Seren Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 9 of 26

Seren dragged Trump three miles east to the old crypt her line had used for punishment work. Dark iron door. Weathered stone. Sigils cut deep enough to hold a screaming god. She shoved him inside and let the door clang shut behind them. The vines on his wrists tightened when he tried to squirm. "Names," Seren said. "Which of them signed the order." Trump spat on the floor. "You'll be dead by nightfall. Half of them are watching for you already. I don't need to tell you a thing." She crouched and pulled the green bottle from her skirt pocket. Fog curled off the glass stopper. She'd brewed it two winters back and never used it. Trump watched her thumb the cork loose. His jaw locked tighter. "Open your mouth," she said. "No." She pinched his nose. He held out longer than she expected. When he finally gasped, she tipped three drops onto his tongue and clamped his jaw shut. He swallowed. The fog crawled into his nostrils and back out again. His eyes went glassy. His mouth kept moving after his will gave up. "Who signed it," Seren said. He named two. A harvest god. A war god. He stopped. Bit his tongue until blood ran. Belladonna's cold half stirred in Seren's chest, hungry for more, but the elixir was thinning already. He'd been dosed against it. Someone had prepared him for exactly this. Seren cursed and stood. Two names weren't enough. Two names told her who to fear, not who to hit first. If she moved on the harvest god, the other four would strike her sleeping. She pulled the pendulum from her pack. Black feathers, dark crystals along the shaft. She'd bought it off a road-witch a year back and never trusted it enough to try. She hung it from her fingers over the crypt's flat altar stone and dripped Trump's blood in a circle beneath. "Show me the rest who signed against my line." The pendulum swung. Not in circles. In sharp, hard points. It stabbed toward the west wall, then north, then north again, then east. Four more directions. Four more gods, each pinned to a place on the map in her head. She counted six total. She had six. Trump laughed through the blood. "You can't reach them in time. They meet at dawn to decide your end." Seren wound the pendulum back into her palm. Dawn. Six gods. One half-goddess and a cat. She knelt on the crypt floor and drew a burning circle with her thumb. She spoke a name older than her mother's book. Fire gathered in the center of the ring. Wings pushed up out of it. A great owl unfolded, feathers wreathed in flame, one gold eye fixed on her. "Six," Seren told it. "Find them. Slow them. I'm coming behind you." The owl screamed once and burst through the crypt's ceiling stones like they were paper. Seren locked Trump in the dark and ran for her horse.