Page 79 of Ashborne Phoenix

It was reflex. A skill my father taught me as a child.

I slammed the door on everything. Kham, Grace, the power, my own heart. Everything.

Cold as stone.

Untouchable as wind.

The fear, the pain, the anger, I shoved all of it outside the walls of my rib cage until nothing touched me. Because I couldn’t let it touch me. Any of it.

I had come here, prepared to face some poor, broken, miserable slave, planning to save them. And, as sacrificial lamb, my fucking mother brought the first lover who’d ever betrayed me.

How had she known? How the fuck had she known I would be the one to enter the Circle?

But then I realized… she hadn’t. She’d just been prepared, in case I was.

The crowd closed behind us, leaving room for the king and queen to stand in the first row of witnesses. Breckon would be somewhere in the crowd also—licking his wounds. Though I couldn’t see him. There was grim satisfaction in that. I doubted he wished to be anywhere he might be noticed after that defeat.

A defeat I could not afford to suffer myself, at my mother’s hands.

Those who chanted to invoke power began the slow, smooth steps. Two lines of men and women in the long, silky black robes, swaying and singing, arms upraised and circling as they danced in opposing rings to form the impenetrable circle of human flesh that would lock power in, and refuse to let it leave.

And at its center, that altar. The sacrifice. Tools and elements for the ritual.

And my fucking mother.

Cali blinked once, twice, everything in her body and mind slow and dull. But just as I shackled myself to control, she recognized me, and her eyes widened. Even with the haze of drugs, her head eased back and her limbs tensed, hands and feet suddenly pulling against the red, wet cords they’d used to bind her to the altar.

Even in the fog of whatever my mother had done to keep her feeble, she was terrified. She moved too slowly, in uncoordinated jerks, her body twisting, though there was no real give in her bonds. She’d been drugged, secured by blood-soaked silk ropes, and left here for me. For us.

Either Mother had anticipated that I’d intervene, and thus be the one to find Cali like this. Or she’d wanted Breckon and Grace to kill her.

Why?

A curse. It had to be.

Of course Mother wouldn’t have any respect for the risks of a ritual. Of course she would have plots within plans within schemes. Like the layers of a fucking onion. No, like the strings of a web—every one building her strength and carrying her closer to the ultimate goal, yet each intricately connected to the others.

Fuck.

Fuck!

Grace tugged at my arm surreptitiously. I could feel her vaguely in the bond, like an animal scratching at the door in another room. Grating. Insistent. But distant.

Fuck. She needed to know.

Reluctantly, I eased open a hairsbreadth crack on the bond. Like light under a door, she rushed in, making me flinch.

‘Voski, what’s—’

‘That’s Cali,’ I sent bluntly. Grace went still. Her expression didn’t change. But I felt the jolt in her. I swallowed. ‘She’s dressed in red, and she’s either drugged, or bespelled. Mother has turned her into a living doll. But given her role in my life—and subsequently yours—she’s a sacrifice to rage, or hate. Mother meant for whoever made it down here to kill Cali. Aside from the power that would be released by a sacrifice for this ritual, she must be trying to invoke a curse.’

‘A curse? On you?’

‘Possibly. Definitely on someone connected to me—and she’s mixing magik, using the ritual to trigger it—an entirely different, secondary spell. Which is fucking dangerous. Though incredibly powerful, if it works.’

‘How?! And how do we stop it?’

That was the question. I lifted my eyes from Cali’s to my mother’s. Around us, the Cruors swayed and chanted, calling up the power and sending it into the circle. The air was beginning to hum. Soon, it would be time to start.