Rapture (Hades Castle Trilogy Book 2)

by C. N. Crawford

  My blood heated as I thought of her tied up in my bed, stripped naked and writhing.

  But before I could respond, a burst of flames erupted in the distance. In the dark park that stretched out to our right, fire blazed beneath a gnarled tree. Something was on fire. It looked like an angel with wings of flames, dangling from a branch. Violent shouts rose around it.

  “What is that?” asked Lila.

  “An angel effigy. Of me, probably.”

  “Definitely losing the propaganda war.”

  A cold shudder rippled through my body when I thought of the Harrower rising again.

  On the left, there was more graffiti on another wall, reading Albia Will Rise Soon—Albia First. Another lightning bolt had been painted beneath it.

  “On the Night of the Harrowing, the streets will burn with demon-fire,” I said. “They look forward to their doomsday. Those who helped the Free Men will be evacuated. The rest will perish. I’ve seen their vision in my nightmares—every alley filled with the nephilim dead, mortals among them, angels, too, the air scorched with flames. Anyone who tries to stop the purges will hang from nooses as traitors. They are selling it as a day of freedom, but it will be hell on earth.”

  “The Free Men hate angels, but they’re fine living with demons?”

  He shook his head. “No. They have a book of magic called the Mysterium Liber. It will allow them to control the lesser demons. So, when the demons are done and corpses fill Dovren, the Free Men will force the demons to kill themselves. Carve out their own hearts. Then, they will kill the Harrower. So, I have to kill the Harrower before any new demons are grown. As king, I will lead the Fallen to hunt the rest of the Free Men down, one by one.”

  “But how do we find this Harrower?”

  “You’ll help me, one way or another.”

  13

  Lila

  Dark and cryptic. I supposed that was typical for Samael. “Okay, well, I will do my best to help you find this Harrower, then.”

  A flicker of movement caught my eye. Instinctively, I started to reach for my knife. But the creature who crawled from the darkness wasn’t dangerous at all. In fact, she was a little girl, clutching a small wooden tray of wilted boutonnieres.

  The girl was barefoot and wore an old gray frock. She was pale and gaunt, her brown eyes too large for her face. One side of her jaw was swollen, which told me she’d once worked in the match factory. I’d worked there as a kid, but not long enough for the sulfur to affect me that way.

  She shot Samael a nervous look. “Boutonnieres!”

  He sheathed his sword and started to walk again, ignoring her completely.

  “Wait, Samael,” I said.

  He went still, his back to us, blending into the shadows with his cowl raised.

  I leaned down to look at her flowers. Daisies, corncockle, bluebells, foxglove—common but beautiful flowers. The boutonnieres themselves were poorly made, the ribbons tattered and tied in bulky knots, falling apart. But the bluebells were a nice touch, and the overall effect was sweet.

  “How old are you?” I asked the girl.

  “Ten.” She was the size of a six-year-old—probably severely malnourished. Her wrists looked like they could snap in half at any moment.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Hannah.”

  I straightened, guilt cutting through me. I couldn’t exactly walk past with the fruit tart in my bag now, could I?

  I reached into my bag and pulled out the tart, unwrapping it. “Are you hungry?”

  She stared at it, wide-eyed, almost like she couldn’t believe it was real.

  “I just need to know what it tastes like. The rest is yours.” I broke off a little piece for myself, then handed her the rest. She gripped her tray with one hand, then grinned as she took the tart from my palm.

  My stomach rumbled, loudly, and I stuffed the little corner of the fruit tart into my mouth. Sweet, creamy, tart—the taste exploded in my mouth. Heaven. I glanced over to see Samael watching me closely, so I shrugged. “I’m a thief, not a saint. Oswald gave that to me, and I have no idea if I’ll get another. I had to see what it tasted like.”

  The little girl stared at her tart in awe, nearly dropping the tray. Then, she stuffed it into her gob. A few crumbs rained onto her tray from her mouth. It was only then that I noticed the dark bruise around one of her eyes.

