Chapter 5: Devil's Bargain
The stable yard was a rectangle of churned mud and torchlight, bracketed by two long, low buildings. The three men from the tavern had the stable boy backed against a water trough, their broad shoulders blocking any escape. The lead man, the one with the crude chuckle, had a hand wrapped in the boy’s tunic.
“A half-elf woman,” he was snarling. “Black hair. You seen her?”
Malphius’s breath was a warm whisper against her ear, his body a solid presence pressed against her back in the confined space. “The big one first. The talker. Can you do something… quiet? Something that doesn’t involve opening a hole to the underworld?”
Maura didn’t answer. She was already reaching for the cold place inside her, the well of power that was both hers and Taerinil’s. It answered eagerly, a frigid tide that surged up from her core, making the air around her hum with a sub-audible thrum. The world sharpened. The scent of horse sweat and hay became acrid. The flicker of the torches seemed to slow.
She stepped out of the alley’s mouth.
The lead man saw her first. His eyes widened, then narrowed in triumph. “There!”
He never got another word out. Maura raised a hand, not in a dramatic gesture, but a simple, almost casual flick of her wrist. She didn’t speak a incantation. She simply willed it. The life in him was a bright, hot candle flame. She pinched it out.
A whispered necrotic curse, silent and invisible, hit him in the chest. It wasn't a blast; it was an infection. His skin greyed instantly around the point of impact, the discoloration spreading like spilled ink through water. He made a wet, gurgling sound, his hand releasing the stable boy as he clutched at his sternum. His knees buckled, and he crumpled to the mud, his body folding in on itself like a discarded puppet. The whole process took less than three seconds.
The stable boy screamed, a high, shrill sound of pure terror, and scrambled away into the shadows of a stall.
The remaining two men stared, stunned, at their leader’s rapidly decaying form. That moment of frozen shock was all Malphius needed.
He was a blur of motion. He didn’t run; he flowed. One moment he was beside Maura, the next he was within the second man’s guard. There was no flash of steel, just a brutal, efficient economy of movement. His left arm hooked around the man’s head, yanking it back to expose the throat. His right hand, holding a dagger she hadn't even seen him draw, did the rest. A sharp, precise cut. A gout of dark blood splashed onto the trampled earth, its metallic scent joining the stable's aroma.
The third man, younger than the others with a wispy beard, finally found his nerve. He fumbled for the sword at his hip, his eyes wild. “Witch! Demon-whore!”
Malphius was already turning, his body low, but Maura was faster. The cold power was singing in her veins now, intoxicating and demanding. She didn’t want to just kill him. She wanted to make a point.
She took a step forward, her emerald eyes flashing obsidian for a heartbeat, the pupils swallowing the irises whole. She pointed a finger at the sword he was still struggling to draw.
“Rust,” she whispered.
A wave of absolute decay radiated from her fingertip. It touched the steel of the blade first. A patina of orange and red bloomed across the metal, flaking away in chunks. The rot raced down the hilt, the leather wrappings crumbling to dust in the man’s grip. It touched his hand, and the skin shriveled and blackened, the flesh sloughing from the bone. He stared, dumbfounded, at the ruined stump of his sword and his decaying fingers, a silent scream frozen on his face.
Malphius ended it. He moved behind the man and delivered a single, powerful thrust between the ribs, into the heart. The man sagged, his horror finally ceasing.
Silence descended on the stable yard, broken only by the crackle of torches and the nervous whinny of a horse from within the stables. The air stank of blood, void, and fresh death.
Malphius straightened up, wiping his blade clean on the dead man’s tunic with a practiced motion. He looked at the first man Maura had killed, his body already looking days old. Then his gaze shifted to her. His stormy eyes were unreadable.
“Quiet,” he said, his voice flat. “You call that quiet?”
Maura let the cold recede, though it left a familiar, hollow ache in its wake. Taerinil’s satisfaction was a faint, smug presence in the back of her mind. “He didn’t scream.”
“No. He just… deflated.” Malphius walked over to her, his steps making no sound in the mud. He stopped too close, much like he had in the tavern booth, his presence both a threat and a challenge. “That’s new. The rust.”
“I’m full of surprises.”
“I’m starting to see that.” He reached out, not to touch her, but to gently brush a stray strand of her black hair from her face. The gesture was so intimate, so at odds with the carnage around them, that she flinched. “Your eyes. They go black.”
