“It’s a blood curse that causes the victim’s flesh to waste away,” he explained.
“How long?” I breathed.
He gave a short, bitter laugh. “It’s slow-acting. Better for drawing out one’s suffering.”
“Is there an antidote?”
“The only cure is Mirran Elixir.”
“And where would one find this elixir?” I inquired. “Ethervale?”
Casimir’s expression hardened. “Arden, it’s not possible,” he evaded.
“It’s fine,” I interrupted. “We’ll simply have to go to Ethervale and get the antidote.”
“No,” he growled. “It’s far too dangerous, I’ve told you. Ethervale is no place for mortals.”
“I already made a vow to act as emissary to the Order,” I argued. “I swore it on my blood.”
He winced. “That doesn’t mean—You don’t have to report to the court immediately?—”
“Weren’t you the one telling me how dangerous it is to break a bloodbargain?” I interjected.
Casimir fell silent, his jaw clenching. I could feel his resolve wavering.
“You need that elixir,” I pressed. “I need to fulfill my bloodbargain. And…” I hesitated, wondering how far I could push him. “And you have to return, if only to free Isolde.”
His eyes flared with emotion as they bored into me, but he did not reply at once. We sat in tense silence for a few minutes as Casimir’s fingers traced the raw, mottled flesh on my forearm. My newest rune. The Threxian rune, an Ethervalean symbol for debt, for burden.
Casimir’s were eyes as hard and unyielding as onyx when they met mine. As if to remind me how badly this had gone for us, and how much worse it was about to get.
“I never would’ve imagined you’d end up marked with one of these, too,” he murmured, his expression softening. “But I can’t bring you into Ethervale, especially not when you’ve just relinquished your blood protection against softmagic.”
I grimaced at the reference to my bloodbargain with Evren, but my resolve was unwavering. I steeled myself for how the Darkseer might react to this final revelation. “What about a half-Daemon?” I hedged.
Casimir went rigid, his expression blank. A heavy silence settled between us. When he spoke, his voice sounded strangely distant. “What are you talking about?”
I unsheathed my silver dagger, allowing the sunlight to play off the blade’s pink-blue iridescence.
“You never told me why you found this knife so interesting,” I said, turning it over in my palm. My eyes met his. “It’s because this dagger was forged in Ethervale, wasn’t it?”
Casimir stared at me in pale disbelief as I set down the blade.
“One of the many secrets my father hid from me is that my mother isn’t my mother.”
It explained a lot—the cold, distant way she loved me. Why she always seemed so embarrassed by my ability to taste lies. To her, my gift was a sign of my difference, my non-humanness.
“No,” Casimir said, his lips twitching as though this were some sick joke. “That’s impossible.”
I shoved the journal into his hands. “See for yourself.” When he didn’t immediately open it, I urged him impatiently, “Go on.”
I followed along over his shoulder as he began to read.
June 23, Whaling Pub, Isle of Lorn, Maine
I do not know where to begin. Over these past few weeks, the nature of everything that has come to light has shocked and dismayed me to no small degree. Over the summer, I returned to Ouverham with special permission to access the college’s archives, which contained a second-edition folio by Marlowe. While rifling through additional materials, I stumbled upon shocking evidence of a plot involving Ouverham’s administration and a secret society known as the Bloodthorn Order. I uncovered a map detailing the location of the Bloodthorn Order’s headquarters. They maintain a holding on a scrap of land not three miles from the Isle of Lorn. Due the treacherous nature of the rocky shoals, the isle is impregnable except through the notoriously deadly Lacunae Cave system. I am possessed by a mad impulse to trek into the caves and attempt to locate their headquarters.
August 15, Lacunae Caves