Chapter 35: The Meeting

I didn’t hear their response. My heart was pumping so hard that all I could hear was the pulse in my ears.

I tried to think how to say this, eyes darting across the room. No windows. Of course no windows. This was an important private meeting. And I could keep it that way.

“I-I, umm...” I stood up, trying to look like I had authority, though my hands gripped the edge of the table. “This is an important meeting, and, umm, it’s our first one.”

Should I have started by introducing myself?

Iratheon’s fingers tapped once on his journal, impatience clear on his face, but everyone’s eyes kept shifting between me and Lazeth.

“Umm, as you know, I’m the... the Demon Lord, and, umm, well, what I was trying to say was the—um the demons should leave.”

They looked surprised at this, except for Nimera who looked confused

“Demons?” she asked looking around the room

“our lord means the Wroughtborn” Lazeth answered patiently

“but… I thought demons was the name of his species? Why else would he be called Demon Lord?” her voice a strange mix of puzzled and defensive.

“I’m not a demon, I’m a human!” I blurted

Nimera blinked, “Human,” she whispered confused.

Then the fear came in all at once. Her hand shot inside her sweater vest and pulled out a contract book.

“Human!” she yelled, and this time there was no confusion in her voice. Only terror.

“stop!” yelled Lazeth but Nimera did not,

Ash whirled behind her chair, rising too fast, twisting into a billowing cloak. A skull pushed out beneath the hood, long and narrow, with too many eye sockets. It faced me, and my body knew what it was before my mind did.

My hand lifted on instinct, reaching for the familiar spark of magic that wasn’t inside me. Nothing answered.

The room exploded in red-violet light.

I stumbled out of my chair as Magnavex’s summoning circle spread across the floor. Virellins crawled from it, long-limbed and gray, their purple eyes empty of anything alive. They surrounded Nimera and the thing she had summoned.

Someone shouted. A chair scraped hard across the floor. Wings snapped open. The skull demon turned its hood toward Magnavex’s Virellins.

The ache in my head split open.

I staggered to my feet and grabbed Magnavex around the waist, pressing my face into her clothes and shutting my eyes as hard as I could.

Sounds crashed around me. Claws on stone. A table leg cracking. Someone barking an order. The rush of ash. The wet scrape of something being dragged across the floor.

Then the floor was gone.

I opened my eyes and saw the familiar ceiling of the church roof.

The noise became distant, like I was hearing it from underwater. Chairs flew somewhere far away. Demons crashed into stone somewhere that was not here.

I rolled over in my bunk and looked through the side. Emma was still asleep in her bed across the room, though Magnavex’s clothes hung translucently in front of her like a second curtain. I looked beneath me and saw Olivander in his bed.

I wanted nothing more than to climb down and curl up beside him.

But I was too scared to move.

A Virellin flew through him as it was thrown across the council room. Its floppy ears snapped back, one eye bloodshot and gone.

I shut my eyes again.

I’m sorry, Lumisiel. I failed you.

But please don’t let me die with him. Please let me stay once he is gone.

But I knew it was worthless. If you killed the Sentinel, the Warden died too. That was what it meant to be one.

A pressure filled the room.

I focused on Lucarion, expecting Lumisiel to have come save me.

At first, all I saw was Lazeth.

The black lines across his face and throat had darkened. They were no longer thin traces disappearing beneath his collar. They shifted beneath his skin in slow, deliberate movements, thicker than mine, like ink dragged through blood. Each line pulsed with a violet-black glow, and the air around him seemed to bend toward it.

My vision swam. For one heartbeat, Lazeth was the only thing in the room.

Then my eyes adjusted.

Something stood behind him.

DEATH.

It could be nothing else.

It did not look alive. It did not even look like something that had ever lived. Hunched beneath massive wings was an enormous demon, so large it made Belgorath look like a child. Its stomach had gashes in it, dripping shadow instead of blood. Its skin looked like rotten cloth and dead bark.

But its face was the worst part.

There was none. Only tendrils where a face should have been, hanging down in slow, heavy ropes. Somehow that made it feel like it was looking at me anyway.

Lazeth’s voice cut through the room, cold with rage.

“Enough.”

The demon behind him vanished.

My knees hit the floor with a wet splash.

For one second, I did not understand the sound.

Then I looked down.

