by Sara Thorn
“Mara?” Bree asked. “What’s wrong?”
She knelt in front of me and looked in my eyes. My vision looked like a split-screen and only saw bits and pieces of her in my view.
“I don’t feel—” in the middle of my staggered words, I felt the warm blood roll out of my nose and also up over my lips. I wanted to ask her what was happening to me, but all of a sudden, it felt as though the floor had bottomed out from beneath me.
***
When I opened my eyes, I heard words being spoken quietly around me. Bree was there, and so was Cassius. I could pick his voice out of a million voices in a crowd far away.
“It’s not sickness,” I heard Bree say to him. “Not human sickness anyway. It’s her connection to Mystreuce.”
“I warned her this would happen if she went back to her home world again.” Cassius sounded very worried.
“That’s not it, either; it’s not because she visited the human world that caused this. It’s because of her connection to what is happening on Mystreuce. I know you can feel it, too, Cassius. Even I can feel it. The land here is in turmoil now…again. But for her, humans weren’t meant to be connected to the power of this world. She is feeling the unbalance of the land, just as we are, but her body cannot handle it like ours can.”
“How can I help her?” Cassius asked.
“Aside from fixing the chaos that is ensuing here, you can’t. Her chances of surviving this are nearly impossible.”
“I won’t accept that,” Cassius said.
I could hear the tiny cracks in his voice that revealed how he was trying to hold himself together.
“I need to tell you something else, too,” Bree said. “I need to tell you about Quinn and your half-brother.”
“Athan? He’s probably dead by now.”
“I can assure you that he is not,” Bree said.
Cassius looked at her with surprise. “How do you know that?”
“Because Quinn has been talking to him and keeping him alive every day.”
“Why would Quinn do that? Athan tortured him while Quinn was under his control.”
Bree shook her head. “I don’t know why he is doing any of this. I only know what it is that he is doing.”
“It can wait,” Cassius said as he sat beside me and held my hand against my chest. “I need to find a way to help Mara first.”
I felt like I was only half-there. I could hear them and see them, but every time I tried to speak or even to try to formulate the thoughts in my head, I seemed to fade out like the fuzzy channel on an old radio.
“This is the only way that I can think of for you to help Mara,” Bree urged. “Quinn is very powerful now. I mean very powerful. Instead of trying to rid himself of the shadow magic, he has called upon it even more. He invited it in to consume him, and in exchange for not letting it kill him, Quinn has become one of the most powerful hosts of magic that the fae have known in quite some time.”
“I don’t care about what he does with his magic,” Cassius said as he squeezed my hand. “I care about what happens to Mara. Tell me something useful for her then.”
“Quinn is quite possibly the only one who can save her,” Bree answered.
“How?”
“Shadow magic is capable of doing almost anything that its caster so desires, including killing you.”
Great, so Bree knows about Cassius’s weakness, too.
I tried to say something, but it just sounded like a gurgle in my head that never made it to my lips.
“The risk is great,” she continued. “Quinn wants you dead. But he doesn’t want Mara dead, and he also doesn’t want Mara to hate him. You may be able to broker a deal with him.”
“What kind of deal?” Cassius asked.
“A deal for him to heal Mara and, at the same time, spare you.”
“Where is Quinn now?” Cassius asked.
No, no, don’t go there, I thought to myself. Don’t risk it, just stay here with me, please.
“He would have headed into the forest by now,” she answered. “Deep into the forest where he will be well hidden and well protected.”
“Protected by who?”
“There are plenty of fae who revere Quinn and his ability to master such power, even at risk to himself. There are those of our people who will follow his lead.”
“Why aren’t you one of those people?” Cassius asked. “You seemed quite taken with him.
“At first,” Bree said sadly, “until I saw his true form.” Whatever Bree meant by that did not sound good. “You need to go, now!” she said. “I will watch over her, but you need to go quickly.”
Cassius leaned forward and kissed me on my burning forehead. I could feel his cool lips against my sweating skin.
“I will be back very soon,” he whispered into my ear as he pressed his cheek against the side of my face. “You need to stay alive, Mara. You promised me we were in this together, too. Stay alive until I get back with Quinn to help you.” He turned his head and pressed his lips against the side of my face as if he didn’t want to let go.
“I’ll make sure she’s okay, just hurry,” Bree said anxiously. “Human bodies are frail and temperamental.”
Well, she was right about that. Every section of my body hurt as if I were being carved into from the inside out. I would have cried or groaned, but nothing seemed to be working. Even my blinking eyelids seemed to be out of my control. It was as if my body were functioning on autopilot and it wasn’t happy about it. I felt like one of the animatronic figures at the theme parks that glitched out when it broke down and did random things like wave its hand backward over and over again.
I felt like I was broken, too.
Chapter Nineteen
Bree’s eyes stared into mine for much of the time while we waited. She had pretty eyes. They seemed to change color every so often. The last time I had really looked at her eyes, they were orange.
Now, they looked like a rose-gold.
