by Sara Thorn
Chapter Nine
We decided that the best place to enact this crazy plan was at Cassius’s castle. At least there would be some form of fortification there inside the massive structure. It was quite a long hike, and after a few days spent traveling toward the golden structure, we were still only halfway there. I had a feeling that things would have gone faster if Cassius didn’t have to stop for me to eat and rest, but if it seemed tedious to him, he didn’t say anything about it.
Traveling all the way to the castle wasn’t a feat that Athan could yet manage to do. Even with his above-ground tunnels, they didn’t yet stretch the span of the rolling hillsides that led up to the castle. Cassius and I stayed within the forest’s edge as much as possible to avoid being spotted. There were some parts of the journey in which the cover of the forest canopy just wasn’t possible, but for the most part, we were able to stay pretty well hidden. Sometimes, a giant raven flew overhead, one that looked more like the size of a man than an actual bird. I got a sick feeling in my stomach each time I saw it, and I wasn’t sure why. Whenever the giant black bird came around as if it were scouting, we simply ducked back beneath the cover of the trees and waited for it to pass, which also slowed our journey some.
Along the way, we searched for any fae who might have been able to escape Athan’s roundup of their people and might still be alive outside of his reach. Cassius said that in order for our plan to work, we needed someone capable of wielding fae magic. Dregon had disabled all of the entry points on Earth, and in order to get there and open them back up again, we needed someone who could use magic to get us there. Quinn had done it for us before, and even then, it had seemed like a task he wasn’t sure about tackling. Now we were at the mercy of finding a stray fae on the slim chance that one might still be alive and convincing them to risk their life to help us. The odds were definitely not in our favor, but there was nothing else to do but to continue walking and searching along the way. The closer we got to the castle, the less likely we would be to find any survivors in the woods.
“What do we do if there is no one left?” I asked. I didn’t want to sound disheartened, but at some point, reality would need to be dealt with.
Cassius didn’t yet answer my question before we both heard a noise behind us that sounded like a snapping twig. We both turned around as Cassius drew his blade.
“No, don’t,” a girl said as she stepped out from between the trees. She looked to be in her early twenties, but with her tipped ears and eyes that looked like they magically tapered into points at the edges. I could tell she was fae, so there was no telling how old she actually was. She held up her palms in the air as she walked a bit closer to us before stopping. She had intricately drawn tattoos that swirled around her fingers and looked as if they were done in indigo ink.
“Who are you?” Cassius asked her. “Why were you following us.”
“My name is Bree, and I’ve been following you ever since you left the ancient tree. I saw you escape from Athan’s stronghold, and I wanted to see what you were doing.”
“Are you all alone out here?” I asked her.
Bree nodded. “I escaped during the battle when Athan came to collect all of the fae. I have two sisters he took, but I got away. Are you his brother?” she asked as she looked at Cassius.
“Half-brother,” he answered.
I could tell that being any sort of relation to Athan was an extremely weighty nuisance.
“You’re the rightful heir to the vampire rule then,” she said as if she were reciting something that had been taught to her. “I hear you’re a lot nicer than your brother.”
“Half-brother,” Cassius reiterated again. “And who did you hear that from? Are there other fae out here, too?”
“No,” she said sadly. “I’m the only one. I’ve been alone this whole time.”
“Why did you choose to reveal yourself to us now?” he asked skeptically. “You fae are more light-footed in the forest than to have let us hear a branch snap beneath your feet.”
Bree grinned. “That’s true. But I heard you say something about needing fae magic, and I want to help.”
“Why would you want to help us?”
“I want to get my sisters back, and I want my people to be freed from Athan’s rule so we can go back to how our lives used to be.”
That made sense to me, and Bree seemed genuine. Well, about as genuine as anyone could trust a fae to be, I supposed. I glanced over at Cassius, and he shrugged.
“She’s the best chance we have right now,” he said. “How strong is your magic?”
Bree squished her face up, and it made the skin on her nose ripple into like wrinkles.
“Well, here’s the thing. I’ve been told that my magic is really strong for my age, but I’ve also been told it’s rather unpredictable.”
“All fae magic is unpredictable against vamps,” Cassius said.
“Yeah, well, that makes mine about doubly as unpredictable. But what I lack in control, I can make up for in enthusiasm,” she said.
Cassius rolled his eyes. “I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not.”
I touched the side of his arm and noticed Bree stare intently at my hand against his skin.
“She is offering help, and we need fae magic. She wants to save her family and will need our protection against Athan, too, once he reaches the full capacity of the surface. I think we should give her a chance,” I said.
“You’re human,” she said, astonished. “And he’s—”
“Dhampir,” Cassius interrupted. “Something wrong?”
“No, no, not at all. I’ve just never seen anything like it before.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Normally, they kill your kind,” she said with a look of fear in her eyes that wasn’t for her but rather for me.
