Darkdawn--Book Three of the Nevernight Chronicle

by Jay Kristoff

  “The Crown of the Moon,” Jonnen heard himself whisper.

  His father blinked. Surprise in his coal-black stare. The boy savored that a moment—it wasn’t often he found his father on the back foot.

  “Mother spoke that name to me,” the imperator said. “In my dream. And my old friend Cardinal Duomo sought a map to that same place last year. He was of the belief it held the key to a magik that would undo the Red Church entirely. And despite my daughter’s efforts, Ashlinn Järnheim stole it.”

  “She did.”

  His father leaned forward on his elbows, looking Jonnen in the eye.

  “Who, or what, is the Moon, my son?”

  “… I cannot tell you, Father.”

  His father picked up the gravebone dagger from the chessboard. Staring at Jonnen as he twirled it through his fingers. He didn’t say a word. But Jonnen could feel his glower, like a truelight heat beating on his skin. With a malevolent hiss, Whisper slipped free of the boy’s shadow, and without the passenger to consume it, his fear returned. Flooding cold into his belly and making his little hands tremble. The fear of disappointment. Of anger. Of hurt. The fear that only a boy who has looked into his father’s eyes and seen what he might one night become can ever truly know.

  “I cannot tell you. But…”

  Jonnen licked at dry lips. Searching for his voice.

  “I can show you instead.”

  * * *

  “… Extraordinary…”

  “It is at that,” the imperator breathed.

  They stood far beneath the City of Bridges and Bones, before a black and gleaming pool. The air was oily and thick, drenched with the stench of blood and iron. Jonnen had explained something of what they might see below, and it simply wouldn’t do for soldiers of the faithful to learn their imperator was darkin—thus their Luminatii guards had remained at the entrance to the catacombs.

  Jonnen, his father, and Whisper had stepped inside, down stairs of cold, dark stone and into the city’s underdark. The light of a single arkemical torch was all they had to see by, held high in the boy’s hand. They journeyed through the twisting tunnels of the necropolis, then into the shifting labyrinth of faces and hands beyond. Jonnen led them from memory, unerringly, for what seemed like hours in the lonely gloom. Until finally, they stepped out into a vast and circular chamber.

  The boy stood now at his father’s side, watching their shadows stretch before them. Whisper slithered out from his master’s shadow, hypnotized, just as Mister Kindly and Eclipse had been. All around them, the beautiful faces etched on the walls and the floor were moving, just as they’d done the last time Jonnen stood here. The ground shifted and rolled beneath their sandals as stone hands reached toward them, stone lips whispering silent pleas. Jonnen understood who these faces belonged to now.

  Their Mother.

  Their true Mother.

  The air was alight with it. Hunger. Anger. Hate. The anguished faces sloped downward into that deep depression, at once familiar and utterly alien, barely visible in the torch’s pale glow. The shoreline was all open hands and open mouths. And pooled there, gleaming dark and velvet smooth, lay the pool of black blood.

  Godsblood.

  “I think…”

  His father took one hesitant step forward. He stretched out his hand, and Jonnen swore he saw the surface of the pool ripple in response.

  “I think I saw this place. In my dream.”

  “… Here he fell…,” the serpent whispered.

  “Here he fell,” the little boy replied.

  “And there is more of this?” The imperator stared at the pool, finally turning to look at his son. “Awaiting her at the Crown of the Moon?”

  “I do not know,” the boy admitted, his voice small and afraid. “But Tric told Mia she must journey there to unite the pieces of Anais’s soul.”

  “Why travel all the way to the ruins of Old Ashkah?” his father asked. “Why not claim the power that resides right here beneath Godsgrave?”

  “The remnants in this pool will not avail you, Father,” Jonnen said. “Tric warned Mia about them. They are what is left of the Moon’s rage. The part of him that wants only to destroy. They have festered down here in the dark too long. Mia did not dare to touch them. Nor should you.”

  His father’s eyes glittered in the dark. Fixed upon that liquid malevolence. His hands balled into fists. Frustration. Agitation. Calculation.

