7 Deadly Instincts (The Sinfire Chronicles Book 1)

It was two weeks later, and Gray couldn’t help but feel the minutes coming and going faster than usual. He took some pride in the fact that while other squads weren’t out on the training field when the uncertain weather turned bad, Squad 23 was, rain, snow, or shine. And during those couple weeks they had all three. It was like daily, the seasons would change, and at one point, during one of their long runs, he really thought the sun was trying to kill him.

He had to peel off the layers of clothes until he was running bare-chested, carrying his gear.

Lilian couldn’t keep her eyes off him, and of course, she had to comment. Mostly, it was to remind him how skinny and pathetic he’d once been, though now, she had to admit he was beyond impressive.

In truth, he’d never felt stronger. But it wasn’t his physical strength that made a difference. No. It was the fact that he walked with six other warriors, all at the peek of their conditioning. Walking in a group of five was vastly different than walking in a group of seven, and after the arrests, the seacow shit, and the attempted assassination, Settie was often with them.

Even though she was only one person, it felt like at least two more. Her hat did have a very wide brim and that cane generally had a ton of mana as well.

At one point, he talked with Settie about his encounter with Hama Hama Avarica at the chaos house, and how her squads all had the magic items. He asked her about her own magic items, and she just smiled. “Who says I need any?”

He had the idea she had some, but either she didn’t use them, or she wore them and kept them hidden. There had to enchantments to hide the true identity of things.

Settie was very impressed with how Gray had handled meeting one of the heads of the six Watchfire families, but she was as excited as he would’ve thought. She did have relatively nice things to say about Miss Hama, though in the end, it sounded more like how Pinch would describe her. She’s not an idiot. She won’t betray most of the time. And you had better be rich or on your way to riches, or you shouldn’t waste her time.

Settie spent hours with each of her recruits, talking about their abilities, offering tips, but mostly advising them to be patient with themselves. While Midj and Tomi were able to manifest their adept abilities some times, it wasn’t like they could count on them. Not yet. They weren’t full adepts and there was no guarantee they would master their new abilities until after the Training. Which was why they had a training in first place.

Settie also had to remind them that they had jumped almost three ranks in a mere matter of months. It was rare, but then, First Field did have a certain magic to it. Or it was the brutality and danger of death. Or maybe the ironbites. They were potent in the canteen.

Other schools around the Belly had similar results, but unless you were spending most days training and working on your core, it took most people years to advance.

Gray felt good about that, and he also had come to a decision on what adept ability he wanted. It was the only thing that made sense to him.

He hadn’t brought it up with Settie, yet, but he was sure she would agree.

On a particular warm day, with the snow melting and the rivers full, Gray pulled Settie aside. They were done training for the day and still trying to decide what to do for dinner. Half the squad wanted to get something in the market and eat at Ruin Manor, and the other half wanted to choke down food at the canteen and go to the pink palace’s library to study.

While they talked on the running path, Gray led Settie into a pavilion.

Settie was holding her mask and hat. Her eyes were bright, she was so relaxed, and she ever had a smile. Her squad had seven recruits. Things were good. “Have you come to tell me which ability you are trying to cultivate? I am ready to be impressed by your cleverness.”

“Not yet.” He leaned in close. “We need to take Tomi down into the Underdwell. We need for her to get used to it, but the only way that’s going to work, if you tell her the truth about your past. Maybe not about the Night of Sorrow and Wrath but with the Fall of Alastria. We know most of the story already. What’s a bit more? And why try to keep denying it?”

Settie’s whole expression changed. He watched the light go out of her eyes as she put up the walls. She didn’t need the mesh mask in her hand. Her scowl was mask enough.

“There it is,” Gray said. “There you go. The one battle we need you to fight, you’re not fighting.”

“Don’t speak to me like that.” Her voice was filled with venom.

Gray stepped closer to her. “I understand better all the things you’ve done for us. And I know I owe this life and all my magic to you, but for Tomi to fight this battle, you need to fight yours.”

Settie was breathing hard.

