Never Keep (Sins of the Zodiac, #1)

by Caroline Peckham

Merrow – the very same Order my father happened to be and, of course, in his opinion, the greatest Order in existence. They were a ferocious breed; jagged, serrated blue scales coating their body like armour in their shifted form, remaining mostly Fae in appearance apart from the spines that ran the length of their backs and the sharp spikes that extended between the knuckles of their hands. In water, they could shift their legs into a tail and carve through waves faster than any other Order of the ocean, their throat producing gills that allowed them to breathe underwater too.

They call me the Sky Witch. Bloodborn Aquarius of the greatest nation of them all. My birth took place in the eye of a storm while battle raged around us and my mother’s screams were met with those of men dying in the fields of glory beyond. I am yearning. I am lust. I am the greatest desire of all who fall prey to my power, and I am lethal in more ways than can be counted. I am Fae. I am Air. I am master of blood and bone. My name holds no power because it is not what I am. My true name is War.

“Is he here?” Moraine asked, stepping forward to work on the door. “Yes,” I replied, lifting a hand to the vial of blood which hung from my neck, the few drops warm within my fingers, urging me on. The spell I’d cast on it would lead me directly to the man who had bled to fill the vial and there was no doubt in my mind that he was contained within the bowels of this building now that I stood before it. “The tip off was good.” I ignored the relief which settled over me at that fact. Dragor’s fury would have been beyond compare if the Fae we sought wasn’t here after all of this effort had gone into retrieving him.

I swore, sheathing my sword and striding into the room, sparing a glance for the vials and vials of venom which had presumably been taken from Ford before he’d died. Basilisk venom to be precise, potent and deadly, a biological weapon coveted by all sides of the war. He was one of ours, but he’d been kidnapped almost a month ago, our spies unable to locate him until now. “Fuck,” I cursed, reaching the near-naked Fae and pressing my fingers to his throat so I could be certain. My gut coiled with a fear I refused to admit to myself as I thought of what Dragor would do when he found out I’d failed. “Warm,” I gasped. “Thank Libra – he’s alive!” “No shit,” Dalia breathed, hurrying over to help me cut him free.

“I have to get you to safety first. But I’ll come back for her, I swear it,” he vowed, looking down at my injured hand as I curled it against my chest. There was fear in his eyes over the reality of what that wound could mean. The skin was ravaged, and if there was one thing I knew about Basilisk venom, it was that there was no healing its scars. Healing was a rarity of its own, the gift of such knowledge belonging to the Reapers alone, though they didn’t offer it out too many. And there was one injury worse than any other in this world, the loss of a hand was as bad as it could get in terms of my ability to fight with magic.

I was crossborn after all – birthed too early under the wrong sign. My mother had been waterborn and I had been planned for a Pisces birth, but the stars had intervened, bringing me to the world early and marking me as a child of Aquarius instead. It was why I had been sent to war at fourteen, why I had been tested and trialled more than any other I knew – though of course my sisters in arms had been placed in a similar position, but their shame was the work of their airborn parents – Dalia’s father having failed in a mission which cost the Skyforgers a battle and Moraine’s mother shaming her bloodline by being captured by the Stonebreakers. Yes, shame marked us all, and we had all been named as Sinfair – those whose reputation bore a stain which only glory in war could blot out - but they would never bear the weight of having weak blood.

All four lands respected and revered the Reapers, following their teachings of the stars. Helle Fort was sacred just as Never Keep was, and bloodshed between the four warring nations was forbidden here, punishable by execution at the Reapers’ hands. It wasn’t just the threat of that fate that stayed the blades of our enemies and ours alike, this was proclaimed by the will of the stars, spoken to the Reapers directly from the source of our creators. Among their ranks were Seers, those who possessed The Sight, a hallowed gift that gave these honoured Fae glimpses of the future and helped the Reapers guide us all in leading lives of worth and honour.