  “Duomo’s map.” The imperator turned his piercing black stare upon his son. “The one Järnheim stole. Did you see it?”

  Jonnen swallowed hard. He loved his father, he truly did. Admired him. Emulated him. Envied him. But more, and above all, he feared him.

  “I … saw it,” the boy whispered.

  “Whisper,” his father said.

  The shadowviper remained silent, swaying before the pool.

  “Whisper!” the imperator snapped.

  The serpent slowly turned its head, hissing softly.

  “… Yes, Julius…?”

  “Since you struck down my daughter’s passenger, you seem made of … darker stuff.” Black eyes looked the serpent over. “Do you feel changed?”

  “… I am stronger since consuming the wolf, aye. I feel it…”

  “The tale is true, then? In destroying another of these … fragments…”

  “… We claim that fragment for ourselves…”

  The imperator looked at his son. “And my daughter has killed other darkin?”

  The boy nodded. “At least one.”

  “Then she is at least twice as strong as I.”

  Jonnen nodded again, watching his father by the light of their lonely torch. He could see the imperator’s mind at work—the cunning and intelligence that had seen Julius Scaeva lay waste to all who opposed him. To build his throne upon a hill of his enemies’ bones. And ever the apt pupil, the boy found his mind working, too.

  His father had two problems with his wayward daughter, the way Jonnen saw it. First, that Mia might lay claim to whatever power lay waiting at the Crown of the Moon. And second, that even if she failed to claim it, with two fragments of Anais inside her, she was still more powerful than their father was. If she returned to Godsgrave at truedark—as she almost surely would—he’d be unable to stand against her, either way.

  The imperator looked out over the inky black, his face etched like pale stone in the arkemical light. Jonnen couldn’t quite remember ever seeing his father wearing the expression he wore now. He seemed almost … afraid.

  “She showed me this for a reason,” he murmured. “This is the answer. No mere throne or title. No work of man, destined for dust and history. This is ageless. Undying.”

  The imperator of all Itreya slowly nodded.

  “This is the power of a god.”

  “… Yours for the taking, Julius…”

  “It is dangerous, Father,” Jonnen warned.

  “And what have I told you, my son?” the imperator asked. “About claiming true power? Does a man need senators? Or soldiers? Or servants of the holy?”

  “No,” Jonnen whispered.

  “What then, does a man need?”

  “Will,” the boy heard himself say. “The will to do what others will not.”

  Julius Scaeva, imperator of the Itreyan Republic, stood on that screaming shoreline, looking out over that ebon pool. Stone faces mouthed their silent pleas. Stone hands caressed his skin. The godsblood rippled in anticipation.

  “I have that will,” he declared.

  And without another word, he stepped into the black.

  “… Julius…!”

  “Father!” Jonnen cried, stepping forward.

  No trace of the imperator remained, save a faint ripple across the gleaming black. The pool shimmered and shifted, a strange un-light playing upon its surface. The boy felt his heart thumping in his chest, taking another step closer. The stone faces had frozen still. Aa himself seemed to be holding his breath.

  “Father?” Jonnen called.


  A wailing beyond the edge of hearing. A thrumming in the dark behind his eyes. Jonnen blinked hard, swayed upon his feet, clutching his temples as a black pain lanced through his skull. The stone faces opened their mouths wide, the cries rising in volume until the walls themselves seemed to tremble. Whisper curled upon himself, hissing in agony. Jonnen did the same, dropping to his knees and cutting them bloody on the faces beneath him. The reverberations seemed to shake the room, the city, the very earth itself, though all in the chamber was frozen still.

  Jonnen found himself screaming along, feeling a pull like some dark gravity. He looked into the godsblood and saw it trembling, perfect, concentric circles rippling out from the spot where his father had fallen. The boy’s belly flipped, his heart surged as he realized the liquid was receding, like an ebbing tide, draining back down into …

  Into what?

