We encountered other groups as we moved through the winding halls of the Herald’s Keep. The occasional guard, furtive servants who refused to make eye contact, gangs of drunk nobles meandering the ancient palace to admire its scenery.

  “I would think Evangeline might have more of an interest in keeping people from wandering about,” Emma noted as we passed a group of youths commenting on a set of portraits. The hallways were well lit and clean, prepared for the enjoyment of the Queen’s guests.

  “It would only take one or two vampires and maybe half an hour to slaughter every human in these halls,” I said as we moved past the gawkers. “Besides, the palace belonged to the city’s local guilds before House Ark ascended. They’ve been working to keep it restored for decades, so I doubt she’d put all her charnel pits and blood larders here.”

  “At least not up above,” Emma suggested.

  I nodded. We needed to find a way below.

  Doing our best to act like we were merely another pair of aristos enjoying the palace’s wonders, Emma and I followed in the wake of another group and found ourselves passing outdoors into a garden. It was built within the walls of the castle, with the shadow of turrets piercing the night sky beyond a small orchard. A stream trickled through the flower beds and fountains, a stone trail meandering through it all.

  Just the sort of place to give people privacy for trysts or sensitive conversations. Or to allow a night creature to tear out your throat without fear of causing a panic. The night sky was clear, the moon not yet risen high enough to show over the castle walls.

  “Do you think the others managed to find that vampire hunter?” Emma asked.

  “They’re both skilled and smart,” I assured her. “I just wish I knew what Olliard was planning. That man is unpredictable.”

  I paused, something Emma noticed. When she asked me what was wrong, I shook my head. I’d missed it earlier, while lost in my alter ego.

  “Olliard spent some years in the continent, in a country called Kell… That’s where he took his moniker. And now the Duke of Kell is here. He’s a vampire, too.”

  Emma bit off a quiet curse. “A problem?”

  It was. I wasn’t sure how yet, but an ugly sensation of unease had begun to settle in my gut.

  We moved deeper into the palace garden. The music of the ballroom faded from hearing as we advanced into the maze. I wasn’t sure exactly where we were going — Emma even asked that very question, to which I answered, “I’m following my instincts.”

  She took that in stride. My instincts weren’t just ordinary hunches, but impressions from my powers, both holy and necromantic. There were ghosts here, the very stones of the palace gravid with centuries of them, and their near inaudible whispering drew me on. Once, I’d worked to push that will away, but things had changed during my journey through the dark beneath Osheim.

  I recalled a conversation from then, one I’d dwelt on often in the weeks since.

  “Why are you pushing them away?” Sans had asked. “They’re trying to help you.”

  “They despise me!” I’d laughed. My laughter was unhinged, broken. Only days had passed since Delphine called the demon out of hell.

  “Not every ghost is hateful. Everyone dies, Hewer, and they all get pulled down here. There’s not enough room and not enough warmth, so some get pushed up and out. All they want is to be heard.”

  “They want my heat. They’ll leave me a husk to get it.”

  “That’s all Cat wanted,” Maryanne said in a distracted voice. “All any of us want, really.”

  She refused to leave Flora’s head, and we’d caught her talking to it a few times.

  I fell silent. Sans had sighed and given me an appraising look.

  “Our world is a graveyard,” he told me. “And beneath it is a crypt. It’s in the name, don’t you see? We tread upon the dead with every step we walk, and all of us will one day join them. We ignore their voices at our own peril.”

  “I’m not going to be lectured by a necromancer.”

  Sans’s voice became mocking. “I see the corruption on you, knight, and I watched you back at the city. We all watched you skin that crowfriar. You are a necromancer.”

  “He’s a paladin too,” Maryanne sang as she brushed Flora’s hair. “They’re all hypocrites. Their ghosts shine gold, so they think it’s different!”

  “What do you want from me?” I’d asked tiredly. Surrounded by heretics and the undead, I had felt like I might be in Hell. Part of me felt that to be just.

  “Just to listen,” Sans said. “Heed the voices of the dead like I do. The ghosts in this place, even Maryanne — they have seen past thresholds that you and I have yet to cross.”

