“You can assist Patrik and Scarlett with their research,” he said to her. “We need to find out what’s happening with that asteroid belt, too. GASP may already be on their way here, but we’ll still have to get off Neraka at some point, preferably in the near future. We can’t do that if the asteroids continue to jam our magic.”
Fiona nodded firmly, and Scarlett put her arm around her shoulders. Despite everything that had just happened, I could still breathe easier with Fiona back from the Valley of Screams. As long as our team was intact and strong, we stood a better chance against the daemons.
“I’d like to join you on this mission, if you’ll have me,” Caspian interjected, giving me a brief sideways glance.
Jax and Hansa looked at each other for a moment; then they both nodded.
“It would be an honor to have you with us,” Jax replied. “Provided the other Lords will not suffer any setbacks in your absence. We wouldn’t want to disrupt your activities in any way, especially after what just happened.”
“That won’t be an issue,” Caspian said, just as Emilian opened his mouth to reply. “I’ll leave Cadmus in charge while I’m away. I feel like you need one of us with you on this journey, and, given the recent development, I feel like we need to address this trust issue between GASP and the Exiled Maras.”
Emilian, Farrah, and Rowan exchanged glances, as if they didn’t even need words to communicate. Emilian then placed a hand on Caspian’s shoulder, squeezing firmly.
“The Lords trust your judgment, as always, Caspian,” he said, his voice soft but his gaze cold, unyielding, as if there were more beneath his words—something that Caspian needed to be aware of. It triggered a little question mark in my head, but I knew this wasn’t the time to ask. Caspian owed me an answer, anyway. I’d have to slip that in. “Besides, Cadmus is more than capable of acting as your emissary.”
I knew Jax and Hansa were more than eager to have Caspian with us. Lord Kifo was the only Exiled Mara they trusted—he’d more than proven his noble intentions, despite the many questions he’d left unanswered.
Caspian could even help us find a way into the underground city of daemons, but that was a conversation best left for later, maybe in one of his meranium chambers—provided I’d be able to get him into one. Either way, his offer to join us worked for me, too. There was so much about him that I didn’t know, and something had definitely changed between us, from the moment I’d given him my blood to drink.
There was a glimmer in his eyes that I hadn’t noticed before. Whenever he looked at me, something lit up beneath his dark eyelashes, and I couldn’t help but hold my breath for a split second. It was as if he could see right into my soul. And I didn’t mind it one bit.
On the contrary, I delighted in his attention, mostly because it amplified the emotions coming out of him—waves of gold, red, and murky green that I was doing my best to interpret accurately. Mom had once told me that it takes a while to attune oneself to someone’s soul, as a sentry—the more time we spent together, the better I’d be able to read him.
“We should go back to the infirmary for now,” Jax said, his gaze fixed on Emilian. “We’ll see you in the morning, Lord Obara. What time will the funerals take place?”
Emilian sighed, the grief returning to his expression with a dark crease between his eyebrows. Both Farrah and Rowan leaned against him, and he put his arms around their shoulders. They were in this together, after all. I felt sorry for them, and I hoped we’d get our chance to pay the daemons in kind for what they had done to these people.
“We will begin the procession at nine,” Emilian replied, a slight tremor in his voice confirming the suffering already visible on his face. “Rewa will be appointed Lady of Azure Heights, now that Darius is… gone.”
“She is the eldest of House Xunn, and we need all five Houses to come through during these trying times.” Rowan sighed.
“We’ll leave you to talk among yourselves and to rest, then.” Jax nodded slowly, then looked at Avril. “You and Heron stay behind and continue sifting through the remains. Look for anything that could be of any help. Come down to the infirmary afterward. We’ll be there for another couple of hours, at least. We’ve got to go over the maps for tomorrow.”
I figured that we could get a lot more done over a shorter period of time if there were more of us up here. My True Sight alone could significantly speed things along.