  He couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. He’d long since run out of breath to scream, but still he tried, eyes open wide, watching the blood sink lower and lower still. He could see a figure now, crouched at the center of the basin. A man, coated in gleaming black. The blood continued to sink, leaving the stone spotless behind it, every drop and spatter being drawn into the man’s very pores. His form shifted, nightmare shapes briefly twisting into being and disappearing just as swiftly. And as the screaming reached crescendo, the shape settled into something Jonnen recognized.

  “… Father?”

  He knelt at the bottom of the basin. Head bowed. One knee to the spotless stone. Silence fell in the chamber like a shroud.

  “… Julius…?”

  Jonnen’s father opened his eyes, and the boy saw they were utterly black. Despite the torchlight, the shadows around them were all being drawn toward him. Jonnen saw his own shadow, reaching out to his father’s with fingers outstretched. The longing and sickness and hunger inside him was almost a physical pain.

  But slowly, ever so slowly, it ebbed. Fading, like the sunslight during truedark. Jonnen could see his father trembling with effort. His every muscle taut. The veins in his neck stretched to breaking. But gradually, the black across the surface of his eyes receded, withdrawing back into his irises and revealing the whites beneath.

  “The will,” he breathed, his voice tinged with a dark reverberation.

  The imperator raised his hands. The shadows about them came alive, writhing and twisting and seething and stretching, the black a living, breathing thing.

  “The will to do what others will not.”

  “… Julius…?” Whisper asked. “… Are you well…?”

  The imperator snapped his fists shut. The shadows stopped their motion, falling still like scolded children. The imperator lowered his chin and smiled.

  “I am … perfect.”

  The air hummed. The shadows rippled. Whisper retreated from the pool’s edge, some instinct driving the serpent to coil inside Jonnen’s own shadow. But instead of the passenger lessening his fear, the boy felt his own terror double. The snake’s dread bleeding into his own.

  His father climbed out of the now empty basin. Jonnen looked down and saw his father’s shadow was utterly black. Not dark enough for three or four or even dozens. It was a dark so fathomless that light seemed simply to die inside it. The boy could hear a faint hissing noise, like a frying pan on a hot stove.

  Narrowing his eyes, the imperator reached inside his robe, pulling out a trinity of Aa hanging on a golden chain about his neck. The light from the holy symbol flared bright in the boy’s eyes, sickening, blinding. Jonnen gasped, stepping back with one hand raised to blot out the awful radiance. His stomach churning, he saw his father’s skin was hissing and spitting where it touched the trinity, like beef on a skillet, smoke rising up from the imperator’s burning flesh.

  Jaw clenched, Julius Scaeva turned his will to the golden suns in his hand. Grip tightening, veins standing taut in his forearm, he slowly curled his fingers closed. The trinity crumpled like tin in a vise, crushed to a shapeless lump in his fist. Lip curling in disdain, he tossed the ruined metal aside, off into the cavern’s far-flung shadows. Eyes on the burned skin of his palm.

  “We will return to the Ribs,” he said. “And you will draw me Duomo’s map.”

  “Yes, Father,” the boy whispered.

  His father looked at him then. Despite the passenger riding him, Jonnen felt a perfect sliver of fear pierce his heart. The dark about them rippled and his own shadow shivered, as if just as afraid as he was. And looking up into his father’s eyes, Jonnen saw they were filled with hunger.

  “It is a good thing you’ve a memory as sharp as swords, my son.”

  CHAPTER 37

  AWAY

  One broken and bleeding heart.

  Four figures beneath the Mother’s gaze.

  Seven letters carved in black stone.

  Ashlinn.

  Mia stood in the Hall of Eulogies, looking at the letters she’d cut into the tomb. Ashlinn’s body lay inside, wrapped in a beautiful white gown taken from Aalea’s wardrobe. All had been silent as Mia laid her love on the stone, kissed her lips, cold as the heart in her chest. Staring down at that beautiful face forever stilled, those eyes forever closed, that breath forever stolen. Trying to convince herself she felt nothing.

