The tower they locked him in belongs to a dilapidated fortress. It has no roof and Séraphin can look straight up into the sky. The way into the tower’s interior is through an arched doorway with no door and from what he can gather from the time they’d brought the spinner in, a staircase leading to the lower floors of the fortress.

The dark sky above is velvet dark and there is lingering scent of damp in the air beneath the stink of the spinner.

Séraphin is very clear on why they have put him in here.

The useless bastards who drugged him want him dead. Either by exposure to sunlight or by having him and the creature they locked in here with him turn on each other.

He’s only seen a spinner once before. It had been an adult and bonded, so it hadn’t looked as unpleasant as this one.

An unbonded spinner is a dead one. Like any good parasite, it needs a host to survive.

This one, watching him quietly and with greedy eyes, is young and will die soon if it doesn’t get itself a host. If it gets desperate enough, or is stupid enough, then it might try to attach itself to him but that wouldn’t end very well. A spinner’s host must bond willingly, or the rejection of the bond will kill the spinner just as fast.

Not that Séraphin is in a much better state. The only available source of food is sitting across from him, and its blood is poison.

He looks up at his bound shrivelled hands. His skin has become sallow and currently resembles leather.

It’s harder to measure time here with only a brief intrusion of the sun after months of unending darkness. Even then it only lasts for a few hours here. But just a brief moment of exposure is all it will take.

He can feel it approaching now, the nearness of it making his hair stand on end.  

It takes at least forty odd human realm days to get him to this state. So he has been away from his court at least that long.

My court has become quite bold, he thinks.

There’s no one else other than his court that could have gotten close enough to him to drug him. Drug him and hand him over to the demons who brought him into the Fade.

Yes. Very bold.

He thinks he’ll start with their canine teeth. Those lovely little pointed fangs. Pull the upper ones first and then the bottom ones. And then perhaps he’ll pull out all the rest. Hmm. Yes. Beautiful.

Enemies are something he is not short on and it’s natural that some of the vampires in his court would eventually decide to try and get the upper hand. Vampires are creatures of exceptional greed and cunning; they’re not known for their loyalty.

It may have a little something to do with Séraphin massacring the entire vampire coalition in Paris and establishing his own court.

The original four courts must have celebrated, having finally found someone close enough to him to sell him out.

Séraphin has had a long time to think it over. He’s come to the conclusion that it is someone in his inner circle. Which is a small, small circle.

His consorts, his conseiller and his enforcers. Five vampires.

But which one? Perhaps it all of them.

Unluckily for them, the demons they handed him to hadn’t dared to kill him themselves and instead put him in here to let the sun or the spinner do it for them. Though the spinner is a more recent addition.

Pity he doesn’t plan on cooperating. They should have killed him while he’d been knocked out.

He’s weakened, yes, but he’s dealt plenty of damage in a worse state.

The first thing he’ll do when he leaves this place is soak in a long bath, remove this stench from his body. Although it’s hard to beat the smell peeling off the spinner. It’s as if rotten eggs have been stuffed into every corner of the tower’s interior.

Séraphin glances down at his hair where it is spilled over his chest. The long black strands pooling in his lap are brittle and greasy and a displeased moue shapes his peeling lips at the current state of it. Even his emerald silk satin banyan is ruined.

Just then he feels a shiver of awareness in the corner of his mind.

Ah. Good. His patience has paid off.

The sounds of small delicate wings sound above his head a few seconds later. The foreign sentience unfurls and a familiar connection clicks into place.

He glances up as the crow swoops down and for a moment, his vision doubles.

He sees himself and the spinner from the top of the tower. Sees the state of his face, sunken and corpse like, surrounded by the dirtied swathes of his banyan.

He closes his eyes, breathing deeply as he feels the blood lust surge, scarlet and near all consuming.

The crow lands on Séraphin’s knee and perches there, patiently.

Séraphin opens his eyes, and it cocks its head at him. A long, thin, silver hairpin with a shimmering ruby stone at the end is clasped in its beak.

‘Bravo petit oiseau,’ he murmurs, voice ruined by the dried tissue of his throat.

Like most vampires, he has a familiar. Whereas most only have one or two at the most, he’d been quite enamoured of a little murder of crows. Intelligent birds. They remember well those who wrong them and they have the most beautiful wings. So he’d created a bond with them all.

Séraphin lives for beautiful things.

Unfortunately, their connection muted as the moment Séraphin was pulled into a different realm. Muted but not closed.  He’d known they would find him eventually.

And one has. Smart little thing.

The spinner is looking at the crow with wide, hungry eyes.

Séraphin motions up with a jerk of his chin, and the crow beats its wings, making Séraphin’s hair billow away from his chest before settling again. Delicately, the crow places the pin in his upturned palm.

The chain and cuff on his wrist rankle together as he shifts the pin so it’s at the angle he needs to reach the lock tethering his cuffed wrists to the wall. His neck strains as he keeps his gaze on his hands. The silver of the cuffs is rusted, but silver is still silver, and he feels it singe the skin of his wrists anew with each shift.

At least his hunger has counted for something.

His muscles have shrivelled without his usual sustenance and it allows him to push them through the cuffs further and manoeuvre better.

His shoulders, already a knot of sore muscles from how long he has been sitting in this position, protest the new activity and his fingers tingle as what little useful blood remains in his body is forced into circulation as he picks the lock.

This brings back old memories.

The crow settles once again on his knee, watching his ministrations with shiny eyes.