  My gaze flicked to her tray of wilted flowers. Whoever she lived with probably beat her if she came home empty handed. I didn’t have anything besides the tart, though.

  “Samael. You wanted some boutonnieres, didn’t you?”

  He turned to look at me, frowning. Confusion shone in his pale eyes. “Have you lost your mind?”

  The girl stared at me, still chewing.

  “You did want them. For our wedding. You can dry them, you know. Give them to the groomsmen. I think you need all of them. And she needs to sell them, of course, or she will have a very bad night. So it seems like a happy coincidence for everyone that we ran into each other.”

  Samael’s brow was furrowed, the moonlight glinting off his pale eyes. He was studying me, perplexed. Then, he turned abruptly and strode over to the girl.

  He reached into his cloak and pulled out a small bag, which was probably full of more coins than she’d earn in a lifetime. I thought he probably had no clue how much anything was worth, but I wasn’t about to point it out. He gathered all the boutonnieres in one hand and stared at them.

  The little girl dropped her tray and yanked open the bag of coins. “Fuckin’ hell. That’s a lot of money!”

  She was a terrible negotiator. I crouched down to her level. “You should know that he’s the count, and if anyone tells you the count is a terrible murderer, you remember this and tell them he’s not all bad. He has his reasons for what he does.”

  She clutched the coins close to her chest, staring at me wild-eyed. Then, she ran back into the shadows, her tray forgotten.

  When I turned back to Samael, I found him still staring at the boutonnieres, baffled.

  I plucked one of them from his hand. “Here, let me help you. I can fix you up a bit.

  “Do I need fixing up?” Samael grumbled. “I was under the impression I was stupidly, divinely beautiful. I believe that was your adverb-heavy phrase.”

  My cheeks flamed. “As I said, you were the first person I’d seen in months. Your face is frankly mediocre. Average. As far as I’m concerned, you barely have noticeable features. It’s just a blank expanse of tedium.” This was perhaps the most ridiculous lie I’d ever told, and I was surprised he didn’t burst out laughing.

  Instead of laughing, his jaw tightened. The air seemed to grow cold and thin. “Mediocre.” He spat the word out like it was a curse. “Average.”

  Of course, he had literally no sense of humor about himself. I was getting to him, which delighted me. After all, he’d already dismissed me as only as interesting as any woman who strutted around half naked. Right after we’d kissed, no less. It had been extremely insulting, and he deserved to be rankled.

  I finished fastening the flower to his cloak. “I said what I said. There. Now you have something interesting about you at last.”

  The air grew even colder around us. His eyes narrowed, and he went quiet for a moment. The wind toyed with his dark hair. “I think you want me. Someday I will get you to admit it.”

  “You first. Am I as interesting as any ordinary woman strutting around showing off her wares?”

  He leaned down, whispering into my ear. “The Venom of God never yields.”

  The feel of his magic so close to me made a shudder run over my body. “The Venom of God needs to stop talking in the third person. It’s not going to make you less average.” I could feel his fury rippling over me. I had the sense that I was playing a dangerous game, but I couldn’t stop myself. “When I saw you, I was like a man released from prison after ten years who shags the first ordinary hag he sees.”

  Shadows whipped around him, seeping into
the air. “Is that right?”

  I shrugged. “Absolutely. But everything is better with flowers, even the Venom of God.” His powerful magic thrummed up my spine. “Flowers have their own meanings in Albia. You see that bluebell? They’re connected to angels.”

  “As an actual angel, I can confirm that is absolute bollocks.”

  “Daisies are for innocence,” I went on, ignoring him. “Corncockle means an invasion, which I suppose is appropriate for you. This whole thing is really perfect for you. And now you have a nice pop of color in your ensemble.”

  “Just what I’ve always wanted. A color pop on my ensemble.” He stared down at the boutonniere, then met my gaze. “I am an ancient creature of slaughter. In what possible way am I innocent?”

  I shrugged. “You just are. The world confuses you. But you’re also a dour, cranky weirdo with fire eyes, and the flowers will help you look more normal. Now I’m no longer as embarrassed to walk the streets of Dovren with you.”