  “We’re not meant to cross it while alive,” I’d argued, more by reflex than defiance. “That is the natural order.”

  “And who made that order?” Sans demanded. “I never agreed to abide by it. Gods and kings can only rule you by your own consent.”

  When I didn’t respond, Sans leaned in close. “Listen, Alken — I know you’re dealing with something. Casimir told me what happened up above. You’re angry, confused—”

  “I’m not confused about anything,” I spat. “I know where I stand.”

  “You can lie to me if it makes you feel right, but I’m telling you this for your own good; stop straddling this edge. See the world as it is and make your own judgements. You have already shied from the right hand path, yet you cannot convince yourself the left hand isn’t evil — accept that the world is not black and white, or you will break.”

  “Is that how you justify what you do? The world is complicated, so why bother with right and wrong?” I hadn’t hid my mockery.

  “I’ll tell you this much — we’re trespassing in the Kingdom of the Dead. You want to follow the rules, heed the natural order? Down here, we do not belong. This is their sanctuary, where they rule. Either learn, or die in ignorance.”

  For some days, I had considered simply dying. It would be easier than going back above and facing my sins. Facing her.

  But I’d chosen to live. I chose to learn. Did this make me like my enemies? Orson Falconer and Hasur Vyke had chosen to seek the forbidden and become anathema for it. They chose hatred towards a world that had disappointed them.

  Sans, Maryanne, Eilidh, Caleb, Casimir, and Catrin too — they showed me another path. They showed me that I had let fear dictate my actions for far too long. Fear of myself, of being wrong.

  In the gardens of Tall Carreweir’s royal palace, I lifted a beckoning hand and used the words Sans had taught me — the language of the draus, the spirits of the Underworld. “Show me the way. Take me to your champion. Help me save her.”

  The Herald’s Keep was old. It had many ghosts. They feared the predators that were allowed to walk in their midst and hid from them, but my presence drew them out, my words spurred them. Emma shivered violently as the temperature of the garden abruptly dropped.

  “This way,” I said as I listened to the whispers. Emma followed, keeping more of a distance than before.

  We navigated a hedge maze that eventually took us into the interior of a small orchard. In the middle of that orchard was a small stone building. A mausoleum, kept in the depths of the garden, probably used to inter the remains of royal family members. It looked old, poorly maintained, crawling with ivy and part of its facade starting to crumble. There’d been a gargoyle roost once, but it lay empty now.

  “Think it goes underground?” Emma asked.

  I suspected it did. The whispering shadows were urging me towards it.

  If Evangeline or her demon had mastered the dead in this castle, then I might be walking right into a trap… But that was always a risk. Taking a deep breath, I approached the mausoleum and stepped inside. Dusty walls, sallow faces carved into the stone, urns set in nooks. Cobwebs covered everything.

  In the middle of the floor, there was a deep recess with stairs leading down.

  “No guards,” Emma murmured.

  “This clearing is haunted,” I said. “Any of the guests wandering about would unconsciously stay clear of it, so she probably didn’t think it needed a sentry. Might be some below, though.”

  We went down, slow and cautious. Without the moonlight and with my powers suppressed, I quickly realized that visibility would be a problem. It tripped me for a moment — I’d long since gotten used to not having to worry about being able to see in unlit places.

  But Emma had come prepared, and produced a small alchelamp — little more than a glass ball suspended by a leather harness. I nodded gratefully to her as she shook the device to activate it, causing dim green-hued light to fill the corridor.

  The old crypt wound its way beneath the palace complex. At first the walls and ceiling pressed in close, the air stale, but a draft came from somewhere further on. That, and my own senses, tugged us along through the dark until we passed into a more spacious passage that branched off in several directions. The ceiling was high, the masonry cleaner, the air less stagnant. There were shapes carved at regular intervals along the walls, and I recognized some of them. They were the symbols of noble clans.

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  “The Herald’s Vault,” I said, feeling a smile tug at the corner of my lip at odds with our circumstances. “I’ve wanted to visit this place since I was barely more than a boy. There are legends buried down here.”

  “I never took you for a pilgrim,” Emma quipped.

