The Half King

30

They enlisted the help of General Petros, who issued an evacuation order under the guise of inspecting the sanctuary for potentially harmful cracks he claimed to have seen in the ceiling during the ceremony. Cerise had worried that Father Padron would object, but oddly, he was still so shaken that he didn’t argue. He shuffled with the other priests to the dining hall for supper while Cerise took advantage of the empty prayer room.

With the Petros Blade strapped to her back, she stood in front of the massive stone wall and tried to recall where the seams had been when Father Padron moved it. She needed to visualize the act before releasing her energy, like Nero had taught her, but enough time had passed that she couldn’t remember the details. She checked over her shoulder. She was still alone, but Daerick and Nina wouldn’t be able to keep the priests away forever.

She would have to try.

Exhaling long and slow, she widened her stance and stared at the wall with a soft focus, thinking of the corridor on the other side. She let her energy flow and commanded the stone to part. The tang of copper coated her tongue. A charge raised chills of pleasure on her skin. And to her great surprise, the wall slid in half with a grinding rumble that she felt through the soles of her shoes. She grinned while waving away the dust. She had done it, and she didn’t feel the least bit tired. Nero would be proud of her…if not a bit jealous.

She strode into the corridor and illuminated the wall sconces with nothing more than a flick of her hand. It was strange to remember how awe-stricken she had felt during her last visit, when Father Padron had led her on his arm and told her not to worry about being “late to bloom.” At the time, she had considered herself more of a weed than a flower. She had never imagined that one day her strength would resemble a mighty oak tree with branches stretching toward the sun. She could still hardly believe it.

She hurried to the end of the corridor, where she crossed beneath the marble archway leading to the mausoleum. She remembered the corner walls that Father Padron had opened to access the archives. She parted the walls and squeezed through the slim gap, but she stopped short in surprise. The room was already lit. Someone had been in the archives. Her pulse thumped. Whoever had lit the torches had yet to extinguish them, which meant the person might still be down there.

She scanned the dusty floor for the partial boot print she had seen before. Instead of one partial heel, an entire trail of prints led to a far wall between two flickering sconces. She crouched down to study the boot prints. All of them looked identical. It would seem that one person had been coming and going from the hidden chamber—more than likely, it was Father Padron. If she was right, then she didn’t have to worry about him waiting for her on the other side of the wall.

If she was wrong…then she would run.

She parted the wall, and the marble slid apart to reveal a lighted hallway. Peeking down the corridor, she detected no movement or sound. As she crept slowly inside the hidden chamber, the scents of dust and damp blended with something else—there was energy in the air, clouds of it, along with the stench of a washroom privy. She covered her nose and continued to the end of the hallway, where she hugged the wall and glanced around the corner.

What she saw turned her stomach.

On the other side of a small, stony chamber, a man and a woman were half naked and bloodied, both of them spread flat against the wall and bound there by some invisible force of magic. The woman’s dull, matted head hung slack between her shoulders, hiding her face. Loose skin sagged from her bones, as if she had starved. Cerise couldn’t tell if the woman was dead or alive. Each outline of her ribs was visible, but her chest didn’t seem to be moving.

The man’s head hung low, too, but as Cerise crept closer, she noticed he was breathing. He must not have been hanging on the wall for very long, because his body was corded with the lean muscle of someone well-fed. But that was where his good fortune ended. His shirt was torn down the front, exposing a chest mutilated by hundreds of weeping boils that looked too unnatural to have been caused by anything but magic of the cruelest kind.

Is that what you think happens under my watch? Abuse? Murder?

Father Padron had asked her that once. Now she knew exactly what happened under his watchful eye. She didn’t know what crimes the man and woman had committed, but they didn’t deserve to suffer torture, especially not at the hands of the Order. Holy magic was a gift, and for a priest to abuse his power was the foulest form of blasphemy she could imagine. She would tell the king as soon as the sun rose. The priests were still beholden to his command—for now, at least. If Father Padron wanted a reformation, he would have one.

Starting with himself.

She approached the victims while scanning the rest of the room. Aside from filth and waste, all that caught her eye was a discarded bundle of clothes and rubbish in the corner. That wouldn’t ordinarily strike her as important, but someone had cast an energy shield around the pile, so she made a note to take a closer look at it.

The nearer she moved to the wall, the stronger the smell of decay grew, leaving no doubt that the woman’s soul had returned to Shiera. The woman’s hair was gray, her skin withered with age. Cerise began to suspect who the woman was, and she was right. She recognized the face of the elderly maid who had touched her skirts the first night she’d arrived at the palace—the maid Father Padron claimed to have discharged from her post and then relocated into the city.

