by Tami Lund
“Your chamber? I don’t understand.” Cecilia looked around. The room looked exactly as it always did: slightly worn but reasonably comfortable. Although the faintly depressing sense of gloom that had permeated the cottage since her brother’s death some ten years ago was still there. Cecilia had learned to block it out, but today, with one arm shackled in iron and her magic weakened by the poison slowly seeping into her system, she could feel it as though it was a living, breathing entity. Her stomach roiled and she wondered if she would vomit.
“This is my parents’ home,” she protested. “What have you done with them? Why were you abusing my mother out there? What did she ever do to you?” As callous as Lacey Druthers had been as a mother, she could not imagine the woman had done something to this man. Hell, they held the same ridiculous beliefs. Didn’t he realize that?
“Lacey has grown soft, weak. Just like Samuel. They both refused to do my bidding when it came to you.”
“You killed my mother?” she cried out. “Just because she wouldn’t—what did you expect her to do?”
“Bring you to heel. Bring you into the fold. You have always been a belligerent child, rebelling against our true nature. As your mother, it was her responsibility to break you. And she failed.”
“To break me? I think your definition of mothering is skewed. And just so you know, she tried her damnedest. I promise you. I’m lucky I had the king and queen to counter all the nonsense she spewed about exclusivity and everyone else being the enemy. Utter garbage. Stupid. And anyone who believes that crap is stupid too.”
The cloaked man didn’t like her insolence. Neither did the three followers who were standing at attention, waiting for him to dictate their next move. They shifted and moved restlessly, murmuring under their breaths, while the Chosen One struggled to maintain control. Cecilia suspected he was tempted to separate her head from her shoulders, just as he had Samuel’s. Suddenly, provoking him did not seem like the wisest course of action.
“My chamber,” he said after he practically pulled his emotions under control almost like he was wrapping himself in that crimson cloak he wore. “You haven’t seen it since your fifteenth summer, but I’m sure you’ll remember it. Vividly, I suspect.” His tone was malicious. His pale lips lifted into a small, evil smile.
“Fifteen summers?” she repeated, turning her head sharply to stare at the closed door leading to the basement. When she turned back around, the mouth, the only part of the cloaked man she could see, was still smiling.
There were two things of which Cecilia was deathly afraid. Losing Finn. And being locked in the basement. Again.
“No!” Pulling on a reserve of strength fueled by fear, she managed to pull free of her captor’s grip and bolted for the front door. She would not go into that basement. Not ever again.
“No!”
Someone caught her around the waist, and she fought against him, using the iron manacle on her wrist to her advantage. As soon as they’d stepped into the house, the Lightbearers in their little party had shed some of their outdoor gear, so she slapped the iron against any bit of exposed flesh she could reach.
Lightbearers screamed and cursed each time the iron reached its mark. She fought her way to the door, her arm flailing every which way. They kept trying to grab for her, but each time someone touched her, she hit him with the iron and he quickly pulled away.
“Enough,” the Chosen One yelled. The fact that he’d yelled instead of whispered shocked everyone into freezing. Even Cecilia, who, with one hand wrapped around the door knob, turned around, her widened, fearful gaze seeking out the owner of that voice.
That voice.
For the first seventeen years of her life she’d endured that voice as it yelled at her, cursed at her, degraded her, condemned her. When she sneaked out of the coterie that fifteenth summer and later had confessed that she’d fallen for a human boy, the evil insults had only increased in volume and intensity, until she had all but moved into the beach house just to get a reprieve.
She never thought she’d hear that voice again. She thought the owner was dead. Everyone said he was dead. How was it possible that her brother was back from the grave?
“Cedric?”
Chapter 21
“Cedric is dead.”
But he wasn’t. She could hear it, and see it in the shape of his lips, so similar to her own. She hadn’t realized it until he stopped disguising his voice.
“You’re alive.”
Their audience looked at each other, confusion in their features, in their eyes. They didn’t understand what was happening. One was young enough that he might not even know who Cedric was. After his supposed death, her parents had refused to ever speak of him again. The older two were scratching their heads, probably trying to place him in their store of memories.
“Do Mother and Father know you’re alive?” she asked her brother.
The mouth pinched with annoyance.
“Of course they do,” Cecilia answered her own question, as it all began to piece together in her mind. “Your chamber. You live here.” She glanced at the closed basement door. “In the basement? But how?”
He didn’t respond, but then again, Cecilia didn’t give him much time to. “Why didn’t you stop it when Mother was being attacked earlier? Did you really kill her? Why? She believes the same way that you do. They both do.”
“You were always far too inquisitive, even as a young child,” Cedric replied with a scowl. It was Cedric; she knew it.
“She was becoming weak,” he added. “Developing sympathy for you, despite your flagrant disrespect for your own kind.”
“I have absolute respect for my own kind,” Cecilia protested. “Those who are rational and intelligent, anyway. But you’re right; I have no respect for people like you and our parents, who foolishly believe we should cut ourselves off from the rest of the world, that everyone around us is evil. It’s just not true.”
