And yet, I’d run into so many traps at this point that I’d started to prepare my own. Just in case.

  “Emma, enough playing.”

  The cold smile that spread across my squire’s face put even Lillian’s mad grin to shame. The panic she’d displayed before vanished as she spoke with a note of sharp command.

  “Qoth! Now.”

  Two shining eyes appeared in the darkness behind Lillian. The Briar Elf swiped at the back of the crone’s head with claws sharp as razors and hard as adamantine. They tore into the back of her neck, slashing through the high collar of her gown and spraying blood across the stone.

  The witch spun, recoiled, and threw up a hand to the injury all the same jerking motion. She lost her footing on the short stair leading into the tomb, tripped on her own skirts, and went down even as Qoth slashed again, this time at her midsection.

  There are legends of the Cats of Chesh, also known as the Cat Sidhe. They were some of the most deadly beings in all the world, feared by knights and wizards alike, for they were amongst the most brutal and bloodthirsty of all faeries. Shapeshifters and spellcasters in their own right, they could duel with even the most potent adept, when they didn’t simply tear them to shreds from the shadows.

  And Nath had given the prince of those nightmares to Emma as a servant.

  Lord Chesh’s eldest son leapt on Lillian Rue and began to maul her. I saw few details, for the faerie was shockingly fast, little more than a blur of fangs and claws and glowing green eyes. Lillian’s screams were horrible, unrestrained, while the faerie attacked with unnerving silence.

  But I couldn’t focus on that. Lorena’s mouth stretched so wide that her lower jaw hung beneath her collar bone, and she seemed to take in a deep breath. All the air in the tomb shifted towards her.

  To the side of my face, Vicar’s eyelight flashed. “Cover your ears!”

  I understood, and let my dagger drop out of my hand to comply. I’d barely clapped my hands over the sides of my head when Lorena screamed.

  It wasn’t sound that came out of the ghost’s throat. At least, not just sound. The air seemed to crack, like in the instant that a lightning bolt strikes a tree. The edges of the room blurred and went out of focus, the sense of bone aching cold in the air becoming something elemental, solid, slamming down like a great fist.

  The ceiling of the Herald’s Vault rumbled as that scream reverberated through the very roots of the palace.

  Pain. A pain I had no words for. I fell to a knee as the room went out of focus. My vision splintered, and it seemed like my bones were trembling from the aftershock of that unearthly shout. There was warmth against my hands — my ears were bleeding. Blood trickled out of my left nostril as well.

  Through that haze of agony, I saw the glowing form of the banshee advance as she lifted her scythe up high. She didn’t speak, probably couldn’t anymore — she’d gone beyond humanity and become an avatar of her own vengeance. A manifested curse.

  She had good reason to hate me.

  But I wasn’t just going to lay down and die.

  I hated myself for what I did next.

  “Emery.”

  My words rippled into the surrounding mist, moving beyond it and into the darker shadows at the corners of the tomb, kept at bay by Lillian’s clever trap. My own ghosts were there, the ones that were always with me, always gibbering into my dreams.

  And one of my defeated enemies answered.

  The Earl of Strekke appeared between me and Lorena as a dark sillhouette, not nearly as bright or clear as the other spirit, but real all the same. Emery Planter had been an old man when he died, built stocky, with receding hair and thick sideburns. He wore armor like a knight, though it hung on him in this ghostly form like the weight of iron chains.

  “My heart.”

  Emery’s whispering voice made Lorena freeze. Her shining form went perfectly still, like a painting. Her face flickered and blurred, then refocused into something almost human, a tired woman in her forties with graying hair and sunken, grief-reddened eyes.

  Lorena still said no words, but her shock was easy enough to read. Pain wracked her already tortured features, shifting them between gaunt horror and abject sorrow.

  “I did not want you to become this,” The Earl of Strekke said sadly. “The wizard told me that we were lied to by the Church, that our souls would be imprisoned forever… I thought to free us.”

  The banshee looked at me, and once more transformed into that avatar of hate. I felt I understood what her spirit keened in that moment. He murdered you! Enslaved you!

