by Brindi Quinn
That was when I knew this wasn’t a game, and that something was terribly, terribly wrong.
“Wind…ley?”
“The truth is, the payoff of breaking a heart is most satisfying when that heart’s full. I happen to be exceedingly good at both filling hearts and breaking them.”
How much, captive ones, do you think it would take for my resolve to falter?
My judgement was clouded. I knew that. But it was a cloud that had accumulated over a long period of time, fueled by many memories and reinforced by weighted words like vulnerability and mutuality. As I’ve repeatedly demonstrated, Windley had my trust, and as I’m sure you’ve come to realize, he had it in an unhealthy way. I was committed to the cloud over my judgement.
The woodcutter’s cabin hadn’t broken it.
Seeing Flora’s likeness hadn’t broken it.
Hearing about his past hadn’t broken it.
Charmagne and Exitium hadn’t broken it.
Being put into compromising situations again and again hadn’t broken it.
Each of these had only strengthened us, and that’s why I knew that those words, cold, callous and cutting, were not Windley’s words. They may have gotten the details right—the look of him, even the smell of him—but when my stomach dropped, it wasn’t because of lost faith in Windley; it was because I knew I was in the presence of an imposter.
“RAFE! THIS ISN’T WINDLEY!”
The imposter shifted behind me, twisting my arms into a locked position. “Argh! Already?! That didn’t take long at all! Thanks for the disappointment, cupcake.”
…Cupcake?
Excuse me, but—
FATHER-FREAKING CUPCAKE?!
I didn’t know what had happened, where the real Windley was or how she had found us so fast, but I knew: of all the people who could have worn Windley’s face, she was among the least worthy.
“Charmagne!”
“Ding, ding, ding.”
“How DARE you make yourself to look like him! You don’t deserve to mimic a single freckle or hair, you vampiric tramp!”
“Well aren’t you bold for someone with their hands wrenched behind their back?”
The blast of Spirite power Charmagne next hit me with was unlike any Windley had ever used. It wasn’t gradual or tingly; it was fierce, turning the whole of my back, neck and shoulders stabbingly numb. If she intended to wage war, I would end it before it ever started.
All morning, I had been holding the floodgates to fend off the swell of whispers creeping in from the other side, but with my permission, they came flooding back like a landslide, and Exitium was leading the charge.
“Why do you insist on insubordination, Merrin! I have been trying to get your attention the last hour!”
“MErrIN!”
“meRrIn!”
“Ones without merit, MeRRIN! Ones without merit!”
The echoes were screaming and shaking, but it was nothing compared to the tempesting of my rage. Whatever had happened to bring us to this situation, I would blast Charmagne into pieces of hair and ash. I would separate her bones from her body. I would make her rue the day she crossed my path!
My wrath was greater than it had ever been.
“It is time, Merrin. Give in to your bloodlust. Do not stop with the beastling. Speak my name and give birth to destruction! Put an end to this world of lust and pain.”
I was crawling with disembodied hands, on the edge between their realm and ours, and for the first time, Exitium’s offer was a tempting one.
But running toward me was a reminder of all we were fighting for.
“Stay back, Rafe! You’ll get hit!”
Rafe wasn’t listening. He was determined to reach us. He was—
Inspecting the ground around my feet?
“Did you do it?” he barked at fake Windley. “Is she hexed?”
“Not all the way—the cow has a thick aura. I’m having trouble penetrating it. Help me.”
Disillusionment hit me as Rafe took my throat in his hand, donned with a blackstone ring identical to Windley’s, and said: “Heya Merrín. Too bad you didn’t take my offer. I warned you I wouldn’t be so nice next time.”
Chapter 22
A Smidge of Fondness
“E-Edius?”
Rafe’s face smiled at me darker than it ever had. “Miss me?”
“But how did you get here so fast?!”
