Kunel glanced over his shoulder at Rahab, who gestured for him to go on. When Kunel raised his hands, shadows slithered out of the tapestries, dancing across the hall.
I knew there’d been something shady about those threads.
“Bastard,” I half-pushed off the bench.
“Only a tale for children,” Och muttered, settling his hand on my knee to keep me seated. “Do not show fear now, my Queen, Kunel would delight in that.” Why did he speak with more hushed reverence than the First Reformer ever had? Yet all I could imagine was the spray of blood across Rebel’s back, along with the swish of Och’s whip.
I shoved his hand off my knee. “And you wouldn’t?”
Och’s eyes narrowed. “My brother is unable to walk, shuddering through the agonies of a whipping I laid onto your boy. I do not delight in it, nor your fear. I simply do my duty, and if you’d done the same, neither of them would be suffering now. Nor would your brother be soon.”
My breath caught, even as Och leaned away from me again, as if he hadn’t been shanking me with each word.
Tears pricked my eyes.
What did being a rebel count for in a world ruled by the Code and strict ranks of Brotherhood? Wasn’t it easier to obey, do my duty, and be rewarded, than to risk punishment?
To become part of the fairy tale?
I battled to hide my vibrating fear, as the shadows grew into grotesque puppets: vampires, angels, and witches. Nightmarish, they waged silent battles above our heads, slithering cold trails across my exposed skin, as they slunk between their living audience.
The shadows inside me clamoured, surging out in trailing fingers to join the fight. I hung between the two: the true puppet.
Kunel spun between the tables, weaving the shadow war. “In the name of the Brotherhood, there arose a great conflict. Witches and the Fallen became a plague. One angel with the most powerful mental powers of them all arose…” A pure light shone on Rahab, as if he wasn’t already going for the Deity of the Year award. I swallowed my mouthful with difficulty; way to make a bitch lose her appetite. “And built the Brotherhood and Phoenix Code. Yet still the mages weren’t strong enough to rise…” Shadow angel mages soared from the tapestries. “So, the secret of resurrection was taken from the blood of one special angel, Phoenix, to raise an army of dead angels.”
I hurled down the venison leg that I’d been holding; a glob of fat splattered onto Rahab’s chin. He wiped it off with a thin finger.
Shadow angels rose — resurrected — but leashed behind the mages like fighting dogs.
Phoenix slaves.
Phoenix had been my first kiss. The first vampire to try and either kill me or transform me to Blood Lover. And when Rebel and I had been hunters, we’d ganked him.
If Phoenix could resurrect himself, however, was he even dead?
It didn’t sound like his life before he’d Fallen — having the secret taken from him — would’ve led him into the Land of the Balanced, which explained our encounters. Because how had Rahab transferred Phoenix’s miracle blood to resurrect his angel slaves? With a little needle prick and this won’t hurt…?
Yet Phoenix hadn’t changed his angel name, unlike every other vampire. Had he lost so much more than them, that he couldn’t bear to lose his name as well?
“By my feathers, Phoenix was kidnapped from the Legion…”
Boos and hisses.
I huffed: I’d always hated pantomimes.
When Kunel cast a sly glance back at me, however, my guts churned. “Phoenix had already conceived a son with the Matriarch, however, who’d hoped to birth a talented daughter with his powers. And the son’s blood was just as potent at resurrection.”
My brother.
I hadn’t realised I’d doubled over the table, until Drake’s arms were clasped around my neck; his curls swept across my face, as his cheek brushed against mine.
They’d been…bleeding…my brother to steal his blood to raise their slave army.
My half-brother — the Invisible Prince — was Phoenix’s son.
For what twisted reason had Phoenix wanted me…? Had he sensed the connection? Craved it because he’d lost his own son? Or hadn’t he known?
That would’ve been one hell of a conversation.
“Our Invisible Prince.” With a flourish, Kunel slipped a glass box out of his pocket and tossed it into the air.
Silence.
The Phoenix Hall stilled in an uneasy quiet.
The box hung between the warring shadows, before hovering and expanding.
