Chapter 6
Phaedra fell in behind him, clutching her aching shoulder, her fist clenched tight over her dying mark, terrified of the road ahead—and even more terrified of the man leading her down it.
The storm broke over the Sunken Crypts not as rain, but as iron-cold needles that drove through cloak and leather alike.
The gale screamed across the ridge, tearing the dying fog to shreds and replacing it with a torrential deluge. Water churned in the ravines, rising fast, swallowing the ancient stone stairways that wound down into the subterranean necropolis.
“Step carefully,” Phaedra commanded, her voice competing with the roar of the deluge. She kept a tight grip on the Stygian tether, though the magical cord felt heavier now, dragging against her wrist like an anchor of lead. “The lower chambers flood when the celestial tides turn. If we are caught below the watermark, the weight of the water will drown us both before the wraiths even scent us.”
Kaelith did not reply with his usual dry flippancy.
That silence frightened her more than any threat of drowning.
He was leaning heavily against the slimy basalt wall of the outer descent, his boots slipping on moss-slicked flagstones. His head hung low, chest heaving in rapid, shallow gasps that sounded like dry leaves scraping together. The iridescent sheen in his blood had vanished; what trickled from his split lip was dull, dark crimson, devoid of its royal fae luminescence.
“Kaelith?” She turned, her boots splashing into an ankle-deep pool of black run-off.
He took another step, his left knee buckled violently, and he crashed sideways into a crumbling sarcophagus.
Phaedra lunged forward, catching him under his good arm before his skull could strike the sharp stone edge. The impact jolted through her wounded shoulder, sending a spike of blinding fire down her spine, but she clamped her teeth together and hauled him upright against the crypt wall.
“Look at me,” she ordered, her fingers digging through his sodden sleeve into the hard muscle of his arm. “Stand up.”
He lifted his head with agonizing slowness. His violet eyes, usually so sharp, so mocking, were glazed with an uncharacteristic, milky fog. The skin around his eye sockets was bruised a sickly lavender, his lips pale as sea-foam.
“My apologies, Reaper,” he rasped, every syllable a battle against his own collapsing lungs. “It seems... my aesthetic sensibilities... have finally failed me.”
“Do not joke,” she hissed, pulling him further into the crypt’s dry entrance archway to escape the downpour. “What is this? The shoulder was set. The wraith venom was burned out.”
“Not venom,” Kaelith whispered, leaning his temple against the cold stone, his breath shuddering. “The tether. Your cord... it drinks from me, Phaedra. And the border... the border wards were keyed to reject my royal blood. Crossing them... tore the anchor from my soul.”
Phaedra looked down at the Stygian cord binding their wrists.
The violet light of the tether had turned ravenous, pulsing with an ugly, jagged rhythm. It wasn't merely restraining him anymore; it was leeching his vital warmth, mistaking his failing pulse for an attempt to escape into the ether.
*Cut it,* instinct whispered.
*If you sever the tether, he is free,* the voice of her training instantly countered. *An unbound offering in hostile territory is lost. If he dies unbound, the harvest fails.*
“I can manage,” Kaelith murmured, though his eyelids were already fluttering shut. “The shrine... is only a league past the lower vaults. Just... leave me twenty paces to crawl. I’ll make it... to the child’s glass.”
“You won't make it twenty paces down this corridor,” Phaedra snapped.
She reached for the Stygian knot at her wrist. With a sharp flick of her will, she severed the ethereal bond. The cord dissolved into harmless grey ash, swirling away on the freezing draft of the tomb.
Kaelith slumped instantly, sliding down the basalt blocks until he was seated in the dry dirt of the vestibule. His head fell forward against his chest.
Phaedra dropped to her knees in front of him, heedless of the filthy mud soaking through her apprentice shrouds. The chamber around them was cavernous, smelling of mold, damp lime, and centuries of undisturbed dust. Above, the storm slammed against the heavy stone ceiling, vibrating through the solid bedrock like the pounding of a distant titan’s heart.
She ripped off her leather gloves and pressed two bare fingers against the side of his neck.
His pulse was a dying moth—frantic, paper-thin, stuttering every third beat. Worse, the furnace heat that had radiated from him in the borderlands was gone. His flesh was turning to ice. The kind of ice Phaedra knew intimately.
The ice of a corpse entering the threshold.
“Kaelith,” she said, her voice dropping its harshness, laced with an involuntary, rising tremor of panic. “Stay awake. Keep your eyes open.”
“Cold,” he breathed, his teeth chattering so violently the sound echoed against the crypt’s vaulted ribs. “Gods... Phaedra... it’s so cold.”
“I know. Stay with me.”
“I can’t... reach her,” he whispered, his sightless gaze wandering the dark shadows of the ceiling. “The child... she’s waiting in the weeping glass. She’s going to think... I forgot her.”
“She won't,” Phaedra said, her hands moving frantically over his chest, checking for internal hemorrhaging. Her palms pressed flat against his torn tunic. Underneath, his ribs were cold, his heart fluttering like a spent candle in a gale. “You haven't forgotten her. We are going to the shrine. Do you hear me? We are going together.”
A dry, fractured laugh scraped out of his throat, turning into a wet cough that sprayed dark blood across her fingers.
“Draw your scythe, Phaedra,” he whispered, his hand rising with immense effort, his trembling, bloodied fingers brushing the curve of her jaw before falling limp into his lap. “Do it now. If my soul disperses in this crypt... the wraiths will feast on the shards. Harvest me. Take the tithe... while there is still enough of me left... to seal your ascension.”
Phaedra stared down at him, her chest seizing as if wrapped in iron bands.
*Draw your scythe.*
It was the rational choice. It was the correct choice. The textbook resolution to an apprentice’s seventh harvest. The quarry was incapacitated, consenting, offering his spirit freely to avoid the horror of spectral disintegration.
All she had to do was call the astral blade into her palm, press the crescent edge against his jugular, and whisper the rite of unmaking.
In ten seconds, his suffering would end. In twenty seconds, his spirit would be gathered into the crystal orb at her hip. In thirty seconds, the High Tribunal’s summons would flare in the sky, welcoming her into the ranks of the immortal Arbiters. She would be untouchable. She would be safe. She would never feel the biting frost of grief or terror ever again.
She opened her right hand.
“Summon,” she whispered.
The astral glass flared to life, casting the dark crypt into harsh, brilliant hues of starlight and sapphire. The scythe hummed, its edge sharp enough to split a strand of hair, singing its silent song of finality.
She brought the blade down until the glowing curve hovered a fraction of an inch above his bare throat.
