belly flipped, his heart surged as he realized the liquid was receding, like an ebbing tide, draining back down into …
Into what?
He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. He’d long since run out of breath to scream, but still he tried, eyes open wide, watching the blood sink lower and lower still. He could see a figure now, crouched at the center of the basin. A man, coated in gleaming black. The blood continued to sink, leaving the stone spotless behind it, every drop and spatter being drawn into the man’s very pores. His form shifted, nightmare shapes briefly twisting into being and disappearing just as swiftly. And as the screaming reached crescendo, the shape settled into something Jonnen recognized.
“… Father?”
He knelt at the bottom of the basin. Head bowed. One knee to the spotless stone. Silence fell in the chamber like a shroud.
“… Julius…?”
Jonnen’s father opened his eyes, and the boy saw they were utterly black. Despite the torchlight, the shadows around them were all being drawn toward him. Jonnen saw his own shadow, reaching out to his father’s with fingers outstretched. The longing and sickness and hunger inside him was almost a physical pain.
But slowly, ever so slowly, it ebbed. Fading, like the sunslight during truedark. Jonnen could see his father trembling with effort. His every muscle taut. The veins in his neck stretched to breaking. But gradually, the black across the surface of his eyes receded, withdrawing back into his irises and revealing the whites beneath.
“The will,” he breathed, his voice tinged with a dark reverberation.
The imperator raised his hands. The shadows about them came alive, writhing and twisting and seething and stretching, the black a living, breathing thing.
“The will to do what others will not.”
“… Julius…?” Whisper asked. “… Are you well…?”
The imperator snapped his fists shut. The shadows stopped their motion, falling still like scolded children. The imperator lowered his chin and smiled.
“I am … perfect.”
The air hummed. The shadows rippled. Whisper retreated from the pool’s edge, some instinct driving the serpent to coil inside Jonnen’s own shadow. But instead of the passenger lessening his fear, the boy felt his own terror double. The snake’s dread bleeding into his own.
His father climbed out of the now empty basin. Jonnen looked down and saw his father’s shadow was utterly black. Not dark enough for three or four or even dozens. It was a dark so fathomless that light seemed simply to die inside it. The boy could hear a faint hissing noise, like a frying pan on a hot stove.
Narrowing his eyes, the imperator reached inside his robe, pulling out a trinity of Aa hanging on a golden chain about his neck. The light from the holy symbol flared bright in the boy’s eyes, sickening, blinding. Jonnen gasped, stepping back with one hand raised to blot out the awful radiance. His stomach churning, he saw his father’s skin was hissing and spitting where it touched the trinity, like beef on a skillet, smoke rising up from the imperator’s burning flesh.
Jaw clenched, Julius Scaeva turned his will to the golden suns in his hand. Grip tightening, veins standing taut in his forearm, he slowly curled his fingers closed. The trinity crumpled like tin in a vise, crushed to a shapeless lump in his fist. Lip curling in disdain, he tossed the ruined metal aside, off into the cavern’s far-flung shadows. Eyes on the burned skin of his palm.
“We will return to the Ribs,” he said. “And you will draw me Duomo’s map.”
“Yes, Father,” the boy whispered.
His father looked at him then. Despite the passenger riding him, Jonnen felt a perfect sliver of fear pierce his heart. The dark about them rippled and his own shadow shivered, as if just as afraid as he was. And looking up into his father’s eyes, Jonnen saw they were filled with hunger.
“It is a good thing you’ve a memory as sharp as swords, my son.”
CHAPTER 37
AWAY
One broken and bleeding heart.
Four figures beneath the Mother’s gaze.
Seven letters carved in black stone.
Ashlinn.
Mia stood in the Hall of Eulogies, looking at the letters she’d cut into the tomb. Ashlinn’s body lay inside, wrapped in a beautiful white gown taken from Aalea’s wardrobe. All had been silent as Mia laid her love on the stone, kissed her lips, cold as the heart in her chest. Staring down at that beautiful face forever stilled, those eyes forever closed, that breath forever stolen. Trying to convince herself she felt nothing.
She’d pushed the tomb door closed. Felt it slam on