A minute later the lock gives. He pulls his hands down and the chains run through the loops of the cuffs until his hands are free. He can’t do anything about the cuffs themselves right now but he can deal with those later. He can put up with the burning metal for a while longer. He deals with worse pain quite regularly. His skin will heal perfectly as soon as he has his next drink.

With a sigh, he braces a hand against the cold, rough wall. The crow flies up to settle on his shoulder instead.

The spinner remains curled into a ball, gaze never faltering.

‘Well. I guess you’ll die here,’ Séraphin sneers, ‘a kindness to the world, I’m sure.’

He turns his back on it and heads for the door, banyan trailing behind him in the wake of his bare footed steps.

His body feels overly heavy and stiff and he can’t move with the ease with which his body is capable of. Not with the drug still in his system and when he’s malnourished to this extent.

But the sun is on its way, perhaps half a day away, and he needs to reach the gate to the Boundary before then.

Besides, the tips of his nails are tingling with the need to tear a body to shreds and he knows all the demons will be outside.

Let’s see if they can take him down now that he is alert.

He slips into the pitch black of the fortress’ interior and begins his descent.

*

From his room, Nulla hears Hope speak to the last remaining choir member, thanking them for coming.

His senses are starting to settle back into their usual levels, and his hearing has sharpened even further, allowing him to follow the conversation of the young mediators leaving, even beyond the sanctuary’s walls. They have no idea they almost came face to face with a Demon Lord today and there’s no need for them to know how close they got.

From what Hope said, there’s been a lot of progress made in how people view the sanctuary during his sleep, he doesn’t want anything ruining the hard work that’s been done.

They’ll definitely have to fortify the wards.

He pulls on a loose hooded jumper. He doesn’t remember this. Ignácio must have bought him new clothes at some point. He likes the looseness of it, he thinks, as he shrugs his shoulders experimentally. It’s easy to move in. Same for the baggy trousers with their multiple pockets.

He’s taking a small box from the last drawer—an old antique lacquered box that had been gifted to him a very long time ago—when Hope appears outside his door, her face pale.

‘Were they okay?’ he asks.

‘Yeah,’ she nods and folds her arms across her chest, ‘they didn’t even notice anything was wrong. They thought I was just in there listening in on their rehearsal.’ 

‘That’s good.’ 

‘Are you sure the demon isn’t coming back?’ she asks. ‘I felt it when it touched sanctuary grounds,’ she tucks a stray hair nervously behind her ear, ‘I don’t think my wards would be enough to hold something like that back.’ 

Nulla hasn’t entirely recovered from the shock of seeing Evangelo’s face after centuries. 

He hasn’t seen them since the day he was cast down from the Veil. Evangelos hadn’t been at Nulla’s trial. They had already disappeared from the Veil by then, willingly becoming a Fallen.

That was as much as Nulla had been told. Till this day he still doesn’t know why Evangelos had done that.

They had fully transitioned into a demon and become a Demon Lord. It makes sense. Celestials, even when Fallen, remain powerful beings. It makes sense that that power might be enough to turn them into something even more dangerous than a mere demon.

Evangelos’ fate is the one Nulla is still fighting off to this day.

If a Celestial falls, the call begins. Whispers. They tug at the mind, slowly taking you by the hand to pull you step by step toward the Fade.

The long stretches of sleep have kept him from the worst of it so far.

But tonight, somehow, Evangelos who had long ago turned demon, resurfaced. And they had come to Nulla.

Darsha. She’s in the Fade.

Darsha.

The memory of her has never lost its shape. Her wide, diabolical smile, and the waves and waves of dark hair that she’d always gathered into her hand when she was nervous. She’d never been able to hold it all, and it always trailed behind her.

She died. Nulla fell.

He still remembers her eyes, reddened and dull, staring at him with her mouth sealed as they’d ripped out his celestial core.

Then he’d watched her die.

‘Nulla?’ Hope prompts.

‘They won’t,’ he says, and looks over his shoulder to give her a reassuring smile, ‘they came for me.’

She nods but it’s a little distracted as she realises he’s gotten dressed. ‘You’re heading out?’

Nulla nods. ‘Evangelos told me something... I need to check if it’s true. And I want to find out where Ignácio has gone, find out more about what’s been going on.’ He glances out the window. The night is getting on, and he needs to hurry.

‘Evangelos?’ she asks, confused.

‘The Demon Lord.’

‘You know them?’

‘I’m sorry, but I’ll have to explain later.’ 

He sets the box on top of the dresser and opens it.

‘Okay. But are you sure going anywhere right now is wise? I mean, you just woke up and also just fought off a demon. Shouldn’t you… I don’t know, rest?’ she says, eyebrows furrowing.

Probably, he thinks. But in the little time since he awakened a celestial has died somewhere, he’s found out that Ignácio is missing, and then Evangelos appears telling him that Darsha is in the Fade. He needs information.

‘I’ll be fine,’ he reassures her.

He reaches inside the box for the pendant nestled inside it. It’s thin as sewing thread and hard to see, but, under the weak light of the bedside table lamp, it shimmers.

Nulla carefully picks it up and slides it into a small pouch with a crude thread. He cinches it closed and ties it around his neck before tucking it beneath his clothes.

Now he just needs his weapons.

‘Okay. So where are you going?’ she asks.

He looks at her.

‘The Night Market.’

Author's Note:
1. Translation: Well done little bird.