My pants were soaked. A small puddle spread beneath me on the polished floor.

No one spoke.

Nimera’s skull-cloaked demon was bowed so low its hood touched the floor. Magnavex’s Virellins were pressed flat against the stone. Even the imp Serelune had been sitting on had curled into itself.

Belgorath’s deep belly voice came in, tinted with fear. “Send them away.”

Serelune stood. The imp she had been using as a chair vanished. The demons she had been wearing disappeared too.

“Could I get a change of clothes?” she asked. Her hands trembling.

I looked down at my soaked pants.

“Clothes,” was all I could bring myself to say.

Lazeth looked across the room, and every eye lowered before his. The black lines at his throat shifted as he spoke.

“No word of our Lord’s awakening leaves this room.”

The words settled over us like a lid closing.

Nimera had not moved. She still looked too pale beneath the ash-gray of her skin, her contract book clutched against her chest like it could protect her from what she had done.

Lazeth continued, “Our Lord will be instructed in the necessary distinctions between Eclipseran language and human terminology.”

“This meeting is adjourned.” Lazeth said. “Nimera,”

She flinched.

“Remain.”

***

Magnavex led me out of the council room.

My body felt strange now that no one was shouting. During the meeting, everything had happened too fast for me to feel all of it. Now it caught up. The trembling in my hands. The ache in my legs. The sore tightness in my throat.

I kept walking because Magnavex kept walking.

My feet moved when hers moved. When she turned, I turned. When she stopped, I nearly walked into her back. I should have asked where we were going. I should have asked what would happen to Nimera. I should have asked whether Lazeth was angry with me, or whether everyone knew, or whether the thing he had summoned…

I did not ask anything.

My thoughts felt thick and slow, like they had been wrapped in wet cloth. Every time I tried to hold onto one, it slipped away and left only the same few pieces behind.

My pants were dry now. I had changed them. I knew that because they did not cling to my legs anymore, but I could not remember when it happened.

The halls changed around us.

I noticed that much, barely.

The endless stone gave way to warmer darkness. The echo beneath my feet softened. At some point, there was carpet instead of bare floor. At some point, the air stopped smelling like smoke and cold stone and started smelling faintly of old wood, dust, and something sweet I could not name. We passed tall doors. We passed walls with shapes on them, maybe paintings, maybe banners. Light shone from lamps instead of torches, softer and lower, caught behind shaded glass.

Magnavex opened a door. I heard it more than saw it.

“Rest, my Lord,” she said.

Her voice was gentle.

I stepped inside. The room was too large. That was the only thing I was able to notice.

Then I saw the bed.

Not a table with a mattress thrown over it. Not a study room pretending to be a bedroom. Not a living plant trying to cradle me in damp leaves.

A real bed.

Huge. The blankets were thick and dark, folded neatly beneath pillows larger than me.

I climbed onto it crawling into the middle, it was still early and Olive wouldn’t be awake for awhile, but I was so exhausted I couldn’t imagine staying awake.

The mattress dipped beneath me, firm at first, then giving just enough to catch my weight. I curled onto my side. The blanket dragged under my fingers, smooth and expensive, but I barely felt it.

Magnavex said something from the doorway.

I did not understand the words.

The door closed.

And then I was alone.

I pressed my hands against my eyes until sparks bloomed behind them.

A sob forced itself out of my throat.

I bit it down, and curled tighter, pressing my face into the blanket.

The door opened.

I froze.

For one stupid moment, I thought if I stayed perfectly still, whoever it was might leave. I could not lift my head. I could not wipe my face. I could not even pretend.

Soft footsteps crossed the room.

The bed dipped next to me.

I stopped breathing.

Someone climbed onto the bed and settled beside me. Arms came around me slowly, careful and uncertain, I should have pulled away. I should have demanded to know who was touching me. I should have remembered where I was.

But then she held me against her chest, and a hand rested between my shoulders, another stroked my hair.

I pressed closer before I could stop myself, my forehead tucked beneath her chin, my hands clutching at the fabric of her clothes.

But the arms tightened around me.

Just a little.

Enough.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, though I did not know who I meant it for.

I sobbed into her clothes until my throat hurt.

I cried because I wanted my brother.

I cried because I wanted my mom.

At some point, the hand on my back began moving slowly. Up and down. Awkward at first, then steadier.

My breathing followed it.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.