  “We haunt him,” Emery said. “This is our penance, and his. You and our son deserve a gentler fate, my starling.”

  Lorena’s face twisted into several more shapes, each one like a different image roughly painted over the last. First grief, then rage, then uncertainty.

  I glanced to the side. Lillian and Qoth both lay on the ground, seemingly unconscious. They’d been caught in the banshee’s scream too. Behind me, Emma also lay prone, having dropped Rysanthe.

  I’d heard such spirits could stop their victim’s heart. Was she—

  No time to focus on that now. If Lorena screams again, then you’re all dead anyway.

  I turned back to the two ghosts. Emery’s misty form flickered, and I sensed his shock of concern as though it were my own.

  “Lorena… Our son. What has become of our son?”

  The agony in Lorena’s hollow features had nothing to do with hatred then.

  Emery let out a long, exhausted sigh. “It was wicked of me to bind you to this fate. I thought to grant our boy his mother’s wisdom… And I did not want to let you go. I am sorry. Forgive me.”

  Lorena’s features transformed again, flickered from grieving widow to hateful banshee. She swung her scythe directly through Emery Planter’s ethereal form. There was a blast of freezing air, and then the ghost scattered into fog and wind. I felt him dissipate.

  She had just destroyed her husband’s spirit.

  The cold power clinging to the banshee’s scythe guttered out. Lorena slumped, her features becoming distorted, vague. Before my eyes, she melted like a wax figure subjected to intense heat. In mere moments she was gone.

  I stood, slowly. Sticky blood clung to my earlobes and my lip, and I felt nauseous. My ears rang, but I didn’t think the damage was bad. The sensation seemed to be dying down.

  The first thing I did was check on Emma. She groaned, filling me with a surge of relief, and rolled onto her back. I helped her up and supported her as she got her bearings.

  “I feel ill,” the girl complained. “What happened?”

  “Lorena Starling got her vengeance,” I said. “Her spirit is gone.”

  I looked to where Lillian Rue had fallen when the banshee screamed, and realized that what I’d taken to be both her and Qoth’s prone bodies wasn’t quite what it looked like. Qoth wasn’t unconscious. He clung to the sorceress’s back. His fangs were sunken into her neck, his muzzle wrinkled like a wild cat taking large prey.

  Lillian was dead. Her eyes were popped wide, her face locked in a rictus snarl more bestial even than Qoth’s expression. As I watched, the Briar Elf unlocked his jaws, moved a short distance away, and studiously began licking at his paws.

  “You’re alright?” I asked the faerie.

  “The banshee’s scream attacks the soul,” the Sidhe explained in his uncanny voice. “And I do not have one. Fret not, mortal.”

  “I thought only elves could become banshees,” I complained. “Aren’t they a type of wraith?”

  Qoth glared at the spot where Lorena had vanished. He looked troubled. “You are correct. This spirit has been tampered with to resemble our own spirits. I must inform my father of this. Very few could accomplish such a thing.”

  “Is she really dead?” Emma asked as she cautiously approached Lillian’s body. “That seemed too easy. She didn’t even get a spell off…”

  “If she had,” Qoth said in a dry voice, “we would be dead. This is the best way to handle such foes. However, I would not celebrate the victory quite yet, mistress.”

  I nodded. “She’s a necromancer. Dead doesn’t necessarily mean gone.”

  I took a moment to search for it, and found Rysanthe’s silver brand. It had rolled a distance away, apparently released by Lillian during her struggle with the Cat Sidhe. I noted that one of her hands had been nearly severed at the wrist — she hadn’t let it go until Qoth had cut her tendons.

  “Best to destroy the body,” Qoth said as I moved to pick it up. “No telling what tricks this—”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  The cat coughed mid-sentence. It was such an unexpected sound, coming from the creature, a strange hacking like he had something stuck in his throat. He coughed again, spat, and let out a mournful feline mewl.

  “Qoth?” Emma asked, her voice tight with sudden concern. “What’s wrong?”

  I picked the brand up, half expecting it to burn me, but it just felt cool to the touch. My attention went to the briarfae. He was shaking his head back and forth, his fangs bared. The motion looked like he was trying to dislodge something.

