by Scott, Helen
Good and evil.
It wasn’t as cut-and-dried as everybody seemed to believe. The humans had their God and the devil, with a strict, demarcating line between the two, as though they could never meet. But our creators were human. Born of humans, not spiritual deities, but powerful beings. I didn’t know where they had come from, but I knew, in the depths of my soul, that they were human at their core.
That meant, as with every single creature on this Earth, they were prone to both good and evil. Even as I wondered what each Maker had done to make the Cavalry and Reapers support them, I whispered, “Tell me what’s happening. Where did you take them?”
I wanted to plead with him, beg him to tell me where they were, but there was no point. I sensed that just as I sensed Merlin was deep in the plot he’d crafted to take down the Lady. He wouldn’t tell me, saw no need, because even though I was pivotal to his plan, I was just another of his descendants. One he could control, one he could manipulate, one he could even end… For even if the essence of the Sires still lived, what kind of existence did they have? Somehow powering a second moon? I could think of better ways to spend an eternity.
As expected, he didn’t answer, just got to his feet and tucked his hands into his pockets. With the same casualness of moments before, that ease which made me loathe him, he strolled toward me. Unsure of his intentions, I tensed, but before I could step back, he pressed his hand to my shoulder and in the blink of an eye, I was no longer in the bedroom at the Reapers’ stronghold but somewhere else.
The second we landed, because it felt like that—there was a distinct drop in gravity in the area—I pulled away from him, unhappy to be so close to somebody who I felt sure was the enemy.
And yet, he wasn’t trying to sink into my bones like the Lady had, wasn’t trying to overtake me. I felt none of the same energies I had felt in the council meeting room when the Lady had slaughtered the councilors before Cade had turned back time.
As I stared at our new surroundings, I felt confusion fill me. “What is this place?” I demanded, my voice stronger now, that intrinsic weakness that came from being disconnected from my mates having dispersed somewhat.
The link still felt muted, but I didn’t feel as in pain as I had a moment before. I wasn’t sure why. Was it distance? I couldn’t say for sure, but I knew that the debilitating terror that had overwhelmed me had taken a backseat for the moment. And though it was probably wrong, I could only feel relief about that.
“We are in Limbo, Marcella. I will return you to your mates once you fulfill the task I set you. Think of it as incentive,” Merlin murmured as he, too, looked around. Not that there was much to see. It was like we’d been dropped into the middle of a foggy day. Mist was everywhere, making visibility a nightmare. Even though I’d staggered away from him, I was still close enough that I could see him.
Part of me was tempted to run away from him, to try and avert whatever he was doing, but what was the point? He’d brought me here for a reason, had muted the link between my men and me intentionally. There was a reason behind everything he did, and though I’d never trust him, running off into the unknown would get me nowhere. It would merely lengthen the time I was away from my men, and that was something I couldn’t stand. I had to hope that if I complied with his wishes, this would go faster.
“If this is Limbo, then why are we here?” I rasped.
10
Marcella
“We’re here because the time has come. You need to start building the triangle, and the only way to do that and not have that thorn in my side destroy it, is to do so from here,” Merlin explained, sounding impatient.
I nodded. It made sense in theory, but what the hell was Limbo? A different realm? Something completely separate, but connected to our world? I’d thought it was associated with death, but this place felt… Well, it felt like nothing.
Hell, I almost felt numb myself.
Like nothing could touch me.
Nothing at all.
If I thought about it too hard, it made my brain hurt. Although a lot of aspects of my life made my brain hurt right now if I thought about them too much, but most of it had to do with the man, or rather, god, standing in front of me.
“This was her prison,” he added, looking around, and if that wasn’t a lie, then the mist was so empty she must have felt completely cut off from everything. “A good one at that, if I do say so myself, I just didn’t account for how a lack of distractions would fuel her rage. That being said, the only way I could weaken her was to trap part of her soul in here before she had chance to put me in that damned tree. So you see, if we wish to destroy her, it has to start here. This is the anchor point, the thing that will stabilize the three of you, but it is also something you must create by yourself, since you are the one that has both light and dark elements.”
“So what do I create?” I asked, feeling slower on the uptake than usual. My brain wasn’t awake yet. After all, I had only recently woken up and it had been after a night fueled by pleasure, hunger, and love.
“Whatever holds you steady, whatever memory or item or person calms you in a storm. The most important thing is that it’s a mixture of shadow and light, similar to your dragon. Once that’s done, just call for me and I’ll hear you,” Merlin directed, before poofing out of Limbo.
Being stuck here all by myself, knowing it was a prison that had held a being so much more powerful than I could ever dream of being, was like no other experience in my life to this point. It was scary and intimidating, but most of all, it was lonely. My animals weren’t pressing against my skin, my mates were distant and felt more like figments of my imagination than anything else, and Merlin? Well, he was still a jackass, but what more could I expect from someone who was a god? For all that, I couldn’t feel him either, and that was just as terrifying.