“Simpleton!” Charmagne lashed in Windley’s voice. “As soon as you escaped, we went to that hill that Ediot found you on last time and waited for you to mess up. We knew that place was on the way to wherever you three pillocks were traveling.”
Meaning they were far closer to us than we realized when we sent out our beacon.
Really, it was something we should have considered, and looking back, Windley and I may have been distracted by our own lechery; Rafe by his want to return home to Beau.
We were, after all, imperfect beings.
“Soleil!” I shouted to the sky. “Where are they? Where are Rafe and Windley?”
But the goddess didn’t answer, and I looked mad shouting at the sun.
I could feel it now—whatever they were doing—a dull tingling in my feet. I didn’t know how long it took to hex someone, but I was certain I could summon the echoes faster.
This time, I didn’t only let them into my ears, I closed my eyes into boiling darkness. They were frenzied, more furious than ever before, for my blood was riled with rage.
“Exitium! Where are the guards?”
“The bright one pulled them into her domain when she saw danger coming. She meant to pull only the conjurer, but the beastling was nearby.”
“They’re safe?”
“They are trying to convince her to let them out. Her priority is shielding the conjurer so that her child will have a father.”
“That’s the ‘protection’ she promised Rafe?!”
“It should come as no surprise. Goddesses are wicked. All of them.”
Not ideal, for it meant I was on my own to combat the buttery powers of two Spirites, but at the very least, Rafe and Windley would be out of the way when I released my wrath.
“Is Ascian close?” I petitioned Exitium. “With any luck, I may be able to defeat all three of them at once.”
“I cannot say. A male is close, though I cannot see his figure.”
“Then I’ll just have to take them out now and deal with him after.”
“You only delay the inevitable by picking and choosing your enemies, Merrin. If you wish to defeat them all, then you must bring about true destruction. It lives in you. The sooner you acknowledge it, the better.”
“I’m not destroying the world!”
“Fate runs stronger than your desires.”
“Argh! Just come when I call you, okay?”
But Exitium didn’t respond.
No matter, I would force Exitium out of me. I had done so before and I would do it again. I would use the Nemophile’s Crown to end Edius and Charmagne, and then it would be Ascian’s turn.
And I would do it all without eradicating the world.
With the echoes amassed in my core, I opened my eyes to the world of light and was caught off guard to find myself face-to-face with Edius’s true appearance. I had only seen it at a distance back at their manor, but up close—
The muscled Spirite was like some beast, all over thicker than Windley or Rafe and tall enough that I only came up to his chest. He was looking down at me without making much effort to tip his face, giving arrogance to his already sharp, sphynx-like eyes. His hair was the same dark color as last time, only now it was released from its tie and fell wildly around his shoulders, making him look like he’d just come back from a hunt.
None of that mattered, though. What mattered was the color of his stare. Red. Glittering, bewitching red.
I hastened to look away, but with fake Windley still holding me from behind, I didn’t get very far. Charmagne forced my head in Edius’s direction, s
ecuring my gaze into his.
“You’ve a feisty little stare, dont’cha, Merrín? Hurry this shit up, Charm. She should be hexed by now.”
“You aren’t helping, gnat! You try getting rooted in her! She’s like cement!”
“I told you we should have waited for Pip,” argued Edius. “That little freak could get in there, no problem.”
“Let me go, Edius!”
“Naw.”
Though his mouth lay flat, his eyes betrayed the amusement he felt in holding me hostage.
“You don’t want to make an enemy of me,” I warned.
A threat he took lightly.
“You know what’s funny?” he said. “I got all my stuff back. You know, all the stuff you made me pack for you? All mine again. How does that feel?”
He would do well not to piss off a woman courting darkness.
In fact, I was about to show him exactly how I felt about it.
“Oh shit! It’s starting!” he said, kicking his feet at the cloud of smoke beginning to form around me.
“Well, do your job and ensnare her! Are you even trying?” scoffed Charmagne.
“This is your fault! I told you we should have done it while she was sleeping, but noooo, you wanted to play with her first.”
