A Curse of Blood and Power: A Chronicle of Fanhalen

by Viviene Noel

  ‘Honestly, what are you doing here?’

  ‘It is none of your business,’ she snapped.

  There was a moment where they seemed suspended in time, where even the strange mist of the forest seemed to pause. Demeera angled her head, scrutinising him, her eyes melting through his skin and bone.

  Before Fàaran could react, she shoved him against the imposing oak tree behind him. His head hit the wood, but his hands instantly gripped her waist, and before she could move further, he pulled her to him and seized her mouth with his.

  The flames rekindled instantly—as though they’d never parted, never spent time apart. The heat of his body swarmed as she pressed herself against him. Then his dagger was in her hand, the tip pressed against his throat.

  ‘Why do I keep tracking your scent?’ she murmured in his ear, her breath like a summer fire.

  ‘You don’t accept the facts when I tell you.’ His eyes were on hers but his hands wanted to pull her close and tear her clothes apart. And for all her defying snarls and murmurs, she wanted it as much as he. Instead, he grabbed her wrist and snapped the knife away.

  A flash of amusement brisked through her stare. ‘I forgot you were deft, for a human.’

  They snarled at each other—because that’s what she wanted, what she needed. He held her stare. That heavy pause again.

  Demeera licked the tip of her canine, her eyes pinning his.

  ‘I am done playing.’ Fàaran snapped the leash on his restraint.

  B

  Mahena screamed when it was too late.

  There was a ghost next to her asleep friend. He’d appeared from the void, from the tunneling gloom at the edges of the clearing they were in. She must have sunk too deep into her own mind, must have let the fog of the past months get to her.

  Emmerentia jolted upright as the man swung at her.

  A sickening thunk resonated and she fell back onto her bedroll.

  Mahena stood frozen for half a second as the man lifted his head up, letting it hang limply to the side before dragging his gaze to hers. Then she was running for her discarded dagger a few paces ahead.

  Where the hell was Fàaran?

  The man, the ghost, awkwardly leaned forward and down to pick up Emmerentia’s sword.

  She threw the knife as soon as it was in her hand, her heart thundering in her ears.

  The dagger sliced his upper arm, dragging a screeching sound out of his blackened mouth. He clenched his free hand around it.

  She seized the sword and brought the weapon across her chest, standing between the man and Emmerentia, still unconscious on the ground. Ready to defend, her blood pulsing so loudly through her body it reverberated in her head.

  But the shred of man stilled, fixing his black gaze upon her as he paused.

  The little voice sneered. And stared right back.

  Mahena’s body wasn’t hers anymore. Her hands slackened at her side, the blade coming down as her second hand rose, two fingers up directed at him.

  She hadn’t meant to do that.

  He looked at the raised palm, then at her again, his obsidian eyes dull of life.

  And something happened, deep inside her, tunneling farther into the abyss she hid from herself, that cave she refused to tread, that part of her she buried in a sealed tomb.

  They recognised each other.

  Something in her quaked, screamed, as though scratching at the walls of a well trying to get out.

  The next second, the man fell to the ground.

  Fàaran looked to his sister sprawled on the floor, blood slowly seeping out of her head. There was no kindness in the look he gave her. But—Mahena blinked before snapping her eyes up and down, at the look of him—dishevelled, muddy, flushed. For a second, she forgot her unconscious friend on the floor and just stupidly gaped at the man.

  Mahena watched the older twin inspect his sister, a feeling of utter uselessness lodging itself in her stomach. She was still unconscious, but he pressed a wet cloth to the side of her head to stop the slight bleeding.

  Mahena monitored the man now lying on the ground, the little voice sniffing him out. Home, home, it whispered, mine.

  A small breeze arose, swiping dirt and leaves on its wake.

