“A unicorn?” Lily was aghast.
“A black unicorn horn piercing the heart is the only thing that can kill an irin,” he sighed. “He’s had me trapped down here for two days, holding me captive until he could find a black unicorn. He happened to bring that one last night.”
As if knowing they were talking about him, the unicorn brayed and reared on its back legs. It came down heavily, crushing a skull beneath its hooves.
“Easy now, Addonexus.” The irin held up his hand, and almost reluctantly, the unicorn calmed.
“The unicorn’s name is Addonexus?” Lily asked.
“Yes, we named him,” the irin smiled wanly at her. “It means ‘bringer of death.’” Her eyes widened, and he laughed softly. “It’s a bit of gallows humor.”
“Quite literally,” she said, returning her focus to cleaning up the jagged tear in his wing and shoulder.
“I’m Aeterna,” the irin said, then pointed to the sprite. “That’s Edgar.”
“Hello,” Edgar waved at her.
“Lily.” She gave them both a small smile. “I’m sure it’d be a pleasure to meet you both if it weren’t under such dire circumstances.”
“Yes, I’m certain it would be,” Aeterna returned her smile.
“How come you haven’t asked me what Valefor wants with me?” Lily asked.
“Because I already know,” he said. “He means to marry you.”
Lily stopped what was she doing and looked up at him. His eyes were a dark blue, nearly black, and they were solemn when he looked upon her.
“Marriage?” Edgar scoffed from up in his cage above them. “What does Valefor want with marriage? He is incapable of love or devotion.”
“She is the castimonia,” Aeterna said, and Edgar gasped.
“What?” Lily shook her head. “I’m not…”
She wanted to deny it, but the moment he said it, she felt something inside her. As if she’d always secretly known that’s what she was. Her life suddenly made sense, and everything that Wick and Lux and even Valefor had been saying. She thought back to her mother, and how kind and perfect she had been.
“How did you know?” Lily asked.
“When you touched me.” Aeterna nodded to where her hand was on his shoulder. “We sense our own kind.”
“But I’m not really a castimonia,” Lily said. “Not yet. I haven’t taken any vows to serve the irins.”
“Oh now!” Edgar sounded horrified. “He means to destroy the world!”
“Not destroy it,” Aeterna corrected him. “Win it.”
“What?” Lily glanced between the irin and the sprite in the cage, trying to figure out what they both understood. “How? What do I have to do with all this?”
“Valefor wants you to take your vows to serve him,” Aeterna explained. “If he does that, they win. He’ll have turned a virtu to sin. Evil will have triumphed over good.”
“I’ll never serve him!” Lily insisted. “Never!”
“Good,” Aeterna smiled at her. “Keep that conviction.”
“Wait.” Lily looked at him thoughtfully. “Can’t I just take my vows to serve Daniel? Then won’t this all be over?”
“Yes … if Daniel were here,” Aeterna said. “You have to take them to him, when you’re in his presence. It means nothing if you say it on your own.”
“Oh.” She lowered her eyes.
“She’s just a child,” Edgar said, his voice even smaller with despair. “She doesn’t stand a chance against the torture he’ll inflict on her. We’re all doomed.”
“Edgar, come now,” Aeterna chastised him. “She’s strong. She’s the castimonia, the purest of heart. If anyone stands a chance against Valefor, it’s her.”
“I won’t marry him,” Lily reiterated. “He killed the man I love. Nothing he does to me can be worse than that.”
“She fell in love?” Edgar asked. “I thought the castimonia couldn’t fall in love.”
“Of course she can,” Aeterna said. “Irins are love. Virtus were created to spread love. She’s simply pure.”
“How did Valefor catch you?” Lily asked.
“I was distracted. I was meant to help the other virtus find you and stop Valefor from getting you, but everything on Earth seems to sense that something is amiss. The canu snuck up on me in a way they’d never been able to before, and they got lucky and broke my wing.”
“I’m sorry,” Lily said.