Revulsion and horror clawed up inside her. Cerise hadn’t fully believed him. She had expected Father Padron to punish the woman, but not like this.

He was crueler, far crueler, than she’d ever imagined.

She whispered a prayer of peace for the departed maid. Her words stirred the man, who groaned and lifted his face toward her…a face so handsome that not even bruises could disfigure it.

“Cole,” she breathed.

He licked his cracked lips and begged in a hoarse whisper, “Mercy, please. I repented.” His eyes were swollen and bleary. He didn’t seem to know who she was. “Mercy, please,” he repeated, his voice breaking in a sob. “I repented. You said I would be forgiven.”

“Lord Solon, it’s me,” she said. “Cerise.”

Cole blinked. His eyes focused on her and lit with recognition. “My lady?”

“Yes. Tell me who brought you here. Was it Father Padron?”

Cole nodded. “I repented.”

“I’m sure you did,” she said, wincing as she studied the wounds on his chest. Cole couldn’t have been hanging on the wall for longer than a few hours. Father Padron had accomplished a disturbing amount of torture in the short time since his return to the palace. And he had hidden Cole from her. Perhaps he had tried to sabotage the ceremony after all.

“My lady,” Cole said. “Please—will you let me go if I confess my crimes to you?”

She would release him no matter what, but his words made her curious to know what he might have done. “Yes, I promise.”

“I committed treason, my lady,” he said in a rush, darting a glance at the entrance to the hallway as if afraid that Father Padron would return. “Treason and murder.”

She found that hard to believe. Torture would make a man confess to anything. But she asked him to go on while she calculated the best way to lower him to the ground without hurting him.

“I was the queen’s lover,” he told her.

“That’s no secret.”

“But I fed her herbs—crone’s weed so she wouldn’t conceive another child with the king. It went on for years until she caught me putting the herbs in her wine. She was furious. She ordered me to leave the palace at first light. But I was afraid she would tell the king what I had done, so I poisoned them both.”

Cerise froze. “His Majesty’s parents… That was you?”

“Yes,” Cole admitted. “I tried to kill His Majesty, too. More than once.”

As Cole went on to describe the predawn attacks involving the desert panther and the dream weed fire, Cerise no longer doubted his confession. What she didn’t understand was the reason for any of it. Cole didn’t seem motivated by self-preservation or money or revenge. He seemed to have wanted to end the royal line.

“But why?” she asked.

“Because the priests can’t do it themselves.”

“Do you mean someone compelled you to murder the king?”

Cole’s gaze wandered back to the corridor. “No, the priests can’t compel anyone to harm the king. I had an arrangement with Father Padron.”

“What kind of arrangement?”

“We agreed that if I helped the Order take the throne by ending the Mortara line, the Order would give me more lands.”

“More lands?” she repeated, shaking her head in disbelief. “Are you telling me that you risked execution, you betrayed your king and your realm, and you committed murder for more lands ?”

“No, you don’t understand,” he said. “The Mortaras have been dwindling for years. That’s not my fault. The Order is bound to take the throne. It’s only a matter of time, and when that time comes, I would rather be in their good favor than be their target. You know what they’ll do.” He peeked at the dead woman. “You know what they’ve already done. I had a choice to be Padron’s ally or his enemy.”

“And look what that choice got you,” she reminded him. “Your ally doesn’t want you to repent. He doesn’t care about your soul. He only wanted to use you and then send your secrets to the grave.”

“I was wrong, and I’m sorry,” Cole cried. “I’ll pay for my crimes, I swear, but not like this. Please not like this.”

“What about the old emissary?” she asked. “Did you kill her, too?”

“No, I swear,” Cole said. “She poisoned herself.”

Cerise doubted that, now more than ever. Mother Strout had gathered so much information, and it was only by her own guile that she’d been able to hide any of it. Maybe during the course of her investigations, someone had caught her asking the wrong questions. Any number of Father Padron’s men could have poisoned her. Or Father Padron himself. He could have compelled her to drink poison, just like he’d compelled Cerise to drink water when she was sick.

“My lady, please have mercy,” Cole said.

“I will,” she assured him. “Just help me understand something. Why would Father Padron risk committing treason when no one knows for certain what will happen if the last Mortara dies? The priests might be bound to a different king.”

Cole shook his head. “They won’t. I don’t know how or why, but he told me the Order can only be bound to a firstborn Mortara. He said it was part of the curse, and if the priests can’t break it, then they have to stay bound until—”

“Wait,” she interrupted. “The priests have been trying to break the curse?”