  Emma’s eyes widened. “Her blood. He must have gotten her blood in him.”

  Qoth’s feline eyes popped wide. He hacked again, then — very like an ordinary cat vomiting up a hairball — spat a glob of slimy red onto the tomb’s floor. He stood over it, heaving, his four legs braced unevenly beneath him.

  The blood boiled.

  “Qoth, return to your hall!” Emma cried.

  The faerie cat closed its eyes, an almost relieved expression, and scattered into shadowy fumes. Good thinking, I thought even as I took a single step back from the writhing splatter of blood on the floor. If the elf was infested with something, there wasn’t anything we could do about it in the moment, but back in Briarland he would probably be able to fight it and recover. Just like when he’d taken an injury from a demon back in Garihelm.

  But my concern wasn’t focused on Qoth as the glob of blood once again jumped, almost like a heart stuttering to life. Exactly like that, I realized. The shape was right, the branching chambers, something like an aorta. It beat again, spraying blood for several feet, and grew noticeably larger.

  “Vicar, burn it!”

  Vicar opened his jaws to comply — he would be faster than me anyway, and the room was still filled with that ghostly light preventing me from summoning my axe. But before he could summon up hellfire, the slimy heart grew spindly legs like a spider and started skittering with shocking speed. The blast of yellow flame missed it by inches, scorching one side of the little creature but doing nothing to stop it.

  Emma stepped past me, her sword in hand, but didn’t move fast enough. The spider-heart leapt at her, dodging the point of her sword and grasping for her face.

  I slapped it out of the air with Rysanthe’s brand. The impact made a wet noise and slammed the creature into one of the vault’s pillars. It fell to the floor, writhing, and I realized I’d left a line of black along the animate organ where the silver rod had touched it. A burn mark, even more severe than the near touch of devil fire.

  I dove forward, intending to slam down on the thing again, but it recovered with that same horrible speed, moving with the mechanical precision of a spider. It went behind the pillar, vanishing into the denser parts of the fog.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I asked Emma even as I backed away, scanning the glowing fog clinging to the tomb’s floor.

  She was also searching for the creature. “A homonculus, yes. It seems as though my great-grandmother taught some of her tricks to her favored handmaiden.”

  Renascentia Sanguinis. The forbidden technique of House Carreon. So that was the form Emma’s grandmother had taken the night she tried to murder her.

  She meant to steal one of our bodies.

  “How do we kill it?” I asked.

  “Burn it!” Emma hissed. “Vicar’s flame should do it, if you can catch it dead on.”

  The devil’s reply was tinged with weariness. “I’m afraid I don’t have much more in me, child. I am not what I once was.”

  I threw a worried glance at the lupine head on my shoulder. Vicar’s eyelight was dim, barely visible.

  During that moment of distraction, something moved to my left. I turned, saw what was coming, and tried to shout a warning. “Emma, behind—”

  The body of Lillian Rue, moving like a marion with some inner mechanism broken, slashed at Emma with a small blade. Emma turned and dodged, but not fast enough to avoid a cut along her shoulder. She let out a hiss of pain and riposted, sinking her blade directly into the woman’s eye.

  Lillian slumped, a mad grin marring her withered face. She looked even older than she had, a corpse in truth, hollowed out and empty. Little more than skin and bone, yet that smile…

  That’s just a puppet, I realized. Once again I tried to summon my own magic, but it felt cold and unresponsive. Was Rysanthe’s brand still active? I did not understand how it worked, though I could feel its power.

  “Aaahhh!” Lillian’s mouth was little more than a black slash across her sagging face, her voice a catacomb wheeze. “My Lady, hear me! Take root within me! Use this tired flesh, I beg of thee!”

  The blood homunculus rested on her shoulder like a macabre parrot. It had tendrils extended, stabbing into Lillian’s neck, pumping just enough fluid into her withered veins to make the corpse move. She lifted the dagger — now coated with Emma’s blood — and I understood that she intended to drive it into her own heart.

  “Burn her,” I ordered.

