Rapture (Hades Castle Trilogy Book 2)

by C. N. Crawford

  Strange to think I’d never really known Finn the way I thought I had. He never told me about his mum and dad, that he was a nephilim. Clutching my stomach, I wanted to be sick.

  How dreadfully sad that he hated himself that much, that he would join the Free Men.

  I’d killed him to silence him. How much had that been the darkness within me, and how much had been the ghost trying to influence me? I opened my eyes again, confronted by the two furious faces of the angels.

  “Let me guess.” The ice in Samael’s voice was a stark contrast to the fire in his eyes. “A ghost told you to do that. Or do you have some other lie in mind this time?”

  “I told you he would try to turn you against me,” I said. “You were letting him manipulate you. He’s cleverer than you’d think. You learned everything you needed to know. Alice is important, and the telescope of fire. It was all he knew. Anything after that was just going to be his attempt to get revenge on me.”

  “You have very little faith in us,” said Sourial. “It’s astounding. Perhaps you are a spy.”

  “See? He’s in your head.”

  “How did you learn magic?” asked Samael in a deep, quiet tone that thrummed over my skin.

  Ludd fluttered around the room, panicked.

  “I didn’t,” I said in a small voice.

  “Alice was there at the festival, wasn’t she?” said Sourial, eyes narrowing. “She’s higher up, but you led us to Finn. The captive of lesser value. Seems convenient.”

  Frustration crackled through me. “She disappeared into the crowd. That was it. Finn was easier to lure. I didn’t know she was important until now.”

  Samael’s gaze bored into me. “This time, Sourial, when we lock the door, we must make sure she cannot get out.”

  I paced in my locked room, feeling like a caged bird. The door had been bolted over with metal—a lock I couldn’t pick. The windows, too; bolted shut.

  I thought I’d been in here six days—just me and Ludd, who’d followed after me, screeching at me in his corvid language. I was sure it was a litany of curses. The poor thing still screeched whenever I got near, terrified of me.

  I turned, staring at the crow. He sat perched on the windowsill, dark eyes watching my every movement. “Stop looking at me like that. You feathery little judge. Sanctimonious corvid fiend.”

  He cocked his head, and I swear his eyes narrowed with hatred.

  I took a tentative step closer. “How do I win back your affection? You are my only friend here. You and Jenny. My two bird friends.”

  Hatred gleamed in his dark eyes.

  I took another step closer to him, the floorboards creaking beneath my feet. His black eyes stayed fixed on me. Quietly, I cooed, trying to soothe him. “Ludd. I give you food, remember? It’s just you and me, my friend.”

  One more step—

  He squawked, flapping his wings. Furious.

  I sighed. “Look, I’ve tried to tell you. Your best friend wasn’t the person you thought he was, Ludd. He didn’t deserve you. He was a very bad person, and he was trying to get me killed. So I did what I had to do to survive. Sometimes it’s kill or be killed, you know? You’d understand if you could understand the words I was saying.”

  Ludd puffed out his chest, fluttering his wings again.

  I pivoted, stalking back the other way. In addition to Ludd, I had the books to keep me company, and I’d gotten much better at reading. One by one, I’d been working my way through the small library at my disposal. Slowly, painstakingly—but I was reading, nonetheless. Knowledge was power.

  With each page, I understood more.

  In fact, I almost felt as if that dark presence in my mind was helping me learn. I’d done what she wanted, and she’d stopped attacking me.

  I scanned one of the bookshelves, looking for something new. Some of the books were histories of Albian wars. Some were romances. But the best—and most dreadful—find of all was a catalogue of the history of demons. It was an enormous book, detailing every horrific thing the demons had ever done to mortals over the years.

  I learned that demons amused themselves by leaving mortals lovesick, feeding off heartbreak. Some started wars between nations so they could thrive off the pain, the anger and conflict.

  The book also claimed that demons did not have emotions—and that was certainly perplexing, because I had a lot of pent-up emotions. I must have at least one mortal parent. Maybe half-demons weren’t so bad?

