The Dead and the Dusk (The Nightmare Court Book 2)

by Val Saintcrowe

  They hurried out of the palace, taking the back stairs, and they luckily avoided anyone except one guard, who Absalom used the jewel on and then had Philo cut his throat.

  They did the same to the guards on the gates.

  Accessing the magic in the jewels hurt, and Absalom wasn’t keen on having to use them ever again, but he was glad to have them.

  When they reached the portal, Absalom pushed Philo and Lian through. It was still daylight through the portal, and two of the brides were hiding behind one of the trees. It was Xenia and another… Absalom couldn’t remember her name.

  “What’s happened?” said Xenia.

  “We tried to kill Ciaska,” said Absalom.

  “What?” said the other bride.

  “We failed,” said Absalom. “Come on.” He took them all through the woods, he and Philo staying out of the sun as much as they could. For what it was worth, it didn’t seem to be harming Lian at all. And he had no idea why the brides weren’t bursting into flame, but he wasn’t going to stop and ask questions. There was no time.

  When he reached the fortress, he ushered everyone inside.

  Xenia and the other bride looked around, clearly unsettled. Absalom supposed that the last time they’d been there, they had been bled out. He remembered what had happened to Xenia, because he’d been there.

  Absalom turned to the both of them. “You don’t have to be here. I don’t know why you’re here, or what happened—”

  “Eithan gave us some of the sun liquid to drink,” said Xenia. “I suppose we’re healed or cured or something. We’ve been…” She looked at the other woman. “Talking.”

  “Because I betrayed her,” said the other woman, her shoulders sagging. “Ciaska tortured me. You can’t tell now because the liquid light healed me, but she did. And I’ve been begging for forgiveness and—”

  “All right, well, that’s all well and good for you both.” Absalom did not care. “You’re welcome to stay if you’d like. If not, since the sun doesn’t seem to bother you anymore, then I suppose you can go where you’d like.”

  “I have to get to my daughter,” said Xenia.

  “Right,” said Absalom, swallowing. “Listen, about that. Maybe if you’d said something to us, we might have—”

  “Oh, because you were so merciful?” Xenia gave him a disgusted look.

  Absalom couldn’t meet her gaze. “I am sorry,” he said, and then he pushed Philo and Lian up the stairs.

  Lian looked dead on his feet, and so Absalom tucked him into a bed.

  The little boy wrapped his small arms around Absalom’s neck. “I need a story if I’m going to sleep.”

  Absalom pulled out of the boy’s embrace. He planted a kiss on Lian’s forehead. “Philo will tell you a story, all right? I’ll see you soon.” He hoped he would, anyway.

  He left the room, but he left the door open, so that Lian wouldn’t feel too frightened.

  Philo was pacing out in the corridor, muttering something to himself about raven’s wings.

  “Philo,” said Absalom in a quiet voice.

  Philo’s head snapped up. “What are we doing here? She’s going to be looking for him.”

  “No, she won’t,” said Absalom. “I’m going to take care of that. Trust me.”

  “How will you take care of it?”

  “I’m going back, and I’m going to tell her that—”

  “You’re going back? What? You think to leave me here alone with him?” Philo was panicked. He pointed at the door to Lian’s room.

  “You’re fine with him,” said Absalom. “He loves you. And you’re strong, Philo. If there’s danger—”

  “I’m not whole, Absalom.” Philo’s voice was grittier than usual, saner. “We both know that. Leaving him with me—”

  “You’d never hurt him.”

  “No, but I get confused. Sometimes, I think I hear things.” Philo looked over his shoulder into thin air as if to illustrate this point. “It’s like she’s always there. And those creatures…”

  Absalom knew that Philo had been strapped naked, tied down, and left in a room full of squirming nightmares, all for the delight of Ciaska and to further ensnare the other knights. In the beginning, before she had Lian, she used Philo to keep them in line. She’d damaged him and damaged him. And the more damaged he was, the more they wanted to protect him.

