said about the underground edifice. I didn’t want to frighten you.
Intrigued, I returned to the tapestry and swept it aside. I could use a little adventure.
“Carathin har,” I whispered. My elicrin stone illuminated. Myron said not to bring it downstairs. But he also said to bring a light, and I could barely use it anyway thanks to my probation. I knew he wouldn’t truly mind.
I started down the tight spiral stairwell, my lacy hem gathering dust. Minutes seemed to pass before my dizzying path straightened. At the end of a narrow passage waited a cool chamber, so dark I felt blind gazing into it.
A bowl of ashes sat on a table just outside the edifice, next to a tinderbox and a candle. Giggling at myself for playing along with such silliness, I shed my dressing gown and dipped two fingers into the bowl, shivering as I drew lines of ash along my eyebrows and cheeks, then down my neck, around my bare breasts, and around the weight of my elicrin stone between them. I picked up the candle, said “Matara liss,” to catch it aflame, and stepped into the edifice.
Iron sconces hung on either side of the interior of the archway; I used the candle to light the torches and faced the chamber with a stifled gasp.
The opposite wall held a giant gilt mirror, and every remaining fingerbreadth of the walls and ceiling were covered by a horrifying mural, saturated with lurid detail.
The theme was clear: the four Fallen reigned over their miserable supplicants in the underworld, no redemption in sight.
The ceiling alone depicted humans living on earth. Here, their “vices” seemed, in some ways, harmless. It appeared this played out as a prologue to what lay beneath: judgment for their choices.
In one corner people indulged in rampant debauchery at a feast, spilling wine, fighting over food, engaging in carnal acts. On the walls below their feet, naked worshippers wailed in a grimy pit, gaunt with starvation and sprouting animal features like horns and claws. Amid them hunched Depravity, Robivoros, a creature with sharp teeth—in both of his mouths. The second maw was where his stomach should have been, and with it he feasted on a corpse.
In the next corner stood Cruelty, Themera, a beautiful woman in black wearing a dark smile and a crown made of knives, each point skewering a human skull. Her worshippers wept blood on a ravaged battlefield. The living humans above were shown torturing young children and beggars.
Opposite her was Apathy, Silimos, a withered woman wrapped in a translucent cocoon, her empty, staring eyes covered with a veil of cobwebs. Her limbs were twisted and rigid with the stiffening that comes soon after death. Those who had fallen prey to her lived in a gloomy, rotting forest. Some were intertwined with the trees, so they could no longer move, and covered in moss and mold—yet their eyes remained awake and alert. On the ceiling people lounged in languor, playing cards and ignoring a blazing fire ravaging the fields outside their window.
And lastly, at the far-right corner stood Vainglory, Nexantius. The tall, muscular figure was formed of the purest silver and wore a mask of mirrors that revealed only the attractive structure of his face and his glowing silver eyes. He stood on a pedestal amid a swathe of starry darkness, gripping chains attached to jeweled manacles that held prisoners captive. The damned souls wore crowns of jagged diamonds that dug into their skin and sent rivers of blood down their faces.
In their previous lives, his prisoners dripped with expensive jewelry and lifted golden trophies. One man sat on a throne of contorted human bodies, grovelers who gazed on him with admiration even as they bent over backward to bear his weight.
The scenes were terrifying…and impossible to look away from.
As I circled the room, I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror and turned to fully face it. The dark streaks of ash looked like war paint. Accustomed as I was to dressing like a spring flower, I had to admit I looked beautiful this way: bare and formidable.
I softly traced a hand from my cheek to my lips, down the line that ran sternum to navel with a brief detour over my elicrin stone, forbidden in every way. I looked so exquisite that even the darkness around me began to scintillate.
A sudden draft extinguished the torches.
Ambrosine.
I not only heard the whisper in the wind but felt it: a cool shiver slithering over my naked