Total pages in book: 401
Estimated words: 390373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1952(@200wpm)___ 1561(@250wpm)___ 1301(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 390373 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1952(@200wpm)___ 1561(@250wpm)___ 1301(@300wpm)
“You’re right,” Wesley admitted. The brown-haired Ascended looked the youngest of all of them, likely only eighteen or so when he Ascended. “We should’ve listened to our suspicions, but…” His features pinched. “But if I’m honest…”
“That would be nice,” Casteel replied.
Wesley’s pitch-black eyes lowered. “We were cowards, Your Majesty.”
A tight, barely-there smile crossed Casteel’s features. I stepped forward. “How old were you when you had your Rite?”
“Nineteen, Your Majesty.”
Suspicions confirmed, I inhaled sharply. “You were not a coward, Wesley. You were young.”
“I was your age, Your Majesty.” He lifted his head. “You are young, but you were able to confront the truth.”
“I had help,” I said, feeling Casteel’s stare. “When did you all realize you had been lied to?”
“Many small things built upon one another,” Regis said, his gaze moving to mine. “Inconsistencies that didn’t add up.” He took a shallow breath. “It slowly became clear that everything we had been told about the Ascended wasn’t true. Like the choice not to walk in the sun. As you know, we were told it was a choice made with respect to the gods, but it quickly became clear that was not the reason. There were also other things we weren’t warned about—”
“Like what?” Casteel interjected.
“Bloodlust,” Everett said, swallowing. “We were never told we would need to…feed.” His voice quivered slightly, and the skin around his pale-pink lips tightened. “Nor about the hunger that comes with that.”
That’s true, I reminded Casteel through the notam. He didn’t respond, just dispassionately swept his gaze over the Ascended.
“It was…difficult to acknowledge that we’d been turned into”—blond hair slipped over Raina’s shoulders in loose waves as she dipped her head—“something so frighteningly similar to the monsters we’d feared our entire lives.”
“The Craven,” I surmised.
She closed her eyes with a brief nod. “We are nothing like those who took us.”
Her expression was sad. I wanted to believe her, almost desperately. My gaze moved to where the other male Ascended stood, quiet and listening.
Casteel exhaled slowly. “So, when exactly did you admit the truth to yourselves?”
“I can tell you the exact moment for all of us,” Mira uttered, her already quiet voice becoming nearly fragile. “The following Rite for each of us, when we were allowed to re-enter the Temple of Perus,” she said, speaking of the crimson-stoned Temple hidden away in the Elysium Peaks. “And we saw what…what had become of the third sons and daughters.”
My chest tightened. Images of what we’d found beneath the Temple of Theon rose. The bloodstains. The bones, some of them small. I had never stepped foot inside the Temple of Perus—a Temple dedicated to a god that never was—but I suspected that whatever they had seen in there mirrored what we’d found beneath the one in Oak Ambler.
Casteel frowned and glanced toward Emil. “The Temple of Perus was searched, was it not?”
He nodded. “We found nothing abnormal.”
“What you would be looking for would be gone by now,” Regis advised. “The…tombs where they kept them were in a maze of tunnels. I doubt any of us could find them again.”
Them.
Babes. Children. Eather hummed in the center of my chest, and Delano stepped closer to me.
Casteel’s head turned to Malik. “Can you find the tombs?”
He shook his head. “I was aware of them but never allowed to enter.”
Static danced across my fingers, causing several of the Ascended to shift back a step. Except for the silent one. His brows rose, and his alabaster face was marked with curiosity. “Is it possible the tombs are still…occupied?”
“Not after the last Rite,” Mira said. I barely breathed around the throbbing in the center of my chest. “We were not involved in it but…heard what occurred.”
I already knew, but I needed to hear it. “What did you hear?”
“Apparently, orders were given to…fill the tithes with crimson,” Mira said, her voice thin and strained.
The breath I took burned its way into my lungs, and I took a nearly involuntary step back.
“The stockpiles,” Casteel bit out. “That’s how they were able to hoard so much blood?”
Mira’s gaze lowered as she nodded.
“We only heard about it after it was done,” Helenea said, speaking for the first time since we’d entered. She swallowed thickly. “The stockpiles consisted of more than just Atlantian blood. It was also taken from the third sons—” Her voice caught as her sharp, icy sorrow pierced my shields. “And daughters.”
“All of them?” I asked. She nodded. “Was one of them your sibling?”
“Yes.” Helenea’s shoulders stiffened, but her lips quivered. “My sister.”
The essence tightened in my chest. “I’m sorry.”
She lowered her gaze. “Thank you.”
“What about your second-born sister?” Casteel asked.
“She Ascended,” Helenea said. That was all she said.
I assumed she wasn’t here, or she would’ve been introduced as such. “Who gave the order? The Blood Queen?”
“No. The Hawleys,” Wesley forced out through a tight jaw. “Lord Edmund and Lady Laural Hawley did. They were close to the former Queen and often handled portions of the Rites.”