by Karin Cox
She strode forward, wings rigid.
A murmur rippled through the congregation of Cruxim.
The one she had called Daneo pinned her with a cold stare. “That is no reason.”
“HEAR ME!” Skylar’s voice rang out in my head, strong but tinny, like a smith hammering a sword. “I have reason to believe he is the Cruor.”
Another tremor passed through the crowd.
“The Cru—” I began.
“We understand your hope,” Daneo cut me off, his voice soothing this time but still cut with an undercurrent of anger. “But to bring him here ... Skylar, such exile is not to be ignored, to break it, unforgivable. He must go, and you with him.”
The word burrowed into my brain: Exile!
“Hope is not why I brought him here.” Skylar spoke aloud again, obviously for my benefit. “He has survived the Haemacra. I saw it myself. He is the one the Sphinx’s riddle speaks of. I am certain of it.”
My ears pricked up at that, awaiting the riddle she spoke of, but it did not come.
Daneo’s look was one a falcon might give a mouse. Then, perhaps seeing the truth in Skylar’s face, he said, “Let us convene the Council of Paleon. In the meantime, he must be bound.”
“Bound! He is one of us, Daneo.”
His skeptical eyes raked my face. “No. He is alone.”
Reaching out, he clasped Skylar’s arm and nodded toward three male Cruxim, each bearing arms. “Xanthos, bind him.”
“Yield,” Xanthos—a silver-spangled being with slanted green eyes—said as he approached me.
“I yield,” I said, palms up. “I have no quarrel with your kind. I am myself Cruxim.”
“Then Know Thyself, Cruxim,” he answered gruffly, as he grasped my wrists and bound them behind my back with thick leather cuffs, reinforced and buckled with silver.
“I know only this,” I raged, as the others hobbled my feet together. “You will pay for laying hands upon me.”
They led me, still struggling, through the glade to a marble path that bisected the forest and wend on to a stone hall carved from the cliff. In the flagged forecourt before it stood a summerhouse, a low stone wall with silk above, stitched at the corners for privacy and hanging from a wooden frame. Daneo pushed the silk aside and gestured to a bench of oak covered with cushions.
“Sit.” He turned to my captors as they shoved me down on the bench. “Send for the Councilors, and for Shintaro who has had business in Palindil.”
They gave a curt nod and exited, all but one. Daneo turned his attention to Skylar. “While we wait, let us talk among those Proxim already here in Silvenhall, for I presume it is here you mean to keep him.”
“I do not mean to ‘keep’ him anywhere.” Skylar’s nostrils flared. “I mean to help him to help us.”
So I was right, I thought. It was not about helping me, but helping them.
Daneo frowned and said nothing. We sat in silence as the tent filled with Cruxim: some fair, some dark, but all wearing the brooding expression of trouble. They were people of few words, I saw, but who knew what flitted between their minds? Their thoughts were denied me as I sat in silence near Skylar upon the bench. Could they hear mine? If they could, it was scorn they read there.
“He has survived the Haemacra?” Daneo finally asked Skylar.
“Yes, as the Cruximus tells it. No Cruxim has been known to survive the poison of human blood, just as no Vampire can survive a silver blade to the heart. But he is a true immortal. One who might end the Crux forever.”
“How can you be sure he is truly immortal?” The heavyset, onyx-eyed Cruxim folded thick hands over his chest in disbelief.
“I saw him live, Rosario. Saw a thousand Vampires or more try to kill him. I saw what they did to his lover, a Sphinx. I saw him survive the blood of a boy, of an innocent. Think what a Proxim he might make. Think how he might unite us all against a common enemy.”
“Proxim?” I queried, watching their expressions in an attempt to glean some meaning from their words.
“A military leader of Cruxim,” Skylar’s thoughts explained. “For the war that surely comes.”
“The war is already upon us. It has been for centuries. We do not need Proxim to fight it, only Cruxim,” I responded.
“Proxim are trained in war, experienced. Not vigilantes, but warriors,” Daneo boomed. He flapped forward at me, as a swan might attack a child. “I am a Proxim. HE is an abomination.”
