I had no control over my body any more. It was moving by itself. Primal instinct pushing me harder and faster, as my body tightened and sensation rushed over me, flying me up away from that time, that place, till there was just us two, and no-one else in the world.
His breath became mine. His body, mine. Our love combining and hurtling us forward, till our bodies spasmed as we teetered on the edge of something bigger than us both, and suddenly, suddenly, I became undone, my mind exploding into glorious pieces that slowly rained down around us.
We clutched each other as we lay panting, our sweat mingling, our limbs entwined.
‘So tell me,’ I said, when I could construct sentences again, ‘why haven’t we done that before?’
Aethan’s chuckle echoed through my chest. ‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘if I had realised it was going to be anything like that, we would have.’
We lay in each other’s arms, too exultant to move, too exhausted to speak. His hands traced patterns on my back, as mine played with his hair. My eyelids grew heavier as I fought off sleep.
I didn’t want this to ever end. Didn’t want the sun to rise. I wanted to exist forever in that moment. Perfectly happy. Perfectly sated.
But in the end I lost the battle, and as my body floated weightless in Aethan’s arms, I drifted off to sleep.
***
It was the glow that woke me. Soft warmth oozing into the tent. It’s epicentre stood at the tent flap.
Isla.
I lifted Aethan’s arm from over my waist and wiggled out of bed, scrambling around till I found my clothes. It took me longer than normal to get into them, hopping around on one foot, while the other caught in the soft leather of my pants. I crawled around on the floor till my hands brushed one of my daggers. I buckled it around the top of my left bicep and then, with a last glance at Aethan, I unzipped the tent flap and pushed out into the night.
‘Isla,’ I said, squinting into the light, ‘is it…is it you?’ I still wasn’t sure exactly what I had seen.
‘It’s me.’ She flashed me a grin. ‘And then some.’
‘So, you’re a Goddess now?’
‘Is it wrong to be happy about that?’ She tilted her head to the side. ‘I keep waiting to go all holier than nought, but I still feel normal.’
‘You’re glowing. It’s not normal to glow.’
‘I do seem to be having some trouble controlling that.’ The impish grin was back. ‘Oh well, I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it. But…not until after I see mother. I’d like to be glowing when I see her again.’
I barked out a laugh and then slammed my hand over my mouth, looking over my shoulder at the tent. I didn’t want to wake Aethan and have to explain where I was going.
‘He won’t wake. Nobody will wake.’ She wiggled the tips of her fingers at me.
‘Niiiicceee.’ I nodded my head. ‘So, why are you here? I thought you’d be with Wilfred.’
‘He’s asleep. And besides, why does there have to be a reason. Can’t I just want to see my best friend?’ She hooked her arm through mine and patted my hand as she started walking.
I let out a snort as I fell into step beside her.
‘Oh fine,’ she said. ‘Someone had to make sure you woke up in time.’
‘So is this part of the deal?’ I asked. ‘Omnipotence and all that? Do you know everything that people are thinking?’
‘Not unless I concentrate on them.’ She stuck out her bottom lip. ‘I’m not sure if I’m happy about that.’
‘Why on earth not?’
‘It was much more fun when I had to use more devious methods to find out what I wanted to know.’
I laughed and squeezed her hand. She was still the same old Isla, even if it was hard to look directly at her.
‘So,’ she said, ‘how are you going to get to Santanas?’
‘You already know the answer to that.’
‘Humour me.’
‘A gateway. Like when we came home.’
‘It should work. I’m not sure about the rest of the plan.’
‘No words of wisdom?’
She stopped walking and turned to face me. ‘Dear Isadora.’ She raised a hand to my cheek, a shock of electricity flowing into me at her touch. ‘You need to look inside yourself and find that which none others find when they look at him.’
‘You know I hate riddles.’
‘I know you can do this.’
‘If…urhmmmm,’ I cleared my throat, ‘If I don’t make it back, will you tell him I love him.’
‘I think he already knows that.’ She smiled. ‘I think half the camp knows that.’