If any Fae here today held such a gift, they would be taken into the fold of the Reapers to claim a venerable and highly envied position among them. That wasn’t the only path into their ranks though, for Fae who were Awakened with more than one magical element would be taken by them too, hailed as an acolyte – a Reaper in training. Our star signs may have been linked to the elements of our lands, assuring that we would Awaken with the elements of our homelands, but sometimes the stars selected Fae for such a destiny, gifting a Raincarver with water and air, or a Flamebringer with fire and earth and so forth. I imagined what my father would think if I happened to be gifted in that way, and the thought of his simpering appraisal had my pulse elevating with the possibility, but then I realised that would mean me giving up my dream of being a warrior and I balked against the possibility.

Sexual desire was the least of what I could obtain from those who fell under the sway of my allure. I could see the shape of their truest wants and desires, be it wealth or glory, greed or power, love or lust. I could sway those desires too with enough will and time to work on them. I could twist them into something darker, more desperate, or simply more inviting. And if I helped them to act on any part of those wants then I could drain the magic right from their bones and steal it for my own power. So in war, I could urge my enemies to hunger for my death even more than they did on first sight, stealing their magic from them with every strike they made at me, powering myself while weakening them. And now that my elemental magic was unlocked, I would be free to exploit that power to my fullest capabilities at last.

“I’ve waited far too long to do that,” he said in a low tone as my skin continued to buzz and spark from that kiss. “And now I realise how much time I’ve wasted thinking I would always have you, thinking there was no deadline on us. But I didn’t want to break what we have. You’re my friend first, Ever, but I have to lay an offering of more than that on the brink of our parting, otherwise the regret will feast on me from the inside out. But I want you to train first, to chase your desires and land within the fate you have long been owed, and then and only then, will I ask you to be mine.” He started walking away and I noticed a line of Reapers guiding a group of Fae towards a smaller, though far grander boat upon the shore. He was leaving. The time was upon us before I was remotely ready to say goodbye.

And with a jolt of clarity I knew, in the depths of my bones, what Kaiser was. A creature of legend, a rarity among Fae, possessing an Order so terrible it was said few survived the cruelty of their wrath. “Fury,” I gasped as the vision of my mother turned into one of those snarling, dark red dogs instead, the beast pinning me down and its master leaning over it to glare at me. Only Kaiser didn’t really glare, it was emptier than that, this hollow monster seeing me suffer and drinking in the power I fed him through my dread. The well of my magic drained in my chest as terror shuddered its way through my body and I fought off the sensation of my mother’s weight, the most awful moment of my life reborn.

War of the four, divided and torn asunder. Flame, sky, rock and sea collide, While the stars bless the valiant souls of battle. Seek the void, for it shall guide the victor to their glorious path, A weapon of purity, and the gift of null. In a web of lies and cruelty, fate will favour the cresting wave of destiny, And a bountiful empire shall be reborn under one all-powerful rule, Garnering the fortune and favour of the almighty sky.

“I hadn’t expected this until the blood moon,” a rough voice muttered somewhere to my right and I stilled, concealed behind a wooden carving of Leo which was so large that it blocked the view of the shrine surrounding the exit. “You think the Grand Maester will act?” a more feminine rasp replied. “You seriously think he might not?” Silence followed for several seconds but my instincts held me in place. “The neophytes won’t be coming through here now. Let’s witness it for ourselves,” the male voice suggested, and I inched to my left just far enough to spy the gold cloaks worn by the Reapers. Their hesitation was brief this time. “Yes. I’ll lock the doors.”

I made it to the lower edge of the precipice where the Reapers had climbed free of the ladder and eased myself up to look over the edge. A long passage expanded away from the two figures who had paused half way along it, leaning towards the righthand wall where a series of star-shaped holes had been carved into the brickwork in a pattern which ran the entire length of the passage, allowing the light to shine through them freely. I recognised that pattern, the carved stone reflecting what I had taken for little more than decoration in the Heliacal Courtyard at the centre of the Keep beyond the training amphitheatre. Voices were hissing through the space outside, a clamour of noise which could only be made by a thousand neophytes whispering at once. “Are we too late?” the female Reaper rasped, pushing her face against the stone as she peered out.