  The scent hit her. Ash, rose, pure wildness, and overwhelming strength, alongside another component she struggled to find a word for. Mahena stilled as she took it in, her brain breaking the information down, her core registering the difference from everyday fragrances, from the smells her conscious linked to. Her blood warmed at the recognition. She didn’t understand, could not comprehend, because it wasn’t his body odour she unconsciously recognised. It was stronger, more intimate, within the blood.

  She had encountered that same scent when Mayfair and she had killed the Shadows.

  And she didn’t know how, but she looked at Fàaran, crouched at Emmerentia’s side and frowned. She had scented it hovering over him a few days ago.

  Emmerentia awoke a little while after that, breaking their tense silence. ‘What happened?’ She rubbed the side of her head with the outer part of her palm, where a bump now grew, and groaned. She looked at Fàaran, then Mahena, then the body at her feet, back to her brother. The expression on her face was everything but impressed.

  ‘How is it that if I leave either of you on watch, I get knocked out?’ She grunted, then pointed an angry finger at their assailant. ‘Where did he come from? This forest is almost soundless; how did you not hear him approaching?’

  ‘He’s been poisoned, that’s definite,’ Fàaran observed, more an attempt at an excuse than to make a point.

  Emmerentia rolled her eyes, cracking her neck side to side. ‘Your point?’ Then she squinted at him, scrunching her nose as though something was weird and she couldn’t understand what. He made a point to pretend he didn’t notice.

  Mahena addressed Fàaran, not quite aware of what explanation to feed her friend with before the twins entered a pointless argument, ‘Help me tie him down to the tree?’ She jerked her chin towards a massive unknown tree standing on her right. ‘He might wake soon and there’s no accounting for what he could do.’

  Fàaran nodded in response, underlying questions in his eyes, the earlier anger apparently gone. He walked to the horses and got some rope out of his saddlebag.

  They were done within the next five minutes. Although dead bodyweight, the man was so painfully thin Fàaran maneuvered him with ease.

  Emmerentia, who had recovered her senses, stood with crossed arms in front of their captive, her twin on her left.

  Mahena had sat down on a fallen trunk, further away, the siblings in her peripheral vision. Her heart pounded, so loud it screamed out of her chest.

  Home, home, it kept whispering and chanting, resonating through her blood like a dormant cyclone suddenly awakened. It was so much stronger, clearer, and distinct. The two women that she had crossed paths with didn't emit this type of vibe. In this case, it sang the chants of a close... Mahena looked for an exact word to describe her sentiment—not attachment, not her definition of the term at least.

  Subtler, twisted—link.

  She propped her head in her palm, elbow digging in her thigh as she let her weight sink in. She started toying with a strand of hair, curling and uncurling it around her index finger as her thoughts siphoned her brain into a disrupting storm.

  ‘Mae!’ Fingers snapped in front of her face, claiming her back to reality. ‘Back to us.’

  She blinked a few times before realising Emmerentia stood a few inches away.

  ‘Yes?’ Mahena mumbled in response, still lost in another world of confusion.

  ‘Do you know him? Although he probably looks nothing like his former self. But he keeps staring at you. He is not even fighting against the rope.’

  Mahena swallowed down painfully. She looked over to the tree, to t
he shred of a human being attached to it; his uptilted, bloodshot eyes fixed on her, his skin paler than the moonlight. His hair, caked with dirt and dried blood, brushed the top of his ears. His cheekbones were so prominent, his body so emaciated it seemed as though his bones would pierce through the epidermal tissue to breathe the air, the dried black liquid on both corners of his mouth cracked as he grimaced.

  Tears surged at the extremities of her eyes. She managed to control herself before the twins noticed—they seemed so detached that it stunned her, subconsciously driving double questions about their past to her mind. Was everyone born on this earth so accommodated to torture and pain? Was this detachment a part of their personalities?

  Mahena cleared her head with a shake, digging her stare into that man’s. Had he been a man or boy, even? It was hard to place his age. But two extremely disturbing, deep black spheres met her gaze. She held it, carefully at first, passively, an invitation to safety—from the safety of that trunk.

