The Light of the World

by Tara Brown

  "Take me to my mother. Please." I whisper into the water.

  The brunette woman holding me shakes her head, "We can't Rayne. You're not ready. You must kill the devils."

  I cry into the waves, "Please. Please, I need some help. I need someone."

  They hold me and let me cry and we swim but when I see the lights of a harbor I know they never brought me to her.

  I pull myself from the waves and look back at the lights filling the water. I can't see much in the fog. I think I am at Constantine's house again. It's not a harbor. It's where I ran from. They brought me back. The house looks like his. In the fog it does.

  They must hate me for the death of Willow and the three other Nixie. They made me come back to him. I stumble up the rocks to the grass.

  I collapse on the grass and curl into a ball. I'm freezing. I pray for death. I know I won't be granted it, but praying can't hurt.

  I close my eyes and let the dead take me.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  She is sitting making me a daisy wreath. It feels morbid, but I let her put the crown of daisies on my head. She smiles. The light in her green eyes is almost blinding now.

  "I saw her Rayne. She thanked me. She thanked me for loving you and being the mother she could never be."

  Tears roll down my cheeks, "I'm so sorry Willow. I'm sorry my evil killed you."

  She shakes her head and wipes my tears, "No my darling girl. You have done nothing wrong. He knew I would lie to him to protect you. He knew it would corrupt my soul and end my light. I was happy to protect you. When he asked me to give you to him I lied to him. I never intended for him to take you, ever. I told him to meet me at the house but I put the charm on the house. He wouldn’t have found you inside the house. It was the only way to keep you safe. I lied to him and corrupted my soul. Lying to Lucifer means you take some of his evil. Earth Witches can't have evil inside of them. It spreads like a weed and kills the light. My only regret is leaving you so soon. I wasn’t ready to leave you." Her fingers grip mine and for the smallest moment I feel the light inside of her.

  I open my eyes and wake calm as always. My heart is broken and the pain in my chest takes a second to register. Tears flood my eyes when I register I am in my room.

  His arms wrap around me. He holds me to him and kisses my cheek. His kisses are soft and sweet. His touch is gentle and compassionate.

  "What happened?" He whispers into my ear.

  "Willow." I sob. I can't say anything else. She was so beautiful in my dream. I know it wasn’t a dream. She came to see me like the dead do. I sleep with the dead.

  My body convulses. It feels like she took the light with her, all the light there was inside of me. It's gone now.

  All of the goodness I had, was from her. She saved me, every inch of me. I could have grown up evil and angry from being abandoned and instead I was raised with love and kindness.

  "Shhhh. It's okay Rayne. I won't let anything happen to you." His body forms around mine and for the first time I notice the stomach twinges I have. I look back.

  My body tenses and panic rips through me.

  "Wyatt? Where am I?"

  Wyatt frowns, "You didn’t know you were with me did you?" The question hurts, both of us.

  I sniffle and shake my head. How could the Nixie betray me like this?

  I don’t have the energy or anger to fight him.

  "Come here. Lie back down. I swear I won't hurt you."

  I shake my head and pull further away.

  His dark blue eyes flicker in the dim light of the candles lit. I don’t recognize the room. My brain played tricks on me. It saw my room at Constantine's. I wanted to see it. I should have known I wasn’t there though. The dead never take me when I'm in my room at Constantine's. I can't help but wonder if the reason the Nixie brought me here was to make sure I could be with her. Or they really are just angry with me.

  "Where are we?"

  He sits up and pulls my face to his. He looks deeply into my eyes and kisses my cheeks, "Fitz's house." Chills run up and down my spine.

  "Please let me go. Please."

  He shakes his head, "I can't."

  I close my eyes as silent tears drip from them.

  He kisses them away, "I can't because they're looking for you. You're safe here. My uncle felt your mom die. They were handfasted too."

  My eyes open fast, "What?"

  He nods, "Fitz and Willow were in love for a long time. They kept it secret. He says that’s how Lucifer tricked her into revealing where you were. He used Fitz as bait."

  I feel sick.

