by K. A. Linde
She tightened her hand into a fist, feeling her powers weaken, even as she grasped for more. If it was the last thing she did, she would not let this Braj survive another day.
It grunted as she held it in place, squeezing the very life force from its body. She would have finished him off just like that, but Reeve took the opportunity to run his blade through the creature.
Cyrene released her powers with a gasp and fell to one knee. Empty. She was totally empty. Holding the Braj for that long had felt like fire running through her body, leaving behind blinding white-hot coals.
Reeve released his sword, and the Braj slipped onto the marble floor. His blood leaked out of him, staining the white tiles black.
“Cyrene,” Elea called. Tears ran tracks down her cheeks.
Not done.
She still wasn’t done.
Edric.
She hoisted herself off the ground, despite all protests to the contrary. Her eyes found Reeve’s. They were wide and disbelieving. He had trained his whole life for a fight that he never believed he would have to face. Death was not an easy thing to have on your hands even if it was a creature who would take yours with glee.
“Find Kael,” she told Reeve. “Now!”
He bolted into action, disappearing from view at a sprint.
Cyrene rushed to Edric’s side. She ripped open the side of his shirt where the blade had gone into his chest. Already, the wound was hot to the touch, green, and festering. He didn’t have long.
“Elea, we need a healer. Anyone who is proficient. The king will die without one.” Cyrene turned to the boy with her. “I need supplies—boiling water, clean bandages, herbs. Hurry!”
“Cyrene,” Elea said, reaching for her.
“Do you want your king to die?” Cyrene asked.
She feebly shook her head.
“Then, go!”
As both of them dashed away, Cyrene set to her real work. There was nothing a healer could do if the poison couldn’t be drawn out of his system. This wasn’t like a normal poison. She had felt it through her veins. She had felt the sear of it eating her alive. This was otherworldly and menacing.
For a moment, she pulled back and looked up into Edric’s waxy face. That beautiful face that she had admired for so long was now pale, sweaty, and near to death. His blue-gray eyes were closed. He must have passed out from the pain.
And, for a moment, just a moment, she sat back on her heels and wondered…
Would it be so bad to allow Edric to pass?
She felt horrible for contemplating it. No one else deserved to die. Not on her watch.
But, if Edric were gone, she would no longer be consort. She would be free. Her family would be safe. Her life could go on without this chain tightened around her neck.
It would be so easy to allow him to fade. An honorable death for a king to die in battle. For his bravery and steadfastness, he would be revered high above any king since Viktor Dremylon.
She stared at that disgusting puckered wound and knew that, despite all of that, despite knowing that she could get away from this, Edric didn’t deserve this. And she refused to be the kind of person who would allow this.
“No,” she whispered. “I will save you, Edric. I will.”
She placed her hands on the open wound and closed her eyes. Drawing on her powers, she reached into his body with her mind. She sought out how far the poison had gotten into his system, and the pain Edric was feeling lanced through her in response. It was everywhere. Spreading so fast. Impossible to remove without magic. That was clear from inspection.
But, as quickly as she had found it, her powers stuttered and flickered out. She didn’t have enough. She needed more. She had depleted everything, going up against the Braj.
She needed Kael.
Her eyes flew down the corridor to where she had sent Reeve. If Kael arrived, then they could link and work together to save his brother. They had to do this.
She kept working, trying to use whatever tiny reservoirs came up as her body replenished. But, without food or water or anything, she was tapped out.
“No,” she cried, pushing harder against the wound to try to do what she knew she was capable of.
Tears collected in her lashes as she worked. Tiny amounts of the poison were being removed but not enough. Not nearly enough.
“Where is he?” Cyrene groaned.
She checked for Kael again, but he wasn’t there. He had abandoned her to this and abandoned his brother to his fate.
Edric’s body seized, and he shook uncontrollably under her touch.
“No, no, no,” she cried desperately.
She closed her eyes and tried with all her might to make things work. She had put her faith in her magic. That her heightened emotions—anger, grief, fury, lust, pain—would drive her home. It had been so easy. So impossibly easy.
And, when she really needed it, it was failing her.
She cast out for any magic, any at all, to save him.
But she was too late.
His body stilled beneath her fingers.
When it all hit Cyrene, it came with silence.
No!
She couldn’t.
She wouldn’t accept this.
Not failure. Not death. Not anymore!
Cyrene cast a wide net. Anything to save Edric.
But he was gone.
Her desperate pleas had not been heard.
Her parents’ bodies lay only a short distance away from her. Their blood pooled on the floor. Their life force ebbing out of them.
Already dead.
Never coming back.
She knew that she shouldn’t.
But she had good intentions. No matter that the road to hell was paved with them.
A life for a life.
She grasped on to the sickly-sweet feel that radiated toward her. She knew what it was—unholy, perverted, wrong—but she had no other choice. She imbued herself with their essence, taking it all, filling herself to the brim.
