Chapter 38

Maevyth and Aleysia, drenched by winter rain, pick the temple’s locked red doors and enter its vast, hostile nave. By lamplight they find “The Decimation is upon us” scrawled on a wall and sweep the pews, altar, and upper rooms. In Sacton Crain’s lavish chamber, they discover a hidden closet with manacles and braided whips, exposing his hypocrisy.

Zevander appears in the doorway, soaked and bleeding from arm and abdomen, the black veins around his scar spreading toward his eye. He reports Theron is “no longer present tense,” lamenting the lost option of a blood bond for Aleysia. Maevyth prepares to clean and sew his wounds, but Zevander ignites the hearth with black flame and cauterizes the gashes himself, noting his slowed healing without vivicantem.

Maevyth feels the unnatural cold of his skin and draws a bath, while Raivox perches nearby to watch the grounds. She lights fires in adjacent rooms, rejecting one ruined by rain and noting an inexplicable owl in another, then decides to share a room with Aleysia when the kitchens yield no food.

Changing into dry shifts, Maevyth examines her strange scaled glove, and the sisters settle into bed. They discuss Zevander’s worsening veins and the black lines on Aleysia’s torso, which Aleysia shrugs off. Pressed about Zevander, Maevyth admits she’d be devastated to lose him; Aleysia argues that love anchors hope amid collapse and urges Maevyth to check on him.

Haunted by risk, the absence of vivicantem, and Aleysia’s condition, Maevyth hesitates at the door, torn between caution and the pull of her feelings for Zevander as silence settles over the temple.