  As I knelt over the book, I heard the creaking of the dumbwaiter. My stomach rumbled. The three meals were the high points of my day.

  I crossed to the dumbwaiter and lifted the wooden door. My mouth watered at the sight of poached salmon with roasted carrots and potatoes. Someone had left more acorns on the tray, a small bottle of chilled white wine, and another fruit tart.

  I dropped the demon book onto the table, sliding my plate next to it. I poured myself a glass of wine and flipped through the book as I ate, spearing salmon and potatoes with my fork while I read about the different types of demons—the incubi, the succubi, the demons of possession, the demons who’d come from fallen angels that had turned evil.

  As I read, I could hardly focus on what I was eating, my mind occupied with page after page of the demons’ wickedness. And when I got to a page with a picture of a wild-haired demon, I dropped my fork. She was facing away from the viewer, her hair like writhing snakes.

  She wore a dress of pale green and gold, her body surrounded by illustrations of ruby red fruit and flowers on the vines. She held one of the fruits in her hand—red with seeds, just like the fruit I was given every night.

  But it was the word at the top of the page that struck dread into my heart. The Harrower.

  The text beneath her image read: The Harrower has the power to call life from the earth. She can make the dead live again. She can raise plants from the soil and control them at will.

  My blood went cold.

  That sounded a lot like the power I had.

  At the bottom of the page, I found a symbol that made my heart pound harder. It was the same symbol I’d seen several times now—the crescent moon wrapped in vines. The one that had appeared on my wrist.

  There was no mistaking this. I was connected to the Harrower, and she had lived here once. Maybe she was my real mother, or maybe I was simply a dead creature she’d summoned from the earth using her powers. A buried baby she’d brought to life again—one who could summon plants as she had.

  Somehow, we were connected. Mum had told Alice about how I was found—black eyes, crawling from the dirt. Alice and Finn worked together. Alice must have told him about me, so he’d probably felt no guilt at all when he set me up to be killed in Castle Hades. What did he care for a demon life?

  As the sun set, it cast flaming coral rays over the page. I stared at it, entranced and horrified at the same time. Then, I traced my fingertips over the Harrower.

  She made things come to life again. That didn’t seem like an evil power, did it?

  But Finn said she had made a deal with the Free Men already. That was evil.

  A voice started to flutter like moth wings around my head. Look at yourself, Lila. Your secret won’t stay buried for long, and Samael is the one who brings down the sword. He’s the person who finishes the job.

  Ludd was squawking even louder than usual now, completely terrified of me. Slowly, with a hammering heart, I stood and crossed to the mirror.

  There, the world tilted beneath me.

  My face had transformed—eyes black as jet, my hair writhing around my head. My skin was pale, ashen.

  In the reflection, my mouth moved. “This is the real you, Lila,” the vision spoke. “And you can fight it and lose, or you can accept what you were born to do. Kill Samael.”

  With an iron will, I mastered control of my own thoughts. “Who is the Harrower?”

  I stared as the reflection moved, coming to life from the mirror. My own arm reached from the looking glass and ripped the acorn
charm from my throat.

  Before I could react, the reflection gripped me by the neck, squeezing hard. “I hurt you because you’re soft. You’d never survive without me.”

  I felt my lungs filling with murky water again. Panic snapped through my mind.

  “You need to feel what it’s like to die,” she hissed. “You need to be ready to fight back.”

  I brought my knee up hard into her gut, knocking her back and moving swiftly away. But as I did, the ghost grabbed me from behind, by the hair, by the neck. Her claw-like fingers were digging into my throat.

  “You’re not as afraid of Samael as you should be.” She squeezed tighter, her damp, cold fingers pressing my windpipe shut. “I didn’t see it coming when he killed me. You think he looks at you sometimes with affection. You think he respects you. Admires you, even. Little signs that he cares. But inside, he feels nothing. Death drives him, seduces him. It is what he was made for. You’ve seen his true face. You’ve seen what he is. Do not be lured in by his beauty, because you will end up drowning in the moat.”