  Absalom rested a hand on Philo’s shoulder. “I’ve seen you kill nightmares. You’ve hacked a thousand of them to pieces. It’s like I said, you’re strong. You can do this.”

  Philo’s hands shook. He clenched them into fists to make it stop. “Please, Absalom?”

  But Absalom left him.

  It was the only way.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Nicce was aware while they dragged her and Eithan down the stairs in the palace, past the kitchens and down another level to what she could only term a vast cavern. They called it a dungeon, and there were a set of bars and a gate that were opened to throw the two of them behind, but inside there were no cells, just dank stone walls and the smell of rot and darkness.

  The door was shut and locked with a crystal. Ciaska herself had put it in place. The guards had tugged on it afterwards, testing its strength, but Nicce thought it must have been like the crystal she’d kept Lian in. They hadn’t been able to penetrate that crystal. They would be unlikely to penetrate this one either.

  Nicce began to think that she should have fought.

  She had decided not to.

  Ciaska was obviously stronger than they had predicted, and Nicce hadn’t known what might happen if she continued to fight. She wasn’t stupid, and she knew that fighting when there was no hope of winning only got a person killed. They’d taught her to be strategic at the Guild. Well, up to a point. She knew she’d been expected to sacrifice herself to kill Eithan, but she hadn’t been willing to do that.

  Maybe Nicce would be a better fighter if she was willing to die for her cause. But Nicce didn’t think so. She thought that would just mean she was dead and Ciaska was still breathing. So, she had submitted, pretended to be insensible, and here they were.

  There was another reason for her choice not to fight, and that reason was Eithan.

  He was alive, but he was badly hurt, and he wasn’t conscious.

  Nicce had an idea. She thought it was possible that maybe her blood could also heal Eithan. She wanted to try.

  Her biggest worry had been that they’d be in separate cells. She’d thought of the dungeons in the Guild keep, with their guards and their keys.

  This was entirely different. She didn’t know how they were going to get out of here.

  So, maybe she’d made the wrong choice. There would be no guards to bribe or to overpower. No keys to unlock that gate. As she allowed the light in her to surge, she tried not to panic. She could worry about escape later.

  For now, Eithan.

  She went to him, feeling the heat of her light pump out from her center, and she looked around on the ground for something that could tear open her skin so that she could bleed, but there was nothing. The ground was damp, covered in moss and lichens. The air down here was oppressive.

  Nicce pulled his head into her lap, and she parted his lips.

  He made a little groaning noise, but he didn’t wake.

  She put her finger between his teeth, stroking his canines. She was rewarded with his fangs expanding. One pricked her finger. Her bright blood spilled onto his tongue.

  His eyes opened immediately.

  “Eithan,” she breathed.

  He sucked hard on her finger.

  She extracted it, gave him her wrist.

  He bit into her.

  She gasped, shutting her eyes. It didn’t hurt at all. It felt… almost rapturous, maybe because her blood had changed over to sunlight and she was incapable of being hurt. Maybe because of whatever it was that was between her and Eithan. She didn’t know.

  She buried her other hand in his hair, stroking it, and he lapped a
t her wrist, and she sighed and he groaned, and she felt herself tugged into a place of radiance, where bright feelings of sweetness splashed at her like gentle waves.

  Her fingers traveled over his jaw and his neck, down to his chest and his shoulder.

  Distantly, she heard a noise, like something was near. It was like the pattering of a hundred feet. She wanted to ignore it, but it was getting louder.

  She opened her eyes.

  And Eithan seemed to hear it too, because he detached from her wrist and sat up.

  She looked around. All she could see was darkness. But the sound was definitely louder. Something was coming closer.

  Eithan wiped at his mouth, gazing hungrily at her wrist, which was already knitting itself together, closing off the wound. “You hear that?” he rasped.

  “What is it?”

  “Nightmares,” he said.