I wanted to talk to her and ask her what was going to happen to me. I wanted to ask her what she had meant when she spoke of Quinn. But nothing was working; my body was revolting. How could a place as beautiful and enchanting as Mystreuce do this to me? I had only ever tried to protect this world, and my fondness for it had grown to mean as much to me as my own world. It didn’t make sense that just because I was appointed as one of its protectors, I would be forced to share in its pain. Especially not when sharing the pain of Mystreuce would cost me my own life.
I wanted to be immortal and powerful like the rest of them. I didn’t even care which one; fae or vampire, or even dhampir. I would rather have been any one of them right now than this frail human shell I was stuck inside. I remembered the older fae woman who did the binding ceremony said something about how Mystreuce would grant me dormant powers that would appear only when I was ready for them. I pushed inside my mind and tried to tell my body that I was prepared for those powers now. I needed any kind of power I could find to take away the pain I was feeling and grant me back my voice to speak to Bree.
“I’m going to try to help you,” Bree said gently to me as I stared wide-eyed at her face without blinking. “I’m no healer, so this may not work at all. But Quinn did start to teach me a little about shadow magic, and I’m going to see what I can do to help you.”
God, Bree, no! Don’t do it. How can you risk even attempting to use shadow magic after you saw what it did to Quinn?
But she couldn’t hear the thoughts inside my head, and I couldn’t make them reach my mouth.
I expected shadow magic to look like something. Maybe it was from all the movies I had watched during my teen years, but I thought there would be some sort of swirling, gusting, puff of magic in the air. I didn’t see anything at all, but I did start to feel something. Actually, I started to feel less. The pain running through my body seemed to dull, and it felt as if things started trying to work at least a little bit again.
“Bree?” I heard my small voice and was happy th
at I was able to get a word out.
She smiled at me. “You’re feeling a little better?”
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you. But I don’t want you to use shadow magic for me anymore. I’ve already done enough damage to Quinn. I can’t have that happen to you, too.”
“I won’t use anymore,” she said. At least she was smart about it. “But you didn’t do any of this to Quinn; he did it to himself.”
“How long do you think Cassius will be gone?” I asked.
“Probably, unfortunately, longer than that magic will last you.”
“What’s going to happen to me?” I was honestly terrified to find out. I was terrified to think that I wouldn’t see Cassius again or be alive when he returned. I was scared to think about what he would do if he were grief-stricken over my death.
“Your body will try to hold on for as long as it can,” she answered. “That’s why you’ve been unable to talk and unable to control your movements. It’s going into a kind of emergency mode in order to preserve your basic life functions for as long as it can.”
“But what if Cassius doesn’t get back in time to—”
“He will,” Bree said with assurance.
Quinn was right; she reminded me of Sen, too. If Sen were here, none of this would have happened. She wouldn’t have let Quinn go off the rails like this, and she would be so disappointed in him, and also in me if she saw what was happening now.
“How did you get out?” Bree said suddenly as she looked over at the door.
I managed to turn my head to see Athan standing there in the doorway.
“Final parting gift from Quinn,” he grinned. “Funny how some people will serve you without even knowing it, even when they despise you.”
Bree glared at him as he walked into the room and made his way closer to us. “Take another step farther and I’ll drop you,” she warned.
Athan laughed; I hated his laugh so much. It was so filled with vile menace. “I’d really like to see you try. Besides, she looks like she’s about on her way out anyway,” he said as he motioned to me on the bed. “I’m starving, just let me help her along.”
Athan looked as though he were about to lunge at us, but Bree stood up, and within a matter of seconds, Athan seized up as if he had been paralyzed and dropped to the floor.
Bree looked as though she hadn’t even broken a sweat, but the thin purple vein in the side of her neck looked a little darker than it had before.
“Bree, you said you wouldn’t,” I said.
“And I won’t. At least not again. But he needed to be stopped.”
“Is he dead?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I was actually really relieved by hearing her say that. I had wanted Athan dead for so long now. And it brought me great pleasure to know that his death had been so underwhelming and uneventful. Instead of being killed in some glorious battle for power, he had been killed by a small fae who threw her first attempts at shadow magic at him. I guessed Cassius wasn’t the only one who couldn’t defend against that. I started to feel the pain creep its way back into my muscles. The relief Bree provided hadn’t lasted nearly as long as I had hoped that it would.
“Tell me about your sisters,” I said while I still had the ability to speak. I remembered that she said her two sisters had been captured by Athan, and I realized that I had still never met them.
Bree smiled warmly. “My sisters are lovely,” she said. “My older sister is kind and wise. I think she might actually be selected to preside over the fae. And my younger sister, well, she is a spitfire. She is as impulsive as she is beautiful, but her heart is always in the right place. I think, actually, that she has taken an interest in your friend, David.”
I liked to hear that. I had hoped that David would find someone wonderful here.
“What happens when a fae and a human get together, you know, like in a sexual way. Are their children fae or human, or a mix of both?”
