by Cora May
Fenneck spared a brief glance in her direction. It was enough to figure out what she meant by the question.
“It’s actually quite fascinating,” he told her. His eyes followed someone behind her, but he made no move to get up. It must not have been George, then. “I was studying a theory on the Realm of Darkness. There’s this theory out there that the entire Realm is built on a hierarchal society. You know, not all Dorcha are created equal.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. Her interest was not entirely feigned. It did sound like a fascinating subject matter.
“The Realm of Darkness is a punishment, right?” Fenneck said. “Anyone whose soul is taken down there has been deemed, by the Reaper of Death, as someone who is not good enough for the Realm of the Light. Someone who has not earned purity of the soul. Therefore, there’s a different kind of consciousness for those who are forced to live in the Realm of Darkness.”
Both of them went silent as a new group of people came into the room. Chanta had to turn her head to see who it was, but she risked the motion. She studied each face as it came in, but there was no sign of George or of Creggor.
The heated feeling inside of her moved a bit upwards. It felt like heartburn now. She clutched at her chest.
“Are you okay?” Fenneck asked.
Chanta turned to find his eyes on her, and full of concern. It was sweet, but not helpful in that moment. Releasing her chest, she waved him off. She sat up straight again and assumed her position once more.
“Go on,” she insisted.
“Right. Okay. Anyway,” he continued. It took him a moment longer to recover, but he assumed his position as well. “The theory goes on to suggest that maybe there are some good Dorcha. Isn’t that laughable? As if the punishment, for some of them, actually turns around their behavior. Like a child who learns from time out. But then there are others, truly evil Dorcha, who thrive in the Realm somehow. They go beyond the punishment, and essentially rule over the punishment of other Dorcha.”
“Sounds like the way a lot of things are run around this Realm,” Chanta said with a dry chuckle.
“Right? It’s like they’ve perfected the hierarchy of evil corporations.” He pursed his lips. “What do you think? Could there be good Dorcha?”
Chanta allowed herself to think on the subject for a moment. Could she believe it? No. But did she want to? With her friend trapped and unwilling to leave, she sure did. It just didn’t seem likely, though.
“The Realm of Darkness seems like exactly that to me,” she stated. “Darkness. I don’t think anyone who goes in there can leave untainted. If you had been sent there to begin with, then you were bad in this world. And if you go there with a heart evil enough to send you there, then how can that heart get better? No, the darkness would only swallow you up. Your heart would be fully engulfed, and sure, the punishment would never end, but would you want it to? Are they even aware that they’ve been punished, or are they happy to be there? I feel like demons take joy in their evil ways.”
Fenneck nodded slowly. He was chewing on what she said, weighing it against the book.
Chanta bent over, an action so sudden, she had to throw her arms out in front of her to keep her face from hitting Fenneck’s lap.
“Chanta,” he said, reaching out to hold her shoulders. “What’s wrong?”
“Heartburn,” she confessed. But when she looked up, he was staring at her with disbelief written all over his face. “Or something like it. I don’t really know. It just burns.”
“What burns?”
“Here,” she said, childishly pointing at the part of her body that felt the burn the most. It was the dead center of her chest.
“Well, I don’t think we’re finding your friend anytime soon,” he told her. “Let’s get you in bed.”
“No,” she argued. “I’m fine. We have to keep watch.”
But it didn’t matter. He was already standing. He held out a hand to offer her help. She didn’t want to take it, but she had a feeling he was going to force her to leave the room one way or another. It was probably better than she left walking on her own, rather than draw a whole ton of attention to herself when he carried her out.
She put her hand in his and let him pull her off the couch.
He didn’t let go as he led her out of the room. Heat rose to her cheeks as they attracted attention anyway. Everyone was looking over, pointing at their interlocked hands. She supposed it was still better than having them worry and wonder why he had to carry her out like a child. At least they would be left wondering something she herself had wondered.
The redness in her cheeks deepened at that thought, and she was suddenly glad they hadn’t found sign of Creggor. He would have surely read that thought and filed it away for the future. She banished the idea from her mind.
Fenneck continued to lead her away from the room and to the stairs that would eventually lead to her own floor.
The heat in her core continued to grow. It was fighting against her. It was arguing with her somehow, trying to hold her down. Her knees were buckling in response. Every step she took was getting harder and harder.
Long before they reached the stairwell, it became obvious to Fenneck that she was struggling. He slowed down and glanced back at her.
The heat became angry, thrashing at her and nearly shoving her body back in the opposite direction. Her vision started to fade.
“Chanta,” Fenneck’s distant voice eventually called out to her.
Some part of her realized her hand was no longer in his, but instead, both hands were on the ground. She had fallen down. She looked around, trying to remember how she had gotten this close to the stairwell, but no memory came to her. A few moments of her life had been etched out of her brain altogether. Fenneck, she was certain, had never left her side, but he sounded so far away.
“Chanta, what happened?” he asked again. Closer. He was closer now.
No, not closer, but louder. She was coming back, she realized.