  Nicce cocked her head to one side, because she had spied something across the dungeon. She hadn’t seen it before, but she’d turned, and the light from within her was illuminating a different part of the place.

  It was a human skull, dingy and picked clean, but unmistakable.

  She grimaced.

  “There are always nightmares in the dungeons,” said Eithan.

  Nicce shook her head. Yeah, this had not been one of her better ideas. She should have healed herself and kept fighting the goddess.

  Maybe?

  If she had, would she be dead right now?

  Whatever the case, she wasn’t dead, and Eithan wasn’t either.

  “Well,” said Nicce, “you can fight the nightmares. I saw you punch one the first night we met.”

  The sound was a roar now.

  Something appeared from the depths of the dungeon. It stood up on spindly legs and its center was an eye, but when the eye blinked, it was surrounded by teeth. Another appeared behind it. Another.

  And then, seeping out from beneath those creatures were black slimy tendrils, seeking and searching.

  Nicce got to her feet.

  Her light touched the nightmares, and they recoiled.

  “Look up,” said Eithan in a quiet voice.

  She did.

  Above them, on the ceiling, were creatures clinging with their legs and hands, turning their strange faces on them, faces with too many slender teeth, with beady, greedy eyes. There were so many of them.

  She couldn’t help but shudder.

  “How long do you think you can keep your light on?” said Eithan.

  She didn’t know. She’d never kept it up for longer than a few minutes at a time. “Not forever,” she said.

  * * *

  Ciaska was in bed, surrounded by pillows. She was eating dark orbs of fruit and drinking wine, and her hair looked disheveled. “I suppose you were working with him. I suppose you and Eithan were planning it together.” She sounded tired and sad and hurt.

  Absalom was on his knees, kneeling at the foot of her bed. He slowly got to his feet.

  “Not going to deny it?”

  “With all due respect, Exalted One, we have other problems,” he said.

  “What other problems?” She burrowed into the pillows, and she looked so small there on her large bed. She seemed almost helpless, and the thought of that made Absalom want to laugh. He didn’t.

  “After what happened in the rehearsal room—

  “The orange room,” she countered petulantly.

  “The orange room,” he agreed. “After that happened, the stabbing in the throat—”

  “Well, she didn’t die,” said Ciaska. “She doesn’t seem to die. I’ve seen it before. She’s like me. She’s a goddess. But no, not as powerful, maybe half-human. Do you know about her?”

  “Exalted One, Lian was upset,” said Absalom.

  Ciaska looked up at him. She hadn’t been expecting that. “What about Lian?”

  “Well, I thought I would take him outside the palace. Sometimes, we run and play out there, and he seems to enjoy the freedom. He was worried. I wanted to make things light for him. I brought Philo, because he is a favorite playmate of the boy.” Absalom’s voice started to shake now, and he wasn’t really putting it on. He was terrified, and everything was horrible. He was able to find emotion easily.

  Ciaska sat up straight. “Something happened?”

  “We lost him,” said Absalom.

  “Lost who?’

  “Lian. He ran beyond where I could see him, and then he didn’t came back.” Absalom’s face twisted. He summoned tears and they came easily.

  Ciaska was horrified. “What are you saying?”

  “I left Philo to continue searching,” Absalom said, his voice thick. A tear rolled down his cheek. “But we need to summon everyone, to look everywhere. He’s lost, Exalted One. Your son is lost out there.”

  “But there are nightmares out there, Absalom, how could you let him—” She pushed aside blankets and pillows. “Oh, never mind. I can’t bear it. First Eithan, and now you tell me that Lian…?” She hugged herself, and she did look distraught. “This is the worst day of my life.”

  “Do I have your permission to organize a search party, then?”

  “Yes, go. At once. I will come as well,” said Ciaska. “He is very small, Absalom, and those creatures out there are very big.”

  Absalom was a bit surprised that she seemed so worried. Sometimes he felt he didn’t understand her at all.