It was an insult I had heard before. The specter of Dr. Claus Gandler loomed in my mind. How I wished I’d had more time to savor that monster’s death, to wring the life from his body with less haste and more satisfaction. The freakshow owner and torturer had not deserved the speedy end I had bestowed on him, not considering the monstrosities he had inflicted on Trudie, on Danette, on Kettle, and on Joslyn and Sabine. My bonds tightened as I clenched my hands into fists.
“You think I do not know about war?” I roared. “Trust me, I will give you war.”
“Amedeo, there is much I should have told you—” Skylar interrupted me, but Daneo stopped her with a penetrating glare.
“You may know about vengeance, but you are not a warrior. Trust you?” He scoffed. “In Silvenhall, trust is earned. Your mother was exiled with you still in her belly. She made a vow and broke it. I have no doubt you would do likewise.”
I bristled at that. “I knew her only for a short while, but she was a woman of honor.”
A low cluck of disbelief came from Daneo’s throat. “Honor! Let not that word be used with Calira’s name. She betrayed her word, her betrothed, and her people. No son of hers shall ever be made welcome in Silvenhall, and never one from his loins.”
“Nor in Argentil Crèche,” the Cruxim with eyes dark as ebony rumbled.
I was unsure which rankled more, the insult on my father or on my mother. “I never knew my father. I cannot speak for his integrity.”
“Do not lecture me on integrity!” Daneo’s eyes were bright with unconcealed hatred. He turned to Skylar. “What folly made you bring him here? You should have listened to Samea when she told you it was impossible. He does not belong to you.”
“I belong to no one,” I cried. I flapped to my feet, but my jailer put his shoulder into my wings and knocked me back onto the cushion. “I want no part of this. Leave me to return to Delphi.”
“Daneo,” Skylar interrupted, “please. He knows nothing of his past. Knows nothing of Cruxim lore. I wanted the Council’s approval first, before I revealed anything to him. Let me explain to him.”
“And have him know us and tell others? No, it is more than folly.” He waved her away with one hand and turned to another Cruxim posted by the door. “Bring wine,” he instructed. Under his breath, he muttered, “I would that the Paleon had killed him at his birth.”
Skylar’s eyes turned to sleet and her words were just as icy as she said, “I told you, I have seen what he is. He cannot die. Not like us. Not from that.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Confined to the silken tent with my hands and feet bound and a sentry posted at one corner, there was little to do but await the sitting of the Council. Daneo and the other Cruxim had retreated to the stone hall, out of range of my ears or my probing mind. Assuredly, they could hear my thoughts, yet they had the presence of mind to block their own. My many questions unanswered, my mind turned to Joslyn.
I remembered the day I had seen her, or rather, the day she had seen me. Nothing but a child, she had held her arms out to me, had called me her guardian angel—me, the Cruxim who had led her to her doom. Time passed slowly in the tent, and my grief turned itself to memories of Sabine, too. She would have tolerated no scorn from these luminous, suspicious beings. She would have turned her tail on them and their politics, as I should.
Why had I followed Skylar here? Was it some misguided belief she might provide the answers I needed to rouse Sabine from stone, or was it just loneliness? Weariness? Why had I come?
The salt of tears stung my li
p, but I was unable to wipe at them with my hands bound. The guard snorted and turned his face away.
“Why must you hate me so?”
He just stared into the distance.
When Skylar eventually returned, I barely gave her time to sit beside me on the divan before I began. “You should have left me in Delphi.”
“So say they,” Skylar agreed. “But you must understand—”
“So tell me!” I cut her off and leaned in closer to her, wriggling my wrists within their bonds. “Explain it. Everything. How is it that, aside from my mother, my sister and her father, I never encountered another Cruxim until that night at Dr. Gandler’s Circus, yet they know of me? They all know of me. Tell me that, Skylar.”
Her mask of serenity wrinkled momentarily, and I sought out her mind; it was as closed and mysterious as the gilt incunabulum that had led Joslyn to her doom.
After a time, she said, “You heard the words Daneo spoke. Your mother was a Sibyl, a vestal virgin. As the high priestess of Cruxim, she was a diviner, a Messenger.”
