by Kelsey Quick
My face drops as enlightenment sheds upon me like the rising sun on this cold winter morning. I’ve changed. When did I become so weak and dependent as to shun the facts of life for the sake of my feelings? My eyes burn holes into the wristlets that grant me such stunning weapons. Steadfast, I make my choice.
Vampires are evil. They deceive. They feed on the weak. They take advantage of the dying. They live to starve their prey of any purpose, and they manipulate, and they lie.
Even Zein.
Especially Zein.
The ultra-violet wrist protrusions become several times brighter, showcasing sparks of electric pulses as their girths extend to compensate for the sheer power. I watch the vampires advance forward to take on Castrel and Thelor. I watch as they all cower at the increasing threats that sit idle, though ready, upon my wrists. I have power over the vampires. All of them.
Something clicks, and my body moves.
I run and I swing and I yell and I cry. My weapons connect like sizzling firecrackers and I kill. My wrists flick back and forth in rhythm and I avenge. Castrel and Thelor shout at me, but their words jumble together. I’m on fire with anger. In these few moments of dominion over my oppressors, I avenge every human face and ill fate that I can picture. Savvy, Katarii, Glera, Emi, Anaya, even Amaorin’s girls, even the units that didn’t make it past distribution. In my mind, I avenge the plights of all humanity; of all the souls that had to suffer from the destruction of these monsters. All of them, except for that of my family and my lost town of Avignon. Their plight will carry on through mine until I have taken the life of the one who betrayed me, the one who killed them.
My body lurches to a halt when I see him.
A complete and total stillness covers the plane of Cain’s majestic emblem. Silence befalls my whole world even as the armor of the few remaining soldiers clank to the ground, their owners performing a strained bow. Thelor and Castrel are shouting at me, urging me into the chariot that arrived behind us, even going so far as to lift me and rush me to the edge. The twisted knots in my stomach throbs while my eyes blur in and out, fixating on the center of my existence; the center of a lost world.
Lord Anton Zein.
chapter 22
When I see his eyes widen from a split second of surprise, my fight returns.
“No!” I scream and push myself away from Thelor and Castrel with strange ease, falling to my feet and running toward Zein with a rush of vengeance.
“Stop, Wavorly! You can’t defeat him!” Castrel says, but I refuse to listen. I focus on how Zein stares at me. I’m in such a rage that I barely notice his advisors behind him: Gemini and Narref. I can take them all. I can kill them all.
I yell at Zein, unbridled, with as much force as my lungs can handle, “How dare you! You deceitful and conniving, soulless—”
The weapons on my hands extend even further, stretching a full three feet and gaining. Air and space fly by me faster than before, my senses heightened to a level incomprehensible. I wallow in the fear that plasters over all of their faces. All except Zein’s, which has started to rest to uneasy concern.
I’ll change that.
“You liar!” I scream as I whirl both of my hands around my body to come down on his neck. But he dodges. Easily. As if he had teleported from one spot to another, hands fastened behind his back. He watches me, worry skirting his seemingly unfazed expression. So, even his eyes lie.
I growl without restraint and try again and again, missing every time. Narref steps forward and Zein raises his hand.
“I will handle it,” calmly, Zein says to him.
He will handle it?
“No…,” I whisper, “No. You will not.”
His mouth twitches and his features soften. “Wavorly, stop this.”
I stand up straight and face him dead on, his regal nature never faltering.
“It isn’t just a situation to be handled. It isn’t just my rebellious nature. It isn’t just the heir.” Zein’s eyebrow twitches when I say ‘heir’.
“It… is a life that you’ve single-handedly destroyed,” I concede as tears become jewels of glass upon my lashes.
“You took everything from me. You made me believe—” I shout but quickly cut myself off, spitting grotesquely as to shame the thought.
My screams ricochet. “You killed my family!”
Echoes and silence. Only the wisps of the wind fill my ears. And in my sight, Zein stands as poised as before, except with a noticeably faltering expression.