  She’d pushed the tomb door closed. Felt it slam on all the futures she’d allowed herself to wish for. All the happy endings she’d let herself dream. Resting her forehead against the unyielding rock and exhaling the last of the hope inside her.

  Nothing now remained.

  Nothing at all.

  She turned to Mercurio, and the pity in his eyes almost broke her. She looked away quickly, to Sid and ’Singer, standing close enough to touch. Sorrow in their stares, pain at seeing her pain, no comfort at all. And finally, she looked to Tric, standing still as the statue of the Mother above them, scales and sword heavy in her hand.

  “To live in the hearts we leave behind is to never die,” he’d told her.

  But in the agony of the end, is the having worth the losing?

  Mia hung her head. Face in her hands. Wondering what came next.

  And then, came agony.

  Black fire burning in her bloodshot eyes. Black lice crawling beneath her tearstained skin. She gasped and clutched her chest, falling to her knees, the shadows about her rolling, clawing, biting. The walls were trembling. The earth beneath her crumbling away and dragging her down into darkness. The taste of rot on her tongue. A crushing weight on her chest. The sensation of drowning in a liquid black as truedark, the stink of blood and iron. It seemed for a moment like all the world was screaming so loud her eardrums might burst.

  And then she recognized the voice.

  “Mia!”

  Dark flame in her heart. Dark wings at her back. Dark skies above her h—

  “MIA!” Mercurio cried.

  She opened her eyes. Gasping and filmed in sweat. Her old mentor was crouched beside her, arms wrapped about her, holding her still. The hall about them was in chaos, the tomb doors flung open by shadowed hands, the votive candles extinguished, the great iron chain on the Goddess’s scales broken in two. Her comrades were wide-eyed, pale, staring at her in fear.

  “O, Mother,” Mia whispered.

  “It’s all right, little Crow,” Mercurio said. “It’s all right.”

  “No,” she breathed. “No, it’s not…”

  Mia tried to catch her breath, still her struggling heart.

  “MIA?” Tric stepped forward. “WHAT IS IT?”

  Mia knelt on the graven stone, her breast heaving, hair plastered to the fresh sweat on her skin. She pressed her knuckles to her temples, her skull close to splitting, black pain behind her ribs. Her heart was still thundering, her belly still full of cold dread, the shadows around her still trembling with her fear.

  “Mia, what’s wrong?”’Singer asked.

  “He’s done it,” she whispered.

  “Done what?” Mercurio demanded. “What are you talking about?”

 
Mia could only shake her head.

  “The fucking fool has actually done it…”

  * * *

  They met in the Athenaeum again, gathering in the hungry dark.

  Aelius smoking like a chimney and watching Mia intently. Sidonius and Bladesinger, eyes filled with concern, clad in their worn leathers. Adonai in his red velvet robe and Mercurio in dark bishop’s garb, staring at her with pale blue eyes. Tric all in black, his skin now kissed with a faint warmth that did nothing to warm her at all.

  And at the center of them all stood Mia.

  Black leather britches and wolfskin boots. A white silk shirt and leather corset. A gravebone longblade slung on her back, another of Ashkahi blacksteel hanging from her waist. A burning cigarillo on her lips to smother the smell of her girl on her skin, a bottle of wine in her belly to numb the pain, and the fragments of a god long slain burning in her chest. They’d listened as she spoke of the dark tremors that had run through her, the grip of agony on her heart and the taste of black blood in her mouth.

  And then she told them what it meant.

  “How canst thou be sure?” Adonai asked.

  “I can feel it,” Mia replied, her voice cold and dead. “Sure as I can feel the ground under my feet. Scaeva’s consumed the godsblood that pooled beneath the ’Grave. United the shards of Anais that rested below the city inside himself.”

  “THEN HE’S DOOMED,” Tric said. “THE SHARDS BENEATH THE CITY OF BRIDGES AND BONES WERE A SOURCE OF POWER, AYE. BUT CORRUPTED. ROTTEN THROUGH.”

  “Then let the bastard rot,” Sidonius growled.

  Mia watched Tric with black and empty eyes, dragging on her smoke.