“Not the stairwell,” she told him. She was aware that she didn’t answer his question in the slightest, but she didn’t care. She didn’t know how to answer it anyway. All she knew in that moment was that she was being pulled away from the stairwell. She wasn’t sure if something was in there that she should want to avoid, but she knew she didn’t want to be anywhere near it.
She realized she was panting. She was completely out of breath. She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself down.
“Chanta, we have to get you to bed,” Fenneck scolded.
She felt her body being lifted into the air. For a moment, she thought she was floating, but she realized quickly that Fenneck had picked her up after all.
“No,” she told him, arguing feebly. “Not the stairwell.”
“Where else would we go?” he asked her, taking a few steps forward.
“No!” she said, a little more vehemence behind her voice this time. She thrashed out of his hands.
“Ouch!”
The word was followed by an expletive right as she hit the ground, but neither of them came from her.
The pain in his voice was enough to shock her back to reality for a brief moment. He took his hand away from his face to reveal a big red mark, right over his eye. It already looked like an angry wound, and she was sure it would turn into a black eye very quickly.
“I kicked you,” she stated. “Right? I kicked you. I’m so sorry!”
That had to be what happened, she told herself. She kicked him on her way down to the floor. It had been an accident, of course, and he would understand that. He would forgive her.
But as he looked down at her, she realized that that wasn’t what happened at all.
“You never touched me, Chanta,” he told her quietly. “I don’t underst—”
His words were cut off as his jaw jutted off to the side. No one had touched him, yet when he looked back at her, his lip had been split.
“No,” she whispered. “Not again.”
“Wha
t’s going on?” he asked her with wild eyes.
“Stop!” she commanded.
She just threw the word out of her mouth, directing it at no one in particular. Fenneck looked at her, unsure of what she meant.
He doubled over, clutching his gut.
“NO!” she screamed. She started directing the command to the heat rising inside her. “Stop! STOP NOW!” she screamed.
“Chanta, what is—”
One more punch to the gut.
Chanta stood up, letting the anger pool inside of her.
“Stop this,” she commanded with a firm, calm voice. The anger was bubbling up inside of her, brimming underneath her voice. “Stop this behavior NOW. He is not hurting me!”
The heat in her subdued slightly. It was like it was a living being inside of her, and it was finally responding to her the way it should have.
She was tugged slightly, pulling her off balance a little bit. It was the heat inside, leading her away from the stairwell. It was still there, still commandeering their activities for the night, but it had finally decided to leave Fenneck alone, it seemed. It was listening to her.
She was commanding it.
“Wait,” she said, low and firm. She turned her attention back to Fenneck. “Are you alright?”
His mouth was hanging open, blood dripping both into and out of his mouth. He was still crouched over slightly, but he didn’t seem to be in too much pain. He looked more shocked than anything. Slowly, he straightened himself out. He still looked around for the culprit, though, expecting to see something jump out at him again.
“Fenneck, are you okay?”
The blackness in her own vision had cleared away. She had regained control of whatever it was inside of her.
“I think so,” he told her quietly. He looked around one more time. “What happened?”
She didn’t want to tell him, but she knew she was going to have to. It was something she knew she couldn’t hide for her entire visit at the school—eventually, it was going to have to come out. And, if she wanted Fenneck to stay on her side, to help her through it all, she would have to tell him the whole truth.
At least, as much as she understood.
“What happened is exactly why I’m here,” she stated. “That’s why my mom locked me up, and why Prisanni decided to come and rescue me. It’s what happens to the people around me. I’m so, so sorry,” she told him, her voice softening to a near cry. “This is why I need your help. I need to understand what it is I do, where I’ve come from.”
Fenneck didn’t need any more reason than that.
“Are you okay to keep going tonight?” he asked. “You blacked out back there. Can we do this a different night?”
Not will we, but can we do this another night, Chanta noted. He wasn’t trying to put it off or talk her out of it, he was only ruling it out as a possibility.
The heat inside of her bubbled a bit.
“I don’t think we can,” she told him. “I’m worried that if we do, whatever happened just now is going to kill you.”
“Has that…” Fenneck began, but Chanta saw the recalculation in his head. It wasn’t a question he wanted answered. “So, then where do we go from here?”
Chanta didn’t know the way, but she knew she would be led. She had only to listen to the heat inside of her, let it take her where it wanted to go. She followed the direction of its tugging.
Chanta was very happy when she heard footsteps behind her. He wasn’t going to let her go through any of the halls alone, even if nothing happened as they walked through. She was glad for that. She was also not surprised when she felt herself being led all the way down to the basement.
The heat inside her was excited as they descended down the last spiral staircase. She tried to tell herself to be brave, and she knew that Fenneck was telling himself the same thing. She was only more and more glad that he stayed with her as each step brought them closer.
In the basement was one very familiar figure; Creggor.
He stood all the way against the wall, his wrists pressed firmly against the stone. It was like he was being restrained, but there was no evidence of the restraints. He looked terrified, too, until he recognized who was approaching him.
Then his fear dissipated, replaced by something that looked like understanding.
“I thought I told you not to seek me out again,” he told her flatly. He made no effort to approach her, and, though he still spoke with that ego Chanta detested, he didn’t seem to have any sort of control over his situation.