Regret? No, I’m imagining it. I only want to see that.
I swing the rods another time, both of which have turned into large and extended anlaces—glowing swords of malice. He evades yet again and there is distance between us.
“Stop, or else I won’t be able to save you,” he commands, a bit less reserved, and beneath his breath. But I don’t. I keep swinging. It’s only Castrel’s voice that makes me hesitate.
“Wavorly! It’s no use, he will kill you!”
Zein’s attention shifts to Castrel and the fire within me reignites.
“Your opponent is me,” I roar and throw a perfectly timed horizontal cut. He evades. I blink and he’s nose to nose with me, his hands clasped around my wrists.
I can’t move.
I wait. I wait for him to try and convince me otherwise. Right now, I’m fragile enough to believe anything. Even still, his gaze lingers on Castrel.
“Is he the one? Feeding you nonsense?” he asks me.
“He was the only friend I had in Avignon. Do you remember?” Surprise crosses Zein’s features. “When someone is dead they really have no reason to lie to you, do they?”
The color in Zein’s face drains.
“How can this be nonsense?” I motion to my lit wrists that are bound by his powerful hand. “Even if you take me with you, I’ll never submit. Even if I have to take my own life, I will for the sake of your failure.”
“Wavorly,” he whispers, pleadingly. His face drops to mine. So close that his breaths skate my skin. “I…”
He averts his gaze to Gemini and Narref before refocusing on me.
“I cannot lose you,” he whispers. “To keep you alive, I need you to stop and come with me, now.”
A part of my soul cracks.
“You killed everyone that I loved,” I say through falling tears.
He lets out a tight breath. “Please...”
My stomach drops, and I sob, “You killed all of them to take me from them, to manipulate me into doing what was best for your kind.”
“Wavorly.” He swallows and clenches his jaw. So low, I can barely make it out he says,
“I cannot lose you. And for no other reason except that I love you.”
Everything within me hitches for a split second, but even that long of a reaction sickens me. I grit my teeth and push past it. Even now, he lies.
“You did do it,” I murmur.
He doesn’t respond.
I feel nothing. I see nothing. Everything I have ever known… is nothing.
He did it.
“You monster,” I snarl.
His eyebrows furrow but their time is cut short by a bright blue swirl of light. Instantly, I am flying backward towards the chariot while Zein spirals outward. I find myself in Thelor’s arms, my wrists suspended as he now holds me at the entrance to the chariot. To his left, Ceti is moving her hands in some sort of calculated way. Her eyes are nothing but a perpetual state of glistening turquoise. As soon as I turn back in the direction of Zein, I succumb to a cold and numbing feeling, and the anlaces upon my hands dissipate. Zein’s henchmen are all bound behind some sort of barrier—a result of Ceti—each finding their attempts to get through unsuccessful. Zein, however, has his sights locked on me, his eyes turning a dark black—pure malice—as he walks right through the barrier. The armor he wears sizzles and cracks from the damaging effects, although he conceals any hint of pain. He extends his hand and slowly clenches it.
My heart slows and my blood f
reezes, curdling beneath my skin, frigid and threatening. I gasp and throw my head back, writhing, screaming.
“Get her in the chariot now,” Ceti says. “He’s resulted to the second plan… He’s killing her.”
The movement slows beneath my skin.
I’m dying.
“What...doing?! She...inside…now!” Castrel shouts at Thelor, his words merging together in my head. “Hurry, we have to—”
✽✽✽
Nothingness swallows and encircles me. Blackness. Aching. Numbing tingles shoot down every one of my fingertips. I shiver endlessly, a constant state of cold in the middle of empty space. A small, though very real light radiates from afar. I can’t remember why I’m here or why it’s there, but I propel myself toward the beacon anyway, curious. The closer I get, the more real everything feels; the more I remember. My lips grow hot, and my chest constricts.
