This Second God is renowned for his limited ability to steal from mortals what is known as souls, and from aniels what is known as essence—
My fingers clenched around the parchment. Some paper tears appeared under the pressure, but I hardly cared.
My heart pounded against my ribs and I let out a shuddering breath.
Syfon. A God I knew little about other than that he devoured vilas souls to feed his own power.
That was all I’d ever known about him.
Truth was, I didn’t pay too much attention to the Second Gods in the skripta. Now, I wish I’d read everything there was to know about this God, because he sounded so very much like me.
Syfon had an ability like no other God, vilas, or aniel. Only I could say I shared that with him. The ability to steal.
He stole souls, power, essence. And wasn’t that what I stole?
Was there more to this, I wondered. Was Syfon somehow connected to me, my family line, my mother?
Was he the reason that I could do these things?
Wearing a frown fit for a spoilt cat, I turned my suspicious focus back on the scroll.
The whole time, the parchment shivered with my unsteady hands.
Together, Syfon and Phantom strengthened their paired abilities. Syfon took essence from travelling aniels far from Scocie and, rather than consume the energy, he allowed it to be stored within Phantom who, himself, could do with fresh power what Syfon couldn’t—use it.
With these combined abilities, Phantom and Syfon became a formidable pair within the Palace of the Gods upon their return.
However, Phantom’s greatness was soon challenged.
Shortly after his return to the palace, the toll that the aniel creation took on Phantom became so great that his enemies preyed on his weakened state.
To kill a God is a near impossible feat. Phantom, despite his birth, proved just as impossible.
On the day that marked the turn of the season, the First Gods declared war on Phantom—a war he survived, but lost.
This day was later celebrated as the Season Festival, the day that the Gods forced two of their own into exile.
Phantom and his ally, Syfon, were forced to battle their way out of the palace, where hordes of aniels and Gods alike attacked.
That was where the parchment ended, turning from crinkly beige paper into charred edges that still carried a fresh-fire smell.
I didn’t immediately reach for the last scroll.
The flames of the candles were dimming to the point where I could hardly read much more than a few words at a time before my eyes started to cross.
Besides, I’d been struck silent by the scroll I’d just read.
Syfon was as close to me as one could get. We shared a powerful ability. We could steal from the Gods.
Fleetingly, I wondered if Syfon ever stole poison from the Prince. Maybe he did and that was why he wasn’t around anymore. Maybe he was dead and there was a true way to kill a God.
Maybe not.
Either way, I felt a little better knowing that there was someone out there, dead or alive, who could do what I could.
And yet, the story in this scroll wasn’t a comforting one, and I feared the same fate might meet me.
War, exile, battle. Something I wouldn’t survive.
I let the parchment fall to the glistening stone floor and I slumped onto my side over the blanket.
Staring at the unfurled scrolls, I let tears fill my eyes for the first time in a while. I didn’t fight them. I embraced them.
I shut my eyes and curled up into myself.
Hugging my knees to my chest, my mind wandered back to Damianos. Not as Phantom, but as the man I knew. Or thought I knew. Now, it was clear that he was a stranger to me, a stranger with a motive.
It couldn’t have been more obvious.
Damianos didn’t have Syfon with him anymore. Or if he did, he couldn’t use him like he’d once done. He needed someone new—a Syfon…er.
Phantom needed me, and he used ‘Damianos’ to reel me in. He charmed me with his bait, got me on the hook, and now I was suffocating.
It hurt.
A new feeling for me. One that I never wanted to suffer again. So as I let the tears streak down my cheeks, I sniffed and sat upright.
One by one, I burned the scrolls using the naked flame on the nearest candle. I burnt everything—all of the scrolls, the letter I’d found when I first got into the cell, and the handsome portrait of Phantom.
I only kept the phial of blood.
I wasn’t ready to part with it yet. I knew now that Damianos played me to his own tune.
I needed to know how far the Prince went to do the same.
3
The effects of the Prince’s blood were strangers to me.
I had no idea what it would do to me, or even if I could survive the blood memories of anyone, let alone a God.
So I waited until the other prisoner woke, talked some, used the bucket, then fell back asleep. Only when his snores deepened into gravelly noises that made me think of beasts prowling in dark magical woods, did I uncork the phial and bring it to my cracked lips.
I hesitated.
The glass rim hovered near my lips for a long pause.
So readily, I was about to drink what could be poison, one I couldn’t survive. All I had to go on was Damianos’ word that this, the thick dark blood in the phial, was the Prince’s. But now that I knew Damianos’ true identity, was I so ready to trust him?
Clenching my eyes shut, I tossed back the thick, bitter liquid. It wasn’t that I trusted him, I decided. It was that I had no better option.
At this point, it was Phantom or Prince Poison. I had to pick a side, and I needed all the information I could get before I risked my life for something I wasn’t sure I wanted.
Blood swept through my mouth and down my throat in a sickly river that tasted like old coins.
My face twisted as a shudder seized me.
Of all my sick and dark thoughts, I’d never expected to drink someone’s blood before.
This better be damn worth it.
