Melchior had spent years in a basement. So, in some twisted way, it felt fitting to return to one. Buried alive, right where he belonged. The chains were heavy reminders of wax-wings and suns. That those who didn't know their own limits ended up in graves.

Every memory of his time spent above the tunnels of New York came as another scar etched into his skin. Next to his tattoo, that was where he kept the warmth of the sun, the smell of the pine, the wash of the lake. And him. Everything about him. 

Melchior took it from the shelves of his mind and put it into boxes, sealed and stored far away. It was too painful to do anything else with the fading fondness of their weeks together. He couldn't bring himself to look at them. It was difficult to separate the water from the oil. Tangled up in the scent of his lavender skin was the feeling of his slick blood welling up around the punctures Melchior had driven into his beating chest. He'd tried to kill him

Maybe he had--no one would tell him anything--but he couldn't fathom that possibility, not even to torture himself. Melchior didn't know much. Not how much time had passed, not his impending punishment, not the whereabouts of his brother--not even if he'd killed the most important person in the world. 

He bowed his head and waited in the dark. There was nothing to pass the time. No sounds dared drift to him. Sleep evaded him. Hunger plagued him, thirst nagged him. Melchior shifted from his position on the dirt floor, stretching out his legs as far as the iron chains shackled around his ankles would allow. 

His elbow twinged, forcing a small wince and glance of acknowledgment at the IV tube placed under his skin. The drip bag was full of saline and monkshood, feeding directly into his shivering corpse. 

Melchior pushed his back against the brick walls of the dark room, tensing himself into an awkward sitting position. It was the best he could manage with his arms held aloft at the wrists. He stared listlessly at the domed ceiling, imaging that the spots dancing across his vision were glittering stars filling an ink-black night. 

Melchior's eyes rolled across the room, but no matter where he looked, his sky lacked a guiding light. There was no Polaris to be found in the prison beneath New York. He squeezed his eyes shut, chasing away the waves of dizziness threatening to consume him. 

And he waited. For countless more days, for many more sleepless weeks. For hours, for years, or maybe for no time at all. It was all glass-thin in his mind, and it had already begun forming spiderweb cracks. 

Everything became mud-thick, endless rolling seconds--until he came. Melchior had never been so glad to see another person. Even if it was the one he least wanted to see. He wished it had been Ira, he wished it had been Ishmael. He would have even taken a visit from Ailbe Damianos. 

Why did it have to be him?

The metal doors screeched, filling the domed capsule Melchior was chained in with an ear-splitting rattling. His footsteps barely registered as aftershocks amongst the chaos. Melchior swallowed his wince and forced his wolfish eyes up to the opened door. At the figure lingering there. His heart thudded painfully in his ribs, his throat tensed until he thought he might choke. 

He wasn't ready. Not for this. Melchior snapped his eyes to the side, past the man there, to look beyond the brick of his cell. He'd seen nothing since Lake Seneca. He didn't know what purpose the information would come to. An escape? Unlikely. Even in the best of conditions, with no one but Ira watching over him, he'd chosen to stay on the path fate decided for him. 

But was this still fate? Tied up in a jail cell--was that his choice? No, obviously not. So, maybe he had to divert himself back to his original destiny. For that end, and the attempt to discourage the man from speaking first, he looked behind the stiff outline of his visitor's black and red cloak. 

It was anticlimactic. There was nothing but a dim hall constructed of the same materials as his cell. Dirt floors, crumbling stone brick walls. Minimal lighting. The only illumination came from orange torches lined down the ancient walls in metal sconces. Was there a castle in New York? A long forgotten dungeon? Or had they snuck him into an unused stage to some gladiator show? The crumbling infrastructure around him was miles from the pearl-polished white halls of the Progeny's base. 

"Do you plan to ignore me?" The Archbishop asked stiffly. 

"Yeah, pretty much." Melchior muttered. His dry throat cracked, forcing up words that sounded minced and chewed on. 

The man sighed and dragged his fingers through his short curls. "Still so childish, Melchior." 

"Sorry to disappoint, father." Melchior offered, weakly attempting to shrug his shoulders. Which was harder than he thought it would be. He'd never tried to shrug with his arms suspended over his head before.

