calm.

He would not provoke her. “I was out there fighting skotoi. Which is more than I can say for you.” Her withering glare took in Lacheron and his soldiers.

A few of the latter had the decency to shuffle their feet or glance away, but Lacheron was unmoved.

She wanted to fly at the man and claw the rotted half-smile from his lips.

Was it Halimede’s death that cheered him?

“That mark suggests otherwise,” said Lacheron, nodding.

“Mark?” Sephre tasted sour panic. She swallowed it. Forced herself to look down.

Suddenly the world was spinning, and there was only one fixed point.

The ring of dark lines, just above her right wrist, linking what had once been merely freckles.

The Serpent’s star sign. She remembered the skotos, wrapping its dark tendrils.

The cold. The drowning. The horrible voice, whispering .

Do you even know that you carry it? And why?

So. Nilos was right. She had been carrying the Serpent’s essence all this time. And now it was clear to all the world, etched remorselessly onto her skin.

“I—” She licked her lips, tried again. “It’s not.

..it doesn’t mean...” She had to stop stammering.

It made her sound guilty. She focused on Beroe, on Dolon.

Sisters, brothers, siblings. Her family.

“It means there’s a fragment of the Serpent’s power in me.

But I’m an ashdancer. I serve the Phoenix.

” She raised a hand. Held her fear between her teeth, biting hard until yellow sparks kindled in her palm.

A tremor passed over Beroe’s still face. She drew in a breath, as if steadying herself. “Lord Lacheron,” she said. “I am acting agia. Sister Sephre is a daughter of Stara Bron. I have authority here.”

“The woman is a danger to all Helisson,” said Lacheron. “Her very existence is an invitation for the Serpent to return. In the name of King Hierax, I demand that you turn her over to me.”

Beroe drew herself taller. “I will do no such thing.”

Lacheron’s smug certainty crumbled slightly, and Sephre almost cheered. She had never been so grateful for Beroe’s high opinion of herself.

“What will you do then?” Lacheron demanded. “You cannot allow her to walk free.”

“No,” agreed Beroe. She turned to Sephre. “Don’t worry, sister. I understand, now. How this has been poisoning you, filling you with lies. Those things you said, earlier.”

“That was the truth.” Frustration boiled up her throat, spilling out.

“He’s the liar.” She jabbed a finger at Lacheron.

“He’s behind all of this. Just like in Bassara.

He wanted Halimede out of the way because she refused to recognize Hierax as the Ember King.

Because he wants someone he can control. Don’t let him use you!”

She could practically see her words bouncing off Beroe. In her eyes Sephre was raving. A child throwing a tantrum.

“We will do as Agia Halimede commanded, with her dying breath,” said Beroe, finally.

“What?” Sephre was honestly confused, trying to recall Halimede’s last broken words. Something about facing what she’d done, and remembering. And...water?

“We will burn away the taint,” said Beroe, simply. “You’ll be cleansed of the Serpent’s mark, and released from the pains and fears of your past. Just as you’ve long wished, sister. You will be Embraced.”

· · ·

Sephre had never begrudged her small, windowless bedchamber before. It was warm and snug, and her hours in the garden offered all the fresh air and sunlight she could want.

Now, it was a prison. Complete with a chamber pot and a ewer of water. She counted the passage of time by the rotation of the soldiers standing guard in the hallway outside. It must be well past dawn by now. Half a day since the attack on Stara Bron. Since Halimede died and Timeus was stolen.

He was alive. He must be. The skotos wanted her, not the boy. They would not kill him. But what else might they do? Torment him? Feed on his spirit? At least she could take some comfort in the fact that he was a red brother now. He had a spark of the holy flame to protect him.

Frustration itched over her. She wanted to hit something. Lacheron’s face would do. Or Beroe’s.

Sephre grimaced. She had tried, but it was too little, too late. Maybe if she’d approached Beroe sooner, told her everything that first day after she returned, she could have convinced the woman to trust her.

Probably not. Sephre barely trusted herself.

She sat on her cot, weary from pacing the five steps between the narrow walls, and angled her right wrist to catch the light of the small lamp.

The mark was a shock, no matter how many times she studied it.

It reminded her of the first time she’d seen her own reflection after the war.

The fine lines around her eyes. The threads of wiry gray at her temples.

She understood what Beroe feared. Fates, Sephre feared it herself. What if the mark was changing her? But it wasn’t as if the Serpent was whispering in her head, telling her to release a tide of demons into the world. And her own spark of yellow flame remained as strong as ever.