Chapter 5

Evangeline

EVANGELINE SCRAMBLED INTO a defensive crouch. Her eyes had adjusted, but she would’ve felt a lot more confident if she could see more than shadows.

In the broken doorway stood the outline of a creature. It was taller than the doorframe and double its width. The creature squeezed through the entrance, like black liquid pouring into another container, and slithered toward them, the sickening sound of wetness suctioning against the floor as it moved.  In place of arms and legs were slimy tentacles, and though she couldn’t see the small feelers at the end of each, she knew they were there from her studies with Ryker. One of its tentacles extended, its length stretching almost half the room, flicking about hastily.

Raiythlen and Evangeline remained frozen as the tentacle slid across the floor, missing them by just a few feet. The Wretched were blind, and their ability to process information was no better than livestock except for a handful of Wretched that could speak, but all of them had superb hearing and killer instincts.

The walls rumbled, and it took Evangeline a moment to realize it was caused by the creature. It morphed into a cacophonous roar. Evangeline screamed when the tentacle lashed out, splitting the table next to her in two.

She fumbled with the blades at her sides, holding them in front of her. The Wretched moved fast, a whirl of black coming at her. She thrust out her dagger, keeping a firm grip on the hilt, her legs bent into the attack, like she had done countless times in her training. The Wretched’s tentacle slammed into steel. The force of it pushed her backwards, and something warm splattered across her face. A tight ball uncurled in the pit of her stomach, an unfamiliar sensation unraveling inside her as the smell of the Wretched’s blood hit her. The scent reminded her of a dead carcass and mildewed clothes combined, making her want to hurl, but after the wave of foulness washed away, an underlying smell, like seasoned meat, remained . . . and it tempted her to lick her lips for a taste.

A roar jolted her from that disturbing thought. She had hit her mark, but the creature didn’t seem affected at all.

Raiythlen’s figure swept past her, rolling out of the way of another tentacle. “Distract it!”

What? She didn’t have a choice when more tentacles emerged from the creature’s shadow, another screech piercing her eardrums. Raiythlen was on the ground, but she didn’t have time to see if he was okay when she dodged a tentacle from swiping her off her feet. She panted, but kept a firm grip on her blades. Pushing everything from her mind, she focused on her target, on surviving. She widened her stance. Her eyes locked on its moving tentacles, watching them recoil and wind up to strike once more. Come on, you big, stupid monster, attack me! Her blood rushed in her ears as she waited, but they were no longer aiming for her.

“Hey! Over here!” she yelled.

The Wretched growled and Evangeline instantly regretted her decision. It darted at her, faster than Evangeline would have thought possible.

“Aiiieeeeeaaaa!” Her own battle cry mingled with the Wretched’s screeches as she struck with her daggers. They found purchase, slicing a tentacle into bits, but her newfound confidence didn’t last long when two more tentacles wriggled toward her. She lashed out again, her blade cutting through the Wretched’s skin with ease, but one escaped her aim and knocked into her chest, the air rushing from her lungs.

 “Eva . . . nge . . . line . . .?” The sound came from the creature.

Three more tentacles emerged from its body. Searching and feeling over the floors, walls, and furniture. One crawled closer to her, and she started to move away when Raiythlen pressed a firm hand on her shoulder. She hadn’t even seen him move from his crouched position on the floor.

“This one seems to have some intelligence,” Raiythlen murmured. “Let it feel you. I want to gather some information from it.”

“Easy for you to say. It wasn’t just trying to kill you a moment ago!” Evangeline spat.

The tentacle squirmed toward her. It wrapped around her arm, cold and slimy and raising every hair on her body. With each flick of its feelers, Evangeline’s heart slammed against her ribs. The dizzying, conflicting smell of decayed flesh and warm stew entering her nose, combined with the coolness of its feelers as they ran over her skin painstakingly slowly, made her shake. She dared not breathe.

Its feelers continued down her arms, to her legs, and over her feet—where it tangled around her ankles. Other tentacles around them lunged, but Raiythlen intervened, removing two small blades from his belt and severing them. The remains flopped against the ground like beached fish. Evangeline shoved her daggers into the flesh wrapped around her ankles. The Wretched bellowed in pain and released its grip.

 “Brilliant plan.” Evangeline scrambled backwards, desperate to get out of the Wretched’s reach.

“We . . . not . . . harm . . . Evan . . . geline. Leave . . . here . . .” the creature spat.