He wished he looked more dignified. He was sure he looked dirt-covered and half-dead. He would have liked to stand, to puff his chest, and to glare down at his father with his glittering green eyes--but he couldn't. Because, no matter the complex tangled up web inside of him, there was something else, too. There was a monster under his ribs that fed off his rage. And he wouldn't have even if he could have. He tensed his fingers into fists and blew a breath from his nose. 

The Archbishop sighed, too. He pressed his fingers against his eyelids and shook his head. "Melchior, I'm not. . . disappointed." 

No, he figured he wouldn't have been. Melchior wasn't worth the attention it took to be disheartened. His heart flipped in the tight space behind his ribs before he caught it and shoved it back down into carefully collected calmness. 

"I'm sorry that it's me." Abraham Brisbane said.

Melchior winced, "why?"

Why was he sorry that he'd come? Aside from the nurses to refill his veins with poison, the guards to check his bindings, no one had come. Not Ishmael, not Ailbe. Abraham Brisbane was the only. And he was sorry for making the effort? Did he regret it? 

It stung--but Melchior wished that it didn't. He wished that he could scoff, roll his eyes, and play pretend. Be just another make-believe toy soldier, perfectly molded plastic, all arranged in a line with stiffened spines and scowling expressions. 

"I'm sure. . . you don't want to see me." Abraham guessed. 

Melchior furrowed up his eyebrows. Looking at his father had always filled him with a sense of guilt. One that not even fleeing from his own flesh could free him from. But for a different reason than what his father might have assumed. It wasn't the fear, echoed in his father's pittering heart. It wasn't the disgust crinkled into the corners of his grim sneer. It wasn't even the curiosity in his eyes, peeling back the layers of Melchior's skin trying to decide at which level he became less than human.

It was the indifference. 

It was knowing that when their eyes met, Abraham felt nothing. That Melchior was nothing. Just another of his children. Not the oldest. Not the most skilled with a blade. Not the best shot. Not the smartest, or the quickest, or the bravest. Melchior was just there. Another chair pulled up to the table. Another bedroom down the hall. He was just another pair of shoes left by the door. 

That was what he feared most. That was what diverged his gaze down to the torn edges of his own pant legs--anywhere but at his father. Who regretted that he'd came. Who wished it was someone else.

"I haven't seen you since. . . well, Ishmael was always better at handling your condition. Your mother wanted to come, too, but the Cardinal forbid them. Said he couldn't trust them right now." Abraham mumbled. 

"Mom wanted to see me?" Melchior whispered horsely. It didn't seem real, or possible. 

"Of course she did, Melchior." Abraham said. "She's your mother." 

"No," Melchior whimpered. "No, she's not. She said--I heard her. She said I wasn't her son. She called me a mongrel--a-"

"I know." Abraham said. He pressed his palms against his face. "I'm so sorry, son. It should have never happened like that. We knew what you were. Even if to different degrees. The day Ishmael brought you home, half-dead and only twelve-years-old, we both reached our conclusions. It was easier to distance ourselves. It was easier to be cruel than to willingly embrace the idea of our baby being the sacrifice we'd been praying for." 

"Take a look, father." Melchior grit between his clenched fangs, "did it work? Am I your monster?"

Abraham shook his head. "You're my son." 

"What else?" Melchior asked. But he knew. He'd known since the day it happened.

"You're the Cursed Boy." He whispered. "And neither will ever change." 

"Why did you come?" Melchior asked. 

Abraham shut his brown eyes, bowing his head in silent consideration. Melchior recognized those eyes more than he did his own. For the first eleven years of his life, he'd had the same pair. Until he became something else. Until he became less than human. A man with sharp teeth and glowing eyes. Or, a monster with only fur and fury. 

"Only to say that we, your mother and I, are so sorry," he whispered, "and that, more than anything, we love you, Melchior." 

Melchior couldn't speak around the knot forming in his tensed throat. He could hardly breath at all. Those words--those stupid meaningless words--he'd longed for them more than he'd ever realized. 

"You're sorry?" Melchior choked. "You love me?"

