As I approached the Black Tower at its center, magic resonated in the air, rich and deep as a bow scraping a long, shuddering note from a bass violin. I slowed, trying to quiet my breath, straining my ears for intruding footsteps.
A pale light flickered awake down the hall, illuminating a slim figure with trailing hair. Lamiel stood before the Door’s shadowed alcove, leaning forward on her toes to peer into the darkness, a light burning in her hand.
It was a luminary crystal, no doubt imported from the Serene Empire, where such things were far more common. It cast a cool white radiance across her face and sent her shadow lunging down the corridor as she slowly turned to meet me.
“Oh, hello,” she said, with false cheer. “Couldn’t you sleep?”
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said coldly. “It’s dangerous.”
Lamiel laughed, the sound ringing echoes from the bare stone walls. “I’m certain it is. It’s always the dangerous things that are most interesting. Why do you think I’m courting a Witch Lord?”
I stepped closer, carefully narrowing the distance between us. Power pulsed electric in my blood, a pressure in the air, a sound too deep for hearing. I could never tell whether it came from the Door itself, or from the tower beyond.
Either way, Lamiel was far too close to it.
“That’s between you and him,” I said. “But the Black Tower isn’t for you.”
“My dear, everything is for whoever reaches out and takes it.” Lamiel turned to face the alcove and lifted her light higher, until its pale radiance fell upon the Door. It caught the gleam of obsidian, the thin black shadows of lines etched into the stone.
She sucked in a breath through her teeth. “An artifice seal. I didn’t anticipate that.”
“It’s there to keep reckless fools with no respect for their host’s privacy from getting killed.” I made my voice stern, pulling it up from the deepest chambers of my chest. “Now go back to your rooms and stay there until morning.”
“Oh, Ryx,” she said, almost fondly. “I can hardly go back and meekly wait for the Lady of Owls now, when I worked so hard to create a diversion that would keep her away from the castle.”
My stomach dropped. So it had been a distraction.
“Morgrain will not forgive this,” I warned, forcing myself to take another step forward. Every instinct cried out that I shouldn’t approach so close, but I had to stop her somehow.
“And what will you do?” Lamiel spread her arms, the luminary crystal in her hand throwing giddy shadows against the flat black plane of the door. “Kill me? Perhaps you could, but if you murder an Exalted guest with your Skinwitch magic, every Witch Lord in Vaskandar will turn against you.”
She might well be right, even if I could convince the Conclave that I wasn’t a Skinwitch. I tried another tactic. “What do you think you can accomplish here?” I gestured to the Door. “You’re no artificer. You can’t unlock that seal with your magic, and if you try, the wards will strike you down.”
Lamiel shook her luminary to brighten its fading light, holding it to shine upon the runes on the obsidian door. “You’re right,” she muttered. “The runes of the seal dictate that the Door shall open only to the blood of the guardians.”
Her words prickled a warning in my mind. “Step away from there,” I said sharply.
“Of course.” She moved back from the alcove, bowing in mocking acquiescence.
Suddenly she spun, her hair flying in a wide circle around her, the silver rings of her mage mark blazing with intensity. She thrust the luminary at my face, and I threw up my arms to block the sudden light.
I didn’t see the knife until it slashed across my forearm.
I yelped and staggered back, grabbing my arm, shocked at the blood blooming on my sliced sleeve, and the queasy feeling of flesh not quite matching up anymore. “Pox! You lunatic—Hells take you!”
Lamiel grinned at me as if she hadn’t just cut my arm open—as if we shared a secret, or were about to have a lovely forbidden adventure together. She held up the red-streaked knife.
“Let’s find out if your family are the guardians.” She whirled back to the Door.
“No! Stop!” I lunged toward the alcove, still clutching my bleeding arm, furious and desperate.
I was too late. Lamiel pressed the bloody knife blade flat against the center of the seal.
Glaring red light blazed from every carved rune and line, painting the corridor scarlet. A shuddering sound like the scream of a rusty metal gate dragging against granite reverberated inside my skull. A sense of terrible loss pierced me, as if something that had kept me safe and warm all my life was suddenly torn away.
Stone ground against stone, and the obsidian slab began to move. A blast of heat and a scent like the air after a storm escaped through the widening crack at its edge.
The Door was opening.
Everything I’d learned in my twenty-one years of life, every instinct, every scrap of common sense I possessed all screamed out to stop it from opening completely. But Lamiel stood between it and me, and if I tried to push past her I’d kill her.
“Looks like you’re a guardian,” Lamiel said brightly. “Congratulations.”
“Close that Door at once, or I’ll show you how I can guard it.” I trembled on the edge of grabbing her, and to the Nine Hells with the consequences.
“There are other things I’d rather find out.” With a last flash of teeth, she slipped through the widening opening into the tower beyond.
My instincts recoiled, a wild ragged fear straining to bolt and run. More red light poured through the gap, and the oppressive flood of sheer magical power forced me back a step. Dread built in my chest, along with a strange recognition, as if this were a recurring nightmare made real.
I had to stop her. I could try to close the Door, to seal her in there and wait for my grandmother to return, but I had no idea what lay within. It might be a weapon Lamiel could use, a power she could claim, a sleeping nightmare creature she could awaken; I couldn’t leave her in there alone with whatever the Door was meant to keep sensible people away from.
Red light glared in my eyes as the door swung wider. The last thing I wanted to do in all the world was to step across that threshold, but precious seconds were slipping past. I couldn’t let fear stop me, no matter how frantically it clawed at my chest, tearing the breath to ribbons in my lungs. I was a guardian, and the Warden of Gloamingard. I had a duty to protect everyone in this castle from whatever horrors she might unleash.
I plunged through after Lamiel into the Black Tower.
The chamber soared impossibly high above me. The entire lower half of the tower must be hollow, forming this one room. The ceiling would have vanished into darkness if it weren’t for the trails of artifice sigils that blazed red all the way up the walls, meeting in a great circular seal of astonishing complexity far, far above. The inky black walls absorbed the scarlet glow, leaving the place somehow both impossibly dim and awash with crimson light.
At the center of the chamber stood a dark rectangle of an obelisk. More glowing runes encircled it, forming another artifice ward on the glossy black floor. The stone itself reflected no light, as if someone had cut a hole in the world looking out to a starless sky.