“I can assure you,” Cassius said, “that I have no intention of harming Mara or letting anyone else harm her for that matter.”
Bree stared at him with her mouth hanging open for a minute. “You love her,” she said. “Don’t you?”
Cassius didn’t answer. I didn’t think he trusted her yet. I wasn’t sure if I trusted her yet either.
“You are going to be a great ruler one day,” she said. “And the gift she bears you will be—” Bree stopped short as if she had let herself ramble too much already.
“What are you talking about?” Cassius asked. “What gift?”
“Sorry, I get ahead of myself sometimes.”
Cassius eyed her carefully. “Are you a seer?” he asked her.
“A what?” I said.
He turned to me to explain. “There are some fae, a very rare few, who can see prophesies about the future.” He turned back to Bree to continue his question. “You’re a seer, aren’t you? Did you see my reign come to fruition?”
Bree tried to laugh off her rambling and change the subject. “The things I see are unpredictable, too,” she said as she started walking a few steps ahead of us on the path toward the castle. “I wouldn’t read much into them if I were you. Usually, just a bunch of nonsense.”
Usually.
When we finally arrived at the entrance to the castle, three more days had passed, and all three of us were more than ready to be finished with the journey. I had eaten nothing but berries and forest mushrooms for days, and although they had kept us nourished and the freshwater from the running streams had quenched our thirst, I was beyond ecstatic to see a stocked wine cellar and a pantry full of preserved meats and cheeses inside the castle walls. Bree’s eyes lit up, and I could see that her excitement matched my own.
“Let’s rest and nourish ourselves for a night,” Cassius said once we were inside and sat down for a minute to rest from the vast distance we had traversed. “We are safe here for now, and our efforts will be more effective if we are rested and well-fed.”
I couldn’t agree with him more.
Bree quickly ran into the pantry and started pulling various delicious meats and chee
ses and olives from the jars on the shelves and brought them out onto the table, while Cassius walked into the wine cellar and emerged with two wine bottles held beneath both arms. I helped Bree uncap lids and lay out a spread of food for us to eat. Cassius searched around for a corkscrew, and when he couldn’t find one, I noticed him turn around away from us with one of the wine bottles in his hands. When he turned back around, the cork had been removed and was ready to pour. When he picked up another bottle and turned around again, I was curious. I set down the jar in my hand and walked around the table to stand beside him. I put my hand on his shoulder, and it startled him. He turned around suddenly with his fang still poked into the top of the cork. He quickly reached to pull the cork from his elongated canine and looked at me with his alabaster cheeks turning several shades of pink. “I couldn’t find a corkscrew, and I—” he turned his head away from me as he hid his jaw until the fangs withdrew.
I reached my hand to the opposite side of his chin before he could turn away and tilted his face back toward me. His eyes held a shame for what he was, an embarrassment for his unique difference that made him less human than me. They also held an adoration for me that he was afraid to tarnish or lessen. In short, he didn’t want me to think of him as a monster. Nothing could be further from the truth to me; to me, everything about Cassius was beautiful and enchanting in my eyes.
“You don’t ever need to turn away from me, Cassius…ever. There is nothing about you that I want you to hide from me. Everything that comprises who you are is a part of the man that I am desperately in love with.”
I lifted my mouth to Cassius’s to kiss him, and he pulled back just enough to prevent our lips from touching. I had no idea how instantly the amount of time took for his teeth to rescind, and I didn’t care. Before he could pull away again, I pushed up onto my toes and kissed him, wrapping my hands behind his head and thrusting my tongue between his lips. At first, he seemed shocked. I didn’t feel the press of his tongue back against my own. It felt as though he were waiting for me to let go of him in horror. But I ran my tongue along the edge of his teeth until I found them, the longer, pointed fangs that had plunged into my wrist. I ran my tongue along their sharp edges and moved my lips against his with all of the passion that I felt welling within me. Everything about Cassius turned me on, and I wanted every piece of him, fangs and all.
After a moment, he grabbed me around my waist and pulled me feverishly against him. His tongue found mine and wrapped around the inside of my mouth. And although I could still tell that he was careful not to bite me, he let himself be impassioned, and he let a part of him open to me—his dhampir part.
When we let go of each other, I saw Bree standing at the other end of the table, over the top of his shoulder with her mouth agape. I went to finish helping her as Cassius opened the last two bottles of wine, this time without turning around.
“What did you mean when you said I would be giving Cassius a gift?” I asked her.
“Oh, I don’t want to tell you that,” Bree answered.
“Why not?”
“Because there is a very strong likelihood that what I saw won’t actually come to pass.”
“Is your sight into the future that unpredictable?”
“Yes. Besides, I fear there is something else to be worried about first. Something is going to happen to you soon.”
“Something happens to everyone,” I said, trying not to get worked up over her predictions. “Things have already happened to me and will continue to do so, I am sure. Such is the nature of life.”
