INOTHING BUT DARKNESS
“WHERE SHALL WE start?” Gabriel asked.
“The place you left off seems wisest,” Jean-François replied.
“If it’s wisdom you’re looking for, coldblood, you’re talking to the wrong man.”
“Alas, then, that you are the only man in the room.”
Gabriel scoffed, leaned back in his chair. “Story of my fucking life.”
“To continue it, then.” The historian plucked an imaginary speck of fluff from his frockcoat sleeve, lips pursed. “You had journeyed halfway across the empire, on a quest for vengeance after the murder of your wife and daughter. Intent upon destroying the Forever King, Fabién Voss, instead you had ended up as guardian of the girl, Dior Lachance, last scion of the holy Redeemer’s line. Your brethren among the Ordo Argent had tried to murder you, and your old friend Chloe Sauvage had attempted to sacrifice Mlle Lachance in an ancient ritual intended to end daysdeath. But, with the aid of your sister, now revealed as one of the kith and calling herself Liathe”—here the vampire’s lip curled in contempt—“you ascended San Michon’s heights, butchered your former comrades like holy piggies in a row, and rescued the Grail from certain death. Happy endings for all.”
Jean-François waved his quill, eyebrow raised.
“Unless you were a member of the Silver Order, of course.”
The Last Silversaint said nothing, staring at the chymical globe between them, and back across far-flung years. A skull-pale moth had crawled from some nook within the cell, and was now flitting about the light. He watched the insect beating in vain against the glass, remembering the flutter of a thousand tiny wings as he’d plummeted from the monastery’s heights after his so-called brothers cut his throat. The taste of ancien blood on his tongue, hauling him back from the brink of death. A pale figure in a crimson greatcoat, dragging aside her porcelain mask to reveal the face of the monster, the horror, the sister beneath.
“Why didn’t you tell me, Celene?”
“Because everything I have suffered, everything I am, is because of you.”
The Last Silversaint took another slow swallow of wine.
“Because I hate you, brother.”
“De León?”
“Do you ever wonder where this ends, Chastain?” Gabriel finally asked. “When the last mortal throat is opened? The final drop of us drained dry? When your Empress’s folly about the Grail is laid bare, and your kind fall on themselves like dogs over the last bone? Will you go down fighting, do you think? Or will you die on your knees?”
“There is all manner of bliss to be found on one’s knees.” The historian smiled, brushing his quill across his lips. “But I assure you, I have no intention of dying.”
“Neither did she, vampire.”
The silversaint sighed, his gaze still lost in the light.
“Neither did she.”
Gabriel de León leaned back in his chair, the globe flaring brief in the storm-grey of his eyes. The air was chill, still, save for the warm whisper of his breath and the soft hymn of his pulse and the velvet kiss of bat wings on the night sky outside.
The historian held his quill poised over the page.
All the world held its breath.
And finally, the Last Silversaint began to speak.
“I can still remember it like it was yesterday, you know. I can see it so clear, it’s almost frightening. The pair of us, standing before that altar. The cathedral empty and silent. The smoke rising to the ceiling and the miserable daysdeath dawn spilling through the windows and the statue of the Redeemer looking down on the carnage I’d wrought. But the thing I remember most is the blood. Cooling on the floor. Thumping in my veins. Spattered all over the face of the girl beside me.
“Dior was still swathed in the ritual robes they’d meant to murder her in. A price they thought worth paying to save the world. She stood there in the ringing quiet, blue eyes wide and bruised and fixed on me. Her sinner. Her savior. And dragging her tumble of ash-white hair from her face, she whispered, ‘What do we do now?’
“‘I suppose you should come meet my sister,’ I sighed.
“‘… Sister?’
“‘Long story.’
“Dior watched mute as I knelt beside Chloe’s body. My old friend’s mouse-brown curls were soaked with gore, empty green eyes staring up in sightless accusation at the man who’d condemned this world to darkness. I pressed her lids shut with bloody fingertips, then trudged up the aisle, doing the same with every silversaint I’d murdered. Big de Séverin, little Fincher, old Abbot Greyhand. Friends. Brothers. A mentor. I placed their swords upon their chests, closed their eyes forever. But I didn’t pray for any of them. And peeling aside Greyhand’s bloodied greatcoat, I found …
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