“I’d like to stay and help, if that’s okay,” I said. “I think I’m of more use up here, for now. You, Hansa, and Patrik could easily establish a route through the gorges for tomorrow…”
“Fair enough,” Jax agreed, and gave Scarlett a gentle nudge. “Scarlett, you can stay too. You can all cover more ground together.”
Emilian gave us a curt bow, then escorted Farrah and Rowan toward the stairs. He glanced over his shoulder, noticing Caspian still standing next to me.
“We’re going to the White Star now. Rewa needs us to be there for her,” Emilian said. “Will you join us, Caspian?”
“I’ll come down later,” Caspian replied softly. “I’m not very good at comforting the bereaved. I’m sure you know that. Perhaps I’ll be of more use up here.”
Emilian pursed his lips but didn’t object. Instead, he went downstairs with Farrah and Rowan. Jax and Hansa left shortly afterward, leaving Avril, Heron, Scarlett, Caspian, and me to continue combing through the five mansions for any evidence we could use.
Of course, we were quite certain that the daemons were behind this. But the explosives used were local, and processed by an Exiled Mara craftsman. We couldn’t draw any conclusions regarding that until Caspian’s Correction Officer returned with the Mara in question.
Until then, however, there was still plenty of rubble to look through. With everything that had happened, my exhaustion was nowhere to be found.
We still had a lot to do. And I had a lot more to learn about Caspian. I was particularly intrigued by the shift in his attitude toward me. He’d been hot and cold—well, mostly cold—since the first day we’d met. I was dealing with a peculiarly warm Caspian now, and it made me feel all kinds of wonderfully strange.
Harper
(Daughter of Hazel & Tejus)
An hour went by as we scoured the remains. Houses Xunn and Kifo remained central to our focus, as they’d been specifically targeted in this attack. Avril and Heron covered Darius’s mansion, while Caspian and I looked through his, and Scarlett briefly scanned the other three.
Caspian’s home was mostly destroyed, but there were parts of the first level still standing. After we checked the ground floor and found more traces of explosives, we moved upstairs. I used my True Sight to look through the piles of rubble, and found several notebooks in a metal box buried at the bottom.
I dug the box out as Caspian came to stand next to me. Its lock was melted shut, but I pried it open with my bare hands, and revealed its contents. I pulled one of the notebooks out, its pages soft and pale brown. This particular corner of the house had not been fully damaged, from what I could see. The notebook was a sketchbook, I realized as I flipped through it.
“Can I have that, please?” Caspian asked, his voice low and a flicker of sadness in his jade eyes. I nodded and handed it over. He looked through it, then looked at me. “I’ve been drawing since I was a little boy, especially after my parents died. It helped me handle the loneliness and loss.”
I glanced at the pages and saw pencil portraits of his mother and father. Caspian would’ve been an accomplished artist if given the opportunity. His lines were firm and the contrasts were quite dramatic, but the overall compositions were beautiful. They showed a side of him I hadn’t thought existed.
“You didn’t want to forget their faces, did you?” I murmured.
“I already have,” he sighed, “but I can always look at what I drew and the images come back, albeit a little hazy.”
My chest tightened at the rawness in his voice. I could only imagine what it must’ve been like to
grow up like he did, with nothing but a military regime instead of loving parents. His adoptive father must have been good to him, but I could tell from his demeanor that affection wasn’t part of his daily life. Caspian had a hard time trusting people, and I was sure it stemmed from his childhood.
I flipped through another notebook and found sketches of daemons in different forms—from hunters to the armored ones we saw earlier, but others, too. Some were huge, with hunters hastily doodled on the side for scaling; others looked weak and covered in rags. I saw female daemons, too, with long hair and slim horns. Caspian had been drawing these for a while, from what I could tell. There were pit wolves and schematics of the gorge caves. He’d drawn other Exiled Maras, too, and panoramic views of the daemons’ underground cities.
I looked up at him with questioning eyes, and he shrugged, a muscle twitching in his jaw.
