I grip the edge of the altar to stop my hands from shaking and wish desperately I had something more to offer to prove my worthiness of this assignment. My father glares down at me. And I see it. Behind the fresh anger that flashes in his eyes, it’s still there: that look he used to give my mother before she died—the look that transferred to me after what I did all those years ago—like what he saw before him was the embodiment of every failure, disappointment, and shame he had ever experienced.
As swiftly as fear had struck me a moment ago, a sudden calm replaces it. Resignation. I will not beg as he expects. I will not plead my case again. Instead, I look at him undaunted and ask a final question. “Is your hatred for me so great, Father, that you would risk bringing down the wrath of the Fates on the entire Underrealm in order to deny me my destiny?”
Ren’s jaw tightens. He lifts his sword, grabs me by the hair at the back of my neck, and yanks my head up from the altar’s cold surface. I say nothing more. If this is what he wants, then so be it. Let it come.
Ren swings his blade at my neck.
I will it to be quick and clean.
The sharp edge of the sword slices into my thick braid until it cuts all the way through. The blade nicks the back of my neck just above my shoulders. My skin stings from the shallow cut but I do not flinch.
“Do not call me that again,” he says calmly and lets go of my head. My temple bashes into the altar once more. A cut breaks open above my eyebrow. My blood drips onto the alabaster, staining the cream-colored stone with beads of red.
I am slow to follow what happens next, but I try to focus as King Ren drops the braid he has cut from my head into a large silver bowl. He snaps his fingers and a young servant scurries forward from somewhere in the throne room and lifts the bowl. The boy follows Ren while he approaches the Oracle, the heavy vessel straining his small arms.
My mind is muddled and I almost miss the moment when the Oracle pours some type of shimmering liquid into the bowl with my hair, and then dips a dagger into the mixture. The priest whispers what sounds like an incantation, and then the Oracle hands the knife to King Ren, her blue skin darkening to a turquoise green as he takes the blade from her.
He hesitates. Or perhaps my brain is working too slowly.
“Make the vow,” the Oracle’s priest says.
King Ren holds the dagger out in front of him. I can barely hear anything over the sound of my pulse pounding in my head and my heavy breaths huffing against the stone altar. I make out something he says about the water from the river Styx, the river of unbreakable vows.…
I blink. When my eyes flutter open, the Oracle is standing in front of me.
“Show him,” King Ren says.
The Oracle’s glittering blue hand reaches for me, her icy touch lands once again between my eyes. Her fingers are so cold. I wonder what memory she will steal from me this time, but instead, my thoughts coil inside my brain and my vision flickers black for a moment. A string of images enters my thoughts, layering upon each other until they form one fluid, moving picture.
At first, the images tell a story I already know. It’s the old myth we Underlords are raised on. It’s stitched into every tapestry and carved into every door I have passed in my lifetime, even on the altar I lean upon now, but then the pictures shift and I see the silhouette of a girl standing in a bright light.
We’ve found her—the Cypher. I hear the Oracle’s words inside my head and not with my ears. We have found the one who can restore what has been taken from the Underlords. You are the Champion whom fate has chosen to bring her to us. The outline of the girl grows more defined but I still can’t make out her face. You will have six months to convince her to return to the Underrealm with you. But she must come willingly. No human can pass through Persephone’s Gate without the mortal’s consent. This quest is your destiny. The fate of the Underrealm lies on your shoulders, young Haden.
I nod and the Oracle’s icy touch lifts off my skin. The images in my head flicker to black. I open my eyes and look up at her covered face.
“Do you understand what you have been shown?” the priest asks.
I don’t know if I do—I have never heard anything about a Cypher in any of my lessons—but the entire living population of the Underrealm is watching me, and I dare not say that I don’t understand.
“Yes.”
“Very good.”
“What is her name?” I ask the Oracle. I need to know her name.
The Oracle takes three steps away from me and then turns to King Ren. She indicates the knife in his hand.
“Finish it. Seal the will of fate,” the priest says for her.
Blue wisps of lightning crackle forth from Ren’s hand and wind their way up the dagger he holds.
I have been struck by lightning several times in my nearly seventeen years—in training and in fights—but I am unprepared for the jolt of pain that sears through my body as my father stabs the electrified dagger into my tricep. I go limp against the altar.
Ren pulls the knife from my arm and then makes several small, burning incisions into my skin—cutting and cauterizing my flesh at the same time. I cannot see what he is doing but it feels as though he is carving letters into my skin.
“You want to call me Father?” he says. “To be my heir? To have your honor restored?”