“You are wrong,” Cedric responded, working to disguise his voice again. She guessed that the whispered tone helped him to feel in charge. Cedric had always been a control freak. Long after he was gone she had worked to convince herself that was the reason he was so mean to her when they were children. Allowing someone else to control her was simply not in her nature, and Cedric had never stopped trying to force her to comply with his way of thinking.
“You were always wrong,” Cedric added. “I told her you would never come around, and she refused to believe me. When I informed her that you needed to die, she became a blubbering fool.”
“Of course she did,” Cecilia retorted. “She’s my mother. Just like she should have reacted when you died. Except you didn’t, which explains why they never actually mourned you. What happened? Why did you fake your own death?”
Cedric reached up, shoved the hood off his head. Angry blue eyes flashed at her. Pale blond hair, disheveled after having been tucked under the hood, stood up every which way. His skin was pallid and veiny, like an old man who was too sick and weak to greet the sun each day. Regardless, it was still Cedric. Her brother.
“If you had given up consorting with the enemy, you would be privy to that information.” His voice was angry, bitter, and he was struggling to keep it to a whisper.
Cecilia snorted. “I consorted with humans. They’re harmless. And the shifters I consort with happen to be our allies. Do you want to know how many times Finn saved my life?”
“One too many,” Cedric snapped. “You have always been an insolent, pigheaded child. Too full of stupid dreams and fanciful thoughts. Careless and carefree. Refusing to see that the only way we can survive is if we eliminate all ties with all other beings. Our magic is too precious to share with humans or shifters.” He sneered as he said the word shifters.
“You are a fool,” Cecilia replied, for the first time in her life defending herself against her brother’s insults. It felt good. Really good. Despite the searing pain in her left wrist and the severe lack of magic in her system, she squared
her shoulders, stood tall, and looked him in the eye. She wasn’t afraid of him, not anymore. Ironic, given her current circumstance.
“You’re the one who’s wrong, Cedric. Our magic is renewable. Each and every day that the sun rises, our magic restores itself. And we only share it if we want to. No one can steal our magic from us. We have to be willing to give it. And if we do, we’re stronger for it,” she said, and she realized her words were true. She’d shared her magic with Finn, and because of it, she was able to channel his strength, his confidence. She would never have been able to stand up to her brother without having Finn by her side, even if it was no more than the thought of him.
“We can coexist with other beings. Safely—and happily. If we choose to.”
Cedric’s mouth twisted into a scowl. His bright blue eyes narrowed. Magic sparked off his pale skin. That was the one marked difference between them. Now that he’d thrown off his hood, she could see how very fair he was. Cecilia’s skin was lightly tanned, even in the dead of winter. Lightbearers needed the sun to survive, so their skin was perpetually sun-kissed.
But not Cedric’s. His skin was so translucent she could see the veins pulsing through his neck, across his cheeks and forehead. Like he hadn’t been exposed to the sun in years.
“How are you still alive?” she blurted. “You look as though you’ve been hidden away from the sun since…since your supposed death.”
Cecilia could sense the unease amongst Cedric’s followers. They hadn’t known who he was. Likely, they had never questioned his motives or how he managed to survive without the sun. Cedric would not have allowed it. His followers would have had to follow blindly, without question. Otherwise, they would see the same end as Samuel had. And her mother.
“Tell us,” she said, wondering if she could turn everyone against him, and thus save herself. “We all want to know.” She waved her left arm. The Lightbearers closest to her shied away from the iron manacle on her wrist.
The door burst open, pulling everyone’s attention away from Cecilia. Her father stepped through, his gaze sweeping over her.
“Father!” She felt a surge of relief that he was still alive, at least until he turned away from her and focused on Cedric. She watched his surprised reaction at seeing his son without the hood. She wondered how long it had been since he last saw Cedric as himself. And then she wondered how her own father could allow him to get away with all he’d done in the last few months. Ever since Tanner and Finn and the other shifters joined their coterie, the incidents of small, petty, yet dangerous crimes had steadily increased. Now that Cecilia understood what was happening, she realized they had been hate crimes, designed to punish those who were sympathetic to the shifters.
“Father? You knew about this? You knew he was doing this, was leading a faction of Lightbearers who have been trying to frighten everyone into believing his mantra?”
He looked at Cedric, as if seeking the answer from him. Cedric smirked at Cecilia.
“You’ve been trying to kill me,” she blurted. “My own brother. And you let him do it,” she accused her father. It was all so impossibly surreal, so not right. Her own family had been trying to kill her.
And it wasn’t the first time. When she was fifteen, after she’d recovered from being locked in the basement for three days, they’d insisted they hadn’t intended to kill her, had only meant to punish her. She had accepted their explanation, because she had no reason not to. Now, she doubted everything, her entire childhood, all the small incidents that had often left her injured, sometimes even scarred, but miraculously not dead.
“They were meant to be warnings,” Cedric said dismissively. “I had hoped you would connect the attacks to the shifters, and turn to Samuel for help. He would have then mated with you and brought you into the fold. Then neither of you would have had to die. Now…”
Cecilia shifted her pleading gaze to her father.