This time, I shrugged Drake off, leaping over the table in a clatter of tankards and platters. I swooped up, batting away the shadows and hugging the side of the box.
A tall angel curled inside the tiny space, with his wings furled over him; his brunet hair cascaded down, hiding his bowed face: my brother.
I couldn’t bear to look away or let go, whilst the mages bellowed and Kunel cursed, because at last I could see my brother and had to save him. Even if first I had to save myself from the shadows, which dove towards me in gnashing swarms.
12
The nightmare shadows had broken their strings, united with each other against me.
I clung to the glass box, shrouded in the shadows’ twirling black above the heads of the apprentices and mages in the Phoenix Hall. Like a dark ocean, the shadows’ freezing touches choked me.
I gagged, as one slid down my throat. Then another…
My own shadows hissed inside, mummifying the invaders, before shooting out of me in an inky phoenix that drove the shadow puppets quivering back into their tapestries.
Sunlight flooded the now silent hall again.
Who’ve guessed exploding phoenixes were the way to the Brotherhood’s heart?
I didn’t even glance down at the mages, however, because Kunel’s crooned praise no longer gave me the tinglies. He’d lost his sway over me, since he’d kept my brother locked in a box: a toy on display.
I slammed my palms on the glass — bang, bang, bang — but my brother didn’t even look up. Then I noticed the way his back shuddered up and down: he was weeping, although I couldn’t hear that either.
The prince was trapped, naked, and unable to see or hear out, whilst we watched his suffering, just to add to the drama of the Brotherhood’s tale.
I swung to Rahab, but he shook his head. He was sprawled in his seat, unruffled by my shadow battle, like he’d known it’d happen. Or had planned it. “You wished to see your brother. Plus, punishment. My promise fulfilled and entertainment too.” He laughed, low and musical. “Dinner and a show.”
Violet and black swirled in baying unison to light Rahab up with my fire, just as I’d wiped out his shadows with my own. Yet all that truly mattered was that my brother was more of a captive than me, even if it meant playing nice with the psychos.
“Cheers for the hospitality.” If my jaw had been any more clenched, my teeth would’ve cracked. “Now you can let him go, yeah?”
Rahab nodded.
I sagged against the box, tracing a finger along the glass to follow the curve of my brother’s spine. Then I clasped the pouch, which hung around my neck under my scarf: it held my sister’s necklace. I’d lost Jade to the vampires; now she was a Blood Lover in the Under World, who’d rejected both the angels and me. I couldn’t lose a brother too.
I didn’t even know his real name…
“That is,” Rahab’s gaze hardened, “when you see all you’ve missed.”
My eyes widened; I gripped more tightly to the box, as if I could stop whatever was about to happen.
Like I could be my brother’s Protector.
Suddenly, my brother began to shrink… Only, he wasn’t shrinking, he was deageing.
Years were stripped away, as he writhed, bruising himself against the sides in his panic. I’d be freaking out too if I found myself first a teenager, all mop of hair and long limbs, then a kid with anime large eyes and freckles.
The prince was small enough
now to lift his head and stare out of the box. Even though he couldn’t see me, he was looking directly at me. A sob caught in the back of my throat at his terror because I couldn’t do a bastard thing to soothe or help him.
And this — all these years being played out in minutes — was what we’d missed. Childhood and teenage years spent apart because we hadn’t known that the other existed. I’d been abandoned amongst the humans, and he’d been a prisoner of the Legion, only wanted for his blood.
Neither of us had been raised by our parents: loved.
We could’ve had each other but we hadn’t even been allowed that. And to see this — not just the adult but the child as well — was my punishment, as well as my brother’s.
Rahab was a cruel bastard.
A wail.
A baby lay in the box that now seemed too big, rather than too small; tears steaked my brother’s tiny face as he kicked his legs. When the baby bawled again, I vibrated with the need to hold him until he calmed, whispering that he’d be safe.
Only that’d be a lie.
The baby alone in that box needed me, and for the first time, I didn’t know if I could resist the Brotherhood.
I peered over the glass at Rahab. “I’m your tamed apprentice who’s jumped through all the hoops. So, tell me what I need to do to free my brother.”
