Miners decide to flee with us, hugging their pickaxes tight. Vampire guards stationed here—but evidently not part of the judgemen contingent—see the judgemen fleeing and decide it’s in their best interest, too. Before I can breathe, everyone’s running in opposite directions—
Which causes me to run shoulder-first into a slight figure. She bounces off me with a yelp, and a reflection in her face catches the moonlight.
Glass spectacles hang slightly askew off a thin bridge of a nose. A young face, a boyish body, and wide,verywide eyes behind those spectacles. “Sephania!”
My head reels at the sudden recognition. “Imis?!”
The girl runs at me and wraps her arms around my larger frame. She buries her head against me, I can already hear the tears springing from her eyes “Oh thank the True. I’ve been looking for you.”
“What? Where have you been?”
“I returned to Nuhav after discovering something of importance, Seph. I was rounded up at the southern gate trying to get in, bought by some slick, gaudy interfolk vampire looking for assistants.”
Overliege Liolen,I think.
I pull Imis to arm’s length so I can hear her better. “What have you discovered? Why have you been looking for me, Imis?” My voice is harried, raspy.
“Sephania, let’s go!” Skar hisses behind me at the mouth of the cave.
“To warn you, old friend.” She looks up. Tears sparkle in her magnified eyes. “I read something in a tome. I believe Aramastun Wyvox has tainted blood in his lineage, Sephania. The Night Judgecannotgain access to your Loreblood, whatever happens!”
My heart freezes and my lips part.
“That should do it.”The words from my recent fight, crooning and giddy from the silver-eyed whipper.
I glance down at my arms, at the mottled flesh and beaded needling caused by that whip . . . and my blood dripping from the spikes of the lash as he pulled it back.
“Great.” I groan, feeling suddenly cold and shivery. I stare off into the distance where the hooded vampire ran. “Because I think he just fucking did.”
Part
Four
The priest has lived a sinful life for as long as he remembers.
But are sins not just tests of his faith? Do they not present themselves to him in all their wicked fashions so he can dash them away and claim his utter resolve and commitment to the True?
It’s a life of eternal penance-seeking for this priest. He’s known it since he was a young man—since he first stared at an even younger man, a boy, really, with lust in his eyes and a stirring in his loins.
Many people would frown upon him if they learned his secrets. He’s had to keep them bottled up his entire life, hidden from his contemporaries. He’s even had to kill, at times, to keep those secrets his own.
The Archpriest of Nuhav was one such soul. He stumbled into the priest’s room at the wrong time, gasped at what he saw.
But the Archpriest was old. Ancient, really. His time had passed. And his age made it quite simple for the priest to smother him with a pillow that evening.
A big to-do was thrown over the Bishop’s death. No one lives forever, right? Old people die. It’s what they do. The priest simply gave the old man a nudge to go meet his Truehearts, as their faith dictates all holy men must do.
By this point in his life, after many trials and tribulations, the priest was nearing old age himself. He didn’t want to think about that too much, but it was the truth. The thing that had caused him so much torture and anxiety over the years, which would stir so happily at the sight of a young boy or girl, was no longer working properly. It was a true travesty, and just another trial put forth by the True, he was sure.
He lived his life in sin and secrecy, yet on the outside he was a very charming, powerful individual. His name was put in among those who should become the next Archpriest, and imagine his shock when he won the delegation.
Of course, it was not shock at all. He paid handsomely for the title of Archpriest, and he deserved it. He had lived his life in faithfulness to the True, had braved the crucible of his sins, and now got to sit atop a gilded seat in the very center of Nuhav.
He had made it.
Yet there was always the worry that his age-old secrets would come to light. That his sins would be discovered. So he took every precaution to make sure that didn’t happen.
The newly minted Archpriest even went so far as to dine and deal withvampires, that most unholy of races, if it suited his purposes. He is a sinful rogue, he knows, but what must be done must be done.