I tried to call forth my powers, to create something, anything, in this strange place before I thought about what a good anchor would be, but nothing came. I felt hollowed out, empty, as though this very place was sucking my soul away, stealing years off my life. That couldn’t be true though, could it?
My power seemed to be retreating further and further into the metaphorical well inside me while I tried to call on it again and again. It made me wish I had brought my focus, not that I’d needed it in a long time, but still. I’d take any help I could get.
“It won’t work, you know,” a sultry voice called from somewhere behind me.
I spun to find the Lady standing there, leaning against the mist as though it was solid, assessing me. Fear clogged my throat, my chest went tight, and breathing became next to impossible. The only thing that saved me was my brain waking up and demanding to know why she wasn’t attacking me outright.
“I’m not attacking you because I’m not really here. I’m the chunk of soul that Merlin stole and locked up in here so long ago. Arsehole,” she said, muttering the last word more to herself than anyone else.
“So, you can’t hurt me?” I inquired, hating the tremor in my words but unable to quell it.
“Who said that?” She grinned at me wickedly and pushed off the mist wall she had created, before walking toward me with a sway in her step that made the long, flared, charcoal colored dress sweep from side to side, moving the mist in a way I couldn’t. It seemed to curl around me, as though it was searching for a way in.
“Are you going to hurt me or not? If you are, let’s get on with it so I can kick your ass and get back to work. If not, then please let me work in peace,” I grated out with a sigh.
“I’m not going to hurt you, but why should I let you work in peace when you’re trying to destroy me?”
“You tried to wear me, dammit! I have good reason to want to destroy you,” I snapped, almost shouting at her.
“That doesn’t sound very like me. Look again,” she ordered, turning this way and that to display her features. Her aquiline nose made her look slightly hawkish when combined with her sharp eyes and the slashes of eyebrows that
topped them. She was beautiful though, no mistake about it. The dress and corded belt hanging loosely around her hips were an ancient style that I hadn’t seen anywhere outside of books and Halloween costumes.
“Nope, it was definitely you,” I told her. The Cavalry were so loyal to her, and when I was actually able to take stock of her beauty, I couldn’t help but wonder if they were in love with her too. After all, they certainly didn’t seem to care for Elizabeth, even though she was their mate.
“Well, sorry about that,” she replied, sounding like a toddler who got caught eating a cookie they weren’t supposed to.
“Can you please leave me alone?” I asked again, using the ‘nice’ tactic to see if she’d leave me alone—the sooner I could figure out what I was doing, the sooner I’d be back with my mates.
“What if I trapped you here with me? You could never hurt the rest of me and she couldn’t hurt you, and we would both have company,” the soul-shard of the Lady suggested.
“I have people waiting for me—mates. They need me and won’t stop searching until they find me. Besides, Merlin will probably tell them where I am and come and get me eventually anyway,” I elucidated with a shrug, bullshitting, because I wasn’t even sure they could find this place without that schmuck bringing them here. Still, guilt had me adding, “I’m sorry you’re lonely, but what I’m trying to do would unite you with the rest of your soul. Don’t you want that? Don’t you want to feel whole again?”
She paused for a long time, long enough that I started to worry about what was going on. Finally, she answered, “I should say something along the lines of, if it will bring Merlin down then I can live without the rest of my soul. That’s not true though. I can feel that I’m getting weaker the longer I’m separated from the rest of myself. I’m tired of trying to stay strong. She’s been out of power for years, decades even, and it’s exhausting trying to keep myself in existence.”
“I’m so sorry,” I replied, truly feeling remorse for what Merlin was putting her through. I’d only ever read a little about soul-shards, and what I’d been able to find was mostly theoretical. Ya know, like most shit that was technically impossible.
From what I remembered though, to my understanding they were like magnifying glasses, reflecting the rest of the person’s soul but mainly highlighting one specific piece. I couldn’t help but wonder what this piece of Nimue’s soul was all about. Compassion? Regret? Whatever it was, she was suffering in a way the rest of the soul wasn’t.
The wispy creature stared at me. “You truly mean that, don’t you?”
I blinked at her and because I did mean it, I nodded. “I do. No one, neither you nor Merlin, should have spent the years you have trapped away in these prisons.” I tugged at my bottom lip. “I didn’t even know he’d managed to cage you as well, although, I guess that’s why you’ve been looking for a way to manifest.”
The creature hummed. “If I did indeed try to ‘wear’ you, that would certainly make sense. The water is my medium. To be out on dry land takes an enormous amount of power. Something that was easy to achieve when I was whole, but now? As times passes? I imagine it’s getting close to impossible.”
No wonder the Lady was a raging bitch with a boner for Merlin. Something that wasn’t helped by the fact he’d managed to trap the part of her that was genuinely good… It made sense that she was edging toward evil.
Fuck, the two of them truly had made a mess of everything.
“Wouldn’t you like to be rejoined with that part of you?” I asked hoarsely.
“What? For him to fight me, to try to kill me?” She scoffed.
There was sympathy in my voice when I whispered, “Isn’t that a respite from this half-life you’ve been enduring?”