“How do you know Evangeline?”

She gave him an incredulous look. He’s still trying to converse with it?

“He . . . order . . . nnn . . . Wretched. Order . . . all of . . . mmmm . . . us.” It gurgled up liquid from what she assumed was its mouth. “Protect . . . Eve . . . an . . . geline . . . nnn . . . our . . . queen.”

“Queen? This Evangeline?” Raiythlen inquired.

Evangeline clenched her teeth. Is he trying to antagonize it to kill me? Did he plan on killing me this entire time? She lifted her weapon, prepared for anything. She couldn’t die here. Not yet.

Its enormous shadow seemed to fixate on her. “Her . . . nnn . . . scent . . . nnn . . . the same. He . . . mmm . . . order. Leave . . . here.”

Needles pricked the pit of her stomach. She understood what the creature was saying, but it made little sense to her. How did the Wretched know who she was? Who was the mysterious man pulling the strings behind them? And what did they want with her?

“Who is this man that orders you?” Raiythlen echoed. “What are you protecting here?”

The Wretched made another sound that was oddly similar to a laugh. “He . . . strong enough. He . . . take . . . back . . . nnn . . . world!” A high-pitched scream erupted from it. “We don’t . . . nnn . . . answer . . . to you!” it screamed.

Raiythlen didn’t move, but Evangeline didn’t wait around to see what would happen. The heady mix of survival instincts and adrenaline compelled her, and she ran at the creature, using her momentum to shove her dagger into its chest. Something warm hit her face and body, but the slimy mass still moved beneath her.

“Watch out!” Raiythlen yanked her behind him and shouted in Castanian. Evangeline recognized the words “fire” and “embrace,” but he spoke too fast for her to decipher the rest. The floor burst to life. Runes around the beast pulsated with a blinding light, tendrils of it rising from the ground to envelop the Wretched in a deadly embrace. Raiythlen had been drawing runes around it this whole time.

His shout commanded the runes to burst into a fiery blue flame, disintegrating the creature into an indescribable mass of flesh. Evangeline gaped at the dancing flames. With glamours and charmed daggers, she’d experienced only a taste of Caster magic. Being so close to something this destructive…Her eyes flicked to Raiythlen’s figure. Now she knew why so many Nytes distrusted Casters. The power they held was terrifying.

Raiythlen’s voice startled her. “Something you want to tell me, Evangeline?”

Her mouth was still open when she stared at him. “What do you mean? If I knew something, I would tell you.”

“Would you?”

“Unlike you, I don’t make it a point to deceive others.” Ceven popped into her mind, all the lies she had fed him since he had returned to the kingdom, but she pushed it away. That was different, she convinced herself.

Their victory was short-lived, however, when the ground vibrated once more. An uncomfortable pressure entered the air, electrifying it. It was undoubtedly a Shadow Door, but it felt different from the one by Lani’s quarters. This one was more prominent. Stronger.

“Go. The staircase shouldn’t be much father in this chamber,” he said.

“What about you?” Evangeline knew he could handle himself, but a single Wretched was one thing. A horde of them was another.

“I won’t be too far behind you.”

The leftover flames from Raiythlen’s spell lit her path as she ran farther into the chamber, the walls coming together to form a hallway leading to a stairwell. He was right.

 “Found it!” She gripped the railing of the staircase. It was made of iron, and some steps were missing, but it was accessible. Evangeline whipped around as the roar of several Wretched shredded through the room. As much as she itched to leave, she couldn’t abandon Raiythlen. She needed him. Needed his magic.

“Come on!” she yelled. The dim blue runes illuminated the mass of monsters swarming in and Raiythlen’s blood-covered figure running at her. She took a step, and the staircase groaned and rattled. This is so not safe.

Raiythlen shouted over another chorus of screeches, “When you find Lani, stay there! I’ll come to you!”

“You don’t seriously expect to fight all of those, do you? Let’s just go, now!”

Tentacles emerged from the horde of Wretched, spilling into the room like tidal water. Searching.

Evangeline reached to grab Raiythlen, but he had other plans. “Watch your step,” was all he said before pushing her down the stairwell.

