by Mary Duke
*SNO*
“Illiah. What’s wrong?” I asked as I watched her lose her balance and stumbled backward into Thanatos.
“Grans?” Illiah said, looking past me.
I turned around, but there was no one there.
“What is she saying?” Thanatos questioned.
I looked again just to make sure I wasn’t going crazy.
“Vera is trying to get in,” Illiah said. “She says she’s hurt.”
“Let her in,” Thanatos said.
“Do you trust her?”
“Do we have a choice?”
The second Illiah closed her eyes, Vera appeared beside me and collapsed into my arms.
“What’s wrong with her?” Thanatos questioned.
“I don’t know,” I said pressing the palm of my hand against her forehead.
“What is it?” he questioned, reading the look on my face.
“I don’t know for sure,” I replied putting his hand under mine
“Thanatos!” she said, wrapping her arms around him.
“Something must have really happened to you,” he said taking a step back once she let go.
“Something did,” she admitted. “I learned the truth.”
We both nodded. There seemed to be a lot of truths going around, and it was becoming hard to believe any of them.
“We need to get the word to our brothers and sisters,” she said before the smile vanished from her face.
“What?”
“Mother… Our siblings. That’s why I am here. She tried to lock me in an orb, but as I said, she’s not as strong as she once was. I was able to leave before she got me.”
“That’s not entirely true.”
“What do you mean?”
“We are in your head,” I replied. “Your body collapsed the moment Illiah let you inside the mountain.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know for sure. Though she may have absorbed some of your soul before you had the chance to come here.”
“Right.”
“What was it?” Thanatos questioned. “What did you find out?”
“When you do a spell, all of your focus has to be on the spell and the outcome you want. When she tried to do her spell, a link opened between her mind and my own. I saw what was really on her mind.”
“And that was?”
“Here, let me show you.”
The night of their father's death played before his eyes, and he watched as Hel disappeared into a gate with markings he’d seen over and over again in his dreams.
“Is this real?” Thanatos questioned.
“I believe it is. Right after she did the spell, she said that she had to gather the rest of us before Hel could turn us against her.”
Neither Thanatos nor I knew what to say.
“You’re going to have to reach out to Holt. You have to get them out of there before she gets them. There’s no way we’re going to do this on our own.”
“What do you mean? We have to completely change the plan.”
“No. We don’t have to change anything. It’s too late to change anything.”
“You just saw what I did. You know that Hel didn’t kill him; Nyx did,” Thanatos argued.
“I know that. But she’s still dangerous.”
“No,” he corrected her before he pulled his hand out from under mine. “You still need a scapegoat.”
Chapter Fifteen
JADEA
“Jadea, open this door!” Quint commanded as I returned back to the summer cottage.
“Gladly,” I said under my breath as I willed the door open and walked towards him.
“Go ahead,” Quint said. “Kill me. You will never find Fabien. Your son will remain cursed for the entirety of his life.”
“Fabien…stands about this tall,” I said holding my hand a few inches above my head. “Doesn’t really like you. Is stuck in a cottage much like this one…taken there against his will?”
Quint froze, I could hear his heart beat rapidly in his chest.
I waited for him to speak, letting the realization of what he had started sink in.
“Our children,” he said softly. “Our children were off limits.”
I smiled. “That was when we had a deal. That was before you tried to have me killed.”
“I tried to have you killed. Not your son.”
“Yes, and had you succeeded, my son would forever be in your debt and therefore would have had no life.”
A gate opened behind Quint.
“I assure you,” I said. “If you’ve brought back your friends, I will show no mercy.”
Quint backed away to my left so he could see both the gate and myself.
Zavery was the first to walk through, followed by Sno, Kegan, Illiah, and Thanatos.
“What is this?” I questioned.
Thanatos was the first to speak. “I know what it is you plan to do.”
“And that is no business of yours.”
He bit the inside of his cheek. “But you see it is. I look out for my friends; I would do anything for them.”
I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “After everything he’s done to you…after everything he’s tried to do… You still call him a friend?”
“I am not talking about Quint; I am talking about your son.”
“My son is the reason I’m doing this.”
“I know. Vera told me why you’re doing this.”
“Wait…” Zavery questioned. “You didn’t say a word about knowing anything. All you said is that we had to follow you.”
“If you believe you know so much,” I said. “Please explain it to him, because I’ve never spoken to your sister.”
“Ayana has a way of knowing everything about everything. Now, if she is right, and she usually is, you struck a deal with Quint that would take the curse from Zavery?”
I nodded.
“You agreed to triple the number of souls that was owed to him. But when you made this deal, you didn’t understand its weight. You didn’t know what it meant to take a life, to have someone’s blood on your hands, let alone thousands…”
I just stood there, I didn’t know what to say.