Gray knew he was playing with literal dragonfire. He’d seen her use any number of abilities back-to-back. It could go either way. It was up to her.

How strong was she?

Then she said the unexpected. “You’re right.”

Gray smiled. “I’m what?”

Her voice sounded choked and tears stood out from her eyes. “You’re right. I can’t tell you and Tomi everything, but I can talk about…Cassandra. Only, I called her Cassie. She…we.” She curled her hands into fists. “Let’s get her. Let’s do this right now. If we don’t, I might not have the courage. You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“I’m asking for bravery and truth. It’s what you want from us.”

She nodded. “Tomika Ka! Come here, please. You, Gray, and I are going for a little walk.”

* * *

Tomi stared down into the crypts. “Can we do this another time? I have a headache.”

The days were short, and so the sun was gone, and the crumbling steps lead down into stygian darkness.

Even with the tip of Settie’s cane glowing brightly, that darkness down there seemed like a living thing.

“Come. We need to show you what the Reckoning will feel like.”

Tomi looked like she might bolt at any minute. Or use her new mana weight ability to send them to the ground. Not that it would work.

Settie took Tomi’s hand. “I’ve been coy about my past for any number of reasons. If you walk down to the Colonnade Court with me, I will tell ou all about it.”

Tomi licked her lips. “But the magistrate…he can’t like this. Wouldn’t it be trespassing? No, we should get permission first.”

Settie actually laughed. “Let me deal with the consequences. After he nearly allowed Grist to kill our Lilian, I think he wouldn’t have much to say. And then there was that nasty business in the labyrinth. Trust me. It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine.” Tomi was sweating. “But just…be there with me. And talk to me. Tell me about Caelvarum.”

Settie lifted her cane for light, then reached back to make sure Tomi held her hand. Thus connected, they started down the crumbling steps. Gray followed.

Settie’s voice was ghostly. “I can’t talk about the mana we used. I swore an oath, though I have vague memories of telling you that the mana came from angels. That was true enough, but the love of the slut gods of old, please, don’t tell anyone. Or worse, write it down. Maybe you would want to write a history one day, Tomika. I beg of you not to.”

“Were you Dani Witherhand?” the cat girl asked in a shaky voice.

“Little Dani Witherhand. Yes. I was very small for a long time. My parents wanted nothing to do with me because they thought I would die. I was sick one winter, and they left out in the cold to die. But I made my way to the palace. It was luck, Tomika, that the kindly queen, Ylena herself, found me. Caelvarum was a beautiful but also a kind place. I was taken in that night. Otherwise, I would’ve died. Princess Cassandra was beautiful even then, at fifty years old, quite young as a dragon. I was only a decade, but I grew fast, and while I spent a dozen years in the kitchen, I was soon moved up to help the princess, and we became friends. She saw something in me that no one else had seen?”

“What?” Tomika asked.

“Potential.”

They approached the end of the hall where the gods and goddesses were. Settie touched the lust goddess’s breasts and channeled mana into the stone. The secret door slid to the slide with a great deal of grinding and dust.

Tomi was staring at Settie with wide eyes. “This is true. You’re not lying to me. This isn’t just to make sure I don’t leave the squad or go insane or give up. You are telling me the truth.”

“I am,” Settie said. “Come.”

Then they started down the steps.

“Gray!” Tomi yelped. “Are you behind me?”

“Yes,” he said in a soothing voice. “I’m here.”

“It’s too much. It’s too much, but I can’t stop. Keeping talking, captain. This is the only thing keeping my feet moving. I feel like my heart might burst out of my touch.”

Settie chuckled. “And that was how I felt when the princess first touched me. It was wrong. We both knew it. Of course, many used the servants in that way, and no one talked about it, but she was the princess. She was adored. And she had never, ever done anything like that with anyone. This was before him. Thraxis. Malchutt the Troublemaker.”

“She taught you everything?” Tomi asked.