“This place is devoid of magic,” she commented after a pregnant pause, and her answer made me think my offer was respite even though she never said another word about it. “It’s trying to pull magic from you to find its equilibrium. You brought an energy with you that it wants, craves even. If you don’t get out of here soon, then you won’t be able to leave, with or without Merlin’s help. If you want to successfully use your powers, then you’ll need to create something that’s tantamount to a bubble for yourself. You need to contain your magic to a specific area so that as it’s pulled from you, it reaches an equilibrium faster. Once you have achieved that then you shall be able to create whatever anchor you need.”
“Can you be the anchor?” I queried, although I hadn’t been intending to voice the question aloud.
“Probably. It might even be better than anything else, since I was the original anchor. I could be lying to get you to screw up though, so who knows?” This soul-shard had to be close to death if she didn’t know whether or not she was telling the truth. Or maybe she just wanted to make me think she was? Ugh. I was so tired of the games, mind games especially, of Merlin and the Lady. Couldn’t they just deal with this like adults and move on?
I knew the answer to my question. They were ancient, bored, and hated each other. The problem was, they weren’t content with their own hatred, and they needed everyone else to hate the other as well. When someone didn’t want to pick sides, that was when the fights broke out.
Toddlers, the pair of them, I thought with an inner grumble.
As I processed her words, processed the little I knew about weaving, I came up with a semblance of a plan. The soul-shard was half of it, but I was the other part. It was my power that was the key—if that weren’t the case, then why would I be needed at all? No, I would bring the darkness to the light, but first I had to make a damn bubble.
I pulled my power to the surface, inch by inch. The few times I’d called on Gid’s runes, I’d had to do this, so it wasn’t as difficult as it could have been. When it surged out of me, expelled from my body, I quickly shaped it until it formed a bubble around me and wasn’t just drawn out into this odd ether.
The bubble was small and I didn’t have much room to move, but it was there, forged of both my shadow and light, and I could already feel the magic leveling out around me. The soul-sucking feeling was lessening and I was feeling more awake than before.
Within the bubble, I could make light and shadow spark from my fingertips, like I was flicking a lighter on and off. It wound around my body in a display I’d never seen before, but knew I was in control of it nonetheless. My magic had never been all that visible before, partly because I wove shadows which weren’t exactly visible. Now, though, I watched as it danced and swirled like there was silent music playing that was only for my magic and my ears.
Shadows and light twirled through the mist, strengthening and coalescing in places, while fading out in others. I knew the anchor couldn’t just be something I created, it had to be more, it had to be big enough to be exactly what it was supposed to be—an anchor.
I forced the bubble I was standing in to get bigger before I waved at the soul-shard of the Lady, encouraging her to step into the bubble with me. As soon as she did, it was like everything became super charged. Where my shadows had been gray, they were now as black as night and my light, instead of glowing, turned blinding. Spinning the shadow and light together, I created an equal balance between the two, then I started to siphon off some of the energy of the Lady’s soul-shard, mixing it in like I was baking a freaking cake or something.
The addition of the soul-shard’s power was enough to double the thing I was creating in size, not that I had any idea what it was going to be, but it also made it unstable. I recognized that I needed more darkness to stabilize the Lady’s power, and that had to be where the whole ‘triangle’ idea came into play, right?
I reached toward my bond with Elizabeth through Darius. It was so weak that at first I thought my idea wouldn’t work. Limbo twisted and turned around me and what I was building, and as I finally connected to Elizabeth I knew it was only the magic of this place that was allowing me to do so.
When I was finally able to access some of her power, the power she had g
ained from being bonded to the Cavalry, I pulled it toward me. It was like trying to make taffy in the dead of winter. Each time I pulled, I was worried that the connection between us would break. It felt like the task was insurmountable, but I kept going, kept pushing and pulling, trying to get enough of her power into the structure. It came, but it was slow and fragile, like spun sugar. Meanwhile, I was sweating like a pig as I tried to force something to go against its nature.
After I finally felt like I had enough from her, all as I wondered was why Merlin hadn’t brought them to limbo too, I searched for my connection to Lily. This one was different, since I didn’t have a direct blood connection, just one forged from years of bullying and mutual hatred.
Lily represented everything I had despised about Westbrook, until she wasn’t. The change in her that the Reapers had caused was nothing short of miraculous. She smiled now, something I didn’t realize I hadn’t truly seen before. Back at Westbrook, her smiles were mean and hard, mocking, and sometimes more of a scowl, but they had never been her true smile. That, I had only seen since we arrived at the Reapers’ compound.
I reached and reached, hoping to be able to find and siphon some of her power into the anchor as well. Right now, the structure felt unbalanced, and since it was as big as a truck, that made me a little nervous.
Finally I felt it, the light that had taken up residence in Lily’s soul since she found her mates. I didn’t hesitate to grab on to it, pulling it with a forceful yank, expecting it to be hard to bring into Limbo, just like Elizabeth’s had been, but it wasn’t.