“Then when Quint came to you, with this idea, one that would make you both not only powerful and free, but give you the power to take life painlessly. You took it, not knowing that with every life you took you would become more powerful, and your thirst for even more power would become unbearable.”
Zavery spoke again. “This is ridiculous. She is a monster. Nothing more. She did this for herself, no one else.”
“That’s not true,” Thanatos said. “At least not in the beginning. In the beginning, her heart was in the right place. In the beginning, the deaths had a purpose.”
“Alright,” I said, once again feeling emotion, something I had kept myself distanced from for years. “This has nothing to do with Quint. Let me take out the trash, and I will gladly let you finish this…whatever this is, before I kill you.”
Thanatos again bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from saying what was truly on his mind. “If you kill Quint, the curse on Zavery will surface, and as Quint is now the last of his bloodline, there will be no way to reverse it.”
I turned to Quint. “Is this true?”
Quint smiled and pulled a dagger from his pocket.
“Stop,” Thanatos commanded.
Quint’s hand began to tremble, as he tried to raise the blade to his throat.
“I said, stop,” Thanatos repeated.
Quint spoke through gritted teeth, “I shouldn’t have to listen to you.”
Thanatos smiled, he honestly didn’t know whether or not he still had a hold on Quint or not. “Now, I want you to sign off on the deal you made with Jadea. I want the curse to be lifted from the Blade bloodline.”
The dagger fell from his hand and was replaced with the contract he made with Archer Blade.
Zavery looked up to him. “You can really do that?”
T
hanatos nodded and lifted his hand, causing the parchment to catch fire.
I could feel the curse being lifted, and I watched as the marks began to disappear from Zavery’s arms.
Thanatos stepped ahead of the others. “I am going to give you one chance, only one. Give me back what is mine, and we can all go our separate ways.”
I looked down at the amulet. I had no idea what would happen to me if I gave it up. I didn’t care if I lost the power, but there was no way I was going to go back to being helpless and vulnerable. “I am afraid I can’t do that.”
Thanatos took another step towards me. “Jadea, your quest is over. Your son is now free of the fate bestowed on him. He will never have to go through what you’ve been through. I am giving you a second chance, a chance to start over.”
Zavery was unable to remain quiet any longer. “There will never be a second chance between us. Do not promise her something that she can never have.”
My heart stopped. Zavery was right. There was no chance everything would go back to the way it was. I had gone too far, too many times.
I took a step back into the cottage and disappeared from their view.
Chapter Sixteen
SNO
“The others are here,” Illiah said as we got back.
“How are they here?” Thanatos questioned.
“Well, they are waiting to get in.”
“How do they know we are here?”
“Grans says Vera is with them.”
Thanatos’ shoulders slumped as he turned away from us.
“Do I let them in?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you don’t want me to let them in, I’m sure we can figure all of this out on our own.”
Thanatos snapped, “Don’t you think I thought about that? I’ve run every possible scenario, and without them, it ends in chaos.”
“Maybe,” I said. “We can renegotiate with them. I mean they obviously don’t think they can do it on their own either, or they wouldn’t be here.”
“Renegotiate?” Thanatos questioned.
“Yes. I’m sure we can find a way to cut your sister a deal.”
He covered his face with his hands and rubbed his eyes.
“Is that what you want?” Illiah asked. “If it is, I can let them in, and if they aren’t willing to hear us out, I’ll kick them right back out.”
“I want to say yes. I want to give her another chance. I want to believe the gut feeling I have about her, but I don’t know whether or not I should. Every time I give someone my trust, it ends up getting broken.”
Illiah’s eyes grew wide as she turned away from him. “We will never know until we try.”
“Took you long enough,” Holt whined as he and his brother Enzo held Vera up between them.
“She still isn’t healed?” I questioned.
“No,” Holt answered. “Which really makes us wonder where exactly Nyx has sent our other siblings.”
“So it’s just the five of you?” Thanatos asked.
“Four,” Ayana said. “Vera will not be joining us.”
Holt looked around. “Is there somewhere we can leave her? This all needs to end today before it gets any worse.”
“Before we leave,” I said. “There are some changes we need to make to our deal.”
“The deal has been made, there will be no changes.”
“Circumstances have changed, therefore our approach to certain people needs to change.”
“We are aware of the memory Vera saw,” Enzo said. “But Hel still cannot be trusted.”
“You don’t know that,” Thanatos said. “For the better part of her life she has been hunted, living in fear of those she should be able to trust.”
They just looked at him.
“If you look back at any of the times, before now, that something has happened, you’ll find that it was in self-defense.”
Ayana looked at her siblings, before looking back to Thanatos. “He is right,” she said. “I believe that once Jadea is taken care of, the souls are returned to where they belong, and our mother is taken care of, Hel should be given a clean slate and a second chance.”
“Do you understand what you’re saying?” Holt questioned.