I felt the blood slap into my stomach. With the landing came a dizzying wave that had me slumping onto my side.
My eyes flittered shut.
It hits me in flickers. Images, flashing in my mind, like a stack of paintings being browsed.
The images don’t last long enough for me to grasp them. It is a blur, a mess of smeared colours like those I sometimes get when I shut my eyes after staring at the day sky too long.
The flickering stops.
I’m staring a painting. Only, it’s no ordinary painting. It moves, reminding me of the Gods’ portraits.
This painting is of the Prince’s parlour room, where I first met him. He faces the fireplace, his back to me and a dark-haired man who stands broad-shouldered. Dark hair…
Dark hair…
Why is this ringing through me, like a foghorn from one ship to another?
The Prince stays facing the fireplace as he speaks. “You know what must be done.”
The image stretches and bends until I’m at the Prince’s side, and I see the cutting sharpness of his jaw and cheekbone. In his hand, there’s a clear glass of crimson liquid. Blood—my blood, probably.
My mouth pinches as I try to pull away from the Prince in the memory. I want to see the dark-haired man, but I can’t force myself to turn. I’m stuck in place.
Shouldn’t I witness the memory from the Prince’s eyes? It’s his memory after all.
As I think on it, I try and peel back a memory of my own. It’s useless. I can’t overlap my own experiences with this one that I see in my mind. This image is seared into me right now.
I let it unfold.
“Yes, Almighty.” The other man’s voice is familiar. It irks me almost naturally.
Relief is granted as the Prince turns his back on the blue flames to face the dark-haired man, and I stagger to move with him.
Now, I see the stran
ger’s face, and I suddenly realise why his voice bothered me.
It’s because I hate him.
My gut feels as heavy as stones. I’m staring at the cruel face of Adrik.
The aniel ignites an anger in me that is so close to rage that I clench my fists just to feel the bite of my nails cutting into my skin. It distracts my anger.
“How would you like it done?” Adrik asks the Prince.
For a moment, Prince Poison studies the glass of my blood. I know it must be mine, because this memory is about me, and they’re talking about me…
Anger rears its head again. My face contorts into a feral scowl that I throw up at the Prince.
“Efficiently,” he eventually says.
Adrik falls into a deep bow. Bastard.
“Valissa cannot know the truth,” the Prince adds, still studying the glass.
I’m biting down on my tongue, hard. Muscles tighten, ready for a fight.
I could really hurt him right now. Memory-Prince or not, I want to rip his stupid head off.
That colossal monster did order the attack on me. He thought it out, considered it, then threw the order at the aniel I most despised.
Phantom got what he wanted out of this memory. I am livid, and any weak strand of loyalty I had for the Prince has just been severed entirely.
“Of course, Almighty.” Adrik rises but keeps his gaze downcast.
I have the urge to rip his junk off with my bare hand, or better yet, flood it with poison and watch it rot.
“Tonight.” The Prince accompanies his final order with a lazy flick of the hand.
Dismissed, Adrik gives a final bow.
Before I can see him stride out of the parlour room, the image decays all around me.
I blink, seeing everything shift to the grimy walls of my cell, until all that is left of the memory is the sickly furious feeling buried deep in my chest.
Goosebumps plagued me.
For once, I couldn’t blame them on the cold bite of the dungeons. My skin was prickled by the blood memory alone.
Damianos—Phantom—had been telling the truth. The Prince did set up the attack on me.
Not only that, he’d let an innocent take the fall for it and face execution.
I wondered that, if I hadn’t mentioned Roxhana to the Prince, he might not have had her killed.
It wasn’t a stretch that he used my dislike for her, my scuffle with her, to his advantage.
Good timing for him, terrible timing for Roxhana.
Still, I couldn’t shake the doubts that gnawed at me. The Prince definitely orchestrated the attack and sent one of his vilest aniels to do it, but … why?
What end did the Prince have in sight when he planned it? Was I meant to die?
As I thought back to that night, I remembered that my attacker—who I now knew to be Adrik—only fled, only left me alive, because of nearing footsteps. Was he supposed to kill me?
But then, the Prince specifically said that I couldn’t know anything about it. I wasn’t supposed to know who attacked me or why or who ordered it.
So maybe I was meant to survive it.
No matter which way I looked at it, it just didn’t make sense. I saw nothing that the Prince could benefit from the attack on me.
My thoughts were shattered when my fellow prisoner peered through his bars at my cell.
How long had he been awake?
“What are you doing?” he called out. Freshly abandoned sleep stuck to his voice like honey to fingers. “It stinks of blood in here.”
He couldn’t have been awake too long, because he didn’t know where the blood came from.
Now that he mentioned it, it did smell particularly strong for such a small amount.
“Mind your business,” I hollered back at him. “I have my bleed.”
The vilas huffed before he fell silent.
I let out a breath of relief. Crisis avoided.
4
I must have been talking in my sleep, because when I woke up to the steady drip-drips of the dungeon’s many leaks, the vilas a few cells down shouted at me.
“Say his name again and I’ll make sure your God finds out about it!”