  My brief fit of knightly awe passed as a darker thought struck me. If Evangeline had learned how to raise the dead in addition to possessing them, then this wasn’t just a tomb. It might also be a barracks.

  “Do you sense anything?” Emma asked.

  “…Yes.” That sense of unnatural cold sharpened ahead of us. It felt like I looked down the eye of a crystal lens, the corridor narrowing into an icy focus. “I don’t know if it’s what we’re looking for, but there’s something here. It’s disquiet.”

  The vaults beneath the Herald’s Keep were a labyrinth. I followed my intuition, the ghostly whispering the Backroaders had taught me how to listen to, the gut sensation of dread that kept telling me to go back. I knew that the more intense that instinct of fear grew, the closer we were. The passages went by us in a nonsensical blur.

  At one point I had the thought why are there no guards down here?

  But I kept moving forward, drawn as surely as though I were a sleep walker in a dream from which I couldn’t wake. Emma might have spoken once or twice, but moments later I couldn’t remember what she’d said.

  It wasn’t much different from being lost in the glamour, in a way, and just as risky. If the ghosts were thrall to the usurper, then they might lead me right to my death.

  Instead, with a start very much like waking from a day dream, I found myself stepping over a threshold and into a large chamber. It was an open tomb, regal and well kept, with a high ceiling and warrior statues on the walls standing eternal vigil. At its center stood a white slab, where one might lay the remains of a king or prince.

  On that slab lay a skeleton. It gave off a green glow, and I realized the bones themselves were green, a brilliant shade of it that gave off light like the moon. Mist swirled over the floor of the tomb, drinking in that light and giving it back as a silvery sheen. The air felt crisp as a winter morning against my skin, cold enough for my breath to frost, and I caught a metallic scent in the air.

  “What is that?” Emma asked in a breathless hush as she looked past me.

  “It’s Rysanthe.” The realization came with both relief, that I'd been right, and horror at the state of the drow. There was also distrust at how easy it had proven to find her.

  Emma’s voice became strained. “Is she—”

  “She’s not dead. Not exactly. I think that’s her true form.”

  The skeleton had an uncanny sense of life to it, despite its appearance. As I got close, the coldness in the air took on a different quality — it didn’t come from the bones, as they gave off warmth.

  It was just like me. It produced clean, pure aura. I felt it against my skin, heard it resonate with the same magic in me. The coldness in the air was from all the shades in the tomb being drawn to it, like night insects to a campfire.

  Nothing happened when I stepped fully into the room, so I approached the slab and inspected the skeleton more closely. It lay on its back, arms folded over its chest in repose, and was perfectly still. The eye sockets were black pits, the exposed teeth pressed together in a death’s grin. Though it seemed human at a distance, the bones weren’t quite shaped right when I looked at them more closely. Too delicate, almost like bird bones, the skull holding an odd shape. There were hundreds of symbols carved into the bones, seemingly by an incredibly delicate tool.

  I held out a hand, hesitated, then pressed the tips of my fingers to the skull just above the brow and spoke softly. “Lady Rysanthe? Can you hear me?”

  At first there was no response. Then, much like a sleeper stirring, the skull shifted against my touch. It was subtle, nothing so obvious as a sudden intake of breath, but I felt life in those bones. The green-silver mist in the air clung tightly to the skeleton, so for a moment I saw the telltale impression of a feminine shape.

  It passed just as quickly, and the light seemed to dim. The skull moved, pulling away from my hand, and I realized some of that glowing mist was passing into my skin. I felt warmer, stronger, but the drow was fading.

  I jerked my hand back.

  Several memories flashed through my mind. Emma pulling away in instinctive terror the night of the Vyke coup when I’d made an attempt to heal her. My reaction to Rosanna offering her child to me, a dreadful intuition that I might hurt him if he got too close.

  “What’s wrong?” Emma asked me. “Is it dangerous?”

  “…No,” I said and clenched my hand into a fist. “She’s not a threat, but she is very weak.”

  I tore off the cape I wore beneath Vicar’s pelt, wrapped the skeleton up, then gently lifted it into my arms. She weighed practically nothing. I turned to Emma and handed the elf over.

  “What did they do to her?” Emma asked.