  “We have to find him,” said Ciaska.

  “Yes, we do,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Nicce was rooting through a pile of old armor and bones in a corner of the dungeons. “Swords!” she said brightly.

  Eithan was right behind her.

  “Guess they didn’t do these guys much good,” she said, handing over one rusty metal blade to Eithan.

  Eithan surveyed it. “Well, better than nothing, I guess.”

  “What about the armor? Should we try to put that on?”

  “It’ll just slow us down,” said Eithan.

  “Right.” She made a few slashes through the air, finding the balance of the sword she held. It might once have been a good weapon, but it was in disrepair now. “So, we should try to fight them off while I still have some light left. Eventually, I’ll be exhausted, and then I’ll be no good at anything, let alone fighting.”

  “There are probably too many of them,” said Eithan, who was making his own experimental slashes with his weapon.

  “So, what? You think we should do nothing?”

  “I didn’t say that,” said Eithan, looking around. “Look, I don’t know much about these caverns down here, but it stands to reason that these creatures might be able to get in and out somehow.”

  Nicce considered. “Right, like if they only eat prisoners, then they wouldn’t have enough to feed on and would have died.”

  “Well, they do eat each other,” said Eithan.

  “Oh,” she said. She hadn’t thought of that.

  “But there’s got to be water down here somewhere,” he said. “I mean, you see it, you can feel the wetness in the air. If water’s coming in, if the nightmares are coming in, well, anyway, maybe there’s a way out.”

  “So, we should use my light to try to find that way out instead of engaging the creatures in a fight we probably can’t win?” She laughed a little. “That’s smart. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it. I’m itching to kill something, I guess.” She tightened her grip on the hilt of the sword. “Do you think it would have gone differently if Ciaska had drunk my blood?”

  “No point in doing that to ourselves,” said Eithan. “Let’s focus on the here and now.”

  She bit down on her bottom lip. “You’re worried about the others, aren’t you?”

  “Absalom was going to try to get Lian out in the chaos,” said Eithan. “But if he left, Ciaska will have gone after him, and I…”

  She reached out and took his hand, squeezed it. “Absalom will figure something out. He’d do anything for Lian.”

 
; “Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of,” said Eithan.

  They stood there for a few more moments, holding hands, and then she extricated her fingers. “Well, I can’t keep this light up forever. We should get moving.”

  Eithan nodded grimly.

  Both gripping their swords and walking within the circle of illumination that shone out from Nicce, they began to make their way further into the cavern, leaving the gate behind. Nicce thought of suggesting that they go and try to open the gate, but if that crystal was like the crystal that had encased Lian, then what was the point? They’d never been able to get Lian out. It was unlikely they could unlock the gate.

  Eithan’s plan of looking for a way out, it seemed better.

  So, they walked.

  The nightmares stalked them outside the circle of her light, skittering against the damp stone, slithering and squirming. There were too many of them, Eithan was right. If they had to fight them all, they would never manage it.

  The cavern was wide and huge where they’d come in, but as they moved further inside it, it grew smaller. The ceiling lowered, the walls closed in. Soon, there was barely enough room for them to walk side by side, and Eithan had to duck his head at times to get around lower hanging rocks.

  The only good thing about it was that the nightmares weren’t surrounding them since there wasn’t any room.

  She wasn’t sure how long they walked. It was at least over an hour, and she could feel that the light within her was weakening. She was growing tired. She still has some energy left, but she couldn’t be sure how much. She thought of the jewels she’d used in the Guild, the topazes, how they would eventually be drained of power after excessive use. She was the same way. She assumed that she would be able to make more power after she rested, but she didn’t know how long it would take to get her strength back up.

  And just as she was contemplating this, the light she cast shone upon a pile of rocks in the path in front of them. It looked as though, at some point in the past, there had been a collapse, and now the way was blocked.

  The pile of rocks didn’t go all the way to the top of the passage. There was a small opening at the top.

  They both stopped.