  "No. No."

  He smiles and kisses my cheeks again, "We weren’t the first ones to handfast I guess."

  I sob.

  "Wyatt, I killed her."

  He holds me tight, "No. Lucifer killed her Rayne. Fitz felt her light go out. That happens to witches who take on some of the original sin. She lied to him and took his evil. Lying to an Arch Angel is a sin. Fallen or not. She protected you because she loved you."

  I look up into his dark blue eyes and get lost for a minute.

  He bends his face and presses his lips against mine, "I love you too."

  I let him kiss me and hold me and soothe me.

  I close my eyes and let him lie us both back down. He holds me, and the dead take me.

  When I wake I am alone in the small dark room. I look at the candles lit and the shabby chic décor.

  "She loved you child. You saved her as much as she saved you."

  Fitz looks rough. He's sitting in a corner with a big bottle of something.

  I watch him take a drink and shake his tear stained face, "She loved you so much she sacrificed everything for you." His tone has a hint of bitterness in it.

  "I'm sorry." I whisper. I guess he was one of the things sacrificed.

  He looks at me and smiles, "No. Never be sorry. She did what was right. She loved you and wanted you safe and she gave up everything to make you safe. Never be sorry for that. Be grateful."

  I nod.

  "Be grateful such an amazing creature wanted to help you." He looses it. He bends over and sobs. His sobs are the harsh broken kind. He hides his face from me and shakes with pain.

  I climb off the bed and walk to him. I wrap my arms around him and we cry together. Our pain is the same.

  He looks up at me, "You have to live, for her. You have to. Her sacrifice can't be for nothing."

  "I'll try."

  He kisses the top of my head and hugs me hard.

  He gets up from the chair and leaves the room.

  I walk back to the bed and try to process it all. I grab the cordless phone next to the bed and dial Mona's number.

  "Hello?" She sounds confused.

  "Hey it's me." My voice is lost. It's a hoarse whisper.

  "Rayne?"

  "Yup."

  She sighs, "Oh my god where are you?"

  "I don’t know. I'm with Wyatt somewhere. I don’t know where it is. Are you okay?"

  "Yeah. They’ve been here like three times looking for you. Wait what? Wyatt? Oh my god they have you?"

  "No. Wyatt and his uncle seem to be on my side. Fitz and Willow were handfasted."

  "Shut up. No way. Weird."

  I nod and look around the room, "Yeah. I have bad news though."

  She doesn’t bite right away. She braces herself. I can almost hear her doing it. "Okay."

  "Willow, uhm, well, she died. I think it was yesterday." My voice cracks.

  She is silent.

  "She's gone."

  "I'm so sorry Rayne. How? Want me to meet you?"

  "No stay there. I have to figure out what's next. I'm pretty lost right now. I'll come for you in the next couple days okay?"

  She sounds down, "Yup. Be safe. Please for the love of god be safe."

  "I will."

  "I love you Rayne. I'm so sorry about your mo-Willow."

  I shake my head and try to swallow my tears, "Say mom. She was my mom."

 
; "Mom. I'm sorry about your mom."

  "Thanks."

  "See ya in a couple days."

  "Yup." I hang up and lie back.

  "Are you okay?"

  I glance up at Wyatt standing in the doorway. He almost takes up the entire thing.

  I shake my head, "I'm confused and lost."

  He walks to my side and sits on the bed, "I know. Me too." I glance at the ring finger on his left hand and feel a pain I have never felt before. There on his hand sits a silver ring.

  I feel like I've been stabbed in the heart.

  "You got married?"

  He looks at the hand and then tucks it under him, "No this is the promise I will marry her. We replace the silver with gold when we do the ceremony."

  Relief floods me. He isn’t married yet. He's still mine in some twisted fucked up way.

  I look into his dark blue eyes and get lost. They're like the sea. I can float in them and let myself imagine possibilities, without the pain of reality attacking me.

  "You know I love you and I know you love me, but I don’t know how to be what we are and be together."

  I watch his eyes and smile, "Me either. Your mom wants me full of sin and then dead. My family is a shit show. I don’t even understand how he killed Willow."