  The phantom was crushing my throat, robbing me of breath. I couldn’t speak anymore. Instead of trying to talk, I slammed my elbow hard into her ribs. Once, twice—

  She only pressed harder on my throat. Delirious, I felt sludgy water covering my body from my feet upward. I was freezing, shivering.

  She whispered in my ear. “When he decides you are not worthy of him, that he cannot accept what you are, he will snap your little ribs. He will rip your heart out of your chest, then toss your body in the moat. He will treat you like you are nothing more than rubbish. He doesn’t want you as his wife; he needs you to fulfill a role. And once the part is played, you will sink into the muck. Your pretty face will rot. Your body will fester and grow cold. Forgotten. No one will remember you. Kill or be killed.”

  Fury raged in me like a storm. She said she was warning me, but she just wanted to hurt me.

  I’m not the weakling you think I am, bitch.

  I reached behind my head, grabbing her hard by the neck. I shoved my hips back into her and bent sharply forward, flipping her over me.

  Despite gasping for breath, I slammed her down on the table. Her body splintered the wood, and the acorns rolled across the floor. I snatched them from the ground, and stuffed them into her mouth.

  She went still, her body convulsing.

  Behind her dark hair, I got glimpses of her face—ashen skin, dark veins over her cheeks, black eyes.

  The acorns were weakening her, making her shake. I clamped her mouth shut, forcing them in. “Listen, my ghostly friend. I’ve got an endless supply of acorns. They keep giving them to me here. It’s quite nice, isn’t it? They’re looking after me, even if I’m locked up.”

  Her dark eyes went wide, hands grasping.

  “If there is something you want me to understand, why don’t you make yourself useful? Why not tell me what you want me to know in words?” I roared the last bit. “When I let you open your mouth again, either tell me what the fuck is going on,” I added, “or use your ghost powers to open the door and let me out. And if you open the locked room for me, maybe I can figure things out for myself. Because that’s the key to it all, isn’t it? The symbols. The Raven King. The Harrower. That’s where it all starts, right? That room. Let me in on the secrets. Because I know what a secret can do to someone. They can bury you alive.”

  I released my grip on her and watched as she scrambled up from the floor, choking and spitting out the acorns. Stumbling, she crossed to the door.

  She slammed her fist into the wood, over and over, until she splintered it. As she punched, fiery pain spread over my own knuckles. I grimaced, cradling my fist.

  At last, she had punched a hole in the door. Glaring at me, she slipped her arm through the hole, unlatched the lock, and slid the bar over.

  Then, she flickered out of existence.

  I looked down at my hand. My knuckles were bleeding. I touched my throat, feeling the bruises already starting to rise.

  But the door was open, and the ghost was leading me to that room—the one where she used to live. I slipped out into the dark hallway.

  This was dangerous, I knew. But I had to find out the truth, and I was sure I’d find it there.

  25

  Samael

  I cracked open the book on my desk—a history of Dovren in the seventeenth century. Candlelight warmed the room, and steam curled from a cup of hot tea on my desk.

  I didn’t want the tea. I wanted the deep, smoky whiskey next to it. Already, I’d spent days searching for references to a telescope. Landmarks of Dovren, universities, laboratories. I’d found many telescopes, but none of them seemed like suitable meeting spots for people who wanted to stay hidden. And none of them had anything to do with fire.

  I poured myself a glass of whiskey and took a sip, letting it roll over my tongue. Rich and peaty.

  My lovely bride knew this city inside and out. Lila understood the magic of the place. She looked at the grim and crumbling ruins of a once-glorious world and saw something that still shone with beauty. She understood the hearts of the people who lived here in a way I never had. In the two decades since I’d lived in Dovren, I’d never thought much about those living in the slums to the northeast of me—not until I’d met Lila. Now, I’d ordered the Clovian soldiers to start delivering food to them, making meals available for families who were starving in the East End.

