Chapter 16
1248 Words
"What is this I'm hearing about your brother being a thief from the lower quarters, Gio?" Elio inquired sourly.
I touch my nose and let out an embarrassed chuckle.
We reached the edge of the kingdom before noon.
I stood beside Elio, silent. My disguise still half-intact—a soot-smeared face and a tunic I’d wrestled out of some merchant’s laundry.
No longer “Gio,” and not quite “Cinder.” Just a guilty in-between thing trying to stay quiet for as long as possible.
The crew were already looking at me like I'd betrayed them somehow.
The Moon blessed barrier loomed ahead.
It shimmered like liquid glass between two black stone obelisks, thin and rippling, distorting the world behind it like heat rising off from a scorching hot day.
The divine wall, spun from the magic of old Lunas, tempered by blood, prayers, and the Moon Goddess herself. Its presence hummed through the air like a closed mouth ready to scream.
Quinn unslung the velvet-wrapped staff from his back.
It looked unassuming—ashwood polished to a soft sheen, its head carved in the shape of a crescent moon, runes glowing faintly silver. One-time use.
A key, not a weapon. To open the barrier, to cross safely and to get back. After that, only Alpha Romero himself could recharge it with prayers from his own lips.
Quinn glanced at us once—at Elio, at me(he never was one you could fool), at Isolde who stood smugly off to the side like the entire sea belonged to her—and then stepped forward.
We were the new generation. Never before had we seen anything like it. It was our first time out of the confines of Vargrheim.
He drove the staff into the heart of the Barrier with a steady, merciless strike.
It split like silk.
A silver fire shimmered in a vertical line, opening a narrow passage.
Cold air howled through. The scent of salt and old magic rushed at us without a warning.
Without a word, we passed through.
The Barrier grazed my skin like lightning and ice, as if it were memorizing me. Judging. Or maybe… saying goodbye.
Then, with a whisper, it sealed shut behind us.
I breathed out steady, something in my chest seemed to break a little.
I turned to look back to see the barrier close once again after we passed through.
I was shocked when a stray tear left my eye.
!! !! !! !! !! !!
The journey across the sea took nearly two days.
The waters were moody. Gray, brooding and sickness inducing.
Waves rose like claws and curled back with low, guttural growls that sounded too alive. The sky remained overcast.
The Elders prayed often.
The guards trained in silence.
And I… well puked.
Repeatedly.
“You’re so elegant,” Isolde murmured one morning, stepping delicately around the pile of my breakfast that hadn’t quite made it over the railing.
I glared up from where I crouched, white hair matted to my pale face.
“I’d call you a parasite,” I rasped, “but even they have the decency to stay in one host at a time.”
She was annoying everyone. Quinn, Elio...and I even almost pitied Ezekiel when she asked him to teach her an ancient hymn off the bat.
I was exempt from her blood sucking tendencies until I was outed yesterday.
“You're lucky, cousin,” she said sweetly. “Lucky I wouldn't touch you in that pathetic state.”
She turned on her heel, her wine-colored cloak fluttering dramatically as if she hadn’t just called the princess too disgusting to touch.
I'm disinterested and honestly too weak to care.
Elio told Quinn about my stowaway stunt.
The lecture was brutal.
Elder Ezekiel suggested, with his usual tact, that I be “thrown overboard and left to the mercy of sea demons and my own incompetence.”
“Disgraceful,” he hissed, eyes bulging like a salted frog. “You stain every ceremony with your presence. Every prayer dies and becomes curses in your throat. The Moon! This meet is going to be a disaster. I can already see it...”
Blah, blah, blah.
I thought about lunging at him.
Quinn placed a firm hand on my shoulder before I could.
If looks could kill, then both the Elder and I would have killed each other with how we were staring off.
Isolde just kept scoffing, laughing and sneering for the past ten minutes. "I knew she was a leech." She'd said.
Since I had no luggage, Isolde was ‘graciously’ mandated to share her wardrobe.
“Try not to ruin my silks,” she said, tossing a dress onto my bunk like it was made of rags. “You’re shaped like an insult to femininity. You’ll stretch them.”
“I’ll try not to puke on them,” I said sweetly.
"You know what?" She grimaced. "Just burn them after."
Quinn kept me informed about the summit attendees—Fae royalty, human monarchs, high warlocks, shapeshifters from the southern jungles, and of course… the vampires.
He told me the basics.
Ezekiel filled in the venomous gaps.
“You are to remain silent,” he growled. “Observe. That’s all. Elio and Quinn speak for Vargrheim. You speak for nothing.”
Sigh.
I wanted to fight back. With words of course.
But I was still tired. Still seasick. Still engaged to Zulu, probably. So I had lots on my mind.
I was still a damn problem no one wanted to solve properly.
!! !! !! !! !! !! !!
☆☆EREVAR☆☆
The first thing I saw were the cliffs.
They rose from the sea like a slumbering beast—black and jagged, crowned with trees that shimmered silver-white beneath the dusk. The sky was lavender, cast in perpetual twilight.
The sun didn’t quite touch Erevar. It brushed it, distantly, like a lover ashamed of the affair.
I gasped before I could stop myself.
Sanghana. The City of Night.
It unfolded before us like a secret—towers of obsidian with windows that glowed like starlight trapped in fragile glass.
Canals wound through the city like veins, black water reflecting the shimmer of floating lanterns. There were no street lamps—just suspended orbs of flame-less light drifting in still air.
Everything was too clean. Too symmetrical. A dreary kind of beauty.
It felt like walking into a trap built by angels.
The docks groaned as the ship pulled in.
And waiting on the shore was a vision alright.
Crimson-clad officials stood in perfect lines, faces pale and distant, eyes ringed in kohl, some too beautiful to be real.
They were about twenty in total. In front of them, mounted on a midnight steed, sat a man.
He wore no armor. No crown.
Just a dark, high-collared coat that swept to his ankles, silver fastenings gleaming like stars.
His face was… unreal.
Angular, pale and eyes like blood. Black hair drawn back into a braid that coiled like a snake down his back. His full lips giving a faint smile.
He looked at us like we were prey he hadn’t yet decided on devouring.
Ezekiel stiffened beside me.
“Elio,” he said, a little too loud for our supernatural ears. “Bow. That is Vasska. Lord of Sanghana. Second son of the Eternal House.”
Isolde nearly curtsied herself into a frontflip.
I didn’t move.
His eyes… were already on me.
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