"It was wrong. Sending you away--letting Ishmael take you." Abraham shook his head. "We were cowards." 

"Wait," he scoffed, "that? You came to apologize--of all things--for sending me to live with Ailbe?" 

Abraham blinked. He looked as surprised as Melchior felt. "Ishmael told us he kept you in a cellar."

"I turn into a three-hundred pound dog." Melchior muttered sarcastically. "It was the best place for me. You're talking about it like I was just a prisoner of war, but Ailbe cared for me. He was there." 

Abraham scrunched up his thick eyebrows and ran his palms down his face. "What is that suppose to mean, Melchior? Of course he was there--he was keeping you in control." 

"No!" Melchior shook his head. "I mean he was actually there! He taught me how to make the perfect cup of tea. He shared his favorite books with me. We went on walks when the weather was nice. He told me stories about his Deacon days. Everything I know about the world outside of this city--I know because he showed me. What berries are safe to eat, how to find water, the best shelter." 

"You're. . . upset? Over what? Your mother and I not teaching you how to survive a bear attack?" Abraham asked, quirking his eyebrows. 

"You could have taught me anything! Nothing! I didn't care. I just wanted your attention. I just wanted my mother to be there waiting when I got home from school. I wanted my father to scold me for staying out too late. I wanted you to worry, to be proud, to be angry, to be curious about me. Angels, I'd pray that something I did would make you disappointed enough to just look at me!" 

Melchior knew he sounded childish, but it didn't matter. Laying in his cot beneath Ailbe's cabin, waiting for the monster to release it's hold of his fragile heart, he'd had a lot of time to think. He'd dreamed of this moment. Of facing his father and finally forcing his hand.

He just didn't think that it would have really ever happened. 

Abraham was still. He was silent. Well, except for the racing pitter-patter of his heart. The seconds churned on, filling Melchior's keen ears with whirring radio static. Finally, he sighed. His shoulders slumped beneath his black robes and a look of utter defeat filled his brown eyes.

"I didn't know you felt so. . . ignored." He said. "Melchior, you were never insignificant to me." 

"Because I'm the cursed boy?" Melchior asked. "Because it's my job to die to save us?"

"Because you're my son!" Abraham said. "Because I care about you. I wish I could do it over again. I wish I could have been there for you the way you wanted me to be." 

Melchior scoffed, "there's little room for wishes these days." 

"Is there any room for forgiveness?" Abraham whispered. 

Melchior turned his gaze back towards the floor. He felt dizzy. Drunk on seeing his stoic father fall apart at just a few of his words. And it disgusted him as much as it relieved him. He couldn't look at him. He couldn't speak. He could hardly even gasp in air around the knot in his chest. 

"Melchior." 

He squeezed his green eyes shut. Deprived of sight, his senses turned to the echoes filling up around him. The sound of boots scuffing against stone, of clothes rustling. Abraham came across the small room, stopping inches from Melchior's restrained form on the floor.

"What are you do-" 

Melchior choked on his question as his regal father fell to his knees. He sat on his black robes, not caring as the dirt swallowed him. Abraham reached out with trembling hands and took his son into an embrace. 

It was awkward, because they hadn't spoken in years, and because Melchior was chained to a wall. But more than strange, he realized, it was warm. Melchior hadn't considered how cold the room was until then. Suddenly on the up-take, his body began to shiver into his father's open arms.

"I'm so sorry." He whispered. "I'm so, so, sorry." 

"I. . ." Melchior didn't know what to say. It all felt so strange, clinging to his father in a way he never had before. He inhaled a lung-full of dust and shook his head. There was only one thing left. The last piece of his years spent daydreaming and regretting. Something he'd always longed to say. "I. . . forgive you." 

Melchior allowed the tears to well up. He gave into the cries breaking free from inside of him. He'd never been one to display much emotion. He'd never cried in someone's arms. He'd never been comforted by his father before. So, maybe the embarrassment would have killed him. Only, he didn't feel all that mortified. 

Not as his father began to cry, too. 

• • •

"The Cardinal won't let Sarah see you." Abraham explained. He'd taken to catching Melchior up on the world outside the brick-box to put distance between them and the crying they'd done. Or, maybe just to fill the silence. To keep the inevitable away just another minute longer. 