Once engulfed by the light, I awaken with a start and take a hungry and impatient breath, reopening my eyes into the blurred, hazel-green ones of Castrel, whose lips hurriedly retreat from mine. I can still feel the warmth.
Castrel grabs both sides of my face as he cries. “You’re alive... I can’t… I can’t believe it. Everyone, she’s breathing.”
Talks and cheers echo about the confined space. Long planked walls, satin and carpeted sitting areas, a centerpiece sitting atop immaculate wooden floors; we are in a chariot and—by the feel of it—moving. Ceti rushes over to me and smothers me with an embrace.
“You are safe, darling. We are all safe.”
“Where are they? Where’s Zein?” My voice is nothing but a strained whisper.
“They won’t be able to find us. I’ve placed an invisibility spell on the chariot and we are making headway for New Avignon. Don’t you worry.”
New Avignon…
Glera, who sits in a corner to the left, smiles at me and gives me a deep and respectful nod. Thelor—hovering nearby—pats Castrel on the back. It’s the right corner that nearly makes me die all over again. Savvy and Katarii are curled up together beneath a blanket, staring at me with mild concern on their faces. Savvy had been crying, as told by the red craters in her face. But now both she and Katarii rip me a new one with their glares. I suppose I will have to explain later.
I turn back to Castrel.
“What happened to...,” my mind freezes a moment. “...to Zein?”
A frown appears on Castrel’s face, but he answers me. “He’s still alive, but Ceti managed to bind him and his underlings with enough spells so that they couldn’t follow us. We have the right vampire on our side. Ceti’s one of Cain’s few remaining underground purebloods. Without her, we would have been dead.”
Ceti’s lips stretch into that long, immodest smile of hers. A bit awestruck, I admire her features. What could a pureblood’s motivation for helping humans possibly be?
“I’m not so sure,” Thelor counters. “Zein should have been able to kill Wavorly in an instant. But he didn’t. He hesitated.”
Castrel’s frown deepens but he agrees.
He needed to kill me if he wanted to do what was best for the vampire race.
“Why didn’t he?” I say, staring into the spiraling ceiling. Still dizzy. “Why didn’t he kill me?”
I suddenly remember the last three words he said to me, and I frown.
Castrel blinks a couple of times and shrugs.
“Who knows,” Glera says after no one takes the initiative to answer. “There’s no use dwelling on it. Perhaps he thinks you’re still salvageable alive.”
“Maybe,” I scoff.
I’m not that stupid, and I know for a fact that Zein isn’t that stupid. He chose not to kill me, despite that being his last option.
“I cannot lose you. And for no other reason except…”
I close my eyes and push the final memory of him out of my mind.
“...that I love you.”
Zein is a liar.
✽✽✽
Minutes pass like hours while I numbly watch the sun rise over the land of Cain. It’s especially promising this morning, uninterrupted by walls or boundaries, but I can’t appreciate it. All around me is tension. All within me is regret. My life is starting over. Everything about this dawning day is new. A new purpose. A new reality. And only one thing remains unchanged.
Zein, the murderous vampire who slew my family and deceived me, still exists in every thought, in every breath, and in every beat of my heart. He remains as a blaring and vivid motivation for me to come back and finish what I started—to drain his life for the people of Avignon; to repay him for this cursed “love” that he weaved so expertly into his lies.
Zein will regret not killing me on this day.
That, I will see to myself.
THE END
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A Crimson Truth
Read on for a sneak peek into the next Chronicle of Avignon.
Wavorly
The cold in my fingertips can’t even compare to that of the ground. Sharp and weaving, the hardened tips of grass scrape my ankles like flyaway shrapnel, reminding me of a time I had long thought dead. Sometimes, at Nightingale, I would step out barefoot in the early hours of a twelfth month’s morning—December, as the town and my parents used to call it. I held tightly to my love of that month, in all its white-covered sadness and starvation, only because it brought along with it my birthday—a day that used to mean something.