The heat of a fiery blush burnt into my cheeks. ‘You were eavesdropping,’ I gasped.
‘Dark Sky,’ she said. ‘I was only a couple of hundred feet away. I didn’t need to eavesdrop.’
I dropped my head into my hands as she let out a throaty chuckle. Oh, the shame.
She laughed again as she tugged on my arm. ‘Come on.’
We walked in silence for a while, enjoying the comfort from each other’s presence, as we wove through the trees. When we got to a clearing she stopped and turned to face me.
‘It is time,’ she said.
‘Isla.’ Tears filled my eyes. ‘Why did she do it? Why did Ulandes choose to die?’ There was no doubt that she had known what was going to happen.
Isla’s face contorted as grief rippled through her. ‘She took it as a punishment.’
‘But she wasn’t interfering.’ She had been very clever about that.
‘It was for taking dark faeries’ lives. That’s what she said.’ She looked at the ground, scuffing at a leaf with the tip of her boot. ‘But I think it was so Wilfred and I could be together. Because, you know, he’s a Demi-God now.’ The last came out in a garbled whisper.
‘So he can’t be with a mortal?’
‘He can’t live here, not permanently, and I couldn’t live there.’ She was silent while she stared into the distance. ‘She’s not really dead,’ she said. ‘I can feel her in here.’ She pressed her hand to her heart.
I reached out and put my hand over hers, not knowing what to say. How do you console someone for this? It was unprecedented. ‘You won’t let her sacrifice go to waste,’ I said. ‘She knew that. I don’t know anyone else who lives life the way you do. So fully.’
‘Thank you.’ Her eyes were solemn as she tilted her head to the side and repeated her earlier words, ‘It is time.’
‘Time for…Oh.’ I had forgotten. For a few glorious moments I had totally forgotten what I was about to do. Now that I remembered though, I could feel butterflies starting a lazy circuit around my stomach. ‘Right.’
I closed my eyes, thinking about Santanas. Pushing out my awareness towards him. Unlike when I had focused on Grams, I felt nothing.
‘It’s not working.’ I opened my eyes again and stared at Isla.
‘What are you concentrating on?’
‘Santanas.’ I managed to stop myself from adding the word stupid at the end of the sentence. I mean she was a Goddess after all.
‘That’s your problem.’ She held a hand up as I opened my mouth to protest. ‘You’re thinking about Santanas, not your grandfather.’
‘Oh.’ I slammed my mouth shut and closed my eyes. This time I concentrated on the man whose blood I shared, not the enemy I wanted to defeat. I reached out, questing for my kin.
There. A faint tug. A brush of recognition. ‘I’ve got him,’ I said.
‘Well, what are you waiting for? Go get that sucker.’
I cracked one eye open. ‘That’s not very Goddessy.’
‘Who’s the Goddess here?’
‘You.’
She crossed her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow. ‘Right. And don’t you forget it. If I want to say sucker, I can.’ She flashed me a grin and then waved her hands at me.
I smiled back, keeping my eye open just long enough to press the memory of her, how she looked as she glowed amongst the trees,
into my mind. If I was going to die, I wanted to die looking at her, not him.
‘Hey.’ My eyes flew back open. ‘If I die, can I come live with you?’
‘You’re not going to die.’
‘Really?’ The hope in my voice was palpable.
She let out a sigh. ‘Yes, if you die you can come live with me. Now will you please go and finish this.’
‘Thank you.’ I closed my eyes for the last time and searched for the tenuous connection. When I found it, I pulled back the layers of reality between me and Santanas, and stepped through the gateway.
16
Betrayed
‘There you go Wolfie, I told you she would come.’
‘Don’t call me Wolfie.’
It was dark. Too dark to see. I blinked my eyes a few times, squinting towards the voices, waiting for my eyes to adjust. It seemed looking at Isla had ruined my night vision.
‘Ahhh. Would some light help?’
‘Please.’ I hated being this vulnerable.
A second later a lit lantern threw light out over a meadow. I looked around. Grass cloaked the ground and oaks stood as sentinels around the edge.