“Usually, the children of a fae parent will have fae qualities, at least a handful of the abilities and magic, even if one of the parents are human. Fae is the more dominant trait, so it usually wins out.”
Humans now seemed like such an inferior species to me overall. Especially now that I had seen how many other forms of existence there are. And Cassius had hinted at there being even more.
“What about with vampires and humans,” I asked. “I know that a human mother and a vampire father can produce a dhampir, like Cassius. But is it always that way, or are there sometimes other outcomes to that union?”
Bree looked instantly uncomfortable. “There can be other outcomes sometimes, although it is rare.”
“Like what?” I asked. “Just plain old human babies?”
“No,” she said. “Hey, how about we talk about something else?”
“Why?”
Bree was not very good at hiding things or changing the subject, for that matter.
“Okay,” I said as I let her off the hook with that one. “I want you to write a note for me. To give to Cassius in case—”
“He’ll be here before it’s too late,” Bree said. But even though she was trying to make her voice sound super positive again, this time is had a bit less zeal than before.
“Just in case,” I said. “It would make me feel better.”
“Okay.” She went to get a pen and a sheet of paper. “I think it would be better if it was in your handwriting, though.”
I wasn’t really sure that my hands and fingers would cooperate, but I gave it the best try that I could. Bree held the paper still for me as she propped me up to write it against her knee. Every few letters, I dropped the pen because my fingers couldn’t seem to hold onto anything, but she patiently picked it up and put it back into my hand each time. I couldn’t tell if she was reading the letter, but I thought I heard her sniffle once. I didn’t cry at all, simply because I didn’t want my tears or blood to smudge the page.
“My dearest Cassius,
Remember when you said that we were like planets and moons? Those were the most perfect words I had ever heard. You were right; we will always orbit around each other and pull together even when we are being pulled apart. I don’t think there is any force that is strong enough to separate us, not even death.
They also seem like the perfect words for right now. Because even in death, I will pull toward you, and someday, if you ever join me in whatever lies after life, we will show everything around us that our love is the strongest magic that there is, made of nothing other than the planets and the moons and the stars.
I will love you until there is nothing left of me, and even then, I will stay with you,
Mara
When I dropped the pen for the last time, Bree didn’t pick it up and put it into my hand. My fingers froze in a curled position, and I hovered in this torturous stasis as Bree rubbed my head, and we waited for Cassius to return. At least the note was written, at least he would have something if I were already gone when he got back.
When I slept, I thought it might have been a dream, even though I wondered if I hadn’t really been asleep at all. I heard Bree’s voice chanting various words that must have been in some fae language that I didn’t know. They might have been words that were keeping me alive just a little longer, or they might have meant nothing at all and been merely for comfort. We waited for what seemed like such a long time, even though I had no concept of how much time had actually passed. I was proud of my human body for holding on so long, but I could tell that it wasn’t going to hold on for too much longer.
Bree began to softly sing, which I imagined might have been something that fae do when a death is about to come. I tried not to think about it. I tried not to think about anything at all, especially Cassius because if I did, I would feel the pang of death even more sharply. Instead, I would think of dancing on the stage again as I listened to Bree sing. I would imagine a choreography made to her voice, and I would envision looking out into the audience and seeing only Cassius t
here.
Chapter Twenty
Cassius
I cursed the land beneath my feet as I ran like wildfire through the woods. As its ruler, it should be heeding my wishes and doing as I command, not punishing Mara by slowly killing her with the pain that Mystreuce was suffering.
With every footstep, I hurled a new curse out into the air. If this land thought it was suffering now, it would be shocked by how much it will suffer under my wrath if Mara dies. I homed in my thoughts and concentration on only one purpose, to find Quinn and bring him back to the castle to help her.
As soon as I stumbled upon the fae village, I stood in the center of their space and called for Quinn with immense volume that shook the flowering trees.
“He is here,” a fae girl whose face somewhat resembled a fawn said to me as she wrapped her arm in mine and walked me toward Quinn.
I hardly recognized him when I saw him. It was disturbing how twisted and deformed the shadow magic had made him. He sat on a throne made of woven branches and large tree roots and watched as I walked toward him. His eyes looked like hollow little caves, and all traces of his eye color had been usurped with black. He didn’t bother to wear a shirt to hide the fact that the rest of his skin looked like a black oil spill, and there wasn’t much about him that resembled a fae anymore.
All around him were human slaves who brought food and drinks and stared as if they were looking through a computer screen and couldn’t really see what was on the other side. All of the humans appeared glamoured. They were in the same kind of servitude for Quinn that his people had been in for Athan. Apparently, he had learned nothing about freeing the people and living in peace.
“You know,” Quinn said as I stood in front of him, “I haven’t made any direct threats against your rule, Cassius. Mostly because I still care for Mara. But running in here like this unannounced certainly doesn’t bode well for you.
“I came here because of Mara,” I said as I tried to catch my breath. “Mystreuce is killing her.”