Tears welled in her eyes as she realized that this too was her fault. Lux had probably been killed protecting her, and now this irin, who she’d never even met before, was injured and set to die because of her.
“Don’t be sorry.” Aeterna smiled. “This isn’t your fault.”
“But it is.” A tear spilled down her cheek, and she wiped it away. “If I were stronger or smarter, I would never have let myself get dragged into this.”
“Lily.” Aeterna brushed away her tears and used his soothing tone, trying to calm her. “You can’t let doubt or fear or guilt eat away at you. You are good, and you need to remember that above all else. Love is stronger than hatred, and you are made of love.”
She nodded and then lifted her head, meeting his gaze evenly.
“I won’t let him kill you,” Lily said. “I won’t let him take over the world. I will find us a way out of this, and I will stop it.”
17
“Get back!” Wick yelled and dug in her satchel, pulling out her wand before the behemoth of a peccati could assault them.
She’d never seen Gula before, but she recognized gluttony when she saw it. His clothes strained against the rolls of fat, and he towered over her. Barbecue sauce from goblin wings stained his clothes, face, even his greasy shoulder length hair.
Wick moved in front of Lux, preparing to defend him. She’d seen what Ira had done to him, and after Lux had saved her life, she felt she owed him the same courtesy.
“Whoa, easy!” Gula held up his massive hands and took a step back. His frown disappeared and was replaced with surprise. “I was only joking!”
“Wick, it’s okay.” Lux put his hand on her arm holding the wand, pressing it gently so she would lower it, and she looked between the two of them. “He’s a friend of mine.”
“But the peccati are sent to get you, by any means necessary,” Wick said, and she feared she’d been set up. She lowered her wand, but her grip on it tightened, in case she needed to use it.
“That’s true.” Lux narrowed his eyes at Gula. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, since Valefor is set on seeing you dead and him marrying your girlfriend, I thought you could use some help,” Gula said. He still held his hands up, looking more like mitts than actual appendages.
“You’re going against Valefor to help me?” Lux asked, and Gula nodded. “Why?”
“You’re my friend,” Gula shrugged.
Lux thought about it for a minute, and the answer seemed to satisfy him, so he nodded. He stepped away from Wick and patted Gula on the back.
“It’s good to have you on my side,” Lux smiled.
“Wait.” Wick shook her head. “What?”
“What?” Lux glanced back at her.
“You’re just taking his word on that?” Wick asked dubiously and gestured to Gula. “He could be a spy for Valefor! He could mean to sabotage us!”
“You don’t know Gula,” Lux shook his head.
“I’m Gula.” He stuck out his hand, meaning to introduce himself to Wick, and she crossed her arms, refusing to take it. “I’m gluttony. I just eat and drink. I don’t really like messing with people.”
“No. I’m not doing this.” Wick shook her head. “It’s bad enough that I have to trust you, Lux. I’m not taking on another peccati. That’s just dancing with the devil.”
“Wick,” Lux sighed. “I don’t have time to argue with you. But you don’t know what we’re up against. Having someone of Gula’s … stature might be the only way we get into the gates of Valefor’s lair. If you still want to
rescue Lily, this is our best chance.”
Wick considered it, but she took too long.
“Fine. Don’t work with us. I don’t care.” Lux shook his head and started to walk away.
Wick didn’t want to follow him, but she also knew she didn’t really have a choice. He knew Valefor’s lair better than she did, and if he was right about needing Gula to get past the gates, then there would be no way she could do it on her own.
Sighing, she followed them, but she kept a few steps behind. Just in case.
“How did you know where I’d be?” Lux asked Gula.
“Avaritia told me he found you in the Necrosilvam,” Gula explained. “The quickest way from the Necrosilvam to Valefor is through the Weeping Waters. I couldn’t manage that swamp myself, so I thought I’d wait for you on the other side. Nice job with that dragon, by the way.”
“You saw me fighting a dragon but didn’t step in?” Lux raised an eyebrow.
“You had it under control,” Gula shrugged. “And I hate dragons.”