She tumbled headfirst into the dark pit. Her hip slammed into something hard, and she bounced into an iron rail, broken bits scraping through leather into skin. Air rushed past as her shoulder and head knocked into more iron. Creaks, groans, and screaming Wretched drowned out her muffled cries. She finally stopped moving, pulsing fire radiating throughout her limbs, head, shoulders—blast it, she spitting hurt everywhere. She wiped the dust and grime from her face. The whole stairwell had collapsed.

“Raiythlen! Blast you!” she screamed when a series of sharp coughs cut her short. “I swear that Caster is trying to kill me!” She rolled onto her side, her body thrumming with pain. Nothing felt broken, the armored clothing having taken the brunt of the fall. She patted her sides but only felt one of the two daggers. You fool, you left the other one sticking inside the Wretched. She grimaced, but at least she still had one.

A burning aching didn’t begin to describe how she felt as she got back on her feet. Between the endless bruises she now had and the blood and dust coating her entire body, she didn’t know what was worse. She wasn’t religious; she had stopped believing in the Gods long ago. The final tipping point was watching Nytes step over the body of a dead human girl who had collapsed from exhaustion. No remorse. Not even a second glance from the poshly dressed nobles and uniformed soldiers who strutted down the halls to their multi-room suites and warm beds. All while humans, like the dead girl, were picked up by an Overseer and chucked into a pit to be burned along with other humans who had perished under the weight of the Aerian rule.

Nobody cared, least of all the Gods, but still Evangeline prayed to whoever was out there to make sure Raiythlen made it out safe.

So she could kill him herself.

Darkness shrouded her again, the blackness swallowing her up. She couldn’t even see her hand in front of her. The cold was damp, something she was used to from Lani’s quarters, and her throat and eyes burned from the trapped dust. She ignored a burning desire to sink into a hot bath, like the one in Ryker’s suite, and walked in what she hoped was the direction out of here. Her fingers grazed the wall for guidance, her footsteps crunching against broken rocks. The passage seemed to go on forever, and her patience was wearing thin. Sweat stung her eyes, but she couldn’t wipe it away for fear of getting black ooze and Gods-know-what-else all over her face. And her hip was still protesting in pain.

Farther down, the inky pit was disrupted by a white light. No, wait, they weren’t lights, but vents. There was a room right above her, but she needed to get closer to see.

Discarded furniture lay scattered about, and Evangeline brushed off a few broken pieces of wood and glass from a chair before dragging it beneath the vent. She climbed and peered through the cracks, squinting at the bright light. The room was open, with stacks of cells lining both walls. White light cascaded down from the ceiling, so high that it almost looked like the sun, but it couldn’t be if they were underground.

Evangeline shifted on the decrepit chair to get a better view. Dark blurs moaned and twisted behind the iron cages. Footsteps pattered against cracked tile. The sounds combining into one low grumble against the uneven walls that were carved out of rock. Raiythlen was right; there is something going on here.

A shadow passed overhead, and she ducked.

“He’s late. Again.” The voice was low and gruff, but the words carried clearly. They were right next to her.

“What do you expect? That Rathan does whatever he wants. I don’t know how he got promoted to officer,” another replied.

The smell of cigar smoke wafted through the vents, and her face puckered.

“Probably because he scares everyone to death. The man’s a spitting sadist. Just shut up and do what you’re told and you won’t end up like them.”

There was a pause, then a drawn-out sigh. “I hate doing his dirty work.”

Evangeline risked standing and glimpsed the two Aerians slipping away. They were fitted in silver mesh armor, but the lack of the golden wings emblazed in stars on their breasts told her they were only regular guards and not Royal Guards. Her brows scrunched together. There are guards here? How are they alive with all the Wretched in this place? She thought back to the speaking Wretched. If they were working together, how? Who was their leader? Was it the king?

She thumbed her dagger, but it didn’t melt away how vulnerable she felt. Raiythlen said this was big, bigger than she could imagine, and here, alone, she knew she was getting in way over her head. But I don’t have a choice. Not if I want to save Lani.

The guards didn’t leave the room, instead migrating to each cell, rattling against them, yelling at the occupants. “Not her,” the guard with pink-and-red wings said.

Their boots clacked further into the cavernous room, and Evangeline made her move. She pushed up on the vent, crawling through, her hips brushing the sides. This place was even more vast than she’d originally thought. She had to crane her neck to see all the cages stretching upward several floors. She covered her mouth in horror. Humans, all in their slave attire, curled up in cells, in pain. Marked, just like Lani.

And there had to be hundreds of cells.