“For whom?”
“Whom do you think?” She glanced heavenward.
“For Him.” I shook my head. “The Maker does not speak to us.” As I said the words, I remembered that He had.
You are never alone.
I shook my head, dismissing the thought that buzzed in my brain. Had the voice been Skylar’s? Had it been her thoughts penetrating my mind that terrible day on the beach? Had I heard my Maker, or was it just another Cruxim?
Not sure enough to ask her, I raised my head and stared deep into her eyes. Something passed between us, some current or knowing, and it rattled me, but I did not think it reflected her guilt.
She met my stare and returned it. “Doesn’t He?”
I knew then that she had heard it too.
“I am a Messenger also.” She stood and paced before me. “I hear His voice—not often, but sometimes. There are things about you He wanted me to know.”
“How does one become a Messenger? And how do you know I am one?”
“Your mother was one, and I am one; that is how I know.”
“And this place.” I nodded to the shimmering world outside the silken tent. “Silvenhall—what is it?”
“It is the oldest of the Crèches and the largest—a place where Cruxim bring their children to be trained and educated in the old ways and to learn the words of the Cruximus. A place of peace, where we do not have to hide our true selves. It is not easy to live among humans.”
I stared up at her, unable to stifle a snort at her words. Did she intend to patronize me, who had lived among them for centuries? Her face was blank, but perhaps it was just her brand of honesty talking. She did not have to tell it to me. I knew all too well how hard it could be to live among those you tried to protect. I knew what it was to love them, and to hate them. Barcelona, Sezanne, and Provins had taught me those lessons well.
“No,” I added, by way of apology for my interruption. “It is not.”
She smoothed down a wing feather that danced in the wind and returned to sit close beside me. “Silvenhall is a sanctuary for most Cruxim. But ... perhaps not for you.”
I snorted. “So it would seem.”
“Silvenhall is only one Crèche among many,” Skylar continued. “Nowadays, the Crèches are often riven. Blood feuds, exiles, different interpretations of the Sibylim’s oracles or the Cruximus’s text.” She put a hand to her forehead, as if smoothing an imaginary line between her brows. “I thought it best I brought you first among the safest, among my people and your mother’s, and now, your sister’s.”
“My sister’s?” I jolted to attention. “My sister is here!”
Skylar nodded. “Yes. Kisana wishes to speak to you, should you allow it.”
My throat dried. I had barely nodded when the silk curtain was thrown aside and a young woman rushed in.
“Brother,” she said breathlessly. Fluttering forward, she threw herself at me, ignoring Daneo’s words of caution as he followed her in.
I had known her only as a babe, but I recognized her immediately as my sister. She had grown into a woman with my mother’s look, but there was still something of me in the smooth brow and high cheekbones, the full lips. Her eyes, however, were all my mother’s: huge and hazel and unbearably sad.
Ash-blonde hair, smelling of sandalwood and honey, tickled my cheek as she embraced me, then she pulled back to stare at me and a frown corrugated her forehead.
“Dear brother, what have they done to you?” She turned to the Proxim. “Why is he chained?”
He dismissed her with a sidelong glance. “You of all people know that, Kisana.”
“He is my brother.”
Daneo’s lip curled cruelly. “Your mother’s son, yes. Until the Council rules otherwise, which it will not, he will stay restrained.” He clicked toward the sentry, who stepped from where he had been concealed behind the silken screen. “And Avrel and I will be watching him.”
Turning his back on Kisana and myself, he strode to the low table in the far corner of the tent and poured wine from a decanter into a goblet.
“He is a guest,” Kisana insisted. “Have we become such poor hosts that we would deny guests nourishment or comfort?”
I sensed an undercurrent of pain between them. Were they lovers ... or something else? My sister’s hazel eyes were wells of accusation and hurt as she looked at him.
Daneo flung his long hair back from his face to sip from the silver goblet. “Do not test me, Kisana,” he growled as he set it back down. “There is too much of your mother in you.”
“Or not enough.” She scowled back, defiant. “Perhaps that is why I will never replace her for you.”