  And Vicar did. Our pact gave him no choice. He opened his jaws wide, the hellish light in his eyes flaring hot. The wash of heat and sulfurous stink against my skin made me bare my teeth in pain, but I made myself watch the result.

  Hellfire engulfed Lillian Rue. She might have screamed, but the heat drove into her lungs and all I heard was the roar of flames. The old witch became a black silhouette inside a cloak of yellow fire, limbs outstretched, frozen in that moment that she’d lifted the dagger up.

  Abruptly, the surge of fire abated and Lillian stood there, a charred, indistinct shape crawling with smoke and audibly sizzling. She fell first to her knees, then onto her side, and did not rise again. The smoking, melted knife clattered out of skeletal fingers.

  Emma lacked my resistance to extreme heat. It was a moment before it was cool enough for her to step up next to me. She moved with caution, the tip of her sword still aimed at the corpse. “Please tell me she’s actually dead this time,” she said in an uncharacteristically small voice.

  “I think so.” I glanced at Vicar. His eyelights weren’t showing. “Vic?” I asked.

  No response. I lifted a hand and placed it on the pelt. It felt warm, but that heat was vanishing quickly. I felt a rush of guilt — had there been another way? Something else I could have done in the moment to stop Lillian, besides forcing the devil to give up what energy he had left? He couldn’t refuse a direct order. I'd spoken with the understanding that it might extinguish whatever still passed for the infernal spirit’s life. My second evil of that night.

  He’d called me his master, and himself my slave. It was true. I’d just made it true. With him, and with Emery.

  Disgusted with myself, I instead turned to check on Rysanthe. She still lay comatose, a dimly shining green skeleton swirling with eddies of lambent mist. I approached her, readjusted the cape to cover her, and gently lifted the almost weightless being before turning to Emma again.

  “Are you alright?” I asked her.

  She nodded, still staring at Lillian. “She used the Renascentia. That should not be possible. She isn’t Carreon.”

  “Did she just try to do what I think she did?” I asked.

  Emma blinked rapidly and shook herself. “I… Yes, I think so.”

  “That shouldn’t be possible either,” I said. “Astraea’s soul is in Hell.”

  Emma sighed and twirled her fencing sword in a nervous motion. “Remember what I told you? Our Art creates echoes of souls in our blood. She is inside me, just like my mother and all my ancestors are. A fragment of her, at least.”

  Would that be enough? I was no expert on the metaphysics of souls. If Astraea wasn’t actually in Hell, but somehow lived in some kind of intangible form inside her great-granddaughter’s blood, then wouldn’t the Zosite know? Wouldn’t Vicar? He’d been in charge of the drama between the Carreons and Orleys.

  And I couldn’t ask him until he woke up. If he woke up.

  When I glanced at Emma, I almost startled. Her face was pale. She looked scared.

  Of course she’d be scared. This was how her grandmother tried to kill her. It must have been like reliving that trauma.

  “She’s dead,” I assured her.

  “It’s not that.” Emma looked to me and spoke in a forcibly steady voice. “My grandmother spoke of Lillian Rue once. She was not Astraea’s only handmaiden. And she had sisters.”

  I shut my eyes and carefully controlled my reaction. I could see Emma’s fear, and she didn’t need mine right now. “I’ve only ever seen Lillian. We’ll keep it in mind, but it’s a problem for later.”

  Emma took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right. So what now?”

  “We need to get Rysanthe out of here. That’s our priority. We also need to figure out where the others are.”

  We’d defeated Lillian, but there remained a whole fortress full of vampires right above our heads. There was also Ildeban's whereabouts to fret over. That, and both Emma’s familiar and mine were out of action.

  Emma followed me out of the tomb. I moved at a fast clip, forcing her to run to keep up with me. “Shouldn’t we drop our glamours?” She asked me breathlessly.

  I slowed a beat as I considered, looking inward. “No…” I glanced at her. “I think he’s telling me it’s not time yet.”

  Emma’s features turned sardonic. “Of course he wouldn’t want you to. He wants to exist. It’s the same for mine. We and Maeve came to an understanding early. You need to do the same with Finn Nu.”