“Everything. From love-making to magic to manners to politics. I was given a royal education by a beloved royal herself. She was adored. But then, so were her parents, Regnarum and Ylena Ultimata. A thousand years of peace and prosperity for most. Not my parents, but there are some unhappiness that money or power can’t fix. Beloved, I tell you. Caelvarum was the jewel of the world. It was my Malchutt wanted it destroyed.”

An eerie wind whistled from somewhere. There was a sudden chill.

“Maybe don’t say his name,” Tomi whispered.

Settie barked laughter. “Let him come. With you and Gray at my side, we’ll open him up. I would eat his heart raw and have him watch me do it. I would start killing him and never stop.” Her voice became a growl even as a final sob cut off her words.

When she spoke next, she sounded far calmer. "But he’s dead. Cassandra killed him. All that talk of Cassie destroyed the Wrath Tower to crack open the Weeping Well to see him again is idiocy.”

“Spread by fucking idiots,” Tomi laughed. “To quote our Pinch.”

“Precisely.”

They reached a landing and made the turn.

Tomi glanced back up at the steps that stretched up into darkness. Her eyes found Gray, and he nodded at her in support.

“We are so far from the sky,” she said. “But maybe it’s not so bad.”

Settie spun. “So I can stop with my stories? I would find that a very big relief.”

Tomi shook her head. “No, no, no, captain. It’s better than I would’ve thought because I’m not thinking about it. I’m thinking about you. So if you and Princess Cassandra were tight, how does Prince

Thraxis fit in?” Tomi chuckled. “I can’t believe I’m talking to someone who was friends with Princess Cassandra.”

“Not just friends,” she countered. “We were lovers.”

“Even better!” Tomi called out. “This whole sex thing is beyond me, and I don’t think I’ll ever understand it, but then, Beastkin handle all that very, very differently than the rest of the blood races. But if you mix sex and history? Maybe I see the appeal.”

Settie kept on walking down the steps, shaking her head. “You might be alone in your enthusiasm for I’m not sure anyone else would share such an interest.”

Tomi didn’t relent. “Maybe not as much as you’d think. Pinch likes the spicy stories that take place in the past. Historical romances can be very popular. But back to Prince Thraxis.”

The captain didn’t respond right away. Their footfalls echoed around them as they continued their descent.

Gray knew that Tomi was getting used to the idea of the Underdwell as a whole, and she was feeling better, and that she probably didn’t need the rest of Settie’s story to help her cope. However, he knew that it was important that Settie keep up

“Thraxis came from the eastern part of Alastria far from Caelvarum. He posed as a lesser prince of a rich family, and while my parents had never met him, he seemed so innocent and kind. Malchutt was many things but what he excelled at was manipulation. He could win your trust effortlessly. It really is rather shocking at how easily he became a part of our lives. He didn’t live in the palace—he said he didn’t want to intrude on our lives, but he was there everyday.”

“Where did he live then?” Tomi asked.

“With another rich family, rich and powerful, who leapt at the chance they might make connections with an eastern prince. Malchutt made it easy to accommodate him. He was all ease, comfort, and smiles. He’d spent millennia perfecting the perfect mask to fool mortals. I suppose I shouldn’t feel bad. He’d been able to dupe gods, let alone two randy girls looking to experiment with a boy.”

Tomi sighed. “Let’s not linger on the more, um, spicy bits of your story.”

Settie stopped and turned. “Agreed. Grayson doesn’t want to hear about my exploits a thousand years ago. Heavens, it has been that long. It sometimes doesn’t feel like it. Other times, it does. My social life hasn’t been as active as I would like of late. With a few certain exceptions.” She gave him a secret little smile.

Then, she realized how it might look to Tomi and whirled back around. “Yes, well. To continue. Malchutt made it seem like we seduce him.”

“What about bonding?” Tomi asked.

“Cassandra and I talked a great deal about that…with each other at first. We would kiss for hours, touch each other, walk the edge and then run. One night, we went too far, and suddenly, it had happened. We’d done it all and we weren’t bonded. Funny, I felt so sad. I was sure the princess would forever be a part of me and my life. Then I worried she had cast some magic to prevent us from bonding, but that wasn’t the case. It simply didn’t happen. We thought maybe we couldn’t bond, and so, we could free to do what we wanted with our new prince.”