Sluggishly, I forced myself to sit and rubbed my balled-up hands against my puffy eyes. The pinkish morning light already started to creep in through the barred window-hole above, but it felt like the middle of the night. Fatigue clung to me. Sleep tried to drag my mind back into it.
I let out a loud, shrill yawn and stretched my arms above my head. If I fell back asleep, the morning guard wouldn’t leave breakfast for me—if he came by at all to feed us.
I groaned and rolled my stiff shoulders. “What name?”
“You know what name.” His hissed words slithered through the cold bars. “You shouldn’t be thinking about him, nevermind dreaming about him. If a guard heard you, we’d both be beaten.”
Would we?
I hummed noncommittally. It turned out, I didn’t really care if he would face consequences for my wrongs, whatever they were.
Slumping back against the wall, I stared at my stocking-covered feet and tried to recall my dreams over the night.
Nothing exceptional stood out.
It was the usual, really. Phantom, trying to turn me into a crow of darkness, but the shadows he carried with him ended up devouring me first. The Prince rescued me, but hung Ava from my bedchamber window for my ‘own good’, and so I ate him and consumed his power. The aniels wouldn’t bow to me, and Jasper used my body to resurrect Ava, who then took over me.
Standard stuff.
I’d been having that dream a lot lately.
Then, it struck me and my eyes widened with alarm.
Phantom.
That was the name I must have been saying, over and over in my sleep. That was a name that would get us both more than beaten. It would send us to the axe block.
“Nightmare,” I said, hoping he would take it as iron truth. “Started getting them after I visited the worship room.”
He seemed to relax some. His hands slipped away from the bars and he sank back down into his corner.
Nightmares, I guessed, were pretty damn common among his kind in the palace.
What was the difference in that I dreamt of a banished God? None at all, I imagined.
The morning came and went without breakfast.
Whoever our guard was for that day was a mystery. No one came down to the cells.
The guards mostly stayed up the other end of the narrow corridor that separated us in the grimy cells from the plush lounge room I’d passed on my way here. They had a fireplace to give them the warmth my bones ached for, and a green-felted gin table much smaller than the grand one tucked away in the saloon.
When light was streaming into the dungeons from the barred window above me—the strongest sunshine of the day—I gave up all scraps of hope for a meal.
Vilas-guy abandoned hope long before me. He was quiet most of the morning, and he only broke his silence when his guttural snores started their climb up the walls.
I was ready to join him in the land of sleep when the clack of expensive boots on stone floors crept through the dungeons.
Breath held, I sat upright and stared into the fuzzy darkness of the corridor.
The clack drew nearer, bouncing off the walls with a touch of elegance so hard to capture. It wasn’t a guard. That much I knew.
My heart seized in my chest as Phantom came to mind. Maybe not Phantom himself. It would be too risky for him to visit me in the dungeons, even if he wanted to. But he had someone in the palace who worked with him. How else did letters find their way into my cell, waiting for me before I was even taken here?
The grip around my heart tightened as the figure cleared through the shadows.
Prince Poison stepped into my line of sight. His eyes glowed like small moon-marbles and locked onto me through the bars.
A moment cracked between us.
We just stared at each other. Me, sitting on a fi
lthy blanket, tucked away in the damp corner of a smelly cell. Him, standing in his fine tail-coat suit, a crisp black shirt clinging to him, and his new midnight-blue boots wearing a shine that belonged only to the stars in the night sky.
I shattered the moment with a curt glance to the bars on my right.
Faintly, I could make out the vilas’ silhouette. He was a motionless lump in his cell. Asleep.
With a deep, steadying breath, I forced myself to my feet. The moment I stood, a wave of dizziness hit me, and I stumbled back against the wall.
The Prince’s gleaming eyes narrowed.
His lashes lowered, casting shadows down his cutting face, and he looked more dangerous than I’d ever imagined.
Still, he stood at the dark mouth of the corridor, watching me. I wondered if he was going to change his mind, turn his back on me and leave me to rot in here.
My doubts turned on me.
What if I was dreaming? I would expect the Prince to send a guard or an aniel on his behalf. Not come down to these rotten cells himself.
I sank my dirty fingernails into the palm of my hand. A bite of pain nipped at me before the warmth of blood started to spread.
Nope. Not dreaming.
The Prince kept me pinned with his sharp gaze, like freshly-made silver blades caught in the sun.
He advanced on my cell with a lazy stride. “Valissa, come to me.”
I pushed from the wall, my legs unsteady.
As I reached the rusty poles separating us, I wrapped my dirty hands around the bars and fixed my glower up at his proud, stony face.
“Almighty.” The greeting was smeared with disdain, dripping with the sarcasm that twisted my own face into a sneer. “Whatever did I do to deserve your presence?”
No crack of anger darkened his face.
He looked rather forlorn as he reached between the crusting bars to my face. His toxic fingertip ran down the length of my loose, tangled hair.
“You have not come to see sense,” he said in a small voice, as if he was sincerely disappointed that I didn’t fall to his feet and beg for forgiveness.
Syfoner: (A Dark Bully Romance) (Gods and Monsters Book 4) Page 2