The backs of a few thousand neophytes blocked my view so I moved on, the light from outside casting stars across my skin as I moved from one hole to the next, checking both the higher and lower vantage points and finding nothing but turned backs until- I fell still, my eyebrows arching as I took in the sight of The Cobra suspended with air magic high enough for the entire crowd to see as the Grand Maester drove bolts of iron through his flesh and another Reaper cast chains of flames to burn the skin from his bones. The Reapers had been clear that execution would follow for any Fae who murdered another in this place, so had The Cobra killed someone in the sanctuary? Certainly the brutality of the execution suggested the Reapers were beyond incensed and I imagined spilling blood in the sanctity of their place of communion with the stars would achieve that. Even so, I couldn’t help but be shocked by the barbarity of the pious Reapers as it played out. They had always seemed so above the bloodshed of war, but this proved they were creatures just as capable of it as the rest of us.

There was a stone pedestal holding a glimmering golden dagger and a bronze goblet filled with some dark liquid to my right. I flung myself behind it without a second thought, crouching in the narrow cover it provided and holding my breath as I waited for the call of alarm to come. But nothing happened aside from the arrival of more Reapers entering through the curtain, several others already clustering on the far side of the chamber. I chanced a look around the stone pedestal I was hiding behind just as they finished securing The Cobra and they all backed away from him, pressing themselves to the walls. They had stripped his shirt from him, marks now scrawled across his skin in his own blood – marks which had to be runes and yet didn’t look familiar to me at all.

The golden dagger lying on top of the pedestal that I had chosen for my abysmal hiding place shot from its position as he claimed it with a whip of air magic. I didn’t dare peek out again to see what he was doing with it, but The Cobra’s strangled screams gave me a fair idea. “I call upon the blood of the fallen,” the Grand Maester said loudly over the pleas of the dying man and the goblet shot away from the pedestal next. Again, I didn’t dare move, but as The Cobra choked and spluttered, I could only imagine that he was being forced to drink whatever the fuck had been in that goblet. “And so our offering is made. And so your feast is prepared.” Something changed as those words faded from my ears, something in the very air I breathed and the weight of the atmosphere surrounding me. There was a heaviness to the world which hadn’t been present until that moment and a cold sense of dread seeped right into my soul. My breath began to rise in a fog before me, my fingers trembling where they had curled around the hilt of my concealed dagger.

cascade down over me in a mimicry of the storm. My mind kept slipping back to the memory of that Flamebringer, The Cobra, being so brutally executed in the Heliacal Courtyard. He had killed a Raincarver during the fight he had started at the Astral Sanctuary. Though I hadn’t known the girl who had been killed,

So idle plans formed in my mind while I floated in the embrace of the warm water, feeling a rising swell inside my chest. My magic was recharging. And despite the fact that my Order still hadn’t Emerged, I had this single clue about it now. I’d realised it during my very first week here, soaking in a tub in the bathhouse - showers weren’t good enough, I had to be submerged at least partially to restore my magic. The trouble was, there were several Orders I knew of that recharged using water, but none I could pinpoint specifically to bathing.

I glanced back to find the lizard gone, but before I could wonder where it had gotten to, a wail of utter pain carried through the pipe that curved over the tub and spewed warm water into the pool, making my heart lurch in shock. “Did you hear that?” I gasped, swimming towards the pipe and listening for it again. A tingle of magic stirred beneath my skin, something dark and potent writhing through me, but then it was gone, and I didn’t know if it had come from me or that pipe. “I hear the sloshing of the water, swishing and swirling,” the newcomer said. “I like that sound.” “No, it was a scream. A man, I think.” I rounded on him, finding him leaning back against the pool’s stone wall, looking relaxed. “Water does not scream,” he pointed out as if I was a fool.

Siren like Max? Isn’t that what he is?