She batted his hand away. “Don’t.”
“Why? Does it cost you? Does it hurt?” He was probing, his professional curiosity overriding everything else.
“It costs,” she said shortly, turning away from the bodies. “We need horses. Now.”
He let her go, moving toward the stable doors. “Silverthorne. My name is Malphius Silverthorne. Since we’re apparently in this together, you should know what to yell when you’re angry with me.”
She almost smiled. Almost. “Maura,” she said, though he already knew. It felt different saying it now, an admission of something she couldn’t name.
“I know.” He disappeared into the stable, and she heard the soft, calming sounds he made to the agitated horses within.
She stood alone in the yard, surrounded by the men she had killed. The power’s aftertaste was always the same: a metallic bitterness on the tongue and a profound, cellular exhaustion. She looked at her hands, pale and steady. Tools. They were just tools. Like the magic. Like the demon who granted it.
Malphius emerged leading two sturdy-looking bays, already saddled. He tossed her the reins of the darker one. “Can you ride? Or does your demon carry you on wings of shadow?”
“I can ride,” she said, swinging up into the saddle. The leather creaked under her weight.
He mounted his own horse in one fluid motion, gathering the reins. He looked back at the bodies, then at the town sleeping around them. “They’ll send more. Better ones.”
“I know.”
“That ‘he’ you mentioned. The thorough one. We’ll need to talk about him.”
“I know that, too.”
He nudged his horse forward, moving from a walk to a canter in a few strides. Maura dug her heels into her bay’s flanks, urging it to follow. They thundered out of the stable yard and onto the north road, leaving the torchlight and the dead behind, the cold moon their only witness. The wind whipped her hair around her face, and for the first time in a long time, she wasn’t running alone. The thought was as terrifying as any curse.
The horses ate up the dark road, their hooves a frantic drumbeat against the packed earth. Maura leaned low over her bay’s neck, the wind stealing the warmth from her skin and whipping her hair like a banner. She didn’t look back at the dying torchlight of the town, focusing only on the dark shape of Malphius ahead, a guide into the deeper blackness.
They rode until the horses’ flanks were lathered and their breath plumed in the sharp, cold air of the foothills. The moon, a sharp sliver of bone, provided just enough light to see the trail winding up through skeletal trees. Malphius finally slowed his mount to a walk, then halted in a small clearing where a rocky outcrop offered some shelter from the wind.
“We rest here,” he said, his voice rough from the ride. He swung down from the saddle with a soft grunt, his movements still fluid but carrying a new weight. “They won’t trail us in the dark. Not after that.”
Maura dismounted, her legs trembling slightly from the sustained tension and the magic’s drain. The cold emptiness inside her was a hollowed-out gourd. She led her horse to a patch of scrubby grass, her back to him. “You say that like it’s a guarantee.”
“It’s an assessment.” She heard the soft sound of him uncorking a waterskin. “Those weren’t trackers. They were blunt instruments. The first wave, meant to scare or overwhelm. The next one will be different.”
He came to stand beside her, offering the skin. The water was clean and cold, washing the metallic taste of power from her mouth. She drank greedily.
“Your eyes are back to green,” he observed, his tone casually clinical. “Does it always leave you this pale?”
“It’s not a parlor trick, Malphius.” She handed the skin back, her fingers brushing his. “There’s a cost. It draws from… me. From what makes me alive.”
“And the demon? What does it draw from him?” He wasn’t looking at her; he was scanning the tree line, ever the professional. But the question was a needle, precisely aimed.
“Amusement, mostly.” The words were out before she could stop them, bitter and true. “He finds my struggles entertaining. The price is his attention.”
Malphius was silent for a long moment. The only sounds were the horses cropping grass and the sigh of the wind through pine needles. “The man who is thorough. The one who sends assassins and then men to clean up the mess. Does he find this entertaining, too?”
A knot tightened in her stomach. She wrapped her arms around herself, the fine wool of her dress suddenly insufficient against the night’s chill. “His name is Alaric. He was my mentor's other pupil.” She hadn’t meant to say that either. The isolation of the night, the shared violence, was pulling the truth from her like a toxin.
Malphius turned to face her fully now, his grey eyes capturing the faint moonlight. “Your in what? The grifting or...?”
“Magic.” The admission was a stone dropped into a still pond. “He taught me the first words that could make the dead listen.”