He looked at Cedric. “What would you command, Chosen One?”
“He isn’t the Chosen One,” Cecilia cried. “He’s Cedric. Your son. Why aren’t you listening to me?”
“No more talking,” Cedric commanded. “Put her in my chamber.”
“No!” She reached for the door. Her father wrapped his arms around her from behind, trapping hers against her sides. “No,” she cried again as she struggled, trying to get out of his grasp.
Cedric’s smile was thin. “Come,” he commanded, and with a sweeping motion, he turned away and strode to the basement door. He opened the door, holding it and watching with malicious enjoyment as his father awkwardly made his way through the room, dragging a fighting Cecilia. Despite her redoubled efforts, he was winning the battle, and soon he stood at the top of the stairs, while she kicked and twisted her body and cried and screamed and then begged him not to do it.
“Please don’t, please, not the basement. Anything, anything, anything else. Please, no—”
She felt a push on the middle of her back and then the absence of her father’s arms. Then she was free-falling. She hit the stairs and instinctively curled into a ball as she rolled to the bottom of the staircase. Before she had a chance to even open her eyes, the door closed, and her entire world went black.
And then she felt something touch her.
She screamed. Although it had been twelve years ago, the memories of that time her parents had locked her in the cold, dark basement were as fresh and clear as if it happened yesterday. Long suppressed—and she’d thought forgotten—memories slammed into her mind’s eye, reminding her of the misery, the sheer terror, the aching pain as her magic slowly leeched from her system.
At first, she’d simply sat on the bottom step, certain they were only trying to teach her a lesson, and in about twenty minutes, they would open the door, ask if she intended to ever leave the coterie again, and then release her. An hour passed, then two. She had climbed to the top of the stairs and clawed at the door until her nails were broken and bleeding. She had returned to the bottom and felt her way around the perimeter of the room, searching for something, any means of escape. She recalled finding the bathroom that she never knew before existed, and the small kitchenette with a fridge stocked with food. The lightbulb inside the compact refrigerator had been removed.
On the second day she had not eaten. She had no appetite. The process of the magic leaving her system had felt as though someone were draining the blood out of her body, one slow, steady drip at a time.
By the third day, she had not even been able to crawl to the bathroom. In theory, she should have lasted longer than that, but she’d expended nearly all her store of magic slipping in and out of the magical wards, so had been low when this torture began. It had occurred to her on that third day that it was lucky she was so low on magic. Otherwise, this misery would have gone on for twice as long. At that time, she hadn’t realized they intended to release her that day. She’d been certain she was going to die. All because she’d discovered the ability to slip in and out of the coterie without detection, and had gotten curious as to what was on the other side. At the time, she hadn’t known her ability to slip through wards was the same ability she now used to open locked doors. Otherwise, she could have freed herself that very first day.
Just as she could now, if she weren’t psychologically paralyzed.
“Cecilia.”
She screamed again and scrabbled away from the voice, speaking to her from the darkness. The nightmare was even worse this time. Last time the silence had been so absolute, she might have welcomed the voices.
“Cici. Stop. Listen to me. I’m here. Cici.”
She continued to crawl around the room on all fours, desperately trying to get away from the voice that just kept following her. She screamed again and then heard a curse. She bumped into the wall, could tell it was a corner, and huddled there, pulling her knees up tightly against her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She barely felt the sting of the iron as it burned into the flesh covering her kneecap.
Suddenly
the room filled with light, so blindly bright that she lifted her arms to shield her eyes, even as she felt her body greedily soaking up the artificial magic-and-life-filled brightness.
And then there was a body there, another person. Big and strong and definitely male. He crowded her, blocked out part of the light as he pulled her into his arms, dropped to the floor, and cradled her in his lap, the entire time murmuring soothing words she hardly comprehended. She was too busy trying to wrap her confused brain around the fact that there was someone with her in the basement.
“Finn?”
Chapter 22
He was losing her.
It was so surreal that he could tell. But he could. It wasn’t even that he could sense her emotions. He could actually feel them, as if he was having the exact same emotional reaction. Except he wasn’t.
Finn didn’t have any sort of fear of dark places, and certainly not a learned one. His magic didn’t need the sun to regenerate. He wouldn’t die if he was locked in a closed, dark space for long enough.
But she would. And she knew it. She’d experienced this before. Had come far too close to dying.
Tanner had told him the story of how her parents had locked her in the basement as punishment, about how they’d had to call a healer to revive her because they’d left her down there for too long. The king had explained that he’d investigated, but Lacey and Gerard had insisted they only meant to teach her a lesson, not attempt to kill her. According to the healer who saved her, Cecilia’s magic should not have run out so quickly, unless it had been low to begin with. Knowing Cecilia, she probably had expended her magic almost to the point of no return before she’d been tossed into the basement that first time, twelve years ago. She was, after all, a damned stubborn woman who tended to react first and think later.
If her parents knew her at all, they would have known that.
“I’m not going to let you die, Cici.” He murmured the words, willing her to believe him, while she sat curled in his lap, shivering and staring, unseeing, at the wall of artificial light.