“Just Everest. And you should stay here. No point in both of us getting punished if this goes to hell.” “Oh bother, but I would like to come. I do like secrets. This can be ours.” His shoulders dropped in disappointment, and I stepped past him into the dark passageway, the low chirruping of that little lizard sounding somewhere within the shadows. “Alright, but if we’re shoved in the gibbet for this then don’t go blaming me,” I whispered. “Oh boy, oh boy.” He raced into the passageway. “Can you close the door?” I asked, not liking the idea of shutting ourselves in here, but it was a dead giveaway if a Reaper stumbled across that open passage. Galomp heaved the door shut, the heavy stone slotting back into place and blotting out all light.

Following strange creatures into dark passages probably wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had, and when we rounded into a narrower tunnel, I was even more certain of that as a distant scream echoed out of the dark. I fell still, glancing back at Galomp, his eyes shining with the reflection of my Faelight as he came to a halt too. “Tell me you heard the scream this time?” I whispered despite the silencing shield around us. “No screams, Miss Everest,” he said, shaking his head sadly like he was more upset about disappointing me than the potential horrors that awaited us at the end of this passage.

being seen. “But I hope they will not seek.” I shifted closer to the archway, peering into the chamber where a huge glass altar stood at its centre. A man was lying on it, completely naked with runes carved into his skin, blood dripping from them and some potent power making him writhe within its command. My heart juddered as I recognised him. He was a Stonebreaker, one who had been declared dead, his body found in a passage in the heart of the Keep and the murderer still being hunted. But here he was, alive and…not well. The Reapers began chanting, a low rumble rising to a crescendo and making the man writhe harder still. A scream pitched from his lungs and he reached for something above him that I couldn’t perceive, like he was seeing something beyond this plane of existence, or perhaps he was just fucking hallucinating because of whatever power they had imbued in his skin with those runes.

As I watched, the nothingness above him shifted and writhed. It was just a thickening of darkness in the air, but as it coiled towards the man, he screamed like never before and horror rocked through me as I watched, having no idea what I was seeing, and before I could figure it out, Galomp tugged me back. I turned to look at him, finding him pressed to the wall. “We should not look in there. I have a bad feeling. I do not want to look.” The sound of the Reapers’ chanting came this way and I grabbed Galomp’s arm as my heart lurched, dragging him back the way we had come, running as fast as possible.

Everyone around me was laughing, muttering or sniggering and my eyes met those of the Sky Witch for a moment, the only one in the courtyard who seemed moved by what I’d said. In the depths of those storm grey eyes, I saw a river of belief, like perhaps for some unknown reason she accepted my truth. Heat rose in my veins as the laughter grew and a burning sensation poured through my veins, rage mixed with embarrassment. It coursed through me like an inferno, and suddenly my body was shifting, a ripple of energy rushing down my spine and my form changed at once. I landed on four large white paws, my clothes hanging loose around my new form, and a hiss of surprise left my lips. I’d Emerged, my Order was here and it looked like I was some kind of large cat. And in the puddle of water over the flagstones, I saw my reflection staring back at me. A leopard of some sort, a Relic Leopard perhaps, though their fur was tanned, not white like mine with these dark black spots, and I was smaller than one of them too. They could grow as big as horses, but I was closer to Fae-sized. “What is she?” Alina muttered to Ransom. “A fleabag cat by the looks of it,” Ransom sneered.

After I’d shown the Reapers my Leopard Order, I’d been tossed into Order Enhancement sessions with the Relic Leopards despite the fact that I clearly wasn’t one of them. They had decided I was a ‘smaller, white version of a Relic Leopard’ which sounded a hell of a lot like being called a runt, and I was so fucking tired of being written off as that. I was meant to learn the ways of my Order from my kind so I could use my Order gifts in battle, but when all the Relic Leopards gave you one look and ran off every time you showed up to their meetings in the west wing of the Vault of Frost, you kind of lost motivation to go.