  It took me a moment to reply, as I was still reeling at the realization I’d just had. “Evangeline has been feeding on her. I think that’s why she’s so strong — she’s been stealing Rysanthe’s power.”

  “Well guessed!” A voice said, causing both of us to spin around.

  A figure stood in the doorway, just a silhouette at first, but they revealed themselves as they stepped into the light. Lillian Rue bared blackened teeth in a madwoman’s grin as she entered the tomb. She wore the same elaborate red gown and metal finery as in previous times I’d seen her, all the rich adornment doing nothing to mask her withered face and ghoulish eyes.

  “I have rarely been so amused to be proven wrong!” She crowed. “I counseled the Queen that you would smash your way in here like a dragon, but instead you did something clever. That is you behind that stolen face, is it not, vagabond?”

  I had presented myself to her as a vagabond two years before at Caelfall. Instead of answering, my gaze went down to the crone’s hands — she held a long silver rod inlayed with complex designs, decorative skulls carved around a hollow at the top.

  “Funny,” I said.

  “And what’s that?” Lillian asked.

  “I thought you and Evangeline were enemies for a while,” I said in a light voice. “But you’re just a rat jumping from one sinking ship to another, aren’t you? First it was Astraea, but when the Carreons fell you hid in the shadows. Then you went to Hasur, who was murdered by his own children, so you served them instead… Then Orson, who you also betrayed. Does Evangeline know what a disloyal worm you are, Lillian?”

  Her smile sharpened. “You are one to talk about loyalty! After all, you jumped from that southern whore to the decrepit elf, then to those fool seraphim, then to Forger. Tell me, thug, who next will convince you that their cause is the most just? If I were to take a younger form and bat my eyelashes at you like that slut dhampir, would you fall to a knee for me?”

  “She definitely learned from a Carreon,” Emma muttered dryly. “I almost want to like her.”

  I noted particularly heavy kohl around the witch’s eyes. Delphine had used a similar trick — some kind of mixture that allowed them to see glamours. I really needed to figure out how that worked. My powers mimicked many common magics, so I’d neglected studying them.

  Lillian’s bloodshot eyes slid past me. “Is that you, Lady Emma? Be a good dear and give me that drow. It isn’t safe for untrained hands to touch.”

  “I shall pass, I think.” Emma’s condescending drawl was all her in that moment, her Maeve masque all but discarded. “I quite enjoy feeling like the dashing knight rescuing the maiden fair, though it seems rather droll that my first experience of it lacks flesh… Do you think if I give it a kiss, it will wake?”

  Lillian’s face hardened with rage. “Give it to me, ungrateful bitch!”

  I stepped between them. Lillian took one withered hand off the scepter she held and lifted it.

  Not a scepter, I realized. I’d seen that implement before. To my ethereal senses, it practically blazed with power.

  “That doesn’t belong to you, Lillian Rue. It is not for mortals to touch.”

  The words came from my lips, but they were not mine. It was him again.

  Lillian’s eyes widened, and she took a step back. The motion looked instinctive. “You… What are you?”

  “I thought you could see through our masques,” I said and took a step forward.

  “This is not just a glamour…” Lillian’s grin turned feral. “What have you let those faeries do to you, boy?”

  Emma had Rysanthe. She wouldn’t be much good in a fight. I didn’t know what Lillian was capable of, but she’d been willing to go against every single being in the Backroad Inn almost single-handedly. She wasn’t Magi, I felt certain of that, but she wasn’t much more than a step down from one. Catrin had called her a necromancer, and we were surrounded by old death. I guessed her to be stronger than Sans.

  In this place, she may as well be as dangerous as Lias.

  “Where’s Ildeban?” I asked as I took another step forward. With my cape gone, I had no deep enough shadows from which to pull my axe in easy reach.

  “You really don’t understand anything, do you?” Lillian gestured with Rysanthe’s silver brand like it were a baton. “You remind me of him, you know.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Jon Orley. I bet that little whore behind you will cut out your heart just like her ancestor did to him. Has she let you have her yet? Something to keep in mind.”

  The cold flash of rage in my veins was a welcome rush. I had to move faster than she could weave an Art. Could I subdue her with just the dagger on my belt? It would be a quickdraw — a foolish move against a powerful sorceress, but I had few other options.