  He frowned. “That’s really how you’d describe me?” Without waiting for a response, he turned, stalking swiftly away. He was certainly rankled.

  I caught up with him under one of the dark arches that led to the stairwell. “See? Dour and cranky.”

  “If you wanted that tart so badly, why were you compelled to give it to that misshapen wretch?”

  “Because she’s just a kid. Her face is swollen from the match factory. I saw that a lot when I worked there. And I remember what it was like to be starving. I remember when I was so hungry it was all I could think about.”

  He stopped abruptly, turning to me with something like anger in his eyes. “When I arrived here there was, and continues to be extreme wealth among mortals. The mortal aristocrats have as much wealth as I do.”

  I sucked the last bit of custard off my thumb. “Yes, but my neighborhood is full of people who don’t have enough money for food. It has been since before you arrived. It’s always been that way. Those bunters who lift their skirts in the park for a few pennies—do you think they’re doing that for fun?”

  “I’ve never thought about them one way or another.”

  “Well, color me shocked.”

  His features softened a little. “So, was your life like that? Were you out in the street barefoot trying to sell poorly made bunches of weeds?”

  “I always had something on my feet, though I’m not sure you could always call them shoes. I had the same jobs she does. The match factory. Selling flowers. Selling bones I scavenged. Mud-larking—selling coins and other trinkets snatched from the river muck. I was always hungry, obsessed with food. I thought about it all the time. I dreamt about it. I wanted to steal it, but I was scared of hanging. I told my sister stories about what I’d eat if I had money. I’d pretend to be a princess living in a palace made of cake, surrounded by rivers of chocolate. Then I started working for Ernald. That was a step up.”

  Our footsteps echoed off the walls, and we started climbing the stone stairs.

  “But how often were you fed?” he asked. There it was again, that anger.

  My jaw tightened. “Why are you so interested in this?”

  “I honestly have no idea.”

  “I know plenty of mortals have wealth. But you have more money than God. You are precisely the kind of person who could fix that situation. If you spread it out a bit, the Free Men would have a much harder time convincing everyone that you’re monsters. They’d look like the wealth hoarders.”

  He slid me a sharp look. “Why would anyone buy bones?”

  I wasn’t sure I was getting my point across. “To make soap. Anyway, does it bother you if people in the city you rule are starving?”

  “I can’t care about everyone. I would lose my mind if I did. You have to choose what to care about, or you go insane. I have seen one generation of mortals after another die before my eyes. Your lives are over in the blink of an eye. I can’t get attached. If their suffering bothered me, I’d be raving by now. But I suppose I care if some people are hungry.”

  At the top of the stairs, we rounded a corner to the elevated train tracks. High above us loomed the house on stilts. Craggy black poplar trees grew beneath it, their branches bare. I stared up at it, feeling pressure in my chest when I thought of Finn as a boy, showing me this place.

  Samael crossed to the base of the ladder and motioned for me to go first. I hadn’t been here in ten years maybe, and it looked even more dilapidated than the last time I’d come with Finn. I started climbing the old wooden ladder. It felt soft, half rotten under my fingertips.

  The icy night wind whipped over me, tearing at my hair as I climbed higher. But when I was near the top, a rotten rung broke beneath my feet with a snap.

  I started to fall.

  14

  Lila

  There was only enough time for my heart to pound hard once—then Samael’s powerful arm caught me in the air.

  One arm wrapped around me, then the other. His wings spread out behind him. As he held me close against his chest, I stared at his dark wings, the feathers shot through with veins of gold. They gleamed against the night sky.

  With his wings beating the air, I stared at him. This close to his divine beauty, my heart raced. He was the literal opposite of ordinary, and I was shocked he didn’t know that.

  I wrapped my arms around his neck as we swept up higher, to the rickety house.

  Once in the doorway, I slid down his body, trying not to think too much about how good it felt to be this close to his power, the warm steel beneath his soft clothes. I lingered near him for just a moment longer than I should have. When one of his hands traced down my side, grazing my waist and hips, heat raced in its wake.