Throwing my magic into it, I tried to break it along with the magical barrier. The glass shattered, pouring inside onto the floor while my silencing shield kept it from being heard. But the magical barrier held firm. I cursed, reaching my magic toward it and trying to work out the intricacies, needing to unravel it. But I simply didn’t have the skill, or at least, I thought I didn’t until a twist of magic in my chest and a strange, roiling power slid from me into that barrier and it fizzled out of existence. “Hia kaské,” I exhaled in disbelief, unsure what I had even done to achieve that. But I didn’t have a moment to question it, my time here already running dry. I had to get in and out. I picked up my dagger from the sill, but before I climbed inside, a flash of movement in my periphery made me glance back at the rooftops. For a moment I could have sworn I saw a glimmer of pink, but all was still.

Rage crashed through me, tearing me apart at how easily he had disarmed me, how surely I had failed my mama. It ripped through the centre of my being and awoke that mysterious, dark power inside me, making it rise and rise like the roaring of the ocean. It blazed with an intensity that ricocheted through the edges of my skin, a power like no other burning out of me and driving into the hellion on top of me. But nothing happened, he wasn’t thrown off of me or impacted in some way that I could tell, though his brows drew down like he had felt something. But whatever it was, it wasn’t enough to save me. “You think I didn’t know it was you from the moment you stepped into the room, bare footed and as lost as a lamb in a slaughterhouse?” he snarled, rage flaring in his eyes. Suddenly it seemed he could feel, and all that lived in him was anger, floods of it twisting his features into the most frightening of expressions.

but he pressed the dagger tighter to my throat in warning. He stared down at me, teeth bared and eyes blazing, then he faltered, a gasp slipping from his lips. His weight left me as he knelt up, my dagger falling from his hand to lay by his knees and he held a hand to his chest, then looked to me in utter confusion. I lunged for my dagger, grabbing it in my right hand and stabbing it at his chest with savage abandon, but he caught my wrist, crushing it in his grip. “What did you do to me?” he rasped. I tried to drive my weapon forward, my fingers tight around the hilt, frost sliding from my palm to rush over the blade and a snarl slipping from my lips. He had to die. I had to finish this. “What did you do to me?!” he bellowed again and growling started up in the room, his Order gifts spilling into the air and bringing his three blood-red hounds to life.

“Out,” he said in little more than a whisper, and when I brought up my left hand to strike him, he roared it at me. “Get out!” He swung me off the bed by my hair, dragging me to the window and hurling it open. I screamed as he launched me out of it, my knees slamming into the roof tiles of the Vault of Embers below the tower and the ice clinging to it sending me slipping away toward a deadly drop. With a curse, I drove my dagger into a gap between the tiles to stop my fall, willing the ice around me to melt as I tried to get purchase with my feet. Kaiser stared out from the window, glaring at me for two long seconds, his eyes dark as pitch and filled with all the wild, unbridled fury of a madman. Then he slammed the window shut.

My gifts snapped from me, snaring the brown-haired, green-eyed asshole in my grasp, seeking out his every want and desire, picking them apart like a stack of straw in my fist. He was predictably bloodthirsty, pathetically hungry, ambitious to the point of jealousy, the rot of which speared out towards the Flamebringers who all gathered around him, particularly the one with the soulless eyes. That could be fun to toy with, but I was feeling all kinds of petty and preferred the call of humiliating this piece of shit for the amusement of all those around us, so I went for sexual desire and smiled wickedly as I let him fall into the trap of my kind. “What was it you called me again?” I breathed, my words a low threat as I built his desire to an ache which had him groaning, stumbling closer to me and staring as if utterly enraptured. “You are the most beautiful creature I’ve ever laid eyes on,” he moaned, trying to move closer but his friends grasped his shoulders to hold him back. “Stay away from her, North,” one of them growled. What a simple name for such a simple creature.

“What a pointless way to die,” I breathed, holding her there on the cusp of death. “Finding yourself impaled upon a piece of cutlery simply for being an insufferable cunt.” “Prince Dragor,” Cassandra gasped, clearly not stupid enough to make me wait any longer. “He will marry the Collingsdale heir a week tomorrow with the rising moon.” Ice slid down my throat, coating my spine and racing for my toes. I blinked. A single moment passing as those words struck me. I was his. He’d made me swear it. But he had never promised to be mine.

