Nurturer of Nightmares

Lydiav

The carriage had been painted with the Leviathan Cross, a detail I had noticed as Leviathan had dragged me in, shoving me onto comfortable velvet cushions, the curtains that hid us from the streets of Ordeallan made of the same fabric.

The instant we had started moving, Leviathan had replaced the binds of powers around my wrist with iron chains, gagging me with a simple white cloth, a matching black one waiting on the seat beside me for Nym.

I knew these gags well, our family’s crest still stitched into the front of them. Our male cousins had never been gagged. Our female ones had.

Nym and I had.

Even our mother had been once or twice, by our grandfather. He was long dead, killed by another rival family, but the others… They had been alive the last time I’d checked.

Nym and I had been the disgrace of the family, being born as girls.

My parents had been, Nym and I had been told, delighted when they’d learnt they were having twins- Twins had been prized after Desterium and Reannatiel had been born, and we had been born not long later.

Their delight had faded the moment the doctor who had delivered us had revealed our gender. ‘Twin boys would have been perfect,’ our parents had told us growing up, ‘We could have married you off to Desterium and Reannatiel had you been boys.’

And from that moment, every time we had cried or been too opinionated we had been gagged, our female cousins receiving the same treatment. The longest we had been left was three days, the shortest six hours.

Leviathan was flicking through a bunch of scrolls, likely orders from Caliem, and I leaned back in my chair, sliding my hands toward the door, hoping to pick the lock with the pin from my hair. I turned my body, feigning looking out the window to hide my hands from view, and angled the pin in my fingers, the movement well practiced.

I’d removed it before Leviathan had even gotten into the carriage, my panicked screams the perfect distraction to hide my plans once I’d discovered the doors were locked. After all, I hadn’t become Destiny’s third by panicking every time we’d been captured.

Luckily for me, Leviathan had put me right next to the carriage door, and he’d forgotten to bind my ankles together, which would allow me to run once I unlocked the door.

The locks on this carriage were old, one of Caliem’s first models, and as I slid my hairpin into it, twisting it slightly, I heard a small ‘CLICK!’, immediately coughing to hide the sound.

Leviathan didn’t even look up from his scrolls, humming as he flicked through them, occasionally scrunching one up and tossing it onto the floor of the carriage. I lifted one from the floor with my feet, tucking it into my pocket as I waited.

We were still in the back alleyways, obviously heading toward the Ordeallan Palace, not Caliem, since we would have gone out of the gate had we been heading to the Divider. I had to wait until we were in the Town Square, and thus in the middle of a crowd, to throw myself from the carriage.

If I could take as many of Leviathan’s orders with me, then all the better, because if Caliem wanted an order done and Leviathan ignored it, they would simply send the order to another Demon Lord who was more willing to help.

Picking up two more scrolls as I waited, I heard the carriage slowing, the driver shouting out for people to move out of the way, the sounds of the Town Square market drifting through the door, and I breathed deeply. It was time to go.

Shuffling across the seat, I threw the door open, Leviathan cursing as I pushed off from the seat, landing on my knees on the hard cobblestone, people shouting.

I stood, running as fast as I could, using my elbows to nudge people out of the way as I made my way for the huge crowd in the centre of the Town Square, the Execution Post gleaming with blood.

People were gaping at the soon-to-be-bodies strung up there; two Ordeallan soldiers who had evidently defied Caliem’s rules, their guts hanging from their body and drying in the sun. They were still alive, their faces pale and covered in sweat, their bones broken beyond repair.

Even if someone saved them from that post, infection would take them soon after.

Slipping into the crowd, I ducked behind the platform that supported the Execution Post, sliding underneath it to hide in the small crawlspace, ensuring nobody spotted me as I did so.

It reeked of blood, and there were maggots crawling around me, but it didn’t matter. I was safe.