How could they do this? But it wasn’t surprising. Again and again, Nytes had proven they had no morals, no remorse. Then Ceven’s green-and-brown eyes, crinkled into a smile, flitted inside her mind. Not all, she amended.

Evangeline was grateful for the sleek, black outfit Raiythlen had given her as she danced in and out of the darker parts of the room, shadows caused by structural beams connecting the floor to the ceiling of the cavernous dungeon. With nothing to hide behind, her only hope was for the guards to keep walking in their current direction, her sounds covered by their own chattering and the rattling of the cell doors as they passed. Though it was hard to tell if she was being quiet enough over the screaming inside her own ears, a side effect of imagining the guards or the king finding her and dragging her to her death.

Why is there a dungeon of this size beneath the west wing? The only one that she knew about (and had experienced firsthand) was below the east wing, where Ryker had locked her away for days and where Vane had tortured her. She’d felt like she was the only one down there at the time, but she knew the king had others locked away there, whether it be a human for stealing a plate of food or something equally petty, or a Nyte for insulting the nobles in the castle or getting tangled in love affair gone awry. So why would there be another dungeon? Especially beneath the formerly residential part of the castle?

Her clammy palms brushed the rock walls, and with every step the guards took, her heart thudded with such force she thought she would collapse. Raiythlen had overestimated her ability to defend herself against a Nyte.

The guards paused, then circled back. Right towards her.

Panic. There’s nowhere to hide, nowhere to go! She whirled around—there. An empty cell beckoned her like a godsend.

The metal gate was ajar, and she swept in, closing the iron bars enough to make it appear shut but not lock herself in. It would be her luck to do just that. She plastered herself to the back corner, curling into a ball. If they passed by quickly enough, hopefully they wouldn’t notice her presence. It was risky, but she had no other options aside from running.

They didn’t notice, too busy mumbling to each other. But she caught the dark lines curling up their necks like their heads were a snake’s afternoon meal. The skin beneath pulsed in different colors as if plagued by sickness, but they stood with a height that spoke of power, not disease. Those marks . . . she’d seen the same ones on Lani before she was taken. Why were they on these guards, too? What was going on?

When they were a comfortable distance away, Evangeline slipped from her cell. Moans and pained whispers still wrapped around her, but nobody paid her any attention. They all were curled on the floor like dehydrated corpses, and she shivered at the thought that this could be Lani, could’ve been her, when a light shining beneath the crack of a door caught her attention. And a woman’s cry for help came from the other side.

Lani!

Evangeline kept to the pads of her feet, being as silent as possible even as her friend’s cries pushed her to run, to yell back, to reassure Lani that she was here. But if those guards caught her, this would all lead to nothing. They both would die here.

So, with every scream, Evangeline bit her cheek and took another step. With every cry, her nails bit into her black leather gloves. One step at a time until she was face-to-face with a metal door, an opening engraved on top, perfect for her eyes to peer through. She reared back in horror.

Lani was wrapped in chains, a Rathan’s claws sinking into her shoulders, forcing her to the floor. Another Nyte, an Aerian, stood on the other side, not dressed in armor but in a dark coat. His fingers grabbed a needle from the metal plate beside him, but instead of reaching for Lani, the needle pierced the pasty flesh of the Rathan, the sleeve on his forearm rolled up. Its sharp edge danced across his skin, red and black, adhering to the fleshy canvas. And all the time Lani whimpered, as if the needle were attacking her own skin.

Evangeline’s hand wavered on the door, her teeth mashed together, her hands curled so tightly she thought she might break them. She wanted to storm in there. To shove them away. To protect Lani.

You’re still a human. No matter how hard you train, you’ll never be able to outmatch a Nyte. Ceven’s words taunted her. A part of her knew he was right, but the other part wanted so badly to prove him wrong. To prove herself wrong.

Her fingers ached where she clenched her enchanted dagger. She didn’t know how many lucky hits she had left, but she only needed two. With magic and the element of surprise on her side, she’d target the Rathan’s throat, since he looked the more deadly of the two, and then stab the other Nyte in the heart.

Evangeline smiled and, for a moment, felt powerful.

She squeezed the hilt of her weapon, her palm resting on the doorknob, when bits of gravel shuffled behind her. Before she could turn, a firm hand on her shoulder whipped her around.

Her smile and bravado plummeted as she locked eyes with the King of Peredia.