"Why?" Melchior asked.

"He knows she lied to me, to everyone, about the severity of your curse." Melchior didn't ask why his mother had lied to even him. He knew what side of the line his father would have fallen to if he thought Melchior was uncontrollable. The same side all of the Progeny had fallen to. "Ishmael took you to Ailbe to hide you, so he's been punished as well. And Ailbe, well, I don't know. But he's as stubborn as he is old, so I imagine he's alright." 

"It's all my fault." Melchior whimpered. "They didn't do anything wrong. They only wanted to give me a chance." 

It was a strange defense. His mother, disgust in her eyes, had sent him away to live chained beneath a cabin rather than kill him. Her greatest and only hope had been that he survive long enough to be killed by someone else. 

He knew that it wasn't fair. He knew it should have angered him--but beneath his own hurt was the fear of a woman watching her son turn into a monster, and that dimmed a lot of his own outrage. 

"They did, Melchior." His father sighed. "It wasn't their right to lie to the Progeny." 

"They didn't! Everyone knew I was cursed!" He protested. "I was still their Cursed Boy."

"They thought you could summon demons, son. That's light-years from the truth, isn't it?" Abraham pressed. "You, my flesh and blood, have gained abilities from the depths of Hell. You can transform into a monster. And this was done to you! By some lowly Ze'ev! What's to stop it from happening again? What if it has happened and the Progeny is already infiltrated by thousands of half-bloods! We could be slaughtered from the inside."

"It hasn't!" Melchior said. "Not any Ze'ev can do what was done to me. They have to be Silver-Tongued. They hardly exist anymore-" 

"How do you know that?" 

Melchior froze. His heart pounded painfully before falling into the soles of his feet. "A. . . a Ze'ev told me." 

"Angels, son!" Abraham breathed. "Demons lie!" 

"People lie, too! Mom lied!" 

"She did that to protect you!" 

"Well, that's just it." Melchior snapped. "Everyone has people to protect. We're all so stuck in our own heads, blinded by all this misunderstanding. We kill them to feel safe--they kill us to be safe. It's never going to end! Not unless someone just stops!" 

Abraham sat back on his heels and pressed his fingers to his temples. "And the gate? The Third Prince of Hell? Should we just stop and let him destroy New York?" 

Melchior sighed. It wasn't a difficult question to answer. He knew what to say, even facing the consequences of it's meaning. "No," he said, "the Third Prince has to be stopped." 

I have to be killed. 

Abraham bowed his head, as if he'd heard something greatly unpleasant. He squeezed his eyes shut and inhaled the stale air of their underground compound. "I'm so sorry." 

"I know." Melchior nodded. "It's time, then?" 

He would have liked to believe that his father came here for only two reasons. To apologize, and to tell him that he was loved, but Melchior wasn't so childish as to believe the world was ever that kind. 

"Yes," his father murmured. "It's time." 

"Will it be him?" He whispered. Is he alive?

"I don't know." Abraham said. "I hope, for the sake of your soul, that he comes back to do what's right." 

"He-" Melchior's throat tensed until the words got caught in the back of his mouth. 

"Yes," Abraham finished, "Ira Rule ran away." 

His heart thudded against his pearl-white ribs. He thought he was going to be sick. The chains on his limbs suddenly seemed cargo-ship heavy. He was glad for the IV in his arm, filling him with poison. He wasn't sure if his own free will would have been enough to keep down the swirling rising beast inside of him. 

"He. . . he wouldn't." Melchior whispered. He wouldn't leave me--why? Because they were friends? Because they were Deacon partners? Because they'd nearly been something more? Melchior was a demonic creature. He was a monster. He'd almost killed Ira. How could he expect Ira to do anything other than leave him in return? 

His own parents hadn't had the strength to look at him. Those that loved him would always leave him. His fate was too painful from them to swallow. And those that hated him would have no reason to grant him mercy. He was helplessly stuck between two equal boulders. 

