Savage Beauty

by Casey L. Bond

  Eye of wolf, watch for me

  Eye of blind man, keep me hidden

  Dragon’s egg, prepare my heart

  Spirit, guide me

  Tongue, quiet my foes. Let them not speak spells against me.

  Siren, help me beguile

  Rose, make me immune

  And Umbilis,

  Sever our tie for good

  “Mother moon hear my cry

  With this potion break our tie

  Sever the bond we sisters bear

  And help me wield both fire and air.”

  A slow clap startled me. “Very good, Luna. Very good.”

  I looked into the cauldron and saw that the water had reduced down to a thick, dark soup. Malex handed me a ladle. “Bottle it, and when you’re ready to strike, make sure you break it in an area she can’t escape from. She must inhale the vapors for the spell to work. You may have to hold her, but don’t use your elemental power. The fire could consume the spell and the air could dilute its potency. And either you or Aura has to release the spell. Since you are both bonded, it must be by one of your hands that you are severed.”

  “Okay.” I took in a deep breath and blew it out. “I’ll be careful. What about the other spell?”

  “The full moon is coming. We have to call for it to attack the sun during the day.”

  That’s fourteen nights away. “That’s too long,” I argued. “Phillip might not have that long to live.”

  “She will not let him die. If you know anything about Aura, it’s that she likes to use others as pawns on her board. Phillip is no pawn; he is her Knight and he will protect the Queen, because he’s the only thing standing between you and her and she knows it.”

  He was right, but was I willing to take the chance? I bit my thumb nail. I’d thought of ending her tonight, but I couldn’t do that. I wanted her awake, lucid, and looking into my eyes when I ended her. I wanted to lean in and whisper in her ear that I’d told her I would have my revenge, that she would finally pay for taking away everyone I ever loved, and that she would rue the day she ever set eyes on Phillip of Grithim. She would regret turning me into a monster, because I would take my time showing her how fierce a monster I’d become.

  “She won’t kill him, Luna,” Malex interrupted my murderous thoughts. “Think about what she did with William. She could have ended his life while you slept, but she waited until you were both awake before striking.”

  I couldn’t let the same thing happen to Phillip. The space between me and my sister was the deadliest spot to be in, but if she hurt one hair on his head, I’d draw out her torture. I would make her last hours on earth a living nightmare, and not just a sleep walk.

  “You can watch over him at night,” Malex suggested. “If he gets worse, you can cut her down in her sleep. It isn’t the way you want to fight her, but sometimes to win, you have to fight dirty.”

  What if she agreed to heal him? I thought to myself. But she wouldn’t. I knew my sister. She only knew how to cause pain. She didn’t know mercy. And if I hesitated for a second, I would lose him. But maybe there was a way to trick her into healing him.

  Malex went off in search of the right magical tome, located in the back of the room along a wall full of texts so old, the spines were worn ragged and the words completely rubbed off.

  “Are you sure you want this spell? It’s very powerful,” he asked, plucking a book from his collection.

  I put the cork on the bottled potion and held it up near the torch. In the flickering firelight, the dark fluid was alive, writhing and undulating inside the glass. “I’m sure. I don’t want to attack when she’s sleeping if I don’t have to. I want her to be awake for what I have planned.”

  He smiled. “That’s exactly what I would do. Now,” he cracked open the book, “let’s read about this spell. It’s in the language of the fae, so I’ll have to translate, but the words and magic must come from you, daughter of the moon.”

  We sat together on a long couch, the book resting on his legs until he read the entire section about calling for the eclipse.

  The book’s power had my hair standing on end. “How can you even stand to hold it, let alone read from it?” I asked, my teeth chattering.

  “My heritage, I suppose,” he answered, not outwardly affected by the magic at all. He reached out and took my hand and I watched as he guided it to the open pages. When my skin hit the parchment, I cried out. My flesh burned and froze all at once. Excruciating pain seared a path up my arm, through my shoulder, and pierced my heart, making me gasp. I tore my hand away.