“So do I,” Lux muttered. “Where did you see Avaritia?”
“He tracked me down at the bar just to gloat about how awful you were doing. He said that Ira had beaten you to a pulp and you were working with a hag.” He glanced back at Wick. “Sorry. Those were his words, not mine. I personally think you’re much too lovely to be a hag.”
Wick snorted at his compliment, and Lux laughed.
They walked on, but things were much easier past the Weeping Waters. Gula and Lux talked some, and Wick listened but didn’t add anything. She kept her pace a few steps behind them and couldn’t wait for all this to be over. Working with peccati made her edgy.
They reached a clearing with a clear stream running through it. Jagged rocks stood on the other side, and above that, the red tower where Valefor lived. The air smelled thickly of brimstone, and Wick held a cloth in front of her face to stifle the scent.
“That reminds me,” Gula said when he glanced up and saw Wick covering her nose. “You need to get cleaned up.”
“What?” Lux asked. “We’re almost there.”
“But you stink like the swamp,” Gula said. “If you expect us to get past the ogres at the gates, we’ll need have the element of surprise, and you reek like fish and sea dragons.”
“Fair enough.”
Lux was still covered in muck from swamp. His hair was even caked back with mud. Gula sat on a rock near the brook, and Lux waded down into it to clean himself off. He went a ways out into the water, where it was deep enough for him to really get washed up.
Wick stood off to the side of Gula, watching as Lux scrubbed the soot from the dragon’s fire off his skin.
“Lux was never really that bad,” Gula said, his voice quiet so Lux couldn’t hear.
“What?” Wick glanced over at the giant man sitting on the rock next to her.
“Lux. He was never really cut out for this,” Gula elaborated. “Not really. He liked nice things and pretty girls, but that’s about as evil as he gets. And he’s loyal. He’s stood up for me to Valefor many times.”
“He stood up to Valefor?” Wick raised an eyebrow.
“Well, nobody stands up to Valefor,” Gula admitted. “But when Valefor would think of doing away with me, Lux would point out all the things I had done, and he would ask Valefor to assign me on missions with him, so I’d have something that made me look useful.”
“Why?” Wick asked and turned to face him. “Why would Lux do that? Why would he do anything for anyone that besides himself?”
“He’s my friend, and he has been for a very long time,” Gula said. “We joined Valefor about the same time, and we’ve always had each other’s back. We’ve seen a lot of other peccati come and go, but we’ve both remained.”
“How long have you been friends?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Gula thought and shook his head. “Centuries.”
“Centuries?” She gaped at him.
Both peccati and virtus were immortal when in the service of their masters. They would not even age. The only way they finished their duty was if they were killed or bowed out, but bowing out was not an option for Valefor. Nobody left him.
Wick knew that, and she’d even known that Iris was over a century old when she stepped out of her role as the castimonia to marry Lily’s father and start a family. But from the way Lux had acted, she hadn’t thought him more than a few decades as the luxuria.
“And he doesn’t say it, but he had his heart broken,” Gula said. “That’s how he ended up here. He does have a heart. He’s just been trying not to use it for a few hundred years.”
Lux had finished washing himself up and stepped out of the stream. He shook his head, shaking out the cold droplets of water from his hair, and looked seriously at Gula and Wick.
“What do you say we go rescue Lily?” he asked.
The water left him feeling refreshed, and he started the trek up the jagged rocks with new fervor. Wick followed close behind him, though even she couldn’t match his pace. Gula trailed behind, but Wick had to admit that he was rather agile for someone so large.
There was an easier way to the lair – a road that led right to the front door. But if they took that path, Valefor would see them coming a mile away. The only way they stood a chance was to sneak in. So that’s what they meant to do.
Lux led the way through a secret passage that went under the moat. Valefor had made it for the canu, so they could sneak out and catch unsuspecting prey. The tunnel smelled of canu dung, and there were bones all over with meat hanging off.