  "The Fae are made up of the Light of the World. The small piece of light is what makes them Fae. The Nixie light we used to heal you is from the light of the world. Those Water Witches are Fae. All the witches are Fae. They are bound by a rule, one rule. A golden rule. ‘Do what ye will and harm none.’ They are bound by it."

  "This is like following a bread crumb trail but like the crows ate half the stupid bread crumbs."

  He laughs, "Anyway! The light is easily corrupted. A dark deed, a lie to an angel, murder-not in self-defense, theft, any of those sorts of things can kill the light. When the light is gone the Fae die. They were made of the light, in the light. When they're murdered their light may be taken."

  I shiver, "Like the Nixie who died to save me."

  He nods, "They cleansed you. They removed the sin you ate but at a cost. Sacrifice. Everything with God is sacrifice. Willow sacrificed her light to save you."

  "I wish she hadn’t." Eleven people have died for me.

  He kisses me lightly like a feather would, "I'm grateful to her. I would die without you."

  I kiss him back and try to forget there is a silver ring making promises I don’t want him to keep.

  His fingers trace along my tank top and shoulders. He makes chills and shivers everywhere. He kisses my shoulder and up into my neck. I push him away, "Please don’t."

  He pulls back and gives me his grin, "You want this Rayne. I can feel it."

  His fingers knead into my thighs.

  I nod, "I do, but I'm scared you'll take away my pain."

  He kisses me again and whispers into my lips, "I want to take away your pain.

  I shake my head, "I deserve it. I need to feel it. It makes her real."

  I feel his defeat.

  "Okay. Let me hold you?"

  I curl into him. He lies back and wraps himself around me. I can feel him pressed into the back of me.

  "Will you marry her?"

  He kisses my ear, "You feel like adding to your pain do you?"

  I shake my head, "I want you to tell me no."

  "Tell me you don’t love Constantine Basarab and I will."

  I roll over and look at him, "Not the same way I love you. The girl I was before, Ellie, she loves him. Her memories and mine are merging. The things I remember are all hers. I remember bad things about him too. Not just the way she loved him. He betrayed her, me. He gave her to your mother. He stabbed her with a sword and made her weak. I remember it."

  "I would never betray you like that. You must know that."

  "You already did. You got engaged to that girl and you let them take me to the tower. Fitz betrayed me then too."

  He shakes his head, "No, my mother lied. She said the first Sin Gatherer wouldn’t be full for months. She lied to Fitz and me. And I got engaged because I must. My entire family has arranged marriages. Always has."

  I watch his eyes, "Why didn’t Fitz ever get married?"

  He smiles his huge cocky grin, "Lied and said he was gay."

  I laugh. I don’t mean to but it's funny. Lying about being gay to avoid an arranged marriage is genius.

  "Does she want to marry you?"

  His cocky grin gets bigger, "What girl wouldn’t want to marry me Rayne? Of course she does. She loves me. She thinks she's won the man lottery."

  I frown, "Gross. Lucky you're humble cause that could really inflate your ego. Man lottery. That’s disgusting."

  He laughs.

  I don’t. "Thanks for that. I needed something to cool me off. That worked. I'm going back to sleep again. I'm exhausted."

  He grabs my arms, "Oh come on. It was a joke. No, she doesn’t want to marry me, okay? Happy? No. She is as annoyed and devastated as I am. She's playing pretend very convincingly though. Whereas I am the shame of my family."

  I laugh again, "I could have guessed that easily. Your sister seems like she is your mother's pet though."

  He nods, "She is. She is the one who called our mother when Constantine sent the vampires to collect you the first day you came home with me. She is exactly like our mother."

  I frown, "You knew those vampires were coming for me, even then? You knew about Constantine then?"

  He looks like he might lie or at least attempt it, but he doesn’t. He nods and shrugs, "He's always been after you. For the last three lives you’ve had, he has been with you. Always as a husband. When you said you were with him again I panicked. I thought you'd gone bad again."

  I frown, "How do you know about this?"