Whatever they were, they were not good hosts. But let my sister pretend I was a guest and not their captive. What harm would it do me?
“You never knew her!” Daneo made to step toward her, his fists clenched, and she flapped forward to meet him.
“No. But I know she defied you.”
“She!” Daneo’s fist on the table sent the wine goblets ringing. His half-full one clattered to the floor, washing a plume of red down the white wall of the tent.
Despite my sister’s misery, I wanted to laugh. Here was harmony. Here was the sanctuary for all Cruximkind. But the twitch at the corner of Daneo’s eye told me something. For the first time, I felt the echo of his thoughts in my head. “I loved her.”
So it was jealousy, I thought to myself. He loved my mother, and she chose another over him.
“Not another. Celibacy.” Skylar’s thoughts were barely a whisper. “Daneo was your mother’s betrothed before she swore herself to the Sibylim. It was a vow she kept for many, many centuries. But when she ... when she broke it ...” She trailed off. “Under Cruxim lore, he has every right to hate her for that dishonor.”
“And to hate me by proxy?” Despite myself, I had spoken aloud. “And my sister, does he love her or hate her? I cannot tell from their bickering. Perhaps he does not know that himself.”
Daneo swung his head toward me, but I focused on the shaking of his fist, fast against his side. It was all he could do not to strike out, I saw, and I sneered my disgust.
“I must speak with Rosario and Xanthos,” he muttered. The wind of his wings sucked angrily at the silk as he exited.
“Quiet!” Skylar commanded as soon as he had gone. “Do you wish to make enemies?”
“Something tells me I already have.” I was toying with her, letting her seek out my thoughts, but I did not care. I was trussed like a bird in a silken cage, and she was the snake that constricted me.
“Provoke him no more. He loved your mother once,” Skylar confirmed. “He is mated to your sister now. He sits as a Proxim for Silvenhall on the Council of Paleon, which will determine your fate. You would do well to try to charm him.”
I scoffed. “Charm is not one of my better qualities, nor his.”
A smile tugged at the corner of her eyes. “You undersell y
ourself.”
“Unlike him, you charmed some,” Kisana said, her head cocked as if listening to my thoughts. “Very much.” She glanced at Skylar.
A vision of Sabine aflame in a tent, and of Joslyn, defiled and crying in the firelight, flashed through my mind.
“Then it was not the lucky kind of charm,” I answered.
Kisana put a hand on my shoulder, squeezing gently. “I am sorry, brother, for our arguments and for your pain. Silvenhall has not welcomed you.” She hung her head, embarrassed. “But I am glad you are here and that you are safe.”
For the first time since we had entered Silvenhall, I felt the same. Here, at least, was an ally: one who shared my blood, if not my mission.
“Where did you go,” my sister asked me, “when our mother died?”
Skylar had left us alone to talk, and my sister sat beside me, her feet curled beneath her, one hand absentmindedly stroking a cushion.
“Here and there,” I answered—the truth, although evasive.
The hazel eyes looked heavenward, and I knew she wanted more. She too was a missing piece—the daughter of a mother she had never known. Why should I deny her what little I knew?
I sighed, and jostled a smile out of her with my shoulder. “I remember your birth,” I began. “I remember your father, although nothing of my own. I was young, a small child, but I remember the warmth of her. Before your father came, I had her to myself.”
She smiled again at that, though I could tell it pained her. It pained me too. In truth, there was so little I remembered, except for her smell, her warmth, and the kindness of her eyes. I was unsure whether the fragments of Cruxim lore she had told me were even true. Perhaps there was no danger in mortal blood or in having children. But then, she was gone, and Kisana was here in front of me. I made a mental note to ask my sister when I had finished reminiscing.
“Spain, Italy, France, the Balkans—like minstrels, we went everywhere then, she and I,” I continued. “Sometimes, I fantasized that she was hiding me, as if I were the King’s son ... we traveled so much.” I cleared my throat, remembering. “Your father arrived suddenly one day...” I put my hand on her arm. “Forgive me, sister. I was not fond of him. Mother bent to him, like a willow to the wind. Before he arrived, she kept no secrets from me ... so I thought. After ... she kept herself from me.”