“What happened?”
“He thought my potential was being wasted on small summonings. He had grander plans. A different use for my… talents.” She could feel Taerinil stirring at the memory, a cold current of recognition. “I was easily manipulated. He framed me as a monster as a way to steal my family's wealth and lead us to ruin.” She explained, the memory aching. "We used to be a proud and wealthy family that ran Balmere until Viktor came along. Because of him, my father was executed and my mother, full of grief killed herself shortly after. And I was painted to be a wanted criminal."
The confession hung in the cold air between them, raw and unfinished. Malphius didn’t speak. He just stood there, a tall shadow against the deeper black of the pines, his silence more unnerving than any question. The wind picked up, cutting through her dress with a razor’s edge, and she shivered violently.
He moved then, a shift of fabric as he shrugged out of his long coat. Without a word, he stepped forward and draped the heavy, leather-scented garment over her shoulders. The residual warmth from his body was a shock, an intimacy that felt more invasive than his knife had.
“So he made you a monster to cover his own,” he finally said, his voice low. “And then he sent me to clean up the loose end.” He let out a short, humorless breath that fogged in the air. “Efficient.”
“That’s one word for it.” She pulled the coat tighter, the weight of it a strange comfort. “He owns the city guard now. The magistrates. I’m a story parents tell to scare their children.”
“And the demon? Where does he fit into this tragic tale?” He leaned against the rocky outcrop, crossing his arms. The casual posture didn’t match the intensity in his eyes.
“Taerinil found me when there was nothing left.” She looked away, into the trees where the shadows seemed to pulse. “I was living in a graveyard, eating scraps. He offered me a way to stop being the victim. A way to fight back.”
“By turning you into this?” He gestured vaguely at her, at the memory of the crumbling sword and the grey-tinged corpse in the stable yard. “A weapon that bleeds its wielder?”
“It’s better than being dead.” Her voice was sharp, defensive. “You think I wanted this? You think I enjoy feeling this… this cold emptiness where my soul should be?”
“I think you’re used to it.” He pushed off from the rock and walked to his horse, pulling a rough-woven blanket from a saddlebag. “And I think you’re lying to yourself if you believe that thing only wants to help.”
He tossed her the blanket. It was coarse and smelled of horse, but it was another layer against the chill. “We should get a few hours of sleep. I’ll take first watch.”
She didn’t argue. The exhaustion was a lead weight in her bones. She settled with her back against the rock, the blanket over her legs, his coat still wrapped around her shoulders. She could still smell him on it—steel, leather, and the faint, clean scent of soap. It was disturbingly human.
Malphius sat a few feet away, a whetstone already in his hand, quietly drawing his dagger across it. The rhythmic shhh-click, shhh-click was the only sound besides the wind. She watched his hands in the moonlight, the practiced, sure movements. These were the hands that had held a knife to her ribs, that had cut a man’s throat without a second thought, that had just offered her his coat.
“Why did you really let the contract go?” she asked, her voice drowsy.
The sharpening stopped. He was silent for so long she thought he wouldn’t answer. “I don’t kill for politicians,” he said finally, the words clipped. “And I don’t kill for liars. My employer failed on both counts.”
He resumed his work. Shhh-click. Shhh-click. “And you were… unexpected.”
Sleep pulled at her, a dark tide. The last thing she felt was the phantom touch of obsidian claws in her mind, a possessive stroke from the darkness that watched, and waited, and was not pleased.
A hand clamped over her mouth, jolting her from a dreamless sleep. Her eyes flew open to pre-dawn grey. Malphius was crouched over her, his face inches from hers, his other hand holding a finger to his lips. His expression was pure, focused alarm.
She nodded, her heart hammering against her ribs. He slowly removed his hand.
“Horses,” he breathed into her ear, his voice barely a vibration. “A lot of them. On the road below.”
She was instantly awake, the cold clarity of fear washing away the last dregs of exhaustion. She could hear it now—the distinct, organized sound of multiple riders moving at a steady pace, the jingle of tack carried on the wind. It wasn't a search party. It was a patrol.
“How long?” she whispered, already gathering the blanket and his coat.
“Few minutes. They’re moving with purpose.” He was on his feet, swiftly and silently saddling his horse. “They know we came this way.”
“The stable boy,” Maura said, the pieces clicking together with a sickening certainty. “He saw my eyes. He talked.”
