from her friend’s relics. To many of Madael’s fallen angels, beauty returned only after drinking someone else’s blood or someone else’s life. Setius was a case in point. And this angel she did not know at all.
At least she had managed to do something to spare Hildegard. Rhianon liked to take things from others, just as she had been taken from herself. Perhaps after Loretta she would like to take other people’s kingdoms, such as the Duchy of Rothbert. She found the very idea tempting.
«What have you done?» Orpheus held his own neck in horror, as if she could decapitate him as well.
Rhianon turned to him, still holding the bloodied sword in her hand.
«You’re not happy about something.»
He did not answer, and she added:
«If I am truly their queen, I have the right to take their lives.»
If they are immortal, they can rise from the flames like the phoenix. Rhianon stepped back from the fireplace. Sparks splashed the hem of her dress, but it did not burst into flames.
«See to Hildegard,» she said to Orpheus.
She is the madwoman?» He was clearly dissatisfied.
«I don’t want her plotting anything against us or making any noise today,» Rhianon explained.
«Then it will be done.»
Orpheus disappeared quickly.
Rhianon hid her sword back in its scabbard. She did not scrub the blade because she knew it would absorb blood like a sponge instead of rusting from it. She didn’t need a squire. How would he cope with such a sword that sought to slaughter him? She, on the other hand, was beginning to have the strength she needed to do it.
Strength! What if it were to be tested? No one who spent more than an hour in forbidden towers usually retained their wits. Sometimes convicts were locked up there on purpose. If someone snuck in and stole something, his hands were cut off. For those who tried to read the manuscripts, the punishment was blindness or insanity. What would happen to her?
Rhianon decided to check it out. She knew the secret passage that connected the towers to the castle. She could get there in a matter of minutes. But if she had called her retinue and left the castle gate, the journey to the towers in Loretta would have taken more than half an hour.
Rhianon was unpleasantly surprised to find herself inside. Everything here seemed to retain the memory of Madael. His presence was felt in the crushing emptiness, as if a golden cobweb stretched over the dusty shelves. She could almost see the two of them huddled against the wall. From the outside it looked beautiful and frightening. It was as if the picture was imprinted on her retina. It was there, near that niche… Rhianon went that way.
«They say those towers were built long before the city was built, and that they were never torn down.»
A voice came from behind her and startled her. Rhianon looked behind her and saw no one there, but the voice was still there, seemingly coming from everywhere.
«They had not been torn down because the stonemasons’ hands had not obeyed them. No one wants his hands to be cut off, do they? But the governor, to whom Denitsa later appeared, did not dare to disobey him. He did not want the angel to rob him of his mind.»
She looked up. Douglas was perched at ease on one of the higher shelves. He was folding a scroll in his lap.
«Perhaps this place would someday be assigned a custodian. It would be someone as peculiar as the place itself…» Douglas traced the huge curved dome above. «You don’t find it strange that this tower exists at all. Its contents are valuable, but completely useless to the world. It cannot be touched or read or disposed of at will. It is unusual that a tower that has no function has remained untouched by the rulers of Loretta. It stands there as if it were a curse.»
«Perhaps it is the curse,» Rhianon twirled the globe nestled in the corner. It was unusual. The drawings on it looked more like a map of the stars Orpheus had drawn for her, rather than the usual pattern of bays and continents. It looked quite beautiful. Involuntarily she was fascinated by the symmetry of the constellations and the glittering lines drawn between them. It seemed as if the entire starry sky had been turned into one magical ball. A moment and it began to whirl under her fingers. Rhianon was mesmerized.
«Careful, this thing is capable of captivating your consciousness. Believe me, I almost got caught myself.»
Rhianon nodded reluctantly, but did not take her eyes off the globe. A harpy appeared from beneath her feet and tugged at her hem. Douglas, too, jumped down, traversing the floor-to-ceiling space in one fluid motion, and stood beside her.
«It is a lot of curious things here, but I try not to touch anything. I read it sometimes,» the wizard admitted.
«But your hands are still steady and you’re not blind,» she glanced at the scroll in his hands. «You’re not insane, are you?»
«I keep nothing,» he apologized hastily. «I only look through what I am allowed to and then put it back.»
«So you take nothing away from this place except stolen knowledge.»
«I only get what my already sold soul is worth.»
«So,» Rhianon shot him a curious look. «You know a lot about them.»
«It is not all of them,» he admitted frankly.
«I could have understood it all,» she said, reaching out to take the scroll, but then ducking back in time to look at it. She needn’t look at the strange symbols. She could imagine them anyway. The time of drill was over. She had become strong both mentally and physically. Knowledge that to others would be murderous was familiar to her. It seemed as if she could even penetrate Madael’s mind and learn all that he himself knew.
«You are special,» Douglas said. «It’s not that he chose you.»
«Then what is it?»
He stared at her face for a long moment, then he turned his gaze to her lips.
«It is something…» «Douglas never finished. Rhianon turned her gaze to his pale lips. His face resembled chalk against the dark jabot, but the arcs of his eyebrows and lashes stood out in seductive dark lines. He could have been handsome, but the magical experience he had gained had exhausted him. Around his multicolored eyes appeared a dark cusp. His hair, dyed black, had lost its former silkiness. Maybe it was punishment for him for taking the heads off all his competitors. Rhianon looked into his thoughts and experienced the horrors he had experienced with him. How he had been tormented. A boy who had fallen in love with Dennitsa and discovered his hidden talents, he feared that one of his brothers or kin would become his own rival. He demanded from the king heads of his half-siblings until he executed them all. Rhianon remembered the young man being dragged to the scaffold and the star he had given her. It was Douglas’s brother, condemned by him – who would have thought. It would have disgusted her before, but now she didn’t look away, following his thoughts. They tangled into such an intricate web, and the two multicolored eyes further accentuated his singularity. One eye was blue, the other eye was emerald. Only wizards had eyes of different colors, and not all wizards, only the most powerful. Douglas was a very special, but the struggle for supremacy nearly drove him mad. What was he fighting for? Did he hope that if he became first among the damned, he would win the sympathy of his chosen one? That goal had been relegated to the back burner. Rhianon saw what he was thinking and sighed. Her lips opened like gates, ready to breathe out fire, but she already knew that Douglas would not be burned. She leaned on his shoulder and pressed her lips to his. It was just one kiss. It was sweet. The supple cold lips immediately slid open to meet hers. Experience replaced desire. Surely he wanted more, but Rhianon was quick to pull away. She had no regrets about the gift. In years of torment and abstinence, Douglas deserved at least that.
«Will we meet again… here?» He gazed meaningfully around the tower beneath the high dome.
Rhianon