They walked, the corridors were too mortifying to the eye, they wrapped the mind into a strange form of bindings. Cassia's reflection darkened on the ice. She shook her head. They walked, wandered like animals in deceit. A strange headache tormented her mind, rendering the thick ideas that floated about it numb. Cassia stopped walking, gazing