  “Magic,” he said, “always comes with a price.”

  “If I call on this spell, what price will I pay?” I asked warily.

  He smiled. “None. You are the moon’s daughter. It is expected that children will ask things of their parents once in a while. The spell is powerful, but the words are simple. I will give them to you and you will repeat them after me, precisely.”

  “For a favor?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “This is freely given.”

  “Why?”

  “Because with Aura gone, it will ease your mind. You and I can spend time together.” I opened my mouth to make sure he knew that we would only ever be friends, but he beat me to it. “As friends, of course.”

  His eyes raked down the page, hanging on a set of words that looked like a list instead of a paragraph. He slowly enunciated each word and I repeated them back, feeling the pull of the moon outside his cave. It was like there was a rope stretched between me and the giant orb, and we were both equally strong, pulling one another without fraying the rope and breaking it apart. When I finished the incantation, my body hummed with so much energy, I could hardly stand.

  Malex gently eased the book onto a table and helped me up. “Are you okay to go home alone?”

  “Y-yeah.” My teeth chattered violently. I flexed my fingers, coiling them and flexing again.

  “I’m not sure it’s safe.”

  “I’ll b-be fine.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not you I’m worried about.”

  chapter twenty-two

  AURA

  My sister no doubt made her potion last night and was asleep in her cottage. I would have liked to visit her, if I could leave this place. I could heal Phillip and send him back to her as a showing of good will between us, but Luna and I had burned a bridge that couldn’t be so easily restored.

  Even if I sent him to her, she would still come for me. She wanted to be free.

  She thought that if our life forces were severed, so might the curse of slumber be severed, but I didn’t think she was right. We were too controlled by the celestial bodies to be independent of them. The curse had been with us from birth. If we weren’t bound to one another as sisters, we would still be bound to the heavens; a price of the magic that flowed into us that night. And if one of us died once the bond was broken? Well, it didn’t mean the other would be free of the curse of slumber.

  I understood her desperation.

  I felt it, too. At one point, our strange lives and how we lived them suffocated me. But over time, I came to embrace it. It was part of me, part of us. Of course, I had the easier curse to bear, as most humans slept during the night and thrived during the day. However, I didn’t like not being able to rouse in the middle of the night, as was proven the night before.

  Phillip did something incredibly foolish while I slept. Ever the gallant prince, he sent all the humans away from the palace, unbeknownst to me. I’d woken and yelled for my lady’s maid, but she never came to my chambers. There were no scullery maids, no butler, no one cooking in the kitchen. Not even a single stable boy remained.

  Not a single human was in the palace or on the grounds, except for Phillip.

  I found him sitting in his room, eating an apple, his feet propped up on a table and a smug grin on his face. “Need help lacing your corset, Princess?” he said with a smirk.

  Incensed, I shoved the toxin in his veins toward his
heart, speeding it up to a dangerous, nearly deadly level. “Whatever is the matter, Prince?” I said viciously. His eyes widened and he clutched his chest. “It seems that all my servants have run away. Since it was your doing, it looks like you’ll be the one cooking this morning. We’ll need to break our fast.”

  I let him go and told him to scurry off into the kitchens. After all, I was hungry, and it was his fault there was nothing prepared for the morning meal.

  I dressed myself and found him slicing an apple. He’d managed to bake hard, lumpy bread that I wasn’t sure was edible. “I hope this taught you a valuable lesson,” I sniffed.

  “Which is?”

  “Not to make decisions that might kill you. If that terrible excuse for bread doesn’t, I easily could.”

  His jaw ticked, making me smile. “You could heal me, you know. If you sent me back to Luna, she might forgive you. But you and I both know that if you kill me, she’ll never stop hunting you. And she’s determined. She probably met Malex last night. They probably worked their mojo and have a spell or concoction of some sort, and she’ll be coming for you soon.”