Blood magic infused her body. It struck directly into her hardened heart, cracked through her bones, bit at every nerve, sang through her mind. It filled and filled. A death song and a life song. A connected circle. Then, as soon as she gave in to that feeling of rightness, the slime followed, and wrongness settled into her system.
It was a rush unlike anything she had ever experienced. Her head felt light. Her body felt energized. Her mind felt as if she were capable of taking on the world and winning. No matter the film that seemed to coat everything. She might be breathing in tar, but, Creator, did she feel good!
Unstoppable.
She thrust her hands back down on Edric’s open wound and cleared the poison from his system, hardly taking a breath. It was there, and then it was gone. She focused more intently, as if she were seeing everything in Technicolor, working beyond what she had ever thought she was capable of. She pumped his heart and knit the wound back together until it was almost perfect. Her mind working in the background reminded her that she had to give the healer something to do.
She was working so fast in overdrive, she didn’t even hear the footsteps. Or see the people who came to surround her. To them, she had her hand on his wound, tears streaking her face. To them, she was doing nothing but grieving. But she would not give up.
“Cyrene, step back. Let the healer work,” someone said behind her.
Hands touched her shoulders, and she eased away from them.
No. She wasn’t ready. She wouldn’t give up.
He couldn’t die.
He couldn’t.
Not when she could save him.
Two more beats. Three. Four. She could make this happen.
Then, miraculously, it did. The next beat was his own. And the next.
Edric came to, coughing and wheezing.
Cyrene sat back on her heels, stunned. Blood coated her hands. Edric’s blood. More blood. She could sense it, taste it, touch it. She could drown in it. She could bathe in it. She could fill
her soul with it. Never hit the bottom of her magic again.
Life force.
Whole.
Filled.
Her mind started rocking in on itself. Knocking against the walls, trying to see who was home.
“Come in,” she said.
“Cyrene! Cyrene!” someone shouted over her.
How did I end up on the floor?
“Who is it?” she cooed.
Everything was fuzzy. Blinding on the edges. Bright lights swirled into colors. So many colors on the ceiling. She reached out to try to touch them and giggled as the paint smeared. A finger painting. All the colors mushing together.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“What even happened to her?”
The voices sounded so far away.
Lost in the colors and light.
She bit down on her lip until it bled. Not once feeling the pain.
This was what heaven felt like.
Or was it hell?
“May the Creator bless you,” she whispered.
Then, darkness swept over her.
Cyrene landed in a familiar body in an unfamiliar place.
She was standing on a bridge overlooking a great river surrounded on either side by tall buildings. She looked out through the great Domina Serafina’s eyes, but everything seemed blurry. Faded. As if she was half-there and half-not.
Serafina craned her neck out across the bridge, as if she was waiting on someone, expecting someone. Cyrene tried to clear away the muddy feeling of the vision, but nothing helped. She had no control here. She saw and felt only what Serafina did.
But the more she looked around, the more Cyrene realized she did know where she was. The deep channel beneath her feet, the tangy scent in the air, the close-cropped buildings.
Eleysia.
Cyrene’s heart twanged at the loss of this country where she had been prepared to become their princess. But she couldn’t mourn long. Suddenly, the ground seemed to shift under her feet.
Cyrene tried to grasp on to something, but she couldn’t do it. Nothing was there. No one was there.
Then, she was in a dark tunnel. Black as night. She couldn’t see or feel a thing. But she was herself.
She had never been herself in a dream before.
She took a hesitant step forward and back.
Where am I? How have I been here? What ripped me from Serafina?
“Hello?”
Surely…a dream couldn’t hurt her.
A cackle weaved through the darkness, reverberating through the walls, knocking into her chest. Cyrene stumbled backward and nearly fell to the floor. She caught herself on instinct.
The air wavered and broke all around her. This place felt…wrong. It had a faint feeling of something crawling up her spine. That prickling sensation of fear and adrenaline and panic.
Cyrene took a steadying breath and reached for her magic to cast a light about the room. But, when she plunged into those depths, there was nothing. Not like she couldn’t access her magic. Like her magic never existed.
Real horror seized her. How could there be a place where I don’t have magic?
“That won’t work here.” A feminine voice slithered out from the stillness and echoed across the chamber. “You don’t work here.”
“Who’s there?” Cyrene demanded.
“We’ll meet soon enough.”
“What do you want with me?” Cyrene tried to take a step forward but was frozen in place. Her arms were bolted to her sides, and she was completely immobilized.
Then, the ground shifted again.
“No!” the voice shrieked as she disappeared.
She landed once more on the bridge in Eleysia. Everything was worse than normal. Her tunnel vision was so bad that she couldn’t even see the buildings around her, only the bridge and the water and a handsome man standing before her. His eyes were dark as midnight, and they held such longing in them. Cyrene had never seen him before in her life.
“This can never be,” Serafina said. “Never.”