“Or they just have a competent tracker who noticed two sets of fresh hoof prints leaving a town with three fresh corpses.” He tossed her the bay’s saddle. “Either way, we need to be gone. Now.”
They worked in frantic, silent tandem. The comfortable intimacy of the night was gone, replaced by the sharp urgency of the hunt. As she tightened the girth, a wave of dizziness washed over her, the hollow ache from her magic use still present. She gripped the saddle to steady herself.
Malphius saw it. His gaze was a physical weight. “Can you ride? Really?”
“I don’t have a choice, do I?” She swung up into the saddle, her muscles protesting.
He mounted up beside her, his eyes scanning the steep slope above them. “The road is a death trap. We go up. Through the trees.”
He didn’t wait for an agreement. He kicked his horse forward, angling it up the rugged incline. Maura followed, her bay scrambling for purchase on the loose scree. They pushed into the thick pine cover, branches whipping at their faces and snagging on their clothes.
Below, through the lattice of trees, she saw them. A column of a dozen riders in polished mail, their banners a splash of color against the grey morning. City guard. Alaric’s personal hounds.
A shout echoed up the slope. They’d been seen.
“Go!” Malphius yelled, no longer concerned with stealth.
He urged his horse into a reckless gallop, weaving through the tight-packed trunks. Maura leaned low, trusting her horse to follow his. Arrows thudded into trees around them, one whistling past her ear so close she felt the wind of its passage.
They broke onto a rocky ridge, the world opening up below them. The patrol was strung out along the road, but several riders had already broken off and were starting up the slope after them. There were too many. The horses were tired. They were boxed in.
Malphius reined in hard, his horse skidding on the stone. He looked from the advancing riders to the sheer drop on the other side of the ridge. His face was a mask of cold calculation, but she saw the flicker of grim acceptance. There were no good choices.
Maura felt it then—a familiar, icy pressure building in her skull. Taerinil’s presence uncoiled, vast and impatient.
You toy with these insects while the true predator circles, the voice echoed, not in her ears, but in the marrow of her bones. Let me in. Let me end this.
“No,” she whispered, her knuckles white on the reins.
You are weak. You are tired. He will die for your sentiment. Is his life worth your pride?
She looked at Malphius, at the set of his jaw as he drew his sword, preparing for a futile last stand on a forgotten ridge. He had offered her his coat. He had called his employer a liar.
“Maura!” Malphius shouted, his voice tight. “Whatever you’re thinking, now would be the time!”
The cold surged, sweet and terrible and offering everything. Her vision darkened at the edges. She closed her eyes.
And she let go.
A wave of absolute silence rolled out from her. It wasn't a sound, but a cessation of it. The wind died. The shouts of the men below choked off. The world seemed to hold its breath.
When she opened her eyes, they were pools of solid, light-devouring obsidian.
She didn't raise her hands. She simply looked at the advancing riders. The lead horse screamed, a sound of pure animal terror, and reared. Its eyes had melted into viscous black streams down its face. The rider was thrown, his own scream cut short as the flesh of his arms sloughed from the bone, not from decay, but from a fundamental unraveling.
She turned her head, a slow, deliberate sweep of that terrible gaze. Where it fell, things simply came apart. Leather straps dissolved into dust. Mail rings popped and scattered like beads. A man’s shout became a wet gurgle as his teeth liquefied in his mouth.
It wasn't a fight. It was an erasure.
Malphius watched, utterly still, his sword hanging forgotten in his hand. His face was pale, his stormy eyes wide with something that was not fear, but a kind of dreadful, reverent horror.
As quickly as it came, the power receded, snapping back into the hollow core of her. The silence broke, replaced by the panicked whinnies of unhorsed guards and the moans of the wounded. The attack had shattered.
Maura swayed in her saddle. A thin trickle of blood ran from her nose, hot against her cold lip. The world swam, grey and indistinct.
She felt Malphius’s horse press against hers. His hand shot out, gripping her arm to steady her. His touch was the only solid thing in a universe of vertigo.
“What…” He swallowed, his voice rough. “What did you do?”
She tried to answer, but her tongue was leaden. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth. Behind her eyes, Taerinil’s satisfaction was a glacier, slow and crushing.
“Maura?”
The world tilted sideways. The last thing she knew was the grip of his hand on her arm, holding her fast, as the darkness rushed up to claim her.