Wick noticed with some disgust that there was a chewed up irin wing on the ground. Most of the meat was missing, but the feathers remained.
The passage branched off in several directions, so the canu had many different places to exit. Lux chose the path farther to the left, because it opened up right below the bridge in front of the main gate. Valefor used it to get a jump on anyone trying to invade his lair.
But this time Lux had the upper hand. Now all he had to do was climb up on the bridge and get rid of the two massive ogres blocking his entry to the tower.
18
Addonexus heard them coming first. He reared on his back legs again, and even Aeterna’s soothing voice seemed to have no effect on him. Aeterna straightened himself up and tried to stand, but the lame wing made him off balance. Lily helped him up, letting him lean on her shoulder so he could stand.
By then, she heard it too. The clicking of their feet on the stone path to the dungeon, and the horrible hissing of their breath. She didn’t know what they were, but she could see the fear in the unicorn’s eyes. Even Edgar cowered back in his cage, doing what he could to hide.
“Be strong,” Aeterna whispered, his voice in her ear. “Don’t let them know that you’re afraid.”
“What are they?”
“Sonneillons,” he answered, his eyes fixed on the gates, watching for them to come. “They are daemons of hate, lesser minions of Valefor. They thrive on torture.”
Lily put her arm around Aeterna, helping to support him, and that gave her strength. Their footsteps grew louder, and Lily swallowed hard and held her head high. Even when the sonneillons appeared in front of the gate, and she bit her tongue to keep from crying out in horror, she refused to show any fear.
They were hideous creatures unlike any she’d ever seen before. They were tall, but they bent over. Even hunched like that, they were still taller than either Lily or Aeterna. Their skin was burgundy leather, though it appeared to be peeling in many places, revealing putrid green patches underneath. Small horns jutted out from their skulls near the front. Short, black hair covered their scalps and grew down the backs of their neck until it stopped between their shoulders.
They were thin to the point of being emaciated. All of their bones pushed against their flesh, and the bumps of their spine looked like spikes down their backs. Small, bright yellow eyes seemed to glow from their sunken faces. Four rows of razor-sharp teeth fill
ed their mouths, just below a long hooked nose. Though they had the legs of a man, they had the cloven hooves of a beast, making them stand more like a satyr.
But the thing that Lily found the most horrifying was their hands. Their fingers were unnaturally long, growing nearly a foot. At the tips were long black nails, looking more like talons than fingernails. One of the sonneillons reached between the bars, extending his long arms so they nearly touched Lily. The other one got the key ring from where it hung on a belt around his waist. He had a long, golden rope wound up next to it, and Lily didn’t want to know what they meant to do what it.
“She smells delicious,” the first sonneillon said.
His voice had a strange vibrato to it, and it was somewhat high for a creature so large. It had a vileness to it that sent chills down Lily’s spine, and one of his sharp claws reached out, barely running down the bare flesh of her arm.
“I want to dine on her flesh,” he added, and a narrow forked tongue flitted out of his mouth, licking his lips.
“We’re not here for her, Cifer,” the other one snapped, and the first sonneillon pulled back his hand. “We can have scraps of the irin when we’re done.”
“Yes, I suppose that will do, Beeze,” Cifer said, and his hungry gaze went from to Lily to Aeterna.
Beeze had a large key carved from an irin’s bone that twisted in the lock to open it. Lily knew it was irin bone because it was pure white but it sparkled like diamonds. It was one of the strongest substances on Earth.
“You will dine on nothing,” Lily said, her voice as strong as she could make it. “You will starve to death before I let you eat anything in this room.”
Both of the sonneillons laughed, a horrible cackling sound that echoed off the walls of the dungeon. Edgar crouched down and covered his ears, while the unicorn brayed and stomped the ground.
“Lily,” Aeterna said quietly. “They are not here for you. Don’t anger them.”
“Listen to your friend,” Beeze suggested and opened the gate. “He knows too well what we can do.”
“No.” Lily stepped forward, moving in front of Aeterna. “You will not take him.”
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