“Let me be plainer then,” Cayde replied, leaning closer and dropping his voice, his mouth caressing the shell of my ears with his words. “I saw you with your thighs parted as you perched on your desk in your room back at Wrathbane and Prince Dragor made you come for him with his fingers buried in your cunt while accusing you of being wet for me.” I blinked at his words, twisting my neck to meet his steady gaze, the revelation jolting through me and leaving me scrambling for a moment before I dredged up a waspish retort which came a beat too late to be delivered with the scathing dismissal I was aiming for. “What’s the matter, Cayde? Are you jealous?” I taunted. “That’s the funny thing,” he said, dragging me closer still so that I couldn’t see anything beyond the honeyed gold of his eyes. “Because I think I am.”

“Not like this,” he growled, seeming to be convincing himself more than me. “I don’t want you because you’re hurting over him. I want you when you’ve fallen for the trap of me and ache for no hands on your flesh barring mine. I want you in my cage, little lamb, begging me to take you because there is no other who could satisfy the ache between your thighs or the desperate needs of your lonely heart. I’ll have you all. But not while he can still claim you as his creature. I need you to be mine.” I frowned at him, the words so at odds with the constant rivalry that flared between us and the hatred that invoked, nothing spilling from my lips as he forced himself to withdraw.

After much furious deliberation, I’d concluded that he simply saw me as such a little threat that he didn’t care to see me executed for what I’d done. Something had happened between us that night, and I was tormented wondering what exactly it was. Some magic had passed from me to him unbidden and had affected him in a way I couldn’t even guess at. Fuck, it had made him angry though. I had thought him terrifying without a soul, but with one dipped in ire, he was an even more ominous target. Despite my failure in killing him, I wasn’t giving up. Success was only achieved through attempt. The number of attempts was unknown, but triers were renowned for getting what they wanted eventually. The key was rebounding quickly and realigning to my goal. I wasn’t ready yet, that was clear. I could accept that. But the word to hold onto was yet.

“Quickly, now,” the male Reaper beside Lily hissed, taking hold of Ogden, casting away the air so he landed on the floor between them. “Do it fast,” Lily encouraged. “Let’s wake him first, let him see the creatures he scorned have come to reap justice from his bones,” Grey said keenly, reaching forward to wake him and making my heart judder from what he’d said. This wasn’t right. Why was Ogden being pulled out here in the middle of the night in secret? The Reapers’ punishments were always public. What point was there to this? Grey was a thin sort of man, his cheeks hollow and his eyes sunken, but the lifeless look to his face was lost as he forced Ogden to stir awake with a blast of air magic driving against his face. Ogden cried out, blinking up at the three Reapers in confusion as he started to scramble away.

“For the Void,” Reaper Lily said in reverence, kissing two of her fingers and painting some shape in the air. My mind jarred at that word. The Void? As in the weapon mentioned in the Elysium Prophecy? Was she just showing her devotion to it, or had there been more meaning to her words?

“Why am I here?” I asked Dragor, taking a step closer to him then stopping abruptly. His icy gaze roamed from the tips of my weather-worn boots to the top of my windswept, pink hair before he shrugged. “Alexandrius requested honesty within our union. She holds no objection to me claiming a…well, we haven’t discussed your preferred term. Concubine? Courtesan? Mistress?”

He’d seemed so big then, this legend given Fae form, this inaccessible, unattainable object of my most foolish desires. And yet now, as I looked at him drinking from that tiny fucking tea cup, tittering with this vapid woman he didn’t even know and placing her at his side for nothing more than money and influence, I felt I was seeing him clearly at last. I was just a thing to him. I’d never been special. I was a toy to chew up and discard at will. A soldier to send to face her death time and again.

