Cathedral (Cradle of Darkness 1)

My sobbing witnessed by so many, the sound of my own heart breaking louder than the crush of tumbling stone, I somehow found the power to stand. Crumpled, as if held together by overstretched tendon and misaligned bones, I crept back to my father, to my grandfather, and I shoved my hand straight into the chest of my lifelong devil, ripping out what lay inside. Because I was owed—so much more than my father’s heart—but this was all I’d ever be able to claim from him.

Falling to my knees, I tore out Malcom’s ruined organ and put the black heart of pure evil in its place.

It pumped steadily, weaving with tissues and fascia, bring life back to the dead. The man I loved began to mend, lashes parting as if he’d woken from a deep slumber. To hear me say the truest words that had ever passed my lips, “I love you.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Do you hear that, son?” It was gentle, approving, and unnaturally creepy. “She loves him.”

Shielding Malcom’s rapidly healing body with mine, I watched a dance between a wounded cobra and a slinking mongoose. The cobra capable only of waving his head back and forth, the mongoose circling for the kill.

Darius, heartless as he was, wasn’t dead.

As our fallen king stood before his kingdom, his maker rent him limb from limb. Only to gently place those severed bits in multiple satin lined, disturbingly-sized caskets, carried forward by Vladislov’s contingent.

And I’m sure I was not the only soul in that wreckage of a room who worried that one such as Darius might never be able to know a true death. Still, I witnessed what would pass for his end. Shivering to see the level of preparation Vladislov had aspired to.

All of this would have taken place no matter my part in it.

They gathered an arm or a leg, quarters of torso, spilled guts. Each container the proper size to hold the piece of the immortal whose heart would beat on forever in the body of another.

In a man who was worthy.

My grandfather's dissection of his son wasn’t messy work, considering. Concise, organized, pre-planned and ultimately... sad. Darius was dismembered, brought down from greatness as if nothing more than a dandelion puff blown apart by a passing breeze.

And then the boxes holding what had once made up my father were silently carted off by strangers from strange lands with their own unknown agendas. All the while I imagined those bits would be hidden in various parts of the world, burned, buried, maybe left to rot.

Sold to voodoo queens.

But our fallen king’s head remained, cupped in the arms of his creator. A head still blinking, a mouth still moving. Alive.

A long span passed, an hour, maybe more, as my grandfather considered his child. And though his expression failed to alter, I wondered if he felt remorse. But I feared he felt nothing, and that the nothing inside him had somewhat left the ancient surprised.

Imagine growing to such an age where one questioned feeling anything at all. Such an existence would be worse than even the life I had lived.

“You don’t need to cry for him, Jade.” My Malcom, already sitting up as if his ruined heart didn’t lie on the floor at his side, stroked my cheek, offering me comfort.

That shriveled heart dead on the ground called to me, that piece of my angel. So I took it. I held it, finding the flesh had gone white as all the blood had drained out.

A shriveled white heart that I would not give up for anything.

Arms came around me, an entirely new sensation. This was a feeling I would grow addicted to. Melting against the greater strength of a man who had given his worthy life for my disgraceful one. Warm tears on a bloodstained face, holding the dead heart of my lover, I found that I did feel enough sorrow for both myself and my grandfather.

There were so many lost moments to mourn.

Had I the true strength, I would have killed Darius. He deserved to be broken apart, locked in caskets, scattered and forgotten. He deserved hell.

But God didn’t work that way. Not for my kind. And watching it happen felt far too real.

“What now?” I wasn’t even sure who I’d asked.

Vladislov eyes dragged from the face of his son, finding mine. A moment later he held out his prize. “I believe it’s been an age since Darius has seen the sunrise. Be a dear, and take your father for one last look.”

Startling us all, he dropped the head, just like that, to crack and bounce on the floor. Fate leaving it to roll my way. And then as if all were forgotten, Vladislov climbed the dais, unbuttoned his jacket, smiling at the chaos of the room as he sat the throne.

Whatever speech he gave my people, whatever was worked, designed, and arranged, I missed. With shaking fingers, I collected Darius by hair as dark as mine. With shaking legs, I did as I was bade.