  "Lore."

  "What?"

  His smile stays on his face but I can see it's forced, "Lore. We have legends and stories about you dating back to the beginning."

  I push him away, "You knew this was my last life?"

  He nods, "I only found out after you ran away from me. I'd studied you my whole life but I never knew who you were. We always assumed Lucifer had you kept somewhere. When you got away from me, Fitz fess'd up about knowing about you all along. He had helped Willow several times at keeping you safe."

  I shake my head, "I don’t remember him. Not at all."

  "Well besides her stabbing me in the neck, I'd never met her either. They kept each other secret. Very secret."

  "What was life like before I came along?"

  He laughs, "Plain. I trained and hung out and had regular girlfriends and planned my life after university. Obviously it's always been the family business for me, but I never imagined it would be this annoying and stressful. You have a gift. Let me tell you. Stressing me out is not easy, and yet you do it with ease."

  I blush and snuggle into his embrace, "Why didn’t you ever just tell me the things you knew about me?"

  "My whole life has been training for the moment you would be reborn and killing the things that go bump in the night. You and I are enemies Rayne. Natural enemies."

  I close my eyes again and sleep. All I ever do is sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  "RUN RAYNE! RUN BACK TO HIM! WAKE UP!"

  I open my eyes and look around the room. I heard Willow. I swear I did.

  "RUN!"

  The voice isn’t Willow's but I can hear it outside of my head. The voice is screaming at me like the Nixie did. I climb from the bed and open the door to the hall.

  I open it a crack and look around the empty hallway. I close the door and go back to the bed. I pull on all my layers of clothes Fitz cleaned for me. I pull on my boots and try not to notice the slight dampness from the sea.

  "RUN!"

  I sigh and look up, "I'm fricken tired of running okay." I whisper to whoever is screaming at me.

  I open the door again and slip out into the hallway again. The dead are sparkling around me, whispering. I follow their whispers
down a long hallway. I open the door they sit in front of and peek inside. No one is there. The room looks like an old-fashioned weapons room.

  "LOOK!"

  I look around the room. I'm confused and scared.

  On the wall in the far right corner is something that breaks my heart and lifts me up instantly.

  I run to the wall and pull the sword off. It's a Katana. It's my Katana. The silver sword gleams, just as it did the day they took it out of me. I shiver remembering the feeling of the sword being pulled from my side. Memories flood my mind.

  Wyatt's mother, Gretel, was the one who pulled it from my side. The sheath is on a shelf below it. I grab it and sheath the sword. I pull the matching dagger from the wall and hold it. There is a shelf of belts and harnesses. I grab a belt and put it on. My body is twitching and shivering. Excitement and fear are rolling around inside of me like storm clouds.

  I slide the dagger into the belt hilt and carry my sword. Weapons line the walls. Daggers, swords, maces, axes, nunchucks, arrows, bows, cleavers, knives, polearms, and spears. Guns with wooden bullets and silver bullets fill an entire shelf.

  The room freaks me out. There is no doubt a weapon for every kind of creature. A silver knife for the throat of the Nixie, a wooden bullet for the vampires and a silver spear for a shifter. Leather armor and metal armor fill the far side of the wall. Special armor is encased in glass. I recognize it somehow.

  I want out.

  I turn and walk to the door quietly.

  I peer out. Nothing moves in the hall.

  The dead whisper and sparkle in the air around me. They want me to follow them a different way.

  They trickle over to where a huge brick fireplace and chimney are.

  "PRESS THE STAR TO SEE THE STARS!"

  I sigh and close the door. "You guys are annoying."

  I walk to the huge fireplace. I see a small sign that reads, 'Caress a star to see the stars and find eternal love'

  I look around for the star but see nothing.

  I hear a noise in the hall. The dead cluster their sparkles around a picture across the room.

  It's tiny and black and white. I squint to see the picture. It's a man and a woman sitting on a hillside with the moon in front of them. You can only see the backs of the man and the woman. I look closer. It's Fitz and Willow. I'd recognize the daisy chain on her head anywhere.