  She feared nearing him, feared whatever the little voice recognised there, feared that it would get so out of control. He made to talk, a barely perceptible movement of his lips, as though they forgot their original purpose. From the corner of her eyes, she noticed the twins respectively stepped forward then retreated farther than where they originally stood. The little voice pushed and pulled, requiring attention, thrashing against Mahena’s own will. She muffled an enraged scream.

  The level of annoyance she felt only matched her curiosity.

  An alter-ego, evil and of its own making, battling common sense. In some situations she praised it, leaning against the velvety sentiment of invincibility it seemed to inject in her veins; in others, it felt like another person was trying to crawl out of her skin, trapped in a corner of herself. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to the feeling, or know if it was ever meant to go away. Mahena fought the strange string that pulled her towards him, towards the blood in his veins—if she had to admit the truth.

  The walls of her throat turned itchy, dry and uncomfortable. She slowly got up, ignoring the raw atmosphere bathing the air. Mahena wanted to say something—anything, really—to balm the horror that dripped like sweat from his pores, words she failed to formulate dying unsaid. She focused on his pupils as she walked closer, so carefully slow to prevent stirring irrational reactions. From all the things she felt by looking into them that she didn’t understand, deep in a corner, there laid a call for help.

  There was still someone buried under the layers of torment.

  A flickering light in the darkness.

  She breathed out, counted to three, and gathered her courage. She blocked the pain as a doctor would, and attempted to see him from a purely clinical point of view.

  After a few seconds, she sighed.

  Yeah...she’d never been great at that, empathy always overwhelmed her senses.

  Mahena dared a glance at the twins, retreated further away—silent, observing.

  Oh, God. What the hell was she trying to accomplish here?! ‘Breathe out and shut up,’ Mahena told herself harshly. She swallowed the discomfort running through her veins and met the man’s eyes once more—an ocean of scars and hurting, shattered shields and protections, a weeping battlefield. He’d fought and lost, and represented what loss implied in this war, against this enemy.

  The silence...that roaring silence passing between the two of them, it made her want to carve her own skin to fill her mind with a different kind of screaming.

  His lips moved again, a clear struggle to let sound escape, his chest going up with the effort. She stopped a couple of metres away, refraining from kneeling down and touching him. She squatted down nonetheless, just beyond arm’s reach, aligning their eyes level.

  Castle, castle, castle, resonated around her, pushed through the air, coating the air around her.

  And then his eyes closed.

  ‘How far from the castle again?’ Mahena asked the twins as she straightened up. She brushed her hair back with the tip of her fingers as she turned around. The siblings moved closer, realising the silent exchange had terminated.

  Fàaran ignored her. ‘He’s staying here.’

  Mahena looked at him, really looked him over, in a way she never really dared to previously. It lasted no more than a few seconds, but the world seemed to pause with her, giving her a hand in assessing the man before her that had saved her life without ever trusting her. Was it fear underpinning his cutting-edge answers, the feeling that she might come to understand the truth?

  The little voice tugged and smiled.

  ‘How certain are you they will let us in?’ she countered, the awaiting judgment toying a thin line.

  Emmerentia granted her brother a side look. ‘She has a point. We have no certainty they will extend the courtesy to foreigners.’

  ‘And showing up at the gates of a desolated court with a man that looks like he’s on the brink of death is going to help us? It’s suspicious in the best of cases.’ Fàaran pointed a finger to Mahena. ‘He also hasn’t responded to you.’

  Mahena uttered, ‘I think he is royal. At least he has royal blood.’

  They both turned to her. ‘How so?’

  ‘He keeps asking for it.’ Mahena bit her lips, waiting for them to lash out on how in all hell she could feel that. ‘You should let me try and see what I can learn from him, and we will use him as leverage if it comes to it.’ The sun was rising above the trees, light rays piercing through in sparse places, dotted around, bringing the temperature to a tolerable level. ‘Just add it to the pile of weird things I do we need answers to.’