She stopped talking for several long moments.

Gray knew how hard it was for her to share this story. It brought back a lifetime of wounds, ones she had kept to herself. He was pretty sure he and Tomi were the first person to ever hear this part of her story.

Settie cleared her throat. “Yes, well, suffice to say, Malchutt didn’t have a core. He pretended to have one, one so bright and powerful, that we could feel it. But he didn’t. He was a demon. Every cell had mana in it. We were a happy threesome for months. And maybe, those were the happiest months of my life. Malchutt made sure they were. I’d never felt so loved…so cherished and so powerful. I shot up the ranks from neophyte to acolyte to adept and beyond. It felt like there was nothing I could do.”

Again, a long silence.

“Until that night,” Tomi said.

“Until that night. I let Thraxis in, he murdered the king and queen in hopes of destroying the will of the dragons. But Cassandra fought him that night, even as Caelvarum burned, and in the end, she killed him, but he hurt her, hurt her terribly, terribly, and not just her flesh, but her soul. As long as Malchutt was alive, she had a purpose, but the minute she killed him, she let her insanity destroy her. she died from sorrow on the eastern shores, in the ruins of the eastern port city of Aurorion. All of her money and power was gone, and she lived nameless in a Children of Order temple even as her mind failed her. I suppose I could’ve visited her, but I was simply another refugee fleeing to the south. Of course, the stories have her dying in the battle or simply vanishing, but no, she died in the ruins of the continent she had tried to save but had ended up destroying herself.”

Gray knew that every word was true. And it hurt his heart.

“It’s one of my great sins, not going to the ruins of Aurorion to help take care of Cassie in those final days of her life. I couldn’t. Her parents were dead because of me. If I had not helped Malchutt into the palace, everything would’ve been different. All of history. I fled and maybe I never stopped fleeing.”

Her voice was so full of sadness that it wasn’t long before Gray had a lump in his throat.

Tomi turned to look at him with tears on her face.

There had been so much crying in his life, so many emotions, he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he still was.

He felt like he had to say something to Settie. “You’ve just made a start, captain. Telling us the truth. In the end, though, I think you’re wrong. It’s like you said, Malchutt duped gods. He would’ve found a way into the palace regardless. You were just the unlucky bastard he could use at the moment. As for Cassie in Aurorion, I think it’s time you forgave yourself for that. There has to be a statue of limitations for that amount of guilty. Let’s make it 998 years. So now you can forgive yourself. Cassie is long gone but you’re still around, still doing your best, to do…to do all the mysterious things that you won’t tell us about.”

Settie laughed but neither agreed nor disagreed. That little bit of laughter, however, showed her relief.

They reached the bottom, went through the crack in the wall, and stood in the vast underground room filled with all the columns.

Tomi looked around and the let out a whoop. “This place is huge! I don’t feel like I’m miles underground and being buried alive. That’s a relief!”

Then, unexpectedly, Tomi rushed into Settie’s arms and gave her a big hug. “But it was you, Settie. It was your story. Gray is right. It was so long ago that not even historians can agree what happened. Most people have never even heard of Little Dani Witherhand. You’re not her anymore.”

Settie stiffened but didn’t immediately shove the cat girl away. She awkwardly patted Tomi’s back. “No. No, I’m not.”

Gray stayed back. “What happened to your hand?”

The captain smiled sadly. “It was gift from Prince Thraxis, ancient magic that he swore was from Aurorion. But no, it’s demonic in nature. Many of the demonic mana enchantments deal with elements like rock or steel. He managed to reshape the flesh of my hand. It was just one more miracle during that happy time.”

She then pushed Tomi away. “And that is the full story. All true. Never doubt it. And don’t repeat a word of it…to anyone.”

Tomi laughed. “No one would believe me.” She then craned her neck to look at the ceiling lost in darkness with a smile on her face.

On their way out, Gray told Settie his idea for his adept ability.

To his absolute shock, she loved his idea.