“I see you,” I whispered. “I know who you are now. Who you really are.”
His eyes were no longer brown but a chilly cornflower blue, gleaming with a mixture of mirth and malevolence. Under my appraising stare, he regained some of his poise, straightening his clothes and procuring a white kerchief from his pocket to daintily clean the trickle of Zan’s blood from his hands.
Order in all things. Was that not always his motto?
I might have laughed, had things been different.
Centuries had passed, and he still looked exactly like the man in the portrait hanging in Kings Hall in Renalt: chiseled jaw, sandy hair, lips pulled into a thin sneer.
The Founder himself. Cael.
“It’s been five hundred years since you stood at this point, hasn’t it?” I asked. “Stood here with your brother and your sister for a ritual of magic meant to seal up a rift. A dangerous hole between the spectral and material planes. But then, in the midst of it, you turned on Aren. You killed your sister. Why?”
“I had to take a life, so I took one. My mistake,” he said, “was choosing Aren. She just happened to be standing closer, you see. Easier to grab. It should have been Achlev. All of this . . . this mess”—?he motioned with flippant disdain at the fallen city, the raging storm—?“could have been avoided if he’d been standing there instead of her . . .” He shook his head. “So good at seeing death, she was, yet never saw her own.”
“You were triumviri. A leader of your order. Sent to this spot to do something good. And instead you destroyed everything you ever loved.”
He laughed. “Love is weakness. I lost nothing because I loved nothing.”
My eyes slid to Zan, whose breathing was getting more and more rapid, more distressed. How much easier would it be if I’d never met him? I wondered. And then: How much would I have lost if I hadn’t?
“And what,” I asked, “did you have to gain?”
“Eternity,” he said.
“This is what you wanted? To wear another man’s face? To live another man’s life? Forever?”
“Toris was a means to an end. Don’t feel too bad for him, Princess; he knew what I was when he woke me. Luckily, he didn’t live long enough to regret it.”
“The Assembly,” I said, remembering. “Lisette said
he changed after he went to visit the Assembly. He went there as a historian. He came back as . . . you. You took his place. After you killed him.”
“I’ve killed a great many people, my dear. Toris, Lisette. Your father. Her mother. All the fools who tried to keep me locked away at the Assembly. Soon enough it will be his turn.” He motioned to Zan. “And then I’ll get to you.”
I eyed Victor de Achlev’s blood. Toris—?Cael—?still didn’t know it wasn’t his.
“Five hundred years,” I said. “It took five hundred years for you to get back here, to finish the job you botched. Because your brother saw what you did to Aren and tried to save her. He was a feral mage. He worked with nature, not with blood. So he used yours and left you with only this.” I dangled the blood vial again. “How unfortunate for you.”
“Achlev”—?he spat out the name—?“wasted my blood to make this monstrosity.” He indicated the thatch of bloodleaf, crushing a shoot beneath his heel. “But while I do require blood to work magic, like you, and my own blood was singularly potent, it doesn’t have to be my blood I use. I quickly found an excellent alternative source through the Tribunal.” He grinned. “Of course, it was much more effective when the guillotine was our primary method of executing witches. Beheadings went out of vogue during my involuntary confinement at the Assembly. I’ve been pushing for the practice to make a comeback; I have to interrogate subjects for days to obtain a fraction of the blood I can get removing a head.”
I closed my eyes. “All the countless people who have suffered and died to serve your vendetta against magic . . .”
“I have no vendetta against magic, only against those who might have more of it than I do. Achlev took mine, so I merely found a way to compensate for the loss. The Tribunal was my best idea. My greatest legacy,” he said proudly.
“Destroying it will be mine.”
“You’re not going to make it from this tower, little girl. I need you to die so that I can finally open the rift and set my mistress free.” He tilted his head. “Can’t you hear the whispers? She’s calling for you.”
Come to me. Find me. Free me. The voice was soothing, comforting, cajoling, demanding . . . Let me out. I looked up at Cael, startled. He had his ear cocked to the wind, a smile playing on his lips, letting the silky whispers lull him into obedience.
“Everyone worships the Empyrea so blindly,” he said, “never wondering about the other powers. There were always three of them, you know. One to rule the sky, the other the earth . . . But the last sister . . . she was given the refuse to rule over. The dead and the damned and the souls deemed too corrupt to be given life. They call her the crone, but they are wrong. She is perfect. She is beautiful. My mistress. The mistress of all blood mages, really. And she chose me that day, to do her work: Take a life. Open the portal. Set her free.”
I was inching closer to him as he spoke. “Your mistress made you ageless, undying, just in time for Achlev to take all of your blood and stop your sacrifice. So you failed her, and then you fled, and he built this monument and the entire city and the wall to keep you from fulfilling your bargain with her for five centuries.” I shrugged. “I can’t imagine she is well pleased with your work.”
He kicked Zan to his side and dove toward me but skidded to a halt as I hovered the vial over the abyss.
“Name your mistress,” I said. “Name that dark force to whom you sold your soul.”