“I promise I will tell you everything, Harper, as soon as I make sure that it won’t put anyone’s life at risk,” he said gently, his gaze softening.
He was definitely different from the Caspian I’d known prior to the explosions. And the change felt more permanent. I didn’t know what to do with that. My mind tumbled around the events since my first day on Neraka, as I tried to pick at the signs that might’ve pointed to this dynamic shift between us.
As far as I was concerned, it was getting harder to deny that I was developing feelings for him. I already felt closer to him simply because I could see his emotions. But I wasn’t sure what those emotions were, as the colors changed back and forth and further confused me.
“I trust you will, at some point,” I replied, then looked through another sketchbook, finding more drawings of daemons, one of which was massive and frightening enough to give me nightmares. “I’m sorry for your losses tonight, Lord Kifo. I’ll do my best to punish those responsible.”
A faint smile crossed his lips as he moved forward, leaving only a couple of inches between us. With him so close, I could see ribbons of gold emanating from him, like shimmering tendrils that warmed my face and chest. The jade pools in his eyes darkened, and he slowly lowered his head.
“Thank you for your blood tonight,” he breathed. “Pyrope is a rare and beautiful gift for someone like me.”
“It was the least I could do.” I shrugged, the last part of his statement slipping past me for a second. “I mean, you healed me earlier, too, and I… Wait, Pyrope?”
My eyes widened as it all fell into place. He was right. I’d given him my blood, with my full consent. It wasn’t exactly a pact, but still, the act of willfully giving him my blood could easily qualify as Pyrope. What had Jax told me about it? He did it with Zeriel, in return for his service, and Maras would sometimes engage in it with their non-Mara lovers.
Oh, dear…
Why was my mind rushing to the “non-Mara lovers” part, instead of the part regarding “services rendered”? Zeriel had paid with his blood when Jax saved his life.
Caspian gave me a soft smile, his lips inching closer to mine. Was that why he was suddenly so warm and gentle with me? Had my choice of giving him my blood changed the way he looked at me to such a dramatic extent?
“I mean… it’s not technically Pyrope, is it?” I mumbled, as my heart performed a series of somersaults, kicking my stomach in the process.
“Not technically, but by a very loose definition,” he replied, blinking slowly.
He seemed to look right into my soul, and the golden aura around him seemed to intensify. My lips parted, mostly for me to breathe some air in, as I was getting a little lightheaded with him so close to me. His gaze dropped and his head moved an inch forward.
I froze, understanding right then and there that I wanted him to kiss me. Caspian Kifo, the mysterious and icy Exiled Mara I knew very little about. The seemingly ruthless leader who repeatedly saved me and even gave me his blood to heal me. The creature who had perfectly mastered the art of both drawing me in and pushing me away. I wanted him to kiss me.
But his lips never touched me.
Instead, his eyes found mine again as he took a deep breath, and the chills returned. He moved back and put the notebooks back in the metal box at my feet.
Caspian was flipping on me again. I could see dark green and red ribbons strangling the gold ones, his emotions shifting from what seemed like… affection, to something akin to distrust and pain, or anger. The red was particularly difficult to identify. My mom and dad never had trouble reading other people’s feelings. Neither did Serena. They were able to interpret the colors with great precision, yet I was struggling with Caspian.
My inner sentry growled as he walked over to another corner, resuming the search. My shoulders dropped and I breathed out, slightly irritated—not so much by his hot and cold flips, but by my reaction to his close proximity. I was clearly into him, and that came with problems in a world like Neraka. What were the chances something would even happen between us?
Close to zero, maybe?
And why am I thinking about this? About him? Damn it, Harper, snap out of it! You have a mission to focus on. People to save. Come on!
One thing was still clear and impossible to refute at this point: Caspian owed me a question. I was better off channeling my energy into that. Asking the right question of the one creature on this planet who seemed to know more than everyone else was crucial.
