The Heirs of Death

27. Masks

MASKS

There had been a moment of silence, a couple of seconds that stretched into a lifetime. And that silence was cold, biting at our bones harder than what the Rimelian freezing winds had done as we journeyed through the continent's snow-wrapped and ice-coated mountains.

That coldness seemed to seep to every corner of the room: to the guards, to Yenes and the men at his disposal. To Lysithea, who did not shift in her throne. But her aura was naked to my eyes, revealing just how a new sort of horror licked her soul, how it rampaged up her spine and pierced into every muscle.

And despite the muteness and coldness that devoured the hall, the castle, the world, Blake—Dearcious—was a crackling, hissing fire trapped within confines of flesh and skin.

But I had become used to play with fire. Relished its burning hotness. Its deadly heat. So I maintained my posture as I said, my voice loud and clear and alone in the vastness, "Your spies already told you all there is to know."

Not truly a lie, but not the truth either. And I knew he would not stop at it, knew he would have me singing the answers he wanted like a nightingale in one way or another.

Something swept through Blake, something wicked that made my blood boil as he smirked. He'd repeated his order, but it had been whispered in a tongue that existed far ago, far when the war first erupted.

The Old Tongue. And the realization that he could understand it, speak it, as easily—and if not more—as us, it made me wary. So damn wary. Every murmur, every breath spoken in that tongue was as clear to him as it was to us. And we needed to be so, so careful around the prince so we could keep our covers intact. The other realization that made my guts churn—it was something I'd known before more than a realization, truly, but admitting it, allowing it to materialize clearly in my thoughts…it made me steal a steadying breath as silently as I could.

Dearcious was a Windreaper himself, the very first one created from Apocalys's very darkness and breathes as he rendered his ardorian body to cinders. And the body that was hosting him, that was capable of supporting all the powers brewing for centuries now, it was nowhere being defeatable. Not in the mortal ways we knew.

"Use the common tongue.'' Lysithea's order had been a mercy and a salvation, perhaps for her own self as much as for us. Because we all turned to stare at her, then time seemed to trickle lighter in the universe's hand, the coldness receding until what was left was only the nippiness post the storming weather.

Tightening Elayda's mask, I seeped power that was dark and cold and feral and unlike all this world had seen before, until the darkness was nothing but a swirling emptiness behind me, licking at my skin, folding like a shield.