Majanka Verstraete
Saleyna Loxley was branded with the mark of the Red Priests, like all mages in the Seven Kingdoms. These marks should make it impossible for them to access their magic, but Saleyna’s powers refuse to be bound by the mark burned into her skin. As an Empath witch, she can sense other people’s emotions and intentions, and influence them, for good or for bad.
Now, Saleyna entered the lion’s den, the home of the Red Priests keen on destroying her kind. If Saleyna is to survive, she must hide her magic at all costs. But at night, she’s haunted by dreams about the mysterious Veritas, a stranger locked in an infernal cage, who tells her that her magic will only grow stronger and more uncontrollable. If she doesn’t learn to control her magic, it will destroy her from the inside out.
But controlling her magic is the least of Saleyna’s concerns when one of the other acolytes, Freya, is killed during an initiation ritual. Standing vigil over Freya’s corpse, Saleyna notices the distinct smell of magic, and when the body mummifies in a matter of mere hours, Saleyna knows without a doubt: Freya was killed by forbidden magic. Why, and by whom? If Saleyna doesn’t find the answers to those questions soon, she could be next…
Chapter One
I woke up feeling exhausted, as if all my energy had been syphoned overnight, which was probably an accurate description for what had been happening.
Only two days ago, I had arrived at the Red Keep, the stronghold of the priests loyal to the Red God. In such a short time span, I had already uncovered two secrets: one, the magic that was forbidden throughout the rest of the Seven Kingdoms was very much alive within the walls of the very institution that fought so hard to forbid it. Two, the magic I possessed, wayward magic, was strong enough to overrule the spell put on me by the rune of the Red God.
On top of that, I had met someone, Veritas, whom I still wasn’t sure if I could trust, but who had promised me he would teach me how to control my magic. Which was what we had been doing the entire night, in the infernal cage he was locked up in, surrounded by storm and lightning. We had sat opposite each other all night, and Veritas had urged me to balance my magic: not suppress it, but balance it, let it exist without giving it the power to overwhelm me.
No wonder I felt as if I had run from one end of the Seven Kingdoms to the other come morning.
Yawning, I dangled my legs over the edge of the bed and wiped the sleep from my eyes.
Freya.
The girl who had been selected for the initiation ritual yesterday.Last night, I had been so certain that the initiation ritual would cost Freya her life. Now, in the light of the early dawn streaming in through the window of my cell, I wasn’t so sure anymore. Maybe I had exaggerated, maybe my intuition was wrong.
The door crept open. Cullyn appeared in the doorway, pale-skinned with sunken eyes, as if he hadn’t slept all night.
“Is she—?”
“Altheia expects everyone in the main hall,” Cullyn replied, ignoring my question. His refusal to answer was answer enough. My stomach was made of lead, and each of my legs was as heavy as a pillar of marble while I struggled to make them move.
Each step toward the door seemed like an eternity, reminding me of the nightmares I often suffered from while growing up: an unknown assailant chasing me from the shadows and me desperately trying to get away, but moving agonizingly slow.
“What happened?” I asked Cullyn while I followed him out to the hallway. “Did something go wrong?”
Cullyn’s face resembled a mask of death, his lips tight. “She wasn’t ready,” was all he said before he continued further down the hall.
“And?” I chased after him, half-running to keep up with his fast stride. “What does that mean? I thought the Red God declared she was ready.”
“The Red God weighs the strength of your blood to decide if you’re ready to enter the initiation ritual, but to survive the ritual depends on a lot more than that. You need to find your own strength, be brave enough to face your true self and to learn the secrets the Red God offers. If your mind can’t take it, or if you can’t accept yourself for who you really are…” Cullyn shook his head. “Then you might not make it out alive.”
The color drained from my cheeks. The sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach yesterday had been spot-on. Freya was dead, because she wasn’t ready to learn the secrets of a God she had trusted, prayed to, and believed in.