  My pulse was racing. I reminded myself of what he’d said about me—any woman strutting around flashing her wares.

  That would be my mantra.

  I stepped away from him, and he pulled up his cowl once more, hiding.

  As I looked around the old house, there was a pit in my stomach. Once, this place had been a refuge. Nostalgia pierced me as I breathed in the scent of old wood, the moss that grew along the windowsills. It was only one room—nearly empty. But just as I'd expected, I saw the signs that Finn had been here. His pillow lay on the floor, and a pile of blankets. A candle and a few books.

  I turned around, my eyes stinging. This place was taking the decades away; suddenly, I was eight again. Sun was beaming through the windows, and people were playing in the park outside.

  “Finn used to pretend to be a lord,” I said, my throat tight. “He'd put on a fancy accent and call himself Lord Finnothy Dexter. I thought it was just a dumb kid game. I guess he really wanted to be one of them. Someone with a moneyed accent, ruling the city. I thought it was a game.”

  Cold wind whipped in through a broken windowpane. I crossed to it, looking out at the burning effigy—a bright pinpoint of flame in the darkness. A small mob had formed around it, screaming. “The Storm is Coming!”

  “Do you think these are his things?” Samael asked from behind me.

  “I recognize the blue felt pillow. But he won’t come back now. He’ll notice the broken ladder.” I knelt. “The floorboards. That's where he hides things. Do you see a raised bit of wood anywhere? Anything that looks a little different to the rest of the floor? Or hollow?”

  Samael knelt, and within moments, he was pulling up a floorboard. Then, he extracted a piece of paper. When I crossed to his side, I peered over his shoulder at a white card with handwriting on it.

  My reading was too slow, and I was impatient. “What does it say?”

  “Where we beat the walls with sticks, two monstrous giants flank the door,” he read. “Under the ground, the ancient stones lay sleeping. Once, the bear’s blood ran down upon us. Below us, Albia sleeps, ready to rise again. On the day of the slain wolf, we meet at sunset.” He stared at it. “Does this make any sense to you?”

  I pulled the card from his hand, and as I did, my fingertips brushed against his. With just
that one brush of contact, erotic heat shot through my fingers, into my body. Stupidly addictive.

  He looked unnerved for a moment, then ran his hand through his hair, turning away. “What does that nonsense mean?”

  “I think I know what this is. There's an old Great Hall in the oldest part of Dovren, and it's been used for trials for centuries. Above the entrance, there are statues of two giants—Gog and Magog. There's an old legend that they founded Dovren.”

  “So, the Free Men are meeting in this hall. Considering they’re in hiding, that seems absurdly risky, doesn’t it?”

  “Beneath the Great Hall, there's an ancient temple. It’s quite amazing, actually. This is what is wonderful about Dovren. You’re walking along on what looks like an ordinary street, full of smoke and fog and fish vendors, but beneath you is thousands of years of buried life. The old temples, the ghosts of the past. When magic used to be alive.”

  He turned back to me. “I am enjoying your enthusiasm, but are you going to get to the point?”

  “At low tide, you can get to a door in an embankment wall next to the river. It’s an amazing place. Long ago, they held rituals in the temple there, when they worshipped the old gods. A person would stand beneath the earth, and they'd slaughter a bear above them, and the blood would run down to the worshipper, purifying them in power. Back before we killed all the bears.”

  He arched an eyebrow, and that was all he needed to do to convey something like mortals are violent maniacs.

  “Well, it was a long time ago,” I said defensively. “Anyway, that’s where they plan to meet. The underground temple.”

  He hadn’t stopped staring at me. “Any idea when?”

  “The day of the slain wolf.” I cleared my throat. “We used to have wolves, also, before they were all slaughtered. There’s always a party in the old temple on Wolfshunt Day. They’ll be blending in with the crowd. It seems to be one of their favorite ways to meet.”

  “So, there is a day when your kind commemorates the slaughter of an entire species.”