  “She’ll probably kill me in my sleep,” I grumbled. “But then again, she shouldn’t. And if she shows up, you should tell her that I am the only one who can remove the toxin from your body. I control it. If I die, so will you, and I won’t be there to slow down the symptoms.”

  His hand stilled.

  I laughed. “She thinks killing me would take it all away, doesn’t she? That’s not how it works.”

  He shook his head. “What?” I asked.

  “You two have been tearing each other apart for so long. Don’t you ever tire of it?”

  “Yes,” I said honestly. “I wish she would see reason. I wish she wouldn’t have erected a wall in her dreams. But most of all, I wish for peace between us.”

  “Tear it down, then. Smash it.”

  “What?”

  “The wall. It might take days, but tear it apart.”

  “She would just build it back,” I argued.

  “What if she wondered about what was so important to you that you would tear it down every night? What if that message could reach her?”

  PHILLIP

  Malex wanted me dead. He lied to me and Luna about his blood turning me fae, and instead gave me a vial full of charcoal-tinted molasses. I’d even been willing to do it, forsaking everyone and everything – my family, the crown, my kingdom – to become the thing my parents taught me to fear most. Only, I fell prey to a fae trick instead.

  Why was he lying to her?

  “Why would Malex care whether your lives are bound?”

  She shrugged a shoulder. “You said he wanted Virosa.”

  “He already has a kingdom,” I insisted.

  “Technically, his father has a kingdom. And while he has duties to it, maybe he wants to step out of his father’s shadow and rule one of his own.”

  “It seems too simple,” I said.

  “Most motivations are simple. They boil down to greed or hatred or revenge... lust or love. But I would’ve known if I’d met him before. I have all the memories I’ve ever made, even from infancy. Humans may not remember things until they’re toddling around, but the fae are different.”

  I remembered her vast garden and what lay beneath it. “The fae certainly are different,” I mused darkly.

  “You’re judging me. I can see it on your face.”

  “Wouldn’t you do the same if the situation were reversed?”

  She shrugged one shoulder dismissively. “I would.”

  She took a bite out of the hard bread I’d made and tried to chew it. Then she smiled. “I think I’ll have some apple instead. Come with me. I have an idea about how we can learn more about Luna’s mysterious friend.”

  I followed her to her chamber balcony. “Peace,” she called. The dove perched on the stone and cooed at her. “Find the fae they call Malex and follow him. And for goodness sake, stay out of sight for once.”

  The bird ruffled her feathers and flew toward the forest.

  “I should’ve chosen a different animal for my familiar.”

  “How does it work?”

  “I can see what she does and tell if she’s in distress. Much like my sister and me, I’ve bound my life to Peace. She won’t die as long as I’m alive, but if I die, that protection will be removed and she’ll be vulnerable.”

  “Is the same true for Ember and Luna?”

  “Yes. She can see through Ember’s eyes and feel what she feels, and as long as Luna lives, so will her evil cat.”

  I smiled. “Ember isn’t evil.”

  “Peace thinks she is. She’s always clawing at her, trying to eat her. What a sight that would be if she ever caught her, a live bird fluttering around in her belly. Peace wouldn’t die just because Ember ate her.”

  “Wait…” I said, confused. “You mean Ember wouldn’t have been hurt by your roses?”

  “She might have gotten sick, but she wouldn’t have died. You should have stayed inside the cottage, Prince. How many times did my sister warn you about the dangers that lurked outside her walls?”

  Wincing at the thought, I watched the bird until it flew out of sight. “Will she find him?”

  Aura’s voice was chipper when she answered, “Of course.”

  I was suddenly tired, the toxin causing my strength to wane. I slumped against the railing.

  “Come, Prince. You should lie down,” Aura said.

  “You should heal me. It’s the right thing to do.”

  She shook her head, a calculating look on her face. “Not yet.”

  chapter twenty-three

  LUNA

  For thirteen nights I watched Aura sleep, hovering at her window. She’d used my own tricks against me. I couldn’t enter the palace because she’d used bone dust to block me, and I knew where she found some of that material. There were plenty of bones at her disposal.