  The twins exchanged a long look, something persistent in Emmerentia’s eyes, then Fàaran nodded.

  B

  Hellion Velianor, Lord of the Court of Dusk, lost the unknown trail he’d been following for weeks once again.

  His blood had sung with a burning he knew he should recognise when he had found himself at the Moon Festival in Kordobàr, then it had vanished with the swarm of bodies lusting throughout the palace. He had then stopped at the gates of the war encampment in Val d’Horà, lost and confused, seeking a fairy to help him.

  Most of the Fae who had left Amestris to help the humans had been branded traitors to the crown—they knew his position within the Unseelie court, and not only would they renege making themselves known in general, showing him their identity was an even smaller chance. Against all odds, his call had been answered. No one had shown up, but he had found a dagger embedded in a log covered with moss and grey berries. Underneath it had been written a unique word—Vassalis.

  Hellion now stood alone in the middle of a nest of Gharan spiders after having taken an unfortunate turn. He eyed the monstrosities one by one, taking in their size, the lucidity in their multiple pupils, and the location. They’d hauled him up a tree and were already almost fighting over who’d make the kill, undoubtedly thinking him a lost human—he’d glamoured himself into one. He weighed the weapons on him, cursed profusely about his inability to grow his wings, and when the spiders shifted their focus for an instant, Hellion threw his first dagger and unsheathed his sword.

  53

  Emmerentia had long forgotten the feeling of having a variety of weapons pointed at her—and those arrows would hit home. From the corner of her eyes, she could see Fàaran uneasy, but his politician mask had slid back on. Mahena, on the other hand, was looking rather startled. And that boy she had seated in front of her in the saddle stank of terror.

  ‘They won’t shoot,’ she whispered to the girl as sweat started sliding down her forehead. ‘Did you expect petals thrown upon your path?’

  Mahena shivered, yet murmured something in the ear of the boy before his whimpering grew.

  The twin rubbed her head where the wound stung—what an idiot. She had kept glancing at the boy, a sort of tang of jealousy tugging at how close he clung to Mahena. But the state of him...it
touched even her broken heart.

  As more guards kept pouring on the ramparts and they waited to be addressed by whoever was in charge of strangers, Emmerentia admitted to herself that the castle, the complex of the capital, was remarkable. It was built on several levels, with houses and shops and workshops protruding above them. A spiraling promenade connected each level, and could seemingly be traversed on foot, horseback and small carriage. Everything was white, and she could distinguish, even from this far below, the various effigies and statues to the gods.

  ‘What kind of ill-house is this…’ she murmured to herself. Emmerentia looked at her brother. ‘Do you do the talking, or do I?’

  Fàaran only pointed to himself despite her knowledge of the language being better. She angled her head. You are going to have to talk about it, sooner or later. I know something happened.

  Emmerentia whirled to Mahena, the tug suddenly sharp and aware. Mahena coughed pointedly, and the boy with her darted terrified eyes towards the castle. His hand was squeezing hers white. She squinted, her heartbeat quickening.

  Mahena caught her gaze. ‘I feel like something’s watching me.’

  Emmerentia grunted, ‘Forsaken place.’

  The girl’s shoulders slightly trembled under his frenzied gaze.

  The twin snapped her fingers at her. ‘Mahena, look at me.’ She turned to her. ‘Breathe. It is going to be alright. Just control your breathing, control your emotions.’

  Shouts broke out from the castle gates and they whipped their heads back to the line of guards slowly parting to the sides. Above the main ground visible through the grates in the gates, on the first level of their town, a crowd had gathered—as though emptying the upper levels to come face the disruption. A large man, dressed in a similar white and gold uniform as the guards, walked the path now formed down to the gates. Emmerentia marked him immediately as the captain. His eyes fell on the boy with Mahena and he froze. The air between them crackled like a new fire.

  Interesting. So, they knew each other.

  The arrows, yet, remained steadily pointed at them all.