TWO HOURS BEFORE THE DEATH OF DAMIAN ROSWALD
Glass doors slammed open, spilling warm light out into the dark plaza.
Several figures emerged, their combined shadows stretching out across the cobblestones. At the front of the group was Tia, her blonde hair loose and trailing behind her.
"Tia—!"
Damian couldn't stop the cry from passing his lips, but Tia's shrill screech drowned out his words.
"Let! Me! GO!"
Tia threw off two burly men who were trying to force her back into the building. On the topmost step of the building's lobby stood Morgan Blackbriar, a wicked darkness polluting the shadow at his feet.
"Come now, daughter, stop this nonsense. You know you belong here with—"
"I don't belong anywhere with you!"
Tia's voice carried across the plaza to where both Damians stood, watching the drama unfold.
"Listen to your father—"
"You're no father of mine! You think you can send your—your little cronies—after me? After all these years? Drag me back to your side? I don't want anything to do with you!"
Tia tried to turn away, but Blackbriar's staff—two huge men likely employed as bodyguards—seized her thin arms.
"Ow! Let go of me!'
She struggled and thrashed, but the tall men lifted her clear off the ground and frog-marched her back towards the building, while she screamed the whole time.
"PUT ME DOWN!"
Anger boiled in Damian's stomach. He couldn't watch this any longer. He didn't know what was going on, but an instinct deep in his gut told him that the moment Tia crossed the threshold, he'd never see her again.
He clenched his fists tightly, the signet ring digging into his palm.
Damian didn't wait for his older self.
He sprung into motion, propelled by that impulsive need to act, to protect the people he trusted, to act against injustice and cruelty.
"Hey! Blackbriar! Get your filthy hands off my maid."
Halfway across the plaza, Damian stopped, his feet just inside the pillar of light spilling from the open doors. Tia twisted around, tears streaming down her reddened cheeks.
"Damian!" she gasped. She tried to reach out towards him, but the bodyguards shoved her away roughly. She yelped again as one of the guards wrapped a hand around her mouth, muzzling her.
Morgan Blackbriar didn't seem to care what was happening to his 'daughter.' He merely inclined his head, his milky eyes reflecting the plaza's gas-lit lamps.
"Well met, Your Highness. Or should I say, Your Majesty?"
"I don't give a shit what you call me," Damian snarled, advancing another step. His blood boiled, and his anger stoked the Flame inside his soul, the Angel's wrath feasting upon the emotions flooding through him.
"Killing my father wasn't enough, so you sent assassins after me and kidnapped my maid? You won't get away with this."
Blackbriar raised one hand, and the bodyguards stopped, just a few feet from the open door. Tia sagged against them, her energy spent; she could only watch Damian with her eyes wide, a silent question passing between them.
Damian met her gaze and nodded.
I won't leave you behind.
Blackbriar took a few steps forward, walking with a confident gait that belied his clouded eyes.
"You would accuse me of regicide?" he asked politely, rolling the word on his tongue. "What a bold, tactless accusation. I confess I had expected better from my future king."
"Cut the crap, Blackbriar. You're the First Seat of the High Table. I don't think you're innocent for a second."
Blackbriar gave a low chuckle and shook his head.
"Oh dear, I fear we really got started on the wrong foot. I am afraid I must dispel these illusions of yours, young man. I'm not sure what type of power I command in your mind, but contrary to your belief, I am but a fraction of Tenebrae's power. I cannot command my colleagues, and nor they me. Thus, any actions taken by others is on their shoulders, and theirs alone."
"Don't spin your words around me. Whether you gave the order or not, you'll stand to profit without my father on the throne. That's reason enough to kill him in your books, I'm sure."
Blackbriar grinned, his teeth unnaturally white in the darkness.
"I did not give such an order. I swear upon the Deep Themselves."
Damian's eyes narrowed. That was a powerful assertion to make for any believer—it carried significant weight, Flame or Deep, or otherwise.
No. I can't trust Blackbriar—everything is a game to him, a fencing match of barbed words and twisted truths.
"Then answer me this—did you send assassins after me?"
Again, Blackbriar laughed—a cold, mocking noise.
"Assassins? How crude. I merely used resources that belong to the High Table in order to retrieve a certain possession of mine. One that had erroneously ended up in your company, I fear."
Tia thrashed against her captors, managing to free her mouth.
"Don't talk about me like I'm a piece of luggage! I'm not yours or his or anyone's! I—"
"Silence, girl."
Blackbriar whipped around, striking Tia's forehead with the butt of his cane. She slumped forward into her captors' arms, unmoving.