Santanas stood by the lantern, his head up, his shoulders back. I stifled my fear as he watched me through eyes alight with madness.
Wolfgang didn’t look at me as he sat slumped in a chair, instead, he stared at the grass between his feet.
Santanas’s face pulled into a shiny, tight mask as the red, twisted scarring allowed his lips to move up just marginally.
‘Father.’ I walked towards them.
‘Daughter. You are reconsidering?’
The grass was soft under my feet. ‘This will all go away?’
‘Everything you know will change.’
I paused. ‘How will it change?’
‘For the better.’ The twisted smile was back. ‘Together, we could accomplish so much.’
I risked a glance at Wolfgang. He continued to stare at the ground.
‘We will be a family again.’
Wolfgang looked up at me, his eyes full of pain. He stood slowly, stooping as if a weight hung from his neck as he walked toward me. ‘I didn’t have a choice,’ he said.
‘Wolfgang.’ I reached a hand out to him. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’
‘You don’t understand.’ His head wobbled from side-to-side.
‘What don’t I understand?’
‘I miss her so much.’
I let my hand fall back to my side. This wasn’t the Wolfgang I knew. This man was broken.
‘Too much,’ he whispered.
I didn’t see it coming, so focused on his pain I didn’t feel the spell swirling.
My eyes bulged as my breath caught in my throat. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t lift my arms. Couldn’t run.
I scrabbled at the edges of the spell, trying to find a weak point. There was none.
My lungs burned as my need for air intensified. Black spots appeared in my vision.
‘Wolfie.’ Santanas sounded like a father rebuking a favoured child. ‘Let her breathe. We need her alive. For now.’
The metal bands around me loosened just enough to allow a puff of air into my lungs. The black spots dancing in front of my eyes vanished.
I watched Santanas as he walked to a pile of wood. He pointed at it, and flames burst from the centre. ‘I had a lot of time to think while I was trapped in that cursed bit of stone,’ he said. ‘We were doing it wrong before.’
‘You were doing it wrong,’ Wolfgang said. ‘I had nothing to do with it.’
Santanas’s face twisted. He turned to look at Wolfgang. ‘Yes, I remember. You wouldn’t help. You betrayed her.’ He turned back to the fire and held his hands out. ‘So tell me, why is it that you are helping me now?’
I rotated my eyes back to Wolfgang. He had his back to me.
‘I…,’ His head bent even further as he rung his hands. ‘It never stopped hurting.’
‘She was special.’ Santanas walked to a lone stone, standing in the middle of the meadow. ‘She is special.’ He bent and pressed a palm to it. ‘Not long now, my love. Not long now.’
I shuddered. His words were laced with a deeper meaning my brain was trying not to understand.
‘So what were you doing wrong?’
‘Using children.’
Wolfgang nodded his head, a look of professional interest on his face. ‘You think an adult female will make the difference?’
‘This one will.’ Santanas crossed back to where I stood, frozen like a statue. He reached out and grasped my chin. ‘And Littiana will have her powers. We will be equals.’
‘She will be powerful all right.’ Wolfgang tugged on his beard. ‘So you are going to use her blood and her body?’
Santanas nodded. ‘It will work. What could be a more powerful sacrifice than one’s own daughter?’
He still didn’t know I wasn’t his daughter. My eyes flicked back to Wolfgang as a wave of panic washed over me. He knew. He knew about Mum, but he didn’t say anything as he walked to the fire.
Instead, he looked up at the moon. ‘It’s nearly time.’
My pulse sped up as Santanas wrapped an arm around my waist. My body stayed stiff as he carried me across the meadow to the stone. He set me down facing it. My breathing rasped laboriously as I read the carvings on it.
Littiana Gabrielle
Daughter, Wife
I Will Not Rest
Till I Am With You Again
Claustrophobic panic raced through my veins. I clawed at the inside of my mind, my body a prison that held me trapped.
Dark Sky. It was all my childhood nightmares come true. They were going to sacrifice me.