“Yes, for decades,” Cole said. “It’s the only other way to free themselves.”

Cerise felt her heart drop into her stomach. If that was true, then she’d had it all wrong. Breaking the curse wouldn’t stop the Order from taking the throne. It would give the priests their freedom even sooner. No matter what she did, the priests would be free. If she failed to break the curse, then Kian’s death would unbind them. If she succeeded, then Kian would lose his power to control the same men who had been plotting to kill him for years. Even if she saved Kian’s life, the priests could take it—easily—and then rule in his stead.

Either way, the Order would win.

But no , she thought. One thing didn’t make sense. If Father Padron had all but won, then why had he looked so shaken after the ceremony? He should be gloating and planning a coup with his men, not hiding in fear.

Cerise shook her head. She was still missing something.

“My lady, please,” Cole said. He must have mistaken her silence for hesitation to release him. “Please have mercy. Will you let me down?”

“Of course I will,” she told him.

She studied the open wounds on his chest. Moving him might send him into shock from the pain. She needed to heal him first, a skill she hadn’t learned. She remembered what Nero taught her, how to imagine what she wanted, and then she held both palms forward and willed Cole’s flesh to mend. The magic in his wounds resisted her; it took two tries to clear the boils. But she soothed his skin and then gradually eased him down from the wall until his bare feet touched the floor. He was so overcome by relief that he didn’t question how she had cast the magic. He wasted no time in wobbling on weak legs toward the corridor. She began to follow him, but then she remembered the pile of objects in the corner.

“You go ahead,” she told him. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Cole didn’t need telling twice. He was already gone.

She rushed to the corner and crouched down to peer through the static shield at the bundle on the other side. The tip of an aged scroll peeked through the folds of fabric, but beyond that, she couldn’t discern what the objects were or why Father Padron might want to guard them. She tried using her energy to disperse the shield, but the protection he had cast was too strong. Glancing over her shoulder, she thought of the gap she had left in the sanctuary wall. The priests would finish their dinner soon, and then Daerick and Nina wouldn’t be able to keep them away for much longer.

She faced the corner for one last attempt. Instead of scattering the energy, she focused on creating an opening large enough to fit her hand inside. It worked. She reached in and grabbed the bundle, pulling it free before the static re-formed. She snuck a glance at the scroll and found it filled with jumbled text in a language she couldn’t read. She would need Daerick to interpret it.

She tucked the scroll deep into her dress pocket and held on to the fabric, just in case it might provide a clue. As she turned to leave, a rumbling noise pulsed through the room, originating from the shield she had just breached.

She had triggered an alarm.

She bolted across the chamber and down the hallway without sparing a second glance at the rest of the bundle in her hand. She didn’t even stop to close the walls behind her as she left the torture chamber and the archive room. Her shoes skidded over the dusty mausoleum floor. She righted herself and barreled down the long, upward-sloping corridor leading to the sanctuary. Ahead of her, Cole noticed her clomping footfalls, and then he glanced over his shoulder at her and hurried his own steps in response.

She nearly burst with relief when she crossed into the prayer room and found it empty. She immediately spun around and used her energy to pull both halves of the wall together. It was then that Cole noticed the anomaly of a young woman wielding magic.

“How…” He trailed off in shock. “I’ve never seen an oracle do that.”

“Forget what you saw.” She glanced around for a place to hide the cloth. If the priests found her with it, there would be no denying that she was the one who had triggered the alarm. “Get as far away from here as you can.”

“I’m grateful to you, my lady.”

She nodded absently. Her gaze landed on the burning altar, and she tossed the cloth onto it. In the moment before the fabric ignited, she recognized a pattern of gilded threads peeking between patches of dried blood. She knew the garment. It was the robe Father Padron had worn the night he’d dispatched the titan hyena pack. She had cut the robe off of him before treating his lacerated back. She’d meant to burn all of the bloody clothes that night, but clearly she had missed one.

The robe ignited, and the blood-encrusted fabric erupted into a roaring black flame that rose to the ceiling and held there, snaking back and forth while the fabric shrank to ash.

Cold overcame her. Right down to her bones.

Now she knew why Father Padron had hidden the robe. Why he hadn’t wanted her to burn it with the rest of the clothes.

His blood burned black.

Just like hers did.

Because he was umbra sangi , too.

If there had been any doubt regarding the identity of her father, it vanished into the smoke that thickened the air. There was no use denying it anymore. Her father was a monster.

A low voice from behind asked her, “Where did you get that?”

She whirled around with a gasp.

The monster had found her.