It was a selfish thought, but it popped into my mind right away: if she, a devout follower, wasn’t ready for what the Red God offered, how could I, a fraud, ever survive?
Cullyn led me to the main hall. The doors of the hall were propped open and the acolytes streamed in, a river of grey, white, black and red. “Stand with the others,” Cullyn barked, gesturing at the grey-robed priests.
With my heart slamming against my ribcage, I went to stand next to Reslyn. She gave me a grim smile but said nothing. Given the deadly silence in the room, I didn’t dare to speak either.
All the priests were facing the stage, on which the High Priestess had consumed her dinner yesterday. The table and chair were gone now, replaced by a wooden casket, the lid propped open.
A coffin.
Freya’s coffin.
A dozen random thoughts popped into my mind all at once. Where did they get a coffin from this quickly? Did the Red Priests keep a stock of coffins, ready for use whenever another one of their acolytes bit the dust? What exactly had killed Freya, and how often did this occur? Would her parents get notified, if she had any?
I glanced around the room, trying to find Freya’s friends who had joined her around the chess table in the common room yesterday. They were standing several rows behind me, their faces pale but stoic, no sign of any tears.
“Brothers and sisters.” Altheia’s voice boomed through the room, startling me so I instantly turned to face her. She had appeared on top of the stage, clad in her usual blood-red robe, and was standing next to Freya’s coffin.
“Yesterday, we had high hopes today would be a joyous day.” Altheia took a deep breath and crossed her hands. “Unfortunately, that’s not the case. It saddens me to share the news with you that our sister Freya was not strong enough. She did not survive the initiation ritual.”
The cold way in which she stated, ‘was not strong enough’, made chills run up and down my spine. As if it was Freya’s fault. As if she had burdened everyone by not being stronger and by dying. As if she failed some sacred duty.
“The grey robes will keep vigil around their fallen sister. Let us pray Freya’s spirit finds the road to the afterlife, and no longer wanders around in ours.”
The acolytes around me bowed their heads and closed their eyes.
I followed their example.
“Red God,” Altheia started her prayer. “Lead our sister Freya on to the path of the afterlife, and do not let her stray. Guide her spirit to the world beyond. Even though she failed you, this was not due to a lack of devotion, but to a lack of strength. Guide your devoted acolyte to the great forever, beyond the boundaries of this world.”
Altheia stopped, and I opened my eyes slowly, realizing the others had done the same as well.
The prayer made bile rise in my throat, and I struggled to keep a straight face. Altheia painted Freya as being weak, as not being worthy, as if the Red God—the one whose ritual killed Freya in the first place—was doing her a favor by leading her to the afterlife.
“Come.” Altheia gestured for the Red Priests to come closer.
One by one, the red robes walked on the stage, paused in front of Freya’s coffin and gave a small nod.
After the Red Priests, the black robes took their turn, and then the white robes. As they gave their final salutations to the deceased girl, they walked out of the main hall one at a time, resuming their lives, as if nothing particularly bad had happened, and this was all part of day-to-day life in the Red Keep.
After the white robes, we could take our turn. My stomach churned as I climbed on the stage,
and I clenched my jaw, hoping that this was all just a nightmare I could wake up from any second now.
Freya looked peaceful, lying in her coffin and staring up at nothing. At least she didn’t look as if she had suffered.
I knew nothing about her, not where she had grown up, not what she had liked or disliked, yet my chest felt hollow staring at her.
One moment she had been here, and the next she was gone.
Like the mages executed by the Red Priests.
Like my mother executed by her own magic.
What a brutal world we live in.
I wanted to touch Freya, close the eyes that would forever stare into nothingness, but I was frozen to the spot, unable to move.
To my left, Cullyn coughed, gesturing I should follow the others and exit the room.
My legs moved semi-automatically, guiding me outside the main hall and onto the hallway without my mind registering it.
There, my stomach retched, and I promptly threw up.
Chapter Two
“If you can’t stand the sight of a dead body, then you shouldn’t sit so close to it,” Cullyn said.