"If Ira doesn't come back-" 

"It's only a tantrum, Melchior. He's trying to shed his duty to the Progeny, to the Sect of Saint Francis, and to all of humanity. That can not go unpunished." Abraham said, but Melchior knew what he meant. No matter what Ira Rule did now; Melchior Brisbane was going to die in the end. If not by Ira's hands, if not for the Prophecy, then for the crime of being inhuman.  

"I see." He nodded. "You're fine with that? With your son dying for nothing?" 

"Nothing is for nothing." Abraham shook his head with a stiff snap. "Everything trickles down, making the world forever different." 

"I don't know why I asked, I knew you'd say something like that." Melchior laughed humorlessly. 

Abraham ran his fingertips down Melchior's cheek, wiping away the dirt stuck there. He brushed the tight curls from his forehead and adjusted the dingy fabric of his light T-shirt. Polishing him with care Melchior had been sorely missing. Hadn't known he'd been missing. 

His parents, his siblings. He'd largely tried to toss aside all his thoughts of them. He thought they'd hate him, so he thought it would be better to not miss them. He could remember a thousand daily arguments between his many siblings--over the last popsicle taken from the freezer, over what channel to leave the TV on, over who owned that green sweater--and that had been enough. It had been so easy to remember childish arguments as declarations of disgust as his self-hatred became his only companion. 

"Fate is not kind, but it is kinder than war. If the only way to save the world is this, what else can we do? It's my son's responsibility to die to save us, and it's my responsibility to let him. Trust me, I do not make this choice easily. I do not make this choice out of cowardice, or loyalty, or servitute. I make this choice because it is the only choice we can make if we want the rest of the world to reach tomorrow." Abraham said. 

"I know." Melchior said. 

He was right. This was what he'd been raised for. What had loomed over his head for six agonizing years. The reason he'd sought Ira Rule, the catalyst for every moment since. He'd faced it so easily before. It had seemed the simplest conclusion to his story. 

Stay calm, take it with grace, go easily. 

So why was it, for the first time, so difficult? 

"Dad, I don't want to die." He whispered. 

"I'm sorry." He replied. "It's time to go." 

He knew, to the depths of his withered heart, that his father was right. Protesting would only erode whatever dignity he could cling to. So, he didn't. He let his father remove his wall-tied shackles and trade them in for a new set of thick iron handcuffs, connected behind his back in a painful twist that dragged on his strained shoulder muscles. 

The monkshood IV was removed from the crease of his elbow. Perhaps because his father believed him already too tied up to accomodate for a saline line. Or maybe they just couldn't find a nurse willing to carry the tube after him into the gallows.

It didn't matter anyway. Melchior could feel it inside of him, stinging his intestines and weighting down his eyelids. His lips tingled where his tongue touched it, his teeth ached down to the nerves of his face. He wondered, for one moment, if he'd even survive long enough to reach his execution. 

Or, was he already stronger than the poison? No--was the monster inside of him?

His father placed fetters on his ankles, with just enough chain between the cuffs to allow him to limp forward. And so he did. What else was there? He knew that the choice to walk willingly to his death was not one many others would have made, but no one else had the same cloud hanging over their head as Melchior did. 

He could have dragged his feet, swung out with his fist, spit with his viper tongue--but nothing could halt fate. It had already been decided. For the world--for Ira's home, for his family, for Ailbe, and for all of humanity, Melchior had to die. So, without another word, he walked.

His father escorted him out of his small cell, out into the hall made of the same cracked stone bricks. 

"Where are we?" Melchior asked. 

"Beneath the Cardinal's Court." Abraham answered. "These tunnels aren't too popular anymore." 

"I can't imagine why." Melchior mumbled.  

The passage should have been abandoned. Or, maybe they already had been and the only part missing was to cause a cave-in. One final act to seal away the past. These levels were different from what Melchior had come to expect from the channels beneath the grand Cathedral. There was no grim art, no fluorescent lighting, or polished marble floors. Only dirt, stones, and cobwebs. 

Melchior admired their tenacity to settle in such a lifeless place. He wondered, only to past the time, how even a spider could survive in the dingy shafts. Ishmael would have scolded him.

You're being marched off to your sacrifice and you're wasting time pondering the habits of spiders?

But, Melchior didn't think he would have been too surprised either.