“I do,” Ayana replied. “I also agree with what Thanatos said to Vera. The only reason Hel is in any of this is so we can blame her for our mother's death. No one would question that. It was the perfect plan. End Jadea, return the souls to where they belong, make it look like Hel took them, which would make her strong enough to kill our mother, and then not be able to stop her in time. Then when we brought Hel down, everything would be balanced again.”
“Yes. That is exactly it. That is the only way this will work. We can’t just kill our mother; the council will throw a fit.”
“I don’t know if that is true. They are just as sick of her mind games as we are…and when they are presented with the fact that she killed our father…they may see that as justice.”
Oryn took Ayana’s hands in his. “You do realize what’s at stake here.”
“I believe the lot of you are putting more power in the counsel’s hands than they deserve. As you know I am not one to play the Goddess card, but right now in this moment and with the options I have, I don’t see another choice.”
Holt cleared his throat. “You don’t even know if Hel wants a second chance…you don’t know if she is willing to forgive us for everything we’ve done.”
“I believe,” Thanatos said. “That if we can get her to believe that we were lied to, made to believe that she was someone she wasn’t, that she will give us a second chance.”
Vera spoke, her voice was soft as she grew weaker. “You’re basing all of this on an if. You haven’t even spoken to her?”
Thanatos chewed at the inside of his lip. Vera was right. He hadn’t spoken to her. He didn’t even know how he would.
“You know,” Illiah said. “The two of you share a connection. Why don’t you try to reach out to her?”
“That connection has been severed for so long,” Thanatos said. “I don’t even know if it still exists.”
“It does and you know it does. All those dreams you’ve had. All those feelings that didn’t match your own…”
“That settles it then,” Ayana said. “You reach out to Hel. Fill her in on our plan. If she’s willing to give us a second chance, to try to make this work, we will be here for her. Otherwise...” She shook her head. “Otherwise, Thanatos, I’m afraid I’m going to have to agree with Vera and Holt’s plan. Our Realms need a fresh start, otherwise, there will be nothing left.”
“It’s done,” Thanatos said.
“What’s done?” I asked.
“I reached back out to her. I’ll let you know if she reaches back.”
Holt grumbled under his breath, “And what do we do until she decides to get back to you?”
“There was only one part of the plan I wasn’t okay with,” Thanatos reminded his brother. “I say we get Jadea out of the way and return the souls to wherever they belong.”
“And then?” Enzo questioned.
“Then we take down our mother. I don’t care if I’m the one that takes the fall.”
“You’ve just got your freedom, are you sure you want to risk it again?” Holt questioned.
“Like Ayana said, you guys are putting too much power in the counsel's hands.”
Chapter Seventeen
ZAVERY
“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Sno asked.
“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” I replied.
Sno hesitated, not knowing how to say what she wanted without being blunt. “This is really the end. There’s no going back from this.”
“I know.”
“They’re all willing to give their sister a second chance,” she started to say.
“Jadea does not deserve a second chance. You do not know all of the things she has done…All of the things that she will continue to do.”
“Y
ou don’t know that.”
“I do know that. I know it for a fact, an absolute fact.”
“How?” she questioned.
“The type of dark magic she let consume her, it doesn’t just go away or cease to exist when you no longer wish to use it. It’s all-consuming. It takes over your mind, your soul. It becomes the only thing you can think about…and all it wants is more power, and the only way to give it more power is to kill.”
“You seem to know a lot about it?” Sno questioned as she put her hand in mine as the others began to come towards us.
“I know a lot about it because at one point I did believe she was worth saving. At one point I was willing to forgive her for all she had done to me.”
“Oh,” Sno replied gripping my hand tighter as she looked back at the others.
“That’s when I learned that there was no saving her. The only way to free her from this magic, from this darkness that consumed her, was to kill her.”
Sno let go of my hand and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “Well, regardless of how you feel now, of how you believed you felt when you made this decision, I think it’s best if you just let these guys handle this.”
“That’s not going to happen,” I said through gritted teeth as nicely as I could.
“Please, Zavery,” she pleaded. “This moment, this day, it’s going to play over and over again in your head. Believe me.”
“I know,” I replied before I started to walk towards the gate Thanatos had just created.
Thanatos looked me over as I approached the gate. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”
I nodded.
He put his hand out to stop me. “You understand why we are doing this, right?”
I bit my tongue, to keep myself from saying what I really wanted to say, and just nodded again.
I didn’t know what to expect when I walked through the gate. I didn’t know if she would be in the same place, if she’d be waiting for us. All I knew is that after today, I wouldn’t have to look over my shoulder anymore. I wouldn’t have to worry about her showing up.
I walked through the gate, which put us just inside the treeline. “Why’s the door open?” I asked. “Where is she?”
They just stood there looking at me.