  She’s trying to goad you into attacking, an inner voice warned through my anger. That brand is one of the most dangerous tools you’ve ever encountered, and she is ready for you. Remember what happened with Lias at Rose Malin.

  I needed to be focused. Cold. Brute rage would not win this fight.

  “So,” Lillian said with something almost like approval. “You are not just an empty-headed juggernaut. Of course, I knew that when we spoke at Orson’s castle… Ah, well. It is not for me to kill you anyway, Headsman.”

  “Interesting how cowards always use that excuse,” Emma said coldly.

  Lillian’s empty smile returned. “Ah, but I have not come alone! There are many this man has wronged, and they all seek their pound of his flesh.”

  She gestured with the silver brand to my left, and I felt the coldness in the air spike in intensity.

  It happened fast — a blinding flash of movement, a rush of freezing air, and on instinct I dove into a roll just as something flashed at my face. It was like a blade, only nothing so tangible as that, more like a concentration of air and sheer cold sharp as a blade.

  The mist covering the tomb’s floor swirled up and formed into a distinct shape. It gave off a pale, unnatural light, wore a white gown and veil like a noblewoman at her own funeral, and beneath that veil a skeletal face stretched into a horrendous silent scream. The figure was burnt, the funeral shroud tattered with black shadows falling from its edges like flames.

  It held a reaper’s scythe.

  “I found her wandering the moors, weeping and mad with hate for you!” Lillian laughed from the doorway. “Do you even recognize your victims, executioner?”

  Lorena Starling rose into the air, brandishing her scythe and glaring at me with such a profound hatred that it bent her form. She became all sharp edges, like a being made of broken glass.

  “Iron Wheels,” Emma cursed as she took cover behind me, focusing on keeping Rysanthe protected. “Don’t tell me this is another old flame of yours?”

  I drew my dagger for lack of a better weapon, holding the blade up like a fencer. “I executed her husband and orphaned her son.”

  Emma’s eyes flashed with recognition. “She attacked us at Liutgarde! I thought you destroyed her then?”

  I’d believed that as well, but Lorena’s spirit was apparently made of sterner stuff. I felt the cold of her presence eating into me, drowning my body’s heat and setting me to shivering.

  I reached for power, but it felt weak, feeble — I’d been able to summon it even in Finn Nu’s form back at Estival Bawn, so why…

  I saw Lillian lift Rysanthe’s brand in the corner of my vision. Its end now flickered with a ghostly blue fire. She was dousing me.

  “Vicar,” I growled.

  He didn’t hesitate. The pelt on my shoulder opened its jaws and coughed out a plume of hellfire the exact moment Lorena lunged. The torturous flames of Orkael were no more natural than the aureflame, and the banshee recoiled with a screech. I still almost caught the edge of her scythe across my face, flinching back from it at the last instant as the phantasmal weapon whisked inches past my right eye.

  A lance of bitter agony stabbed into my skull. I let out a yell and fell back, clasping a hand over my face. It hadn’t even touched me, and it had frozen the moisture in my eye.

  “She’s been sharpening that weapon ever since your last encounter,” Lillian crooned from the door. “It is made especially to kill you — the purest and most powerful form of a Soul Art, freed from the constraints of flesh or sanity. How does its kiss feel, Headsman?”

  I couldn’t see out of my right eye anymore, but my left still worked fine. The ghost of Lady Lorena recovered from Vicar’s blast, though sulfurous yellow fire crawled over her arms and shoulders. It must have been agonizing to feel the touch of those infernal flames as a naked spirit, but she barely seemed to notice. Her form stretched again, growing even larger.

  “My Art isn’t good against ghosts!” Emma said with a note of panic. “A plan would be good?!”

  “Get that brand,” I snapped. I couldn’t focus on Lillian or my squire just then. It would only take a moment’s distraction for this spirit to kill me. Even worse, that lambent mist covering the whole room left no shadows deep enough for me to draw my axe out. Between that and the power suppressing my magic, I was little more than mortal in that moment.

  This had been a trap — one prepared especially for me.