“But our love is stronger than your country! Please, stay. Be with me! As you have been!”
“I cannot. You know I cannot. You know what I am destined for.”
“I know what they will use you for,” the man said. “But I love you and your magic. You do not have to be torn in half because of me.”
“Jon, stop, just stop! Byern is my home. My duty is to the Doma. I was sent here to train with the Masters, and I have done so. You cannot ask more of me.”
“I know there is someone else, Sera.”
Serafina didn’t flinch, but she straightened. “What do you know?”
Cyrene leaned in, anxious to hear what this man would say. Serafina had had another lover? Other than Viktor Dremylon?
But, before she could hear, her body moved.
She pooled back onto the floor of the dark chamber. Her body felt torn in two, as if she needed time to piece it all back together.
She tried to get to her feet, swayed, and sank back down to the ground.
“I wouldn’t try that again.” The woman’s voice echoed through the room.
Her vision flickered, and she tried to hold on to consciousness. “Who-who are you? What do you…do you want with me?” Cyrene asked, trying to gain control again. Her mouth felt like she had swallowed cotton balls. “An-answer me!”
“The correct question is, what do you want with me?”
“Nothing! I don’t know who or what you are or even why I’m here.”
“You have a gift. You are squandering it.”
“What gift?” Cyrene gasped.
“Come to me when you discover it. You will know what to do.”
Her feet began to shift again. “Please!” she cried out. “Tell me something, anything!”
“I’m in the forgotten place. A place of awakening. You can find me—”
She landed back on the bridge once more. She could have screamed. The man was gone. All she could see were Serafina’s hands. She was staring at them, as if in horror at what she had done. But Cyrene didn’t know what that was. Or why it even mattered.
She just wanted answers. She wanted to know what was going on and why she was having these visions and how any of it could help her. Because, right now, all these dreams were doing was making her life more complicated. All they had ever done was make her life miserable. From the moment they had told her to find Matilde and Vera in Eleysia, she’d had nothing but pain and heartache.
She just wanted out.
With a great wrenching feeling, her body seemed to rip in half. She gasped, and when the noise came…it was from her own mouth.
She looked up as her vision cleared, and she saw Serafina for the first time.
Her mouth fell open, and she stuttered back a step. “Creator!” she breathed.
No wonder Matilde and Vera had confused her for Serafina at their first meeting. They looked…identical. Well, not completely so but close enough for question. They most certainly could have been sisters at the very least.
“Cyrene,” Serafina said with a sigh. A smile split her features. “I have waited so long for this.”
Then, against all logic, the Domina—the highest-powered Doma of all time, the once creature of her nightmares and evil fairy-tale monster of Byern legend—hugged her.
“Um…” Cyrene muttered.
Her hands were at her sides, and then she reached up and awkwardly patted Serafina on the back. Serafina laughed lightly and then stepped back.
“What are you? How are you? What? Why? I mean…how? How is this possible? You’re dead.”
Serafina gave her a look that Cyrene had always given to her parents. “Magic never really dies, now does it?”
Cyrene shook her head. What a nonanswer. “Why am I here? How have I been seeing these visions? Just explain things.”
“I’ll do the best I can,” she said, glancing up at the sky in worry. “We don’t have a lot of time, and I must share with you something important
before you leave me once more.”
“What? What is so important that you keep drawing me in?”
“Because, if you do not know the past, then you are destined to repeat it.”
“To repeat what?”
“Everything I have done wrong. I tried to reach you once your magic awakened, but I was spurned from reaching you, except at your weakest moments when the gate between our worlds fell. It is only now, when you are blindingly bright with power, that I could get you to sever your connection and give in to your spirit powers.”
“When I learn to control spirit, I can talk to you?” Cyrene gasped.
“Possibly. But that’s not why I’m here. What you need to know, Cyrene, is that you must trust your friends.”
“What? That’s it?”
“They’re more important than you could ever know. Trust them. Believe in yourself.”
The ground started shaking, and the buildings all around them began to crumble, falling into the water and shattering their momentary sanctuary.
“Tell me more. Quickly!”
“Use the coin. Find the lost ones. Learn the truth. Let the past be your guide to remake the future.”
“I don’t know what any of that means,” Cyrene cried as the bridge they were standing on began to collapse.
“You will know. They will help you. Don’t give in to this blindness. There are bigger factors at play, trying to draw you in and away from me, and I want you to be safe. Guard your mind and open your heart.”
“What factors? Who is trying to draw me in?”
Serafina shook her head and rounded her eyes. “I dare not speak her name.”
Cyrene trembled with fear. There was someone even Serafina was afraid of?
“Cyrene,” Serafina said, tugging her close once more.
Cyrene wrapped her arms tight around Serafina, knowing they were both going to their doom.
“I will come for you again as soon as I am able.”
“Don’t go! I need to know more.”
Serafina touched Cyrene’s temple. “I am always with you.”