  Every day, she tried to enter my dreams and tear down the blood-slickened walls I erected. Every day, she failed.

  I didn’t enter her dreams when I visited her. I didn’t force her nightmares to come alive, for two reasons. The first was that she could hurt Phillip to cause me pain, and I couldn’t bear to watch. The second was that there was nothing left to say between us. She slept soundly, even knowing that Phillip lay poisoned in the next room. His breathing was steady, but the toxin was still in his body. I could smell it.

  If Aura wanted to calm me, she could have healed him and let the action speak for her.

  But still she refused, and soon she would pay.

  Malex came by the cottage every night to make sure I was okay, and I clung fiercely to the hope he gave me with each visit: Things are just as I said they would be. Aura hasn’t killed Phillip; she’s waiting to use him against you, and she won’t be the last.

  He was my weakness. She knew she could wield him as a weapon against me and I would crumble. I would bow at her feet to protect him. I wanted him to live.

  Phillip should be able to experience the life he deserved, the life he couldn’t have with me at his side. He should have a loving wife who could be with him day and night, who could bear children and grandchildren whom they could spoil rotten. He deserved to wear the crown of Grithim, proudly leading his people the way his heritage demanded.

  Malex said he didn’t use his blood. He would have been able to tell if he drank it and transformed.

  It was clear Phillip didn’t want this life.

  But I would fight to give him the life he would’ve had if he’d never met me or my sister.

  Tonight, the palace was empty. The servants who’d survived my sister had been sent away. The only sounds were of mice, spiders building their webs, and the softly beating hearts of Pieces, Phillip, and Aura.

  Aura would never have dismissed her servants, but Phillip would have done it to protect them. He probably told them to leave last night, when the slumber claimed her. I bet my sister was furious when she woke up wi
th no one to dote on her. The thought made me smile.

  Phillip, even while he was sick, was a good man. Kind. Fearless. A born leader. I was proud of him for making that choice, and jealous that I couldn’t choose that life for myself. Because if I could somehow make myself completely human and erase all traces of my fae heritage, I would. I would in an instant if it meant I could be with him.

  I wondered if Malex had a spell for that in one of the many tomes he had; a spell to take away a fae’s powers, or to turn a fae into a human.

  I did notice that Aura had done something different to the toxin. His heart sounded stronger, and I hadn’t heard him cough in several nights. At the cottage, he was fighting a losing battle, but in the palace with my sister, he’d stabilized.

  I wanted to gather him in my arms and fly away with him, but I couldn’t take him away while she slept. She might kill him when she woke and found him gone. So, like I’d done the past thirteen nights, I left him there. Each time I flew from the palace was harder than the last.

  I walked into the cottage, placed my broom near the door, and caught Ember as she leapt into my arms. Then she tensed and hissed as she did every night since Phillip left and Malex showed up. And sure enough, I turned to find him on the porch.

  “Are things the same?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  My sister had to know about the eclipse, which meant she had to know I was coming for her. And for him.

  “If you can use your wind to disrupt the earth where you and Aura scattered the bone dust, I can slip through and help you.”

  “This fight is between me and Aura.”

  “I know that, but it might even the playing field.” He rocked back on his heels, his hands resting lightly in his fine suit pockets. “I can make sure she doesn’t use the Prince against you; keep things even and fair. I won’t get involved in the fight between the pair of you.”

  I swallowed, nodding my assent, although a prickle of unease wormed into my mind.

  If he knew a way for me to let him into the yard so easily, why didn’t he offer to retrieve the rose? I know he said I had to do it, but he didn’t say anything when I told him Phillip was the one who plucked it. Secretly, I wondered if he feared the roses or my sister for some reason. There were times he looked at me with unease, and when he spoke of how Phillip smelled of the toxin, there was disgust in his voice.