The stench of cold, damp earth hit me—along with something else, something sharp and metallic.
Kaelith took one step down before turning and extending hishand to me. I looked between it and his face. It was unreadable. The calmness unsettled me.
“How do I know you’re not going to imprison me in whatever is down there?”
“What I want to show you can only be shared in this room, Aurelia. If I wanted to cage you, I would have done so already.”
“And what do you want from me?”
“Aside from the power I know runs through your veins?”
“Yes, besides that…”
“I want everything,” he said at last. “Your power. Your loyalty. Your body. Every breath, every choice, every fracture of you that no one else has touched. I want it all.”
His eyes gleamed with an intensity that made my skin crawl.
Reluctantly, I placed my hand in his. The door shut behind us with a final click.Torches along the walls flared to life as we descended, their flames painting the spiral stairwell in flickering gold. Each step down felt like a step deeper into his grasp.
I hesitated only a moment before following, my fingertips brushing the rough stone for balance.
My heart thundered in my ears.
I didn’t trust Kaelith. But refusing him would paint a target on everyone who’d dared stand at my side—and if I wanted them alive, if I wanted to reach Aeryn at all, I had to play along. Just long enough to survive.
At the bottom of the stairs, we entered a room that looked half-apothecary, half-forgotten chapel. The stone walls were lined with crumbling shelves stacked with jars, books, and strange relics. An enormous black cauldron dominated the center of the room, steam rising from its surface—thick and dark, carrying the scent of blood and herbs.
It was somehow both cozy and terrifying, like being welcomed into the hearth of some ancient, slumbering beast.
Kaelith crossed to a table full of instruments and picked up a dagger. Into the hilt were carved two entwined serpents, one black as onyx, the other white as moonlight. Their jeweled eyes glinted as he turned the blade in his hands.
My heart skipped. It was the same design that was on the box under my bed back home. I remembered the old stories about this blade—about truth and blood and binding.
My face must have betrayed my unease, because Kaelith paused.
“I’m not going to hurt you tonight, Aurelia,” he said smoothly.
But I wasn’t so sure he hadn’t already carved deeper wounds—forcing me to wear crowns I never wanted, to play the queen in games that were never mine. A blade scars the body. Kaelith scarred the soul.
“That’s a beautiful hilt,” I said, forcing my voice even.
“Ah yes,” Kaelith said, admiring the blade. “Eryndis’s Dagger of Truth. One cut from this, and you’ll answer any question asked—whether you want to or not.”
Kaelith flipped the dagger expertly, holding it by the blade and offering the hilt to me. I hesitated. Mama’s stories flickered up like warnings—truth and blood bound speaker to listener, questioner to questioned. Ask wrong, cut wrong, and you’d find your own tongue spilling truths you never meant to give. The moment my fingers closed around the serpents, a pulse of warmth shot up my arms. It was electric, euphoric.
A sound escaped me—a soft, involuntary moan.
Kaelith’s mouth turned into a dangerous smile. “Interesting,” he murmured.
Without ceremony, he removed his cloak, then his shirt, revealing a body marked from neck to navel in ancient sigils and black ink.
Runes wound down his arms, across his chest, over his back, layered with markings I couldn’t decipher.
For a brief, shameful moment, I wondered if the tattoos continued further.
Lower.
“You have a lot of markings,” I said.