Nausea still tormented me, but I had managed to clean up the mess in the hallway and I hadn’t been kicked out or yelled at for being a weakling over it, but the whole episode had forced me to stay here with Cullyn while he held vigil over Freya’s corpse. I had been too late for my class, and Cullyn had ordered me to stay here. Like a good dog, I obeyed.
“That wasn’t the issue,” I snapped at him, circling my arms around the bucket he had forced me to hold onto in case I had to throw up again. “I’ve watched my mother die, and by the time she was gone, she looked a lot worse than Freya did.”
I hadn’t meant to tell him this piece of personal information, but the words rolled off my tongue before I could stop myself. Great. Another tidbit that he could use as ammunition against me.
Cullyn and I were the only ones in the main hall, which looked even more gargantuan now it was almost empty, and our voices echoed off the walls.
Cullyn didn’t react to my sudden outburst; he gazed at me with a mix of curiosity and a look I knew far too well. Pity.
“Spare me your pity,” I barked at him. “Pity has never helped anyone. Didn’t help me, didn’t help poor Freya over here.”
Cullyn leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. Our chairs were so close that his knee almost touched mine when he sat like that. “After classes are finished for the day, all the acolytes in your group will gather here to pray for Freya’s safe journey to the afterlife,” he explained to me. “Until past midnight. As you know, the soul can take a while to find the light. If you see anything out of the ordinary, ignore it.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You mean, like Freya’s actual ghost?” It was common knowledge to everyone in the Seven Kingdoms that the souls of the deceased took some time to find the right portal to the afterlife, and that in those hours between death and departure, before they were properly buried, their spirits still lingered on, but I had never seen actual proof of this, and I didn’t think the Red Priests believed in it.
“Yes.” Cullyn scratched his neck. “Just… ignore it. Focus on something else, and all should be fine. Don’t engage with her ghost, don’t encourage her to linger around.”
When my mother passed away, I talked to her spirit every day. I had begged her to show herself, to stay with me, to give me a sign she was still around, but she offered me nothing. Not even a cupboard opening by itself, or a chair moving positions in our living area. Nada.
“Do people die often during the initiation ritual?” I put the bucket down, no longer feeling nauseous.
Cullyn shrugged, reluctant to answer.
“Well?” I prompted him. “If I’m about to participate in this ritual, then I ought to know the truth.”
The Red Priest snorted. “You’re nowhere near ready to participate in the initiation ritual, Saleyna. But to answer your question, the mortality rate is higher than I would like, and it only seems to have increased over the years.”
I gave him a curious look, waiting for him to continue.
“When I first came here, I’d say about twenty percent of the Red Priests didn’t make it past the initiation ritual, and about forty percent didn’t make it to the rank of red robe.” Cullyn clenched his jaw and averted his eyes, refusing to look at me. “Nowadays, I’d say the percentage of acolytes not passing the first ritual is around sixty percent, and about eighty percent doesn’t make it to the last rank.”
Meaning only one out of five did.
Goosebumps appeared all over my lower arms. What chance did I stand as a traitor if four out of five devout acolytes failed? I was a dead woman walking.
I lowered my voice and leaned closer toward Cullyn. “What happens during the initiation ritual? Why do people die during it?”
Cullyn’s gaze met mine, and for a second he appeared to contemplate telling me. “I can’t tell you. It’s a sacred ritual, and you’ll have to wait until you are called to it.”
“You mean until the Red God deems me ready for the slaughter,” I said sarcastically. “If four out of five don’t make it, then it seems to me he either makes this test way too hard, or he’s a terrible judge of character.”
My eyes grew wide, shocked at my own words. I raised a hand to my mouth, wishing I could take back the words that had just escaped from my lips: words that could probably sentence me to death in a place like this, bordering on blasphemy.
Cullyn gave me a look filled with pain. Raw pain, a wound so deep it had never completely healed, a pain that was old but still fresh at the same time. “Sometimes…” His voice was low, barely above a whisper. “Sometimes, I tend to think the same,” he admitted.