I could feel tears trailing down my face. I didn’t want to die. Not like this. Helpless. It went against every grain in my body.
‘Don’t worry.’ Santanas rested a hand on my face. ‘I will make sure it is quick.’
‘Not too quick,’ Wolfgang said. ‘You need her to bleed out.’
‘Well, not quick, but as painless as possible.’
I think he meant it. I think he was trying to soothe me. But my eyes bulged as I fought against the spell. I wanted to scream in fury.
Dead was dead, no matter how slowly or painlessly it came. This wasn’t what I had planned. I had come here to kill him.
Terror replaced panic as Santanas pulled a knife from his belt.
My eyes swivelled to Wolfgang. I couldn’t believe he was doing this. Couldn’t believe he would let this happen. But she was his daughter. What father wouldn’t want his daughter back?
Wolfgang’s eyes were steady as they met mine. And then he winked, and the bindings holding me in place disappeared.
I felt my eyes widen but I managed not to move. Relief made my knees weak but I held steady. I would only have one chance. One chance to end this.
Santanas looked up, the knife rising toward me as he stared at the moon.
‘Not too soon,’ Wolfgang warned him.
I dug deep into my heart, searching for my greatest weapon. Searching for the one thing which would allow me to kill Santanas. I thought about how he must have felt to have come home and found Littiana dead. How much sorrow he must have felt, how alone he must have been to have gone mad with his grief.
Compassion drifted up, but that wasn’t enough. I needed more.
I forced myself to relax as Santanas tensed. To think about how he was my grandfather. To wonder how differently things might have been if Grams hadn’t fled when she’d realised she was pregnant. Perhaps having had a daughter would have brought him back.
‘Grandfather,’ I thought, as the tip of his knife rested on my throat. ‘My Grandfather.’ And with that, as I finally accepted the bond between us, love poured into my heart.
He wasn’t really a monster. He just had different priorities. But like a rabid dog, he needed to die.
He glanced back up to the sky and I embraced my centre of peace. Holding onto my love, I struck like a
snake. Too fast for him to see. Too fast for him to stop me, I unsheathed my dagger and shoved it up under his rib cage and into his heart.
His eyes widened with pain as he stared down at me.
‘I love you, Grandfather.’ Tears choked my voice. ‘I love you.’
He looked down at the dagger and then back up at me.
Tears cascaded down my face. ‘I’m sorry. It was the only way.’ Blood flowed down over my hand. ‘I love you,’ I said again. It was important that he knew that. That he died knowing that.
‘Granddaughter?’ His hand dropped the knife and fluttered towards my face. ‘Granddaughter?’ He coughed and blood dribbled out of the corner of his mouth.
He sagged in my arms and I lowered him to the ground next to his wife’s grave. My arms were slick with his blood as I raised my hand and pushed his hair back from his face.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, pulling out my dagger.
Blood flowed out of the wound, pooling on his chest and running down the side. He dabbed his fingers into it and then held them up in front of his face, staring at the sticky red.
‘I’m dying.’ His head swivelled so he could look at me. ‘You love me?’
‘I do, Grandfather.’
His eyes changed, madness fleeing. He looked over at Wolfgang. ‘Father,’ he said, ‘will you sit by me as I die.’
Wolfgang moved to Santanas’s other side, lowering himself to sit beside him. ‘I’m sorry son.’ He picked up Santanas’s hand. ‘I miss her too, but what you were doing was wrong.’
Santanas nodded. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’ His eyes were fervent as he stared into mine, as if he could hold onto his life with sheer effort of will. But more blood pulsed out of his wound, and with each beat, his heart became weaker.
His eyes shifted from mine to stare past my head. They widened and then he reached a hand up, stretching his fingers towards something only he could see.
‘Littiana?’ His voice held wonder. ‘Litty, is that you?’
The skin on the back of my neck tingled and the hair there stood on end. Santanas’s fingers curled as if holding onto something and his mouth pulled into a smile.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he whispered. ‘So very beautiful.’ Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. ‘I’ve missed you so much. I’ve done things. Terrible things.’
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