“I sought you out,” she told him, “but I gave up looking for you a while ago. I didn’t bring you down here.”
“You did, actually. Don’t you realize what power you have yet? Have you not figured it out?”
Chanta’s face twisted with sarcasm.
“I don’t know what any of this means,” she told him. “No one has been honest with me.”
“Well, then let me help you out a bit. I know you’ve already suspected it—and yes, you are the spawn of Donlarr. So is Douglass in there,” he jerked his head to the right, motioning toward Douglass’ bedroom. “He’s listening, by the way. He always liked you. Probably because you’re half-siblings, huh? Bred by a demon.”
It wasn’t news she had wanted to hear, but it was what she expected. She looked over at Fenneck, gauging his reaction. The color had drained from his face. She hoped that was the worst of it.
“I don’t know everything about your stone, but I know enough to see the power it gives you. You are in command of the Anam. I guess they should call you Obsidian Commanders, really. So, yes, you did actually bring me here. You don’t realize it, but probably around the time you started to look for me is when I was brought down here by them.”
“By them?” Fenneck repeated. “Anam brought you here?”
“Anam are here right now, holding me back. Why do you think I haven’t moved?”
His attitude was enough that Chanta didn’t mind his predicament.
“I never told anyone to do such a thing.”
“Not out loud,” he told her. “Not directly. But the Anam heard you, and they obeyed. Have you ever told them to do anything for you? Did you tell them to hurt your Keeper like they did? You didn’t, did you? And yet, they listened. He wasn’t doing what you wanted him to do. He was hindering you somehow, hurting you or causing you trouble, and maybe you even wanted to hurt him.”
“I did not!” Chanta said, not even bothering to look back at Fenneck this time, already knowing the hurt she would see there. “I have never wished ill on anyone! Except maybe you,” she seethed. She meant it, too. She wanted to punch his ego in the face.
And, as if she had done it herself, his head was thrown back into the wall.
He was dazed for a moment, but when he looked back at her, he only smiled. She could tell that the back of his head was bleeding from the impact.
Now she really didn’t want to look back at Fenneck. This time, she had clearly brought on the violence.
“This has been how it’s worked for most of your life, hasn’t it?” Creggor continued. “The Anam respond to you, even if you don’t realize what’s going on. Well, now you know. Now you know what your stone is and what you can do. Now, why don’t you have your Keeper there borrow my ability already? Let them let me go.”
He was asking to be freed, practically begging for it, as best as his pride would allow him to. Chanta didn’t want to admit it, but she actually didn’t want to let him go. She was mad at him now, but only because he was right, she realized. She looked back at Fenneck.
Fenneck looked back at her with mixed emotions in his eyes. He was waiting on her to command him, and he wasn’t going to disobey. He was afraid of her.
Her heart sank.
She couldn’t look at him anymore as she asked him to step forward.
“Please, Fenneck,” she whispered. “There is more I have to learn.”
From behind her, he strode forward. He stood in front of Cregg
or and touched his hand to the restrained boy’s forehead.
When his hand fell away, Creggor’s hands dropped to his side. He was released. With as much dignity as he could muster, he brushed off his pants as if they were dirty, looking Chanta dead in the eye, and then strode out of the basement.
Chanta audibly gulped.
“What do we do now?” Fenneck asked her when they were alone.
She hoped he understood that she had not wanted to harm him. She hoped that he knew she was a good person. She thought the thoughts hard, knowing he would pick up on them since he had borrowed Creggor’s ability.
But Fenneck didn’t say a word in the way of acknowledgment. He only waited on her next move. Her next command. She felt sick to her stomach.
Still, she had to continue.
“I need to hear Douglass’s mind,” she told him. “I need to know what he’s seen, what made him go crazy like he did.”
As she spoke, she walked over to the door she knew he lived behind. She knelt down and peered through the keyhole. As she thought, he was sitting up in bed, looking straight at her. It was as if he knew she’d be coming that night.
“Douglass,” she called out. “Douglass, come here.”
He obeyed her. Not, she noted, because of anything forcing him to obey her, but because he wanted to. He willingly left his bed and stumbled across the room. He was crouched over very awkwardly, and she could see the drool pouring down his chin, but that didn’t matter. What mattered is that he came close to her.
“Douglass, I need to speak to you.”
“You came,” he chirped. “Back, you came back. Here you are!”
“That’s right,” she said. “I’m here. I came back because I need to talk to you. You remember me, then?”
“Chanta,” he said. “Pretty girl.”
“Fenneck, what is he thinking now?” she asked without turning away from the keyhole, without breaking eye contact with her half-brother.
It was a minute before she got her answer. Chanta figured it was because of the shock of the power Fenneck had just absorbed.
“He’s remembering you,” he told her. “He’s thinking about your pretty blonde hair. He’s wondering what it would be like to touch it. He thinks it looks better than his. He thinks it looks softer. He likes your face, too,” Fenneck admitted. Chanta heard the embarrassment in his voice. She wondered why. “He wants to feel you—not in a weird way. He wants to know if you’re real or not. He… he thinks you’re an angel.”