Prologue
Cordelia was dying. She had been for years. Her skin was pale with dark circles under her once green eyes. Her hands shook as she held mine, her breath finally leaving her. She lay on the ground, covered in a layer of filth and grime. Her body was draped in the remains of a noble’s clothes, turned to scraps from the years of surviving in the depths.
“Will.” she rasped, breath coming in short gasps. She stared past me, unseeing into the darkness.
“Im here.” I whispered, smoothing back her dark hair. “It’s going to be okay, cori.”
She coughed, her fingernails digging into my hand, drawing blood. “I- i- i can’t-”
“Shhh. It’s okay.”
“I-i- Will…”
“Im right here.”
“You- you need- to- to go. Go.”
“I’m not going to leave you.”
“I- im not…” she trailed off in a fit of coughing “listen.”
“Cori…”
“Go- go home. Use… the… key.”
And with that, her words finally spoken, she fell back. Her chest rose once more and she let out one more shuddering breath before falling still. I felt a sob escape my lips, sounding more like a wounded beast than any human-like creature.
“Cori…”
She didn’t answer.
I pried her hand off of mine and closed her eyes gently. She was just a child, not past her twenty fifth winter. She should never have chosen. Dammit i had sworn to protect her. I had all but raised her while her family fought and died.
I reached into her pocket and pulled out a key, jagged and made of white bone. We had only finished it this morning. Or at least I thought it was morning? To be honest I hadn’t known what time of day it was since we had entered this horrid place. The depths, a prison for the poor souls who disobeyed the Felix’s corrupted order. It was the same prison that the royal family, Cordelia and Ophelia’s parents and elder brother had been imprisoned in. They had died here, of the same sickness i held in my heart, the same sickness that had killed cordelia only moments ago.
I breathed out slowly, stifling the deep grief that was slowly killing me, as surely as the sickness. I would escape. I would live. For cordelia and for all the others. I rubbed the brand on my wrist and stood. Cordelia and I had been the last. The last of the twelve martyrs to survive.
My name is William Brown-Eyes. I am the last surviving member of the twelve martyrs. the queen’s folk who gave up their freedom, their lives so the rest of the kingdom could live in peace. But of course peace has never lasted. The enemy was coming. There were whispers of it in the dark places. A trick or betrayal that will destroy everything we built over those long long years of war and strife. If the Felix succeeded then our sacrifices would be for nothing. Their deaths would be for nothing.
I coughed, the sickness further claiming my body, but my mind had never been clearer. I spat the blood that bubbled up in my throat to the side and left the room, leaving Cordelia’s body laying cold and dead on the stones of this saints forsaken place. As much as I wanted to just lay down and die beside her, as much as the pain of rotting from the inside out pushed me to give in, I wouldn’t. I would live. If not for myself than for the little girl that had died holding my hand.