Chapter 152 The Emperor
The next hours ran together in a fever of blood and phosphorescence.
Mira led Daisy to a narrow alcove. The bioluminescent fungus glowed, casting an eerie light. This recess, once a sanctuary for the wounded in the first uprising, had hidden more than one desperate soul. The passage's shape and even the stones muffled the sound. They offered a rare shield from prying magic. The air was thick—overripe fruit and burning sugar. The surfaces glowed a sickly teal. Daisy’s shadow flickered in many directions. Pain flared in her arms, then shifted; now it buzzed behind her eyes like a trapped wasp.
They set up shop on a stone ledge. Mira pulled parchment, a quill, and a chipped vial from her pack. Daisy understood what to do.
She drew the knife left-handed, slashing her right palm. Blood bubbled thick and dark, hissing on the stone. She caught it in the vial, dipped the quill, and waited for Mira’s instructions.
Mira worked quickly, her hands sure but trembling. “We can’t risk the chain’s signal. The Emperor could find us. If we mimic the old blood, we might call only those bound to you—the original chain.” She glanced at the swirling blood in the vial. “It’s dangerous. If I’m wrong, we could draw the Emperor, or split your soul. The ritual tricks the magic into believing you’re still who you were before the Emperor warped it. Only those linked to your original self can answer. We must be precise—one slip could unbind you or let something worse through.”
Daisy scrawled symbols as Mira recited, each stroke burning like acid. The parchment buckled. The writing spiraled red and black. Daisy’s vision swam; the ink seemed to sing.
Mira grabbed Daisy’s wrist, steadying her. “Now the seal.” She took the quill, pricked her own finger, and drew a dot in the spiral’s center.
The page ignited. The flame was cold, a blue tongue that licked the air and left nothing behind but a floating haze of motes—each one a messenger, a beacon. They drifted up, slow at first, then accelerated into the cracks of the cave ceiling, vanishing with a faint, crystalline chime.
Mira wiped Daisy’s brow, smearing a streak of blood and sweat across her face. “It’s done. Now we wait.”
Daisy paced the alcove, boots marking the fungus. She often glanced at her arms; the veins bloomed in inkblot whorls at every joint.
She tried not to think about Oliver. It didn’t work.
Their anticipation was short-lived. Within moments, the stillness of the alcove was broken by footsteps echoing in the distance, ushering in the arrival of the first respondent to their summons.
Cornelius arrived first. He slunk from the shadows, gaunter than Daisy remembered, a limp to his step and dried blood flaking the side of his face. The smile he gave her was a carnivore’s.
“You sent up quite a flare,” he said, then pointed at Daisy’s arm. “Looks worse than last time.”
Daisy flexed her hand, tried for a shrug. “You should see the other guy.”
He grunted. “We lost three families. Ironclaw took them at the pass.”
Daisy felt the news like a blow to the gut. A sudden, breathless ache swelled inside her. Faces flashed through her mind. Little Rena with her crooked smile. Old Tomas whispers songs to comfort the frightened. The twins who used to braid wildflowers into her own tangled hair. She remembered laughter in the tunnels. Now, silence. It tightened in her chest until she could barely breathe. Her hands began to tremble. She clenched them into fists to still the shaking. Their voices, gone. The loss hollowed her out. She forced her face blank. She swallowed down the urge to shudder or cry out.
Cornelius turned to Mira. “You got a plan?”
“She does,” Daisy said, before Mira could answer. “We break the chain. All the way.”
Cornelius’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded. “Good. I’m sick of running.”
Behind him, others emerged—maybe half a dozen, all that remained from their side. No kids. Daisy’s heart stuttered, then kept beating.
Next came Elder Fern, accompanied by Maribel.
Maribel looked worse than Daisy had dreamed. Her hair was gone, skull exposed. Her eyes were sunken, but awake. She walked alone, each step shuddering, nearly her last.
Elder Fern barely glanced at Daisy before turning to Mira. “You summoned?”
“We need you,” Mira said, voice gentler than Daisy had ever heard it.
Fern’s lips curled. “You always do, at the end.”
But it was Maribel who shattered Daisy’s defenses. Maribel’s eyes traced Daisy’s arms, her face, her neck; horror pinched every line of her mother’s face. Daisy shrank from the look, heat rising to her cheeks; in that awful instant, she wished she’d died in the tunnels instead of facing that gaze.
“Pesty,” Maribel whispered. “What have you done to yourself?”
Daisy tried to speak, but emotion locked her throat. Mira stepped in, hand steady on Daisy’s shoulder. “She’s saving us. All of us. It’s just… messier than we hoped.”
Elder Fern opened her palm, revealing the locket. It was Maribel’s locket, the chain now tarnished black. The preserved daisy petal inside throbbed with a sickly light. Legends said saints first plucked those petals, then wove them into silver and wore them during the old wars. They believed the petals formed a protective barrier against dark enchantments. The flower’s purity was said to counteract corruption. Some claimed the locket had been passed down from mother to daughter for generations, binding their fates. Now the ancient token, long believed a charm against darkness, seemed to pulse with something hungrier and stranger.
“The ancient petal grows restless,” Fern intoned. Her voice landed between prayer and warning. “It’s binding to her, now. There’s no time left.”
The petal pulsed; Daisy’s veins flared with it. She nearly vomited.
Maribel watched, silent, her hands twisting the locket chain.
Daisy knelt in front of her mother, close enough to see the old woman’s pain.
"I’m still me," Daisy said, her voice thin with doubt, hope, and fear tangled in her chest.
Maribel reached out, touched Daisy’s face with fingers that shook. “You always were, Pesty. Even when you lied about it.”
Daisy laughed—a jagged, brittle sound, quickly splintering into a sob she fought to swallow. Her shoulders shook, and she pressed a trembling hand to her lips to hold it back.
Fern and Mira set to work, scraping together rituals with their last magic. Cornelius prowled the perimeter, barking orders.
Daisy just watched her mother. Maribel never looked away.
Night fell. The fungus’s blue glow intensified, painting everything in ghostly hues. Daisy tried to rest, pain in her arms, head, and heart keeping her awake. She drifted, sometimes hearing Delia or Oliver’s voice, always just out of reach.
When the contact hit, it nearly knocked her out.
Daisy doubled over, clutching her skull. Panic exploded in her, breath catching. The pain wasn’t hers—this stabbed like ice in her eye, terror prickling her skin.
Oliver’s voice, inside her head: “Daisy. Listen.”
She gasped, tasted blood. “Ollie?”
“Got a focus crystal. Not much time. The Emperor’s coming. He wants your body, Daisy. Not your blood—your whole self.”
She saw Oliver chained to a wall, lips blue, grinning over the crystal. The Veilseeker’s hall thrummed behind him. At the center—a void in a man’s shape.
Oliver’s mental voice was ragged but determined. “He’s coming. He knows about the petal. He knows it’s you.”
Daisy tried to reach for him, but the pain tripled. Her vision went red. Then black.
“Don’t let them have you,” Oliver whispered.
The connection snapped. Daisy fell to her knees and vomited a stream of black onto the cave floor. The survivors looked on in horror, but Daisy barely registered it.
She wiped her mouth and forced herself upright, every muscle trembling, skin clammy. Inside, she felt scraped hollow, but somewhere beneath her ribs, where the chain sang a warning and a promise, she still quivered with fragile, shivering hope.
She would not let them have her.
Even if it killed her.