The world around him conducted itself six inches away, behind a solid pane of frosted glass. The dungeon, the dirt on his feet, the guiding palm of his father, the drag of the irons, the pain in his stomach. All of it belonged behind the window of his subconscious. 

He walked for miles, or maybe just fifteen minutes. It blended together into an incredibly forgettable movie. One Melchior would have slept through. 

"Here, Melchior." His father said, pushing open a door that seemed to very suddenly appear out of thin air. It was made of wood, chipped and cracked at all the edges. When his father forced it inwards, it groaned like that of a dying Beast. Behind the rotting wood was another tunnel. This one was cut sharply upwards, also made of a stone brick, but carved into stairs. Melchior looked at the slick rock and at his chained ankles and laughed. 

"Take your time." His father said. 

He did. If his father had a stopwatch, it might have timed him at forty-five minutes per sixteen steps. At a snail's pace and after an eternity-and-a-half, they finally reached the top. Which was, to no one's shock or awe, another molding door. Abraham shoved it open with his shoulder. 

Melchior winced, blinking rapidly to deflect the blinding white light tearing at his night-suited eyes. This was the chute he remembered. Pearl-white, lined with horrific imagery, and carpeted by cold, blank, marble. 

He tumbled out into the hall. His legs shook from the strain of keeping his poisoned body upright, his knees buckled from the weight of his irons. He wished he possessed more dignity than fainting--evidently, he did not. 

Melchior hit the floor with a thud, landing as gracefully as a dead bird. He managed to keep from spilling forward onto his chest. It was easy, with the heft of his chains counteracting his momentum. Instead, he landed on his bruised knees. He bowed his head and sucked in labored breaths of subway-stale air. 

"Melchior!" Abraham shouted. He kneeled, as he had back in the dirt floor of the cellar, and wrapped his arms around his son's shaking shoulders. 

"What an amusin' display of concern--well, considerin' that he'll be dead in the next few hours." 

Melchior knew, even through the fuzz in his ears, that he didn't know that voice. It was colder than ice, sharper than snake-teeth, and it flung tightly upwards in a Southern accent. His father's fingers dug into Melchior's shoulder blades. 

A snarl dripped from his mouth. "Watch the way you speak to me and my son."

"Pardon me," the man chuckled, "I forgot to respect the dead." 

"That's more than enough, Salamis." A woman announced briskly. "I apologize on his behalf, Abraham." 

"Your Eminence," Abraham managed between his clenched teeth. 

Melchior knew that he wasn't thinking clearly--but he thought he knew enough to recognize that that title belonged to the Cardinal, and the woman standing before them was not the man Melchior knew to be his Cardinal.

She, like the man called Salamis, was draped in dragging cloaks of a muted gray--or maybe it was flame-bright ruby red. Melchior didn't know. Six years ago his world had grown dark, he'd traded in his human eyes for something unworldly that could only see in a range of dull black.

 "Where is Absalom?" His father asked.

"He'll meet us there." The woman answered. "He wanted to pray." 

"Don't we all." Abraham muttered. He turned to his son and hooked him around the chest. With a grunt, his father pulled Melchior to his swaying feet and steadied him with palm against his shoulder. 

"Is your son alright?" She asked. 

"Does it matter, Esther?" Salamis scoffed. Bitterly, Melchior thought he had a point. 

"That's enough, Salamis!" She hissed. Esther crossed the hall, placing another steadying hand on Melchior's opposite side. "I really do apologize, child. You shouldn't have to witness such foul behavior from a Cardinal, even if he is not the head of your sect." 

"I've been through worse." Melchior dismissed. 

Esther smiled, "I imagine you have, but that doesn't make it acceptable." 

Melchior's head felt bowling ball heavy. But he strained, twisting his fragile throat, to look at her. She looked young, too young to play executioner, but weren't they all? Wasn't Melchior only twelve when his life met this horrible path? Wasn't Ira born into it? 

"Why are you being so nice to me?" He asked. It didn't matter, not in the end, but he felt that he wanted to die with as few lingering curiosities as possible.

"Isn't it obvious?" Esther whispered. "You're the boy who's going to save us all."