Caia
(Daughter of Grace & Lawrence)
Patrik prepared the charm satchels and red paint we needed to expand the protection spell into the underground and to redo the symbols that Harper had painted at the top level, along with the invisibility paste for Fiona.
I put them all in my backpack and checked my pockets for lighters. The chances of another daemon attack so soon after the explosions were minimal, but I couldn’t risk it.
Patrik walked over to the dead daemon still lying on the table in the infirmary and muttered something under his breath. A soft golden light began to emanate from the creature’s body as it was lifted a few inches above the table. He then took several rolls of bandages from a nearby cupboard and proceeded to wrap the daemon from head to toe.
“What are you doing, Patrik?” I asked, as Fiona swallowed the invisibility paste.
The Druid gave me a brief look before he resumed his work of carefully wrapping the creature.
“I’m preparing both bodies for their funeral,” he replied. “Minah will join the procession tomorrow, but the daemon will need to be put to rest elsewhere. I’ll most likely incinerate him in the morning before everyone else comes out.”
“Why are you bothering yourself with giving the daemon a funeral service of any kind? He was a killer, a monster.” Fiona frowned, slowly disappearing as the spell took effect.
“Because it’s in my nature as a Druid.” Patrik sighed, rolling the daemon’s levitating body over as he unraveled a second bandage roll around his massive torso. This was a job for at least six rolls, judging by his size. “We honor life, no matter who it belongs to. Even the fiends back home—the Destroyers and the incubi that sided with Azazel and perished… We said a few words for them, too, when we burned their bodies outside Luceria. All life is precious, and all loss of life is tragic, regardless of how one’s time in this world was spent. Besides, daemons are worthy opponents and ruthless warriors; they deserve a sliver of decency, unlike the Sluaghs back on Calliope…”
I nodded slowly. It kind of made sense, especially once I put myself in Patrik’s shoes. He’d spent years as a Destroyer. He’d witnessed so many atrocities firsthand, reduced to being someone who inflicted pain, rather than fulfilling his Druid nature as a healer, a nurturer. He’d survived a war and decades of oppression, after all, and hadn’t lost his common sense and decency. I glanced at the daemon and wondered if he had any family waiting for him. Who did he get himself killed for? A lover? A son? They all had a story, whether we wanted to acknowledge it or not.
“I don’t know, Patrik,” Blaze offered. “I think Rewa and the families of tho
se who’ve lost loved ones to daemons might disagree…”
“Perhaps so.” Patrik gave us a sad smile. “But it’s in my nature to honor life and mourn death. It’s more of a custom, rather than anything else. If I refrain from showing compassion even toward a daemon, then I am not faithful to Druid ethics and traditions. Even Azazel got a brief funeral. I burned his remains and spread them across the land. No one cried, of course, but nevertheless, his passing was observed.”
“Thank you, Patrik, for not abandoning your nature. We’re off now, and we’ll see you in a bit,” I said, and walked out.
Blaze and invisible Fiona followed, as one of Caspian’s Correction Officers waited outside to take us into the prison.
“Here we go,” Fiona whispered behind me.
“Good luck, Fi!” I breathed.
“Ready?” the Correction Officer asked as we reached him.
Blaze and I nodded, and he guided us up the stairs toward the third level and through a network of dark and narrow alleys, until we reached an old wall with a large iron door. The Mara pulled a lever back, causing it to screech loudly, and the door opened.
We went in, and walked through a corridor just as dark and narrow as the alleys for about fifty yards before a set of stairs took us all the way to the underground level in a tight spiral. I tried to keep my eyes on the lower part of the damp wall to my right—if I looked at the stairs, I could lose my balance.
Blaze was in front of me when Fiona slipped and bumped into me from behind, prompting a domino effect that ended with Blaze casually catching me in his arms. Fiona whispered an apology, and the Correction Officer gave us an over-the-shoulder frown.
“Sorry, I slipped!” I said out loud, for the Mara’s ears, then looked up at Blaze, whose arms were still tightly wrapped around me, making my upper body tingle. “You can let go now…”