Rahab steepled his fingers. “Only a Lazarus Mage has the privilege of meeting with the prince. As you just witnessed, he’s the lifeblood of the Brotherhood.”
“Then mage me up.”
Rahab barked with laughter. “You imagine the First Reformer thinks so highly of you? I’m afraid you’ve years of hard work ahead, little apprentice.”
“Stick your schtick because I’m not buying,” I snarled, rubbing my hands back and forth across the glass like I could reach the wailing baby. “Castle Drake and the Legion are your screwed-up creation. If you want to, you can mould me into a Phoenix Mage, Joseph’s coat of many colours, or the Abominable Snowman.”
Rahab raised himself slowly in his seat, spreading his gleaming wings. It looked like he was about to burst into song…or burst me into flames. “And your question is?”
“What’s the price? What freedom must I sacrifice to become a mage ASAP?”
Rahab rapped on the table: it echoed through the hall. “At last, the correct question. You must undertake the Mage’s Challenge.”
“You shall not. I forbid it.” Drake sprang onto the table, restored to the towering, predatory Commander in his terror.
I’d almost forgotten Drake was there, silent and cowed in his role as Undeserving. Yet he’d shaken it off the moment that he’d heard Mage’s Challenge. Every bloke in the hall was staring at Drake like he’d lost it Falling Down Style.
Hell…
Drake had just witnessed Rebel’s flogging. If he’d been prepared to risk that, then how dangerous was the Challenge?
Yet I throbbed with warmth that Drake sought to protect me, even if I didn’t need a defender, because that’s what fam did: they had each other’s back.
Och yanked Drake’s ankle, tumbling him onto the table with a thud. I flinched, but Rahab didn’t even look down. When Och rubbed his fingers together, an iron harness gag appeared. Drake struggled, staring at me with pleading eyes.
I shook my head:
Sorry, bro.
Drake closed his eyes, as Och forced the gag between his teeth, fastening it behind his curls.
“The Challenge,” Rahab continued, as if Drake hadn’t even spoken, “is to liberate the familiars from the witches of the Head Coven. Then to return the familiars to the Legion, so we may save them.”
“Save them? Or skin yourself some Jon Snow fur coats to keep yourself warm in winter, since you march around half-naked?”
“Your familiars would make the most elegant coat.” When I growled at his threat to Blaze and Spark, Rahab’s eyes glinted. “Bring me the witches’ familiars, however, and your foxes may keep their pelts, whilst you’ll see that I mean merely to reform our new guests.”
Yeah, and I crapped nymphs who sang “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”
“Where’s the Big Bad sized catch?”
Rahab lifted his finger. “No one has ever succeeded in the Mage’s Challenge.”
Yeah, Drake’s outburst not so crazy now.
I snorted. “If you wanted to gank me, why not have the fun of doing it yourself?”
Rahab soared towards me. “I wish to free the true light within you.”
“Pretty sure it’s not light inside me.”
Rahab’s smile was soft. “You’ve been blinded by the words of others. Only a Champion of Light can win the Mage’s Challenge, and there hasn’t been one of those for centuries. Whose side will your spark fall on? Shall we test it?”
I shivered because his words electrified me: light or shadow? Vampire or angel?
I’d been a Champion in the vampires’ Bone Carnival but could I also be a Champion of Light in the angels’ Mage Challenge?
I nodded.
Rahab’s eyes lit with such satisfaction that I knew I’d missed something important. But Drake was gagged, Rebel and Mischief were in my chambers recovering, Ash was leashed, and my brother was literally a baby. Rahab knew how to isolate me, and making choices on my own was bastard hard.
“I want my fam with me.” I met Rahab’s gaze; his satisfaction slid to blankness, then fury. “My blokes.”
“You may have Zophia, the vampire whore, and…” Rahab hesitated. “Zachriel if he’s healed.”
“What about—”
“My son will be in the Reformation room because of his public disobedience.”
I glimpsed Drake, but his head hung low; tremors ran through him.
