Eclipse of the Crown (Villains and Virtues Book 3) by A. K. Caggiano

Author:A. K. Caggiano [Caggiano, A. K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

A NOT-SO-RARE HUMAN AFTER ALL

As he approached the site of The Temple of the Void, Damien assumed one of two things would happen: he would live, or he would die. He was right, of course, as those are just about the only two things that can ever happen to any being, but he was rather more dramatic about the details.

Damien equated dying with a sort of unkind kindness, an ending that would be too soon but perhaps spare a whole lot of innocent, well-meaning folks including a particularly well-meaning one who was only slightly less innocent since he’d gotten his hands on her the night before. But the worst of it was that dying meant leaving her.

Subsequently, Damien equated living with the fulfillment of the prophecy that had plagued him most of his life. Evil was an inevitability, even after he professed to Amma she’d turned him good. Things would be easier if he were already evil, which he was, or, were, or would be again? The subjunctive verb conjugation was rarely used correctly in Key, and sometimes he got it confused with Chthonic, but the point remained the same: there was a state—evil—and Damien Maleficus Bloodthorne was destined to be evil or to be dead.

“Do you still have the pendant?”

At his side, Amma turned to him, wide-eyed but with a tightness to her features she’d been carrying around all morning. He really thought he’d wrung all of that out of her the night prior, and she had been as wild for him as he’d hoped then, but the twenty-third brought its own tension to them both. In the greying late afternoon of the plains beyond Buckhead, she was still a bright spot, intent on moving forward and insisting nothing could go wrong even if they were following the Grand Order of Dread’s commands.

She nodded, smile stiff, eyes unblinking.

“May I see it for a moment?”

Amma went into her pouch and held up the pendant by its chain. It caught no light in its cloudy, crimson surfaces, but his own shadow reflected over it. “See?”

Damien held out his hand.

“You said not to.”

He curled his fingers back. “Just testing your memory.” Though he hated the thing, it felt better knowing it was in her hand, and as she slipped it into her pocket, he was calmed enough to focus on the way ahead again.

Quaz was rabidly running across the plain, springing around brambles and rocks, and tumbling over his paws more than half the time. The newest imp had taken to being a cat as well as a cat took to water, which wasn’t very good, but still somehow capable of finding a way to survive.

Damien pulled out the map again, their moving dot finally overlapping the ominously marked destination. Aszath Koth was not so far from where they stood, though an inlet of the Maroon Sea and mountains lay between. “So close to home,” he said. “How did I not know this place was here?”

But looking around, it seemed fairly obvious: there was nothing to know about at all.

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