I almost fell off my chair, but I willed myself to keep looking at him, to meet his gaze. I was walking on thin ice, I realized, but now I had opened Pandora’s box, I couldn’t close it again.
“My friend, Darcon,” Cullyn said. “He held the white rank when things went wrong. Normally, the ritual from white to black rank isn’t that dangerous, but he didn’t make it. I have no idea why. He was the most devout follower of the Red God I have ever met, a thousand times more devout than I am. Until this day…” Cullyn shook his head, wrinkles appearing on his forehead as his frown deepened. “I’ve never quite understood why.”
Instinctively, I put my hand on Cullyn’s, trying to comfort him. I had opened up about my mother, but he had shared something personal too. Instead of the bully I had encountered two days ago, I saw a man as torn up about what had happened as I was, a man tormented by the past, same as I was. Two sides of the same coin.
“Isn’t there a way to stop this?” I asked while I squeezed Cullyn’s hand. I had suspected he would pull back, but he didn’t. Instead, his palm encircled mine, and then we were sitting there, three feet away from the corpse of a young girl, holding hands.
“How?” Cullyn narrowed his eyes. “If the Red God demands your presence, you answer.”
“Can’t Altheia reason with him? She’s his High Priestess, after all,” I suggested.
“You could be High King, and you would still bow to the will of a God,” Cullyn countered. “No, it’s pointless.”
A cracking sound erupted from inside the coffin, and I jumped to my feet, pulling Cullyn along. “What’s that?”
“Don’t look.” Cullyn moved his hand to my arm, stopping me. “You shouldn’t look. I’ll close the casket. I figured the others would still have one more chance to see her, but…”
“What is happening?” I yanked my arm away from the Red Priest and rushed toward the coffin. Peering over the edge, I clenched the wood of the casket so hard my knuckles turned white. Swallowing a few times, I tried to suppress the vomit pushing to get out.
Freya’s flesh had completely disappeared from her body. Her skull stared at us: two empty sockets where her eyes had been, abnormally large teeth now her lips had rotten away. Her arms were nothing but bony sticks, and if
I didn’t know any better, I would estimate she had died years ago, not hours.
“What…” I struggled to find the right words. “What in the Gods’ name happened to her?”
Cullyn licked his lips. “The same thing that happens to all of them. They become mummified, in a matter of hours. You weren’t meant to see this.” He moved to the other end of the casket and started closing it with the wooden lid.
“Hold on.” I held up a hand so he would stop. “Why does this happen? People don’t just mummify in such a short amount of time.”
“We don’t know. It’s a side effect of the initiation ritual, is our best guess. Altheia thinks it has something to do with the Blood God being so disappointed in them that he drains all the blood from their body.”
Freya had looked extraordinarily pale earlier, even for a deceased person. But still, even if the Blood God had drained her blood—which sounded exactly like something the Red God would do based on all the lore about him—would this have such a profound effect?
The smell of rot mixed with something else whiffed up from inside the casket, and I gagged. “I’m not sure if it’s just the lack of blood. I don’t think that would be sufficient to turn a fresh corpse into… Into this.” I turned away, swallowing hard. “They’re all like this?”
“Yes,” Cullyn replied.
“Hm.” I took a deep breath of fresh air, turned around, and stood on my tiptoes while leaning over the side of the casket. I leaned in closer and, at the risk of throwing up all over Freya’s body, inhaled as deep as I could.
Rot and decay, the trademark smells of the Goddess of Death, but mixed with something else. A hint of magic.
Not all magic had a scent, but the most potent, lethal forms of magic had a certain bittersweet aroma to them, awfully close to the scent of death, and if the effect hadn’t happened so suddenly with me sitting right next to it, I probably would’ve never noticed. The scent was too fleeting; by the time classes were over for the day, it would be long gone.
Magic Underground: The Complete Collection (Magic Underground Anthologies Book 4) Page 179