Yeah, I’d be cracking on with this Mage Challenge because I refused to leave Drake for long in what sounded the opposite of Rainbow Funfair Land.
Och rested his hand on Drake’s elbow. “I could reform Duma myself, without the need for the Reformation Room—"
“Chief Discipliner, do you need a trip there yourself?”
Och blanched, stepping back. “No, sir.”
Rahab brushed his wing over the glass box. I fought not to shove him away. “Yet you must have motivations, as well as rewards, Queen Apprentice. If you fail the challenge, firstly your vampire whore will become forever the First Reformer’s handsome pet; Kunel appears quite taken with him.”
I growled, twisting to Ash, who’d been dragged onto the silk table like a centrepiece. The mages touched and stroked, whilst Kunel rested his hand possessively on Ash’s mane.
Mine, mine, mine…
The violation howled through me. Ash defiantly didn’t move or react to their intimate touches or pinches, but I knew what their callous cruelty meant to him: to be seen as nothing but a creature. A Seducer. As Lucifer had reduced him to as punishment for standing against the murder of slave Bloods: Ash’s courageous rebellion.
How could I let it happen again?
“If there’s a firstly, then there’s a bastard secondly…”
“Zachriel—”
Fury spiralled tsunami through me, bursting out. “I’ll rip off your wings before I let you whip him again.”
Rahab’s wings tightened around the glass box. My brother’s wails had tapered off to dry sobs, as he rubbed at his tired eyes. “Why would I do that? Punishments must be original to be effective. I understand you won’t believe me, but I don’t wish to cause Zachriel more pain. Instead, he’ll be executed.”
I stopped breathing. Stopped. Everything.
The world stopped.
Lights danced in front of my eyes. I beat my wings frantically to keep myself from falling out of the sky because all I could see was Rebel…dead.
Because of me.
My bond screamed at the thought. Agonising, elemental, pure. I shook from the terror. And this grief and knowledge that I wouldn’t survive if Rebel didn’t…?
Hell, at last I got it. That was love. And Rahab was about to take it
away from me.
“Calm now, you look as if I’d ordered the Apocalypse!” Rahab chuckled, like I wasn’t gasping at his threat to my fam, world, and life. “I can be merciful. I’ll resurrect him as my Phoenix. He’ll look so beautiful with golden wings.”
I was going to hurl…
The one thing Rebel hated more than anything and had always fought against — slavery — to be visited upon him after death…?
Yet Rahab thought that horror mercy?
“Don’t do that to him…”
“I assure you, Zachriel is in such pain now — haunted by his past — that having his memories wiped clean, as they are in all Phoenixes, wouldn’t be a loss but a blessing. Can’t you feel Zachriel’s suffering? Don’t you wish to ease it? Forgetting would be a kindness. He’d be happy as a Phoenix with nothing to worry about but to please me. I could make him happy.”
I blushed: Rahab more or less rapped because you don’t.
“I’ll win the Mage’s Challenge.” I flew down to Ash, knocking the mages’ hands off him and sweeping my wings to cover him. His skin was warm, and I clung to him against the images of Rebel. And whether they were true. “Then you’ll never find out because he’s my fam, and I’ll be the bitch to make him happy.”
As I clutched Ash, the phoenixes burst from the stained-glass windows in scarlet flares of light, swooping above our heads. The mages and apprentices oohed and aahed at the show.
I’d become part of the Legion’s propaganda: their new mascot.
Now, I’d take on the most dangerous witches in the world in a challenge that had never been won before because it was the only way to save my brother and become strong enough to sweep away Rahab’s golden reign.
Yet I’d also risked my fam: Ash and Rebel. If I wasn’t the mythical Champion of Light, then one would become a pet and the other would die, only to rise again as a slave.
13
Copper burst in a kiss that shook me with its tremoring sweetness because it had the urgency of a goodbye. Yet this was the first time I’d tasted Rebel since his candy blood had spilt on the Bailey floor and I couldn’t let him go. Instead, I pressed him against the oak’s rough bark in the wood behind the Head Coven, stroking across his shoulders in case I’d still be able to trace the welts, even through his leather jacket.
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