Chapter 44: Chapter 44: THE DAGGER ON THE WALL

VALORIA WILDEROSE

I stop and catch my breath, gasping painfully while being completely wet and soaked, forced back into the present.

I only now realize my tantrum and freak-out have taken me somewhere else: one of the many gardens on the castle grounds, the oldest, with large walls framing it in a circle covered with thick moss and vines.

It is abandoned and forgotten because of its age and because there is too much land on the castle grounds to maintain it all.

The storm rages on around me, relentless and unforgiving, as if the sky itself is mourning alongside me.

I lean against a wall to hold myself up, tripping instead on the muddy earth and falling on my knees and scratching them too.

“Fuck!” I swear under my breath, frustrated, tired, fed up.

When does this end? Will it end without me dying?

Maybe I should die. Maybe I should give in to my natural cowardice and just die. What am I living for anyway? Who would care if I die right now?

Why do I even want to live so badly?

Hot tears stream down my face, the rain trailing down my cheeks. I wail, painfully crying out loud, grateful for the thrashing thunder that drowns it all out.

I mourn my death and my rebirth and possibly the death that now awaits ahead of me as well. I cry until I’m numb and empty again before I can rise to my feet slowly.

The weight of everything crashes into me at once—the wedding, the kiss, his hands on my body, his tongue between my thighs, and then those red eyes promising violence if I didn’t leave.

Tired of being wet and beaten, I decide to retreat back into my room and hide away until it is over.

I rest against the wall to guide me up, pulling away until something insignificant catches my eye: a faint pop of color behind a wall of black and green in front of me.

I pause to look at it, pushing aside a few vines and branches to reveal more of something etched into the wall on the other side.

My curiosity spikes, and I have nothing better to do.

My only focus is clearing the wall in front of me, wiping the moss with my hands and nails, ignoring the pain and continuing like a compulsion, until a wide expanse of wall filled with old carvings and paintings is revealed underneath it all.

It could be just old random strokes and chips from when it was visible maybe a hundred years ago or more… but I get the strange nudge that it’s more than that the more I look at it and trace my fingers against it.

It’s too large and distinct, with figures that stretch across the canvas as if telling a story.

The first panel seems to be depicting war, fighting among wolves. Bodies strewn across a battlefield, blood painting the earth red.

The next panel shows two women, a goddess and a mortal, exchanging what looks like a dagger. The goddess’s hand extends downward, offering the weapon like a sacred gift. The mortal kneels, accepting it with reverence.

In the final one, the mortal woman runs it into the heart of a man writhing in agony, though I get the odd feeling that the pain is caused by something more.

She looks powerful, leading an army of wolves to victory, like a queen.

I linger on her longer, tracing the sketch of her, noting every detail about her down to the blade in her hand, and slowly something begins to click.

It looks just like the dagger the goddess had described, down to the red ruby embedded into the base of its hilt. Exactly what I’m looking for!

I gasp, staggering backwards on cue with the sudden rumble of thunder in the sky, as though reacting to my very first clue since setting foot into the Palace.

Just when I was losing hope and bracing myself for death once more, a beacon of hope; the blade bears a shadow of itself in my face, as if destiny itself is trying to tell me something.

That I can still do this. That I can kill Azrael.

The realization floods through me like warmth returning to frozen limbs. I am not powerless. I am not without purpose. There is a way, and I have just found the first thread to pull.

“Valoria?!”

I gasp from surprise, spinning around to face the new presence I had not noticed while being engrossed in my discovery.

My frantically beating heart calms the second I recognize her delicate, soft features, kind and beautiful from beneath her umbrella, even though they’re etched with worry while staring at me right now.

“Ca-Cal-liope…” I sigh with relief.

I’m grateful that it’s not him. If he’d followed me here and figured out what I’d seen, he might have killed me.

Her worried gaze only gets worse, looking at me from head to toe: barely covered, wet, and now muddy with bleeding feet and knees and broken nails.

I look like a horrifying mess, nothing like a new bride should look like, worse compared to her, who manages to shimmer in the dark.

“What are you doing here?”

“I… I-I,” my trembling lips move to speak, but no definite words come out to explain winding up here on a night I should be spending with the bastard to whom I’m married.

The cold, too, must have gotten in, with how I shiver more obviously.

“Forget it. You don’t have to answer right now…” she responds instead, scurrying to get me under her shade instead of getting her answer.

Her warm, slender arms wrap around me, offering her body’s warmth without a second thought.

“Let’s get you cleaned up first, okay?”

I can’t refuse her gentle coercion, or the care behind each word, even if I want to. It’s everything I need to remind myself of what I am.

Not a dog to be played with, nor a tool to kill the devil.

Just a girl trembling in the rain.

A girl who, for the first time since arriving at this godforsaken place, has a real lead. A real chance.

Tomorrow, I will search for more answers. Tomorrow, I will find out what this painting means and where the blade might be hidden.

But tonight, I let myself be cared for.

“Okay.”

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