“True,” she said as she popped off a lid that was stuck and accidentally sent it flying across the table. “But this thing, I don’t think you’re going to like.”
Chapter Ten
We spent the night eating and drinking and all but forgetting about the insurmountable task that awaited us in the morning. But when the morning did come, there was no more time for frivolity.
“Try it again,” Cassius said. I could hear it in his voice that he was becoming increasingly impatient.
Bree had tried several times already to open a bridge into the human world, and each time it seemed that she was close, it had failed, and her magic had closed back in on itself.
“It’s not her fault,” I reminded him gently as I saw his impatience grow. “She did warn us that her magic was unpredictable.”
“Yeah, I know, but one would think that after these many attempts, we would at least be getting closer.”
Bree frowned and tried again.
Finally, it worked.
Bree stayed behind at the castle on Mystreuce while Cassius and I went ahead into the human world. Our goal was simple, recruit as many humans to our cause as possible. We started in Boston since that was a city that we were familiar with and decided that we would work our way out from there. Whoever we recruited to help would go through the entry point at the gaming dens, and Bree would be waiting for them on the other side. Cassius was a little worried about leaving Bree in charge, but since he felt it was more important that he and I stay together, he conceded that she should be the one to welcome all of the new recruits to Mystreuce. She would get the humans housed and settled in the castle where they would await Cassius’s return to begin their training as warriors. The whole plan sounded slightly crazed, but it would work; it had to work.
We needed to separate temporarily once we stepped into Boston, though, because someone had to be at the virtual gaming den to manage the entry points, and one of us had to be out and finding people that were willing to go. Cassius hated the idea, but there was no other way. Besides, Athan wouldn’t have guessed that we were back on the Earth now. He didn’t know we had Bree, and as far as he knew, Quinn was the only fae who would help us. In Athan’s mind, there would have been no way for us to traverse the worlds, so he was surely still using his resources to scour Mystreuce for us.
The first place that I thought of to go was the dance studio. If any of my friends were still there, I was hoping that they would help. When I walked into my old studio at The Boston Conservatory, I was immediately relieved to see David and Gillian there. It also felt super strange and surreal. I had almost forgotten that I had a different life before all of this started, and I had been kidnapped into a supernatural world as a slave for feuding vampire siblings. Seriously, I couldn’t make this stuff up. David and Gillian were equally as shocked to see me.
“Oh my God, is that really you, Mara?” Gillian screeched as she let go of the barre and ran up to me. “Where in the hell have you been?
David came around the floor to give me a hug. “Athan told us that you had accepted some international scholarship opportunity with some foreign dance company in Italy, but it all sounded pretty sketchy to us, to be honest.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That was all a lie. Athan is a lie, too.”
They both looked at me like I was spewing crazy rhetoric.
“Speaking of Athan, have you seen him lately?” I asked.
“No, he’s been away, teaching some sort of alumnus dance residency program. I think he said it was in New York City, or was it Chicago? I don’t remember. Anyway, he’s been gone for a while now. We were wondering if the Conservatory was getting ready to replace him in his extended absence.”
“Okay, so I don’t have much time,” I said hurriedly. “Actually, I don’t have any time at all, so I need you both to listen to me. There’s a whole other world, a supernatural world, and that’s where I’ve been. I didn’t want to go at first; I was kidnapped and put there against my will. But then it sort of grew on me, and I ended up falling in love with a dhampir and—”
The expressions on their faces made me stop talking mid-sentence. They looked like they were going to have me committed.
“I know you’re really into those games, Mara, but maybe you should seek some help,” Gillian said with a frown.
This is definitely not working.
“Look, there’s another place, similar to the worlds we went into at the
gaming den. And there are people I care about there who are in trouble and need help. I came back to see if I could find people to help us. If you want to, come see for yourself, and bring whoever else you think might be down to help. Meet me back at the gaming den in an hour.”
Gillian gave David the face that she always made when she thought people had either lost their mind or insulted her. It was a look of complete and utter detachment. I knew she wouldn’t be showing up. But David was looking straight at me, and although he looked confused and a bit bewildered, he also looked intrigued.
“Please, David,” I said. “At least think about it.”
I went around the rest of the school campus, talking to everyone I remembered knowing, or at least thought I remembered. Then, when I had approached everyone I could and had also garnered the interest of campus security, I headed back to the gaming den to meet back up with Cassius. I had been gone a bit over an hour, and I was pretty stunned to walk into the place and see David, along with a half-dozen other dancers from the school standing with him.
“You came!” I said as I ran up and hugged him. I saw Cassius flinch out of the corner of my eye.
“Who is this guy?” David asked as he tilted his head toward Cassius.
“Your new ruler,” Cassius said when he overheard David’s question.
“Uh—”
“It’s okay, David,” I interjected before things could get any weirder than they already were. “Thank you for coming.”
I spoke loud enough for all of the people he had brought with him to hear me.