I could see Leviathan’s feet as he shoved people aside, searching the crowd for me and shouting out my description, promising thirty gold to anyone who could present me to him. Every now and then he would grab someone, demanding to know if they had seen me, and they all gave the same answer- No.

Tucking my feet close to my body, I watched as his power snaked across the stones, searching for me that way, forcing me to shuffle back until I was directly underneath the two dying soldiers, praying their own lives would hide mine.

The powers flooded across the Execution Post and platform, wrapping around it and glowing brightly, before moving on, his powers misconstruing my soul as the soldiers’.

Sighing in relief, I leaned back against the post, feeling blood soak into the back of my shirt, and waited.

It would have to be nightfall before I ran back to the others to warn them, and if Leviathan was preoccupied enough with searching for me, or covering his ass for the fact that he lost me, he might not get to Nym for a while.

Emmett would be losing his mind right now… Selphien hadn’t cared, even when I’d screamed for her to help me. I had suspected as much, with her less-than-subtle hints that Destiny had been the one to kill Syrphien. She wanted someone to blame, and at this point, any Demonic-being would do. Hopefully, Emmett wouldn’t be too mad at her.

Reaching into my pocket, I unrolled one of the scrolls that I’d taken, using the dim sunlight to read the letter.

Leviathan,

It is under the order of Lord Rarkamad that you retrieve Lord Caleb, Lord Lucas and Lord Xarran Rarkamad from The Borderlands immediately. They have been kidnapped by Desterium Maladur against their will.

A payment of thirty-thousand gold- ten-thousand gold for each boy, has been promised.

Signed,

Lord Rarkamad.

No wonder Leviathan had tossed it away! It was pure lies!

I did, however, find it interesting that I’d suspected Xarran to be Syrphien’s killer, and this note confirmed that he had been in The Borderlands recently, if not still here.

Placing the note back in my pocket to save for Selphien, I pulled out the next one, flinching as one of the soldiers above me gave out a long groan, and the wood above me creaked, gathering his body weight as he died.

With no time to mourn him beyond a quick prayer that he made it safely to his new life, I turned my attention back to the letter.

It was written in Abel’s handwriting, the words almost illegible.

Destiny had always said he had ‘serial-killer scrawl’.

Leviathan,

Zeella has decided that, once Seth had finished his three-day torture session, I am to train the Nephilim in the ways of our court.

The Sins have requested that you return to help oversee this training, and torture Desterium for more information regarding her war camp traitors.

Be back in three days.

-Abel.

Seth and Destiny were still alive!

Being tortured, granted, but alive was better than dead!

I placed the second note back with the first and pulled out the final one. This note was different from the others, written on a coral-pink paper and written in green ink. The bottom held a wax crest that I recognised well- The Northern Isles Royal Crest.

Tilting it so I could read the ink, which was even harder to read than Abel’s nonsensical handwriting, I sucked in a breath.

Lucifer and Tatiana had made it to the Northern Isles, but the plan clearly hadn’t worked- Ressila was naming herself Empress of The Borderlands, demoting all current Royals to Grand Dukes and Duchesses.

That meant Tatiana and Lucifer were no longer Royals!

Would they really have agreed to that? Somehow I doubted it. Tatiana was loyal to her city, and she wouldn’t have given them over to Ressila for more soldiers, which meant Ressila had taken advantage of the fact that we were under attack to try and claim our lands for herself.

This letter was a war declaration against Caliem; a declaration that Leviathan had thrown out.

It wasn’t a big enough threat to tell anyone about, apparently…

Would Tatiana and Lucifer be hunted now? What about Destiny, once we broke her out of Caliem?

Tucking the letter back in with the others, I wrapped my arms around my legs as the sky lit up overhead, a loud ‘BOOM!’ of thunder following soon after. The winter storms were picking up, and while Caliem was well-equipped to deal with the cold, would Ordeallan’s citizens?

The death rattle of the final soldier above me dying seemed to be an omen of what was to come as the sky split apart, and rain began pelting the dirt…