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?”
“Yes,” I hiss through gritted teeth.
“Then you bring this girl to me,” he says, squeezing the wound he’s carved into my arm. It takes every last bit of strength I have not to scream. “You return victorious, and I will crown you as my heir and allow you to call me Father once again. But if you do not bring her to me when the gate between the Underrealm and the mortal world reopens in six months’ time, then mark my words, your hair is not the only thing you will lose.”
He slides his knife up to my throat to illustrate his point, then stalks away to his throne, gesturing to the ranks of Underlords who stand behind me and the crowds of onlookers beyond them. “Out!” he demands. “Everybody, out!”
The crowd quickly snaps back into its lines and begins to leave the throne room, following his order. I start to rise, but my head swims and I steady myself against the altar. I am stuck in a position that looks as though I am half bowing, half standing as the bystanders file out around me. I do not understand what is happening. After all the protestations, I have finally been Chosen. Which means the ceremony is supposed to go on. I am supposed to be endowed with the blessing of the Court. A wreath of laurel leaves is supposed to be placed upon my head, crowning me with glory. There is supposed to be a feast of celebration in honor of the Champions. The servants have been preparing it for weeks.
Instead, everyone is being sent away.
Ren looks in my direction. “I said for everybody to get out.” He speaks with a quiet composure that makes me shiver more than if he had shouted with rage.
I stumble through the now-empty throne room. My head aches, my arm throbs, and my neck feels naked and exposed without my hair. All I want to do is return to my bedchambers and collapse, but I know the challenges of this day aren’t over yet, and I’m not quite ready to face them.
The aftereffects of the lightning that ravaged through my body make it hard to concentrate on staying upright, let alone anything else. Knowing I can’t be seen by anyone at this point, I lean against one of the golden doors at the end of the torch-lit corridor. The strangest mixture of grief, relief, and pride grips me, and I let out the smallest of sobs.
When I regain my composure, I inspect the cauterized scars on my arm and discover the words that Ren has carved there.
It’s the name of the girl I have six months to convince to return with me to the Underrealm. The girl who can give me the status to be elevated over Rowan and the other Elite. The girl who holds the key to restoring everything that has been taken from me:
Daphne Raines.
Chapter two
DAPHNE
“It’s do or die, Daphne,” CeCe says, with a sassy, almost devious tone as she wades through the sea of red balloons that separate her workstation from mine. Despite her flame red hair and freckled skin, she always reminds me of Billie Holiday with her warm, old-school, jazzy vibe. “Ask him while you have the chance.”