"Tia! Are you all right?! What did you do to her?!"
"Fret not," Blackbriar said calmly, returning his clouded gaze to Damian. "I merely removed a source of distraction. Come now, can we not discuss this like gentlemen? I am sure we can find a mutually beneficial position."
"This isn't one of your fucking deals, Blackbriar! Tia is my maid, and a grown woman at that. I will not have her bartered over like goods in a marketplace."
Blackbriar sighed dramatically. He rolled his neck until there was an audible crack. When he spoke next, his voice was an octave lower, vibrating with a menace he'd previously kept hidden just beneath the surface.
"I hate when negotiations fail."
Blackbriar took a step forward.
The gas-lit lamps flickered, their light fading like embers in a hearth.
Inky darkness flooded from Blackbriar's feet, overwriting the light, consuming every inch of the plaza. Shadows climbed the surrounding buildings, writhing like a million maggots, infesting every nook and cranny of the brickwork.
Damian tried to retreat, but with a start, he realized the shadows had shackled his feet in place. He looked back up, his heart thrashing against his rib cage. His anger was dying, the Flame in his soul fading as the Deep surrounded him, pressing in on him from all sides.
This presence… it's nothing like the Apostles, or anything I've ever felt before.
Damian trembled, fear replacing the anger that had guided him this far.
"Who—no, what are you?"
Blackbriar gave a wicked grin. Shadows swept up his limbs, dyeing his white suit an inky-black; his thin hair lengthened and thickened, spilling down his back. The cloudiness in his eyes retreated, revealing pitch-black eyeballs with dark pupils ringed by solid-white irises.
He spread his arms wide, and his voice thundered across the plaza.
"My name is Morgan Blackbriar, First Seat of the High Table of Tenebrae!"
He rotated his cane in his grasp, and the tip extended into a razor-sharp blade of pure Deepshadow, over six feet long.
He pointed the weapon straight at Damian, and his demonic eyes narrowed.
"You can also refer to me by my true title: The King of the Deep."
King—?!
A chill ran down Damian's spine. His father, and Leon, and he himself—they had all underestimated Morgan Blackbriar. They had turned a blind eye to Tenebrae, allowed the High Table to control Rosweiss' trade—and now, they were paying the price for their ignorance.
Blackbriar wasn't just a political adversary.
He was a powerful servant of the Deep, and an enemy of the Flame itself.
"Come, future King of Sidralis!" Blackbriar cried dramatically. "Let us settle our differences like true warriors of the Heavens!"
Damian didn't even have time to react.
No time to activate a basic shield, or summon a single Cinder. One moment, the newly transformed Blackbriar was standing a dozen paces away—
—and then a sharp pain pierced straight through Damian's heart.
He gasped and doubled over, hands clutching his breast. Morgan Blackbriar caught Damian's falling body and leaned in close, his foul breath caressing Damian's cheek.
"Poor, foolish little prince. This is my town. Through the Deep, I know all. I see all. I am one with the shadows, and the shadows are one with me. Your fate was sealed long ago."
Blackbriar twisted away and Damian hit the ground, screaming in pain. The agony in his chest was unlike anything he'd felt before—it was nothing compared to the beating Titus had delivered, nor the sharp attacks from the Apostles.
His heart thrashed against his rib cage, but no blood spilled from the rip in his jacket. Instead, something bright flowed from his chest. Like motes of firelight seen from across the river, fiery embers trickled out of his soul and died on the cold stones.
Blackbriar looked down at Damian.
"Fear not. I am a merciful king. I have inflicted no mortal wound. Your health shall not suffer. I have merely demonstrated the tremendous difference in power between us."
Damian gasped for breath, his chest burning as though his heart had been truly impaled. Cold sweat dripped down his cheeks.
"What—what did you—?"
A smug grin split Blackbriar's face, and his white irises trembled with pleasure.
"I used the power of the Deep to shatter your connection to the Flame."
What? That's not possible…is it?
Instinctively, Damian reached for the Angel's Flame—and found nothing.
Where once the Angel's Blessing had resided within the depths of his soul, there was—
—absolutely—
—nothing.
Damian tried to channel the Cinder inside the Regalia, but with no Flame in his soul, there was nothing he could use to start the initial invocation.
He gasped and convulsed on the ground. He wanted the pain to stop. He couldn't think, couldn't comprehend the agony. His body had been cut off from the Heavens; there was no longer a link between his mortal soul and the Great Flame. His mortal flesh was rejecting the very concept of isolation from the Angel.
He had been severed from the Angel of the Flame.
Once and for all, Damian Roswald had become truly Flameless.