“Perhaps we can talk in private?” I asked in desperation, stepping even closer and giving my father an imploring look. Please don’t tell them. But it was then that I realised that Ransom was smiling. My eyes slid to him and icy fingers gripped my heart as if he was reaching into my chest and promising to destroy me. Father had already told him. “Everest Arcadia is a one-handed caster, her left hand is a dud, scarred and useless,” Ransom

“I yield,” I gave in, but the pressure only increased. “Please…Father.” The ice turned abruptly to water and I fell to my hands and knees, gasping in a lungful of air, staring up at the man who had sired me, wondering how close he had come to killing me. Ransom cried out in pain and Father wheeled towards him. The little blue lizard I had followed into the passages beneath the Keep was on Ransom’s shoulder, biting into his neck. My half-brother grabbed it in his fist, throwing the creature to the ground and bringing up his foot, ready to stamp on its head. “No!” I lunged forward, catching the lizard in a whip of water and retracting it fast, my own hand closing around the animal. “It bit me,” Ransom spat, striding towards me. “It dies for that.”

could create of the lizard and making it appear to leap from my hand and race across the courtyard. It was little more than a blur of blue scales, but it did the job because Ransom took chase with a battle cry and I shoved the real lizard quickly into my pocket. Father turned his back on me and I sensed that was my cue to get the fuck out of here, turning and walking up to Galomp. He handed me my pack and I shouldered it as we headed inside, my

“You don’t even know how perfect you are,” he replied, the words striking against that bruised and shattered lump in my chest which Prince Dragor had so swiftly crushed. “But the more I watch you, the more I see it. You are precisely what I’ve been looking for, Vesper.” My name on his lips coiled around me, tying me in knots and making my pulse race for all the wrong reasons. He was looking at me like he was looking at me.

I’d just given her the biggest insult of her life. “I do not fear anything.” “Follow me then, Valery.” I sent the Faelight under the water. “That’s not my name,” she hissed, her grey eyes narrowing. “Okay. Follow me then, Vorgash.” I took a breath before swimming after my Faelight, sensing the Sky Witch on my heels.

The stone slab was marked with silver writing, etched into its surface, the words of the Elysium Prophecy painted out before us. Only they weren’t the words I knew. The ones that were hailed from every corner of Cascada, declaring our triumph in the Endless War was destined by the stars. These words were different, similar in ways, but wholly new in others.

War of the four, divided and torn asunder. Flame, sky, rock and sea collide, While the stars bless the valiant souls of heart and light. Seek the Void, for it shall guide the chosen ones to their glorious path, A weapon of purity, and the gift of null. In a web of lies and cruelty, fate will favour the peacemakers of destiny, And a bountiful empire shall be reborn under one united rule, Garnering the fortune and favour of the almighty sky.

“The Elysium Prophecy spoke of Cascada’s impending victory,” I breathed, stepping closer to the stone epitaph in confusion. “No, it spoke of Stormfell’s victory.” The Sky Witch shot me a confounded look then gazed back at the words written into the stone. “So what the fuck is this?”

There were lines like broken veins of black and grey creeping across the stone as if it had once been a living thing but now held nothing at all in its grasp. Everest took a step forward as if meaning to move into the room, but I held a hand out to halt her, my eyes glued to my Faelight which had begun to sputter and crackle sporadically. “You have to maintain a connection to the magic in it,” Everest said as if the problem was with my cast. “It’s not my control that’s causing that,” I replied in a low voice. “There’s something wrong with-” my words cut off in a gasp as the line of power which tethered me to the Faelight thrashed violently, a sharp jerk on it almost making me stumble into the room as if it truly were a rope lashing me to the magic.

“What the fuck was that?” she demanded, advancing on me and I shook my head as I got to my feet. “It was like something was…feeding on me, or draining me,” I said, backing away from that room and whatever foul magic it held.

I stepped closer to the door, my fingers skidding across the rough wood as I slowly pushed it wide. I wasn’t certain what I had been expecting but the wide carven filled with at least twenty stone archways in a wide circle hadn’t been it. The flagstones lining the floor were so pale they were almost white, each of them carved with elemental symbols and likenesses of the various zodiac signs. There was a stillness to the air which denied the possibility of that breeze I’d kept feeling from existence, but as I took a step into the chamber, I felt it again. “Surely you hear the waves now?” Everest pushed but I shook my head in denial.