  She loved this city the way a parent loved a child. She would be my best source of information.

  Except that she wasn’t telling me the truth. It was clear to me that she was keeping secrets, and that meant I couldn’t trust her.

  I turned another page to find an illustration of Dovren burning, flames curling into a night sky. It looked eerily like the Night of the Harrowing that the Free Men had planned—a fiery purge to cleanse the city.

  As I stared at the image, I could almost hear the screams, and my muscles tightened. But this image depicted the past, not the future. Hundreds of years ago, half of Dovren had burned to ash in a night known as the Great Incineration. Flames had raged through the streets, just as they would again if I didn’t stop the Free Men.

  The mortals, in all their wisdom, had blamed the fire on divine retribution for the sin of gluttony. They’d even created a statue of a plump boy to commemorate it—a reminder not to eat too many pies, erected near the butchers’ market. As an instrument of God, I could confirm divine retribution did not depend on the eating of pies.

  Later, when one of the Albian kings had decided to invade Clovia, he’d rewritten the story. The new story was that Clovians had set the fire. It was a justification for the war, of course.

  I turned the page—another image of the Great Incineration, from the perspective of the river. The next page depicted an enormous column that speared the night sky, a monument to the death and destruction of the fire. The stars were drawn strangely large and prominent in the image, forming a dome around the top.

  I stared at it. Most monuments in the city featured statues of monarchs at the top. Why would a king fund construction of a memorial if it wasn’t going to glorify him? But this one—this had nothing. And it had been built just about the time that primitive telescopes were invented.

  Long and thin, the shape of the column would be perfect for observing the stars. With lenses, it could function as an enormous telescope.

  I didn’t know if this was it, but it was worth investigating.

  In the winding maze of Dovren’s streets, I stood before the monument to the Incineration. It stood at the base of a hill, in the center of five cobblestone streets that jutted from it like spokes in a wheel.

  In the stone at the bottom of the monument, someone had chipped away at the cautions about gluttony and carved instead a description of evil Clovians.

  With a glance over my shoulder, I crossed to the enormous metal door at the base and pulled it open to reveal a circular room. Only a stream of moonlight from the top lit it
. When I looked up, I found dizzying swirls of spiral staircases sweeping up to the oculus. This could be used for observations.

  Was this their meeting spot?

  When I looked beneath my feet, I found a nearly imperceptible circular carving in the wooden floor. Something hidden?

  I shifted toward the edge and surveyed the space, looking for something like a lever or a button. At last, near the door, I found an indentation carved in the stone, with a star marking it. When I pressed on it, the sound of turning gears filled the base of the stairwell, and a wooden hatch rose from the floor. I slid the covering out of the way and peered down.

  More spiral stairs swooped down below me. Interesting.

  I squeezed through the opening, just barely making it through, then descended into the darkness.

  When I got to the bottom at last, I found myself in a sort of primitive laboratory of stone. It smelled musty and damp down here. Silver light streamed from the opening I’d climbed through.

  A lever jutted from one of the walls, and curiosity compelled me to pull it. When I did, a whirring noise filled the room, the sound of chains and gears creaking behind the walls. I stared above me as a lens slid into place at the top of the laboratory.

  As I stared up at the canopy of starry sky so crystal clear before me, my chest ached. I didn't remember it, but I could feel that that sky had once been my own. I remembered nothing of my life before the fall. I didn't even know if God was real or not. I didn’t know who made the rules or why. Falling meant that understanding was torn from you, and you were left to grapple around in the dirt with the other beasts, a life of pain with no purpose.

  And yet, hadn’t mortals found a purpose here on the wretched earth. They’d constructed brilliant contraptions like this. Sometimes, mortals managed to stun me with the angelic nature of their intellect. It was easy to forget what they were capable of.

  Maybe they longed for the stars like I did. Maybe they felt incomplete as I did, yearning for wholeness in the heavens. Perhaps they felt ripped in two, at war with themselves, just like I did.