  She was probably right, but a voice in the back of my head kept telling me to be patient. Perhaps it was malevolent, but my gut told me to listen.

  I’d found the tomb before by letting myself be led by other wills, and had no clue how to get out again. But Emma had been paying attention, and she took the lead. Carrying Rysanthe, who I’d wrapped up to keep her skeletal features hidden, I followed my squire as we moved up a series of stairs and found ourselves in the halls of the Herald’s Keep again. They remained brightly lit, crystal chandeliers and painted walls leading us back to the entrance.

  “Awfully quiet compared to earlier,” Emma noted.

  The hallways were empty. I listened, trying to pick up anything — distant conversation, laughter, music, screams of terror — but there was nothing. Through the layer of cloth, Rysanthe’s body felt warm in my arms. I took that to be a good sign.

  “I think the ballroom is this way,” Emma said and nodded to our left. “Why don’t we—”

  “You!” A voice boomed. We both turned and saw a man walking towards us. He was dressed all in white, and his cape was fashioned from feathers, a metal helm that looked more aesthetic than functional shadowing his face. Like the servants, the palace guard had been dressed up like angels.

  “Oh, good!” Emma put on a gushing affect, smoothly hiding her sword behind her back. “We’ve been lost for what feels like hours! Do you know where the ballroom is, ser knight?”

  The soldier kept walking forward without stopping. His expression was stern beneath the brim of his helm, his steps quick. He opened his mouth to speak, and I saw how long his canines were.

  I started to speak a warning, but Emma had seen it too. Her pleasant smile shifted into a snarl, and she flicked her sword’s tip forward. The soldier was already drawing his own blade, a heavy arming sword.

  Before he even got in striking range, there was a flash of movement from a side passage. The man stumbled as another body slammed into him, turned and tried to adopt a guard, only for the flat edge of a warhammer to crack his wrist.

  He grimaced, but an injury that would have dropped a grown man to the floor in pain only angered the vampire. He bared his sharp fangs and lunged—

  And Hendry smashed a second hammer directly into the creature’s face, caving the helmet and the dome of the skull into the brain beneath. The creature crumbled like a bundle of sticks.

  Emma came up short, blinking in surprise. “Hen?” She asked.

  Hendry took a moment to catch his breath and turned his somber features to us. He held a warhammer in each hand, one plated with silver and the other with gold. Covering his bases against both the undead and the fiendish, it seemed. He didn’t wear his armor, instead sporting the simple browns and beige-whites of a city dweller. The clothes barely fit his broad frame.

  “You’re alright!” He let out a breathless laugh. “Heir preserve me, I thought… It doesn’t matter.”

  “Your glamour is gone,” Emma observed.

  Hendry’s expression turned dour again. “Yes. We snuck into the castle as porters, so I couldn’t really look like a knight out of a storybook. Once I changed clothes, it just sort of… Slid off.”

  He shook himself. “But that’s not important right now. Where’s Penric?”

  “Guarding our faerie,” Emma told him.

  His expression turned troubled. It was only then that I noticed he was injured. Blood caked his neck beneath the left ear, and there were wide slashes in his clothes at hip, forearm, and around his right knee. They didn’t seem to trouble him, though the knee wound bled through his trousers.

  “What’s going on?” I asked him. “Where is Lisette?”

  Hendry glanced at me, frowned in confusion, then shook himself. “Ser, is that you? Of course it’s you. This magic messes with my head. Is that… Is that her?”

  He nodded to the bundle in my arms. I had to suppress a growl of impatience. “Hendry, where is Lisette and Olliard?”

  Hendry blinked out of his reverie and nodded. “Lisette is with the Doctor. That’s what I came to tell you both. We need to get her and get out of the palace, and fast!”

  “Why?” Emma asked, lifting her eyebrows.

  “Because Olliard smuggled some kind of alchemical device inside,” Hendry told us. Only then did I realize that his face wasn't pale from effort, but with barely suppressed fear. “Something from the continent, I think. It’s a bomb. The Doctor is going to blow the whole palace up and kill every vampire inside.”