Because once I was hexed I would no longer be able to give her a satisfactory reaction? Did she mean to turn me into one of those sleepwalkers inhabiting the town of Abardo? To take away my spirit?
Cupcake.
Cupcake.
Accursed-naffing CUPCAKE.
“EXITI—”
The press of a foreign mouth to mine stopped the onslaught of darkness I had been about to liberate.
That was because Edius had kissed me.
He was still kissing me.
But if ever there was a one-sided kiss—
The brawny Spirite’s mouth may have been designed for tempting humans, but there was nothing tempting about it. I tightened my lips against him, unwilling to let him beguile me, ready to bite off his tongue should it force its way inside.
“She has zero fondness for me, Charm,” he said out of the corner of his mouth with the rest of it yet on mine. “This is going to be damn near impossible.”
“Then grow some fondness, you amateur! I only have half a hex formed, and if you screw this up and she evades us again, Master Ascian will castrate you!”
My back was chilled from Charmagne’s leeching, to the point where it felt like frostbite.
“We will filet her, rip her, bite her, tear her! We will curse the ground she walks on until the earth swallows her whole!”
The echoes were manifested in our realm, thickening the darkness around us.
“EXITI—”
“Ah, ah, ah.” Edius took my mouth in his oversized hand, clamping my jaw and lips in place, and flared his ruby eyes even brighter. “That an invocation of some kind? Don’t fight me, Merrín. I’m not that bad of a guy.”
“Ha! This is just pathetic,” said Charmagne. “Woo her, you imbecile! Treat her like anyone else we’ve taken!”
Side note—it was incredibly weird to hear Windley’s voice talking so bitchily. Speaking of voice:
Though Edius had put a stop to mine, he couldn’t stop the power flurrying inside my depths. With a sharp exhale through my nose, I willed the darkness around us to rise and swirl.
“Shhh.” Edius rubbed his other hand over my chest as if trying to stimulate my heart. “You like other humans, right?”
An attempt to find common ground? A laughable one. There was nothing common about us.
“In that case, you should know, I didn’t really kill those two humans. The ones I used to impersonate Windalloy. I just implied that to keep you in line. I mean, I drained them, but I left them alive… barely. Same with the ones from today. I try to leave ‘em alive if I can help it.”
“Are you serious?” said Charmagne. “I didn’t know that. Oh, how pitiful, Eddy!”
That didn’t make him a saint.
The darkness was continuing to build, and my breaths were becoming shorter. And while Edius’s red eyes were distracting, I was sure I could pull away enough to send out a wave of echoes. I just had to concentrate on the dark of my soul. Just a little bit more—
“I told you you’re pretty cute for a human, didn’t I? I wouldn’t mind making you mine.” A helping of unwelcome tingles pressed into my chest from his warm palm. “I can guarantee my power’s stronger than your boyfriend’s.”
I told him what I thought of that through eyes like slits.
“What? He’s okay and I’m not? Why? Because he told you some tragic backstory? A reason for all the evil he’s done? Please. Charmagne’s given me the lowdown. A paragon of virtue, he is not.” Edius leaned closer and lowered his voice. “You seem the type to like broken boys. That true?”
I wouldn’t indulge him.
“Well, did you ever consider why I’m with Ascian? Like maybe he has someone I care about under a hex? Like maybe this isn’t a choice? Or have you made the lot of us out to be lowlifes? Does that make it easier on you?”
Charmagne said it best. They were masters of deception.
Yet there was something honest about the way he said it, something vulnerable hidden behind his deep voice…
NO. I was not just the sort to like ‘broken boys.’ That was his power getting into my head.
“What if I took you for myself right now? Just swooped you up and stole you away. Took you to some dark cave so that we could get to know each other a little better. Shielded you from the rest of them. Bet you’d feel pretty small in my arms. I can picture it. Can you?”
I could. But not of my own volition.