“Happy birthday,” I would mumble to myself, letting the cold slice through my sheer, crimson tunic, through my skin—straight to my core. Back then I would do whatever I could to feel alleviated. The harsh, outside world could take my mind off of the war raging inside.
But now… grating cold is nothing but grating cold, even after everything that happened.
Does that mean I’m stronger now?
The decadence of endless, evergreen pines beneath the rays of a cloud-covered sky is a sight I would usually kill for. What I did kill for. So, why do I feel nothing—see nothing—but cold?
I kick away the frost with my toes, curling them up as if the bottom of my feet could offer any real amount of heat. I frown at the earth below. Had it been that long since my days at Nightingale? Since I would stand barefoot and freezing, sucking in the air that foretold of snow at the expense of my numbing feet? Had I been coddled so much by my time in—
I shake my head, holding fast to the truth. I’ve never been coddled. I’ve only been manipulated. I must remember that.
Zein
He stood at the window, peering down at the night-stricken Capitol of Isshar. Blue flames danced outside the doors of the public—their allegiance to Reginald written in the faint light, along the black-bricked walls, and scurrying up the iron posts in the streets. Some of the flames, however, emanated a bright crimson; ruby, even. The color that all in Cain had come to know as belonging to him, the youngest general and council member of the Stratocracy. His lip curled as disgust coated his fangs. Clearly, those few vampires who dared side with him believed that his actions were somehow for the greater good of their race—that the heir apparent completing her prophetic role was the natural cycle that kept the universe balanced; that kept their food from running out; that eliminated all other, immortal competition for it… even if they, themselves might be sacrificed in the process. For his life, they were with him, but for his cause, they were against.
As much pride as he had in himself, Zein was not ignorant. Every reasonable vampire in Cain believed that he had let the heir go, and yet… someone like him would have never done such a thing.
What happened? He had asked himself then. In the moment of truth, he had hesitated. Everything he worked for—proved himself for—had come crashing down in that second of lost connection. And for what reason? Surely, not because he loved her? He grimaced. That bleak and unrewarding concept was beneath him, a tool at his disposal to bett
er restrain the heir and her vulnerable humanity. Zein exhaled sharply.
Yet the insinuation was ever-present, ensnaring his thoughts, and wreaking havoc in his heart.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kelsey Quick is just another twenty-something (almost thirty-something) dreamer with an affinity for creating alternate realities. Her physical form currently resides in Tulsa, Oklahoma with her wonderful husband, huskies, and family. When she isn’t crafting sentences, she can be found painting, playing video games, or eating Japanese food. She would do just about anything for a bowl of jasmine rice.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, thank you to the original fans of my first fanfictions. Without you, I never would have discovered my love for novel writing, nor would I ever have had the confidence to keep going. Without you, this book would have never been written.
Secondly, thank you to my loving and wonderfully supportive husband, Christian Quick, for putting up with my many nights of solitude, accompanied by an incessant clack-clack-clacking of the keyboard. Thank you for understanding and loving me through the months of dirty dishes and messy buns.
Thirdly, a thank you to my mentor (B.B. Swann), my mentee sisters (Courtney Lott and Destinee Schriner), and humorous Circle of Trust cohort (P.K. Merlott) for getting me through the most insecure times that traditional querying brought about.
Fourthly, thank you to Doug and Laura Burgess, and Lyn and Mark Goodnight for being the best, and most supportive parents I could have ever asked for. Special shout-out to my second family who make me feel like their first, the Burts.
Fifthly, thank you to all of my friends who believed I could do it, more notably Nicole Story, Austin Wright, Rachel McCully, Heather Hargrave, and Dakota Howey. Thank you all for seeing the potential in me even when I didn’t. You all are everything to me, and everything I could have asked for in a support system. (Special shout out to Reva Loving, who insisted on reading this book first despite her insane schedule.)