Page 84 of Cursed By the Dawn

“We can’t talk here. I’m taking you to the citadel first—”

“You’ll take me to Elliot first.”

Silas gave me an inquisitive look, lingering on our clasped hands. “You’ve changed.”

“Everything has changed.” I searched his eyes, wondering if he knew the truth of what Mithras was doing. What he had become. “More than you know.”

Silas’s mouth thinned. “Yes, it has. Come, now, we’re nearly to Firstlight.”

As we walked, the towering silhouette of Citadel Firstlight came into view, its white stone walls gleaming against the encroaching night. It loomed above Istralla like a sun waiting to swallow the dark. I glanced at Erebus, and found his jaw set in grim determination. My own thoughts churned with questions, fears, and the weight of what was ahead.

We were in Mithras’s lair now.

And here we would confront the end—or the beginning—of everything.

We slipped past the towering doors of Citadel Firstlight, and Silas guided us through the gilded halls. The soles of my bloody boots looked profane against the pristine marble floors, which were polished to a mirror’s shine. Erebus’s heavier steps, deliberate and even, echoed in contrast to the eerie quiet that hung over the citadel. The rustle of his cloak and the warmth of his hand were the only reassurances that I hadn’t somehow slipped into another dream—a more vicious one than the current reality I was trapped in.

“Are you able to access our shadows?” I whispered.

His mouth tightened. “No. I can’t feel them anywhere.”

I focused on the corners of the citadel, searching for shadows.There.Beyond a grouping of nobles, hiding under a sculpture of a lion, was a thick pool of darkness. I called to it, gently coaxing it to rise, but it did not so much as twitch. So, we were powerless.

Again.

“He reminds me of someone, but I can’t say who,” Erebus murmured, glaring daggers into the back of Silas’s immaculate, close-cropped curls. “Do you see how the others are watching him?”

Sure enough, when we passed the next grouping of nobles—threewomen, two men, and a single Light Legionnaire—they rushed to incline their heads. But their eyes still watched, gleaming with something suspiciously close to desire. To jealousy, even.

I shuddered, skin crawling. “They act like they want to eat him.”

“Or wear his skin.”

We gave each other a look, the corners of our mouths twitching.

Erebus dipped his head toward my ear, pretending that he was adjusting my cloak. “I know he helped you survive the Corrupt attack on your village. And that he was friendly when you were being taken to my tomb.” He adjusted my makeshift scarf, acting as if he was patting away a layer of dust. “But if it turns out he’s marching us to our graves, I will show him no mercy.”

And then he straightened as if he’d never spoken a word.

Everything about the citadel shimmered with excessive opulence. Walls encrusted with golden filigree towered impossibly high, and massive tapestries depicted not the Maker, not the Weavers, butMithras. His tapestries stretched from floor to ceiling, illustrating him in various scenes throughout history. Mithras, defeating demons. Mithras, creating the elixir. Mithras, being ordained by the Maker as he became the Light Bringer. But the final tapestry made my blood run cold.

In the histories, Erebus was depicted as the monster who caused Corruption, unleashing thousands of demons upon the Dream Realm when he tried to purify the Nocturne. For hundreds of years, artists had depicted him cruelly, more beast than man. He often appeared with horns, fangs, and a beast-like body. He was never beautiful. Never human at all. Without his draconic helmet, it would have been impossible to recognize him as the villain he’d been damned to be. But this tapestry was a version I’d never seen before. It didn’t show the Shadow Bringer as a monster; it depicted him as a man, no helmet in sight.

And he wasn’t alone.

At the center of the tapestry were Erebus andme.

We were both wearing spiked armor as we flew above a tainted sea, mouths stretched into disturbing grins. Around us, forming a depravedhalo, were the seven Weavers. Their faces were twisted in pure agony, chests broken by the chains running through them. Erebus and I were holding these seven chains between us, our other hands raised as a storm of shadow loomed overhead. And below us, prepared to strike us down, was Mithras. He wore a golden cape so long that it filled the bottom of the tapestry, and his sword, brimming with light, was raised high above his head. It was a hideous reversal of what had truly happened at Citadel Evernight.

I fought the urge to tear it to the ground.

No wonder Silas wanted our hoods up.

“What a wretched mockery,” Erebus said, disgusted. “Their fear of the truth runs so deep that they’ve butchered it and paraded the corpse as their own creation.”

Silas hurried us on, and I found myself curling inward. Firstlight wasn’t beauty; it was opulence. The gold refracted the last rays of light streaming through narrow stained glass windows, casting warped distortions over the nobles we passed. I tried to ignore their stares, but it was impossible not to perceive their disdain. They didn’t recognize us, and yet they gawked at us as though we were insects or anomalies, faces twisting in horror as they beheld our tarnished clothes and scuffed boots. They wrinkled their noses as we passed, likely offended by smell of soot and Corrupt blood that still clung to our skin.

Strangely, they barely spoke.