And despite my efforts to focus on conjuring darkness, I couldn’t help wondering: was he telling the truth? That he was doing this all under duress? Were each of Ascian’s lackeys a victim in some way?
No, as I said before, some of them were villains.
“Oh, what do we have here?” hooted Edius. “An iota of fondness? Just a smidge? That’s all it takes, darlin’.”
“Good. Try finishing the hex. See if you can get in,” ordered Charmagne.
“Geez. You can’t do anything yourself, can you?” said Edius.
If I wanted to delight in the insult against lovely Charmagne, I couldn’t. Edius’s cherry eyes were more dangerous now that he had humanized himself, and they prevented me from focusing enough to unbridle the darkness waiting impatiently around us. To make matters worse, one of his hands was still keeping me from uttering the one name that could make all of this go away.
Did you know? Words aren’t just air pushed over the tongue.
It wasn’t enough to merely think Exitium’s name or hum it deep down in my throat. I needed to be a conduit for it, to give it life, to bring it from idea to reality. I needed my mouth.
So I concentrated on the feel of Edius’s hand against my lips and pretended it was Windley’s.
“Oh. Interesting.” Edius narrowed his already narrow eyes. “But I know that fondness wasn’t meant for me. You can’t force it. Not that it didn’t feel nice. Keep it coming if you want.” Over my shoulder, he said: “She’s trying to seduce me or something. Cute, huh? Anyway, I’m getting in, little by little. Should only take a few more minutes.”
Damn it! I should have known to leave the seducing to the experts.
A sticky situation, to be sure. Windley and Rafe were being protected—nay, held captive—by Soleil in the sun realm. Charmagne had my arms wrenched behind my back and was depleting me of energy as fast as she could drink it. And once Edius finished his hex, Ascian would be able to draw from the power stored in the Nemophile’s Crown.
Since the start of this all, the echoes had always been an easy way out. So much so that I had begun to feel untouchable. But if we took a step back, I had little to no combat training, my muscles were piddly compared to Edius’s, and I was without physical weapon. Without the echoes, I was quite weak for a human.
But
while I had overestimated my own strength; I had underestimated the strength of someone else.
“STOP! Windalloy will be mad if you do that!”
Out of nowhere, someone pushed into us from the side. And that someone was a hell of a lot stronger than they looked. The ‘male’ Exitium had sensed? It wasn’t Ascian.
“Pip!” shrieked Charmagne. “What are you doing?!”
“Windalloy won’t come for her if she’s broken! You need to stop until we have him back! Where is he?!”
While Pip’s tackle was enough to free me from Charmagne’s grip, it was not enough to free me from Edius’s. He lifted me from the ground and spun me around, all while keeping his hand clamped over my mouth.
Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t able to do so without breaking eye contact.
Free of his spell, I sent the echoes flying out from me in all directions. It wasn’t Exitium’s power, but it was the same power that had felled the blood stags and wounded Ascian the first time. Exitium may have been capable of taking down goddesses, but the rest of the echoes would do just fine against mortal flesh.
For Windley’s sake I directed my attack away from Pip, sending the majority of the dark realm’s energy at my real target—a despicable creature halfway transformed between Windley and Charmagne and with all her snide glory.
The sadistic Spirite leapt and rolled to avoid the attack, sending up a flurry of sand to intermingle with the shadows I had just assailed her with.
But I got her. In the aftermath, she staggered to the ground, holding herself.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t my only victim.
Like a crack of thunder, an upset voice cut through the beach: “You… you hurt me!”
Though I hadn’t meant for it to happen, Pip had gotten caught in the outskirts of the echoes, and his arm was black and scabbed where it had met with my power.
“You’re a bad guy! You hurt me!” shouted Pip, stumbling away from me and Edius, who still had my mouth in his hand.
“Oh shit,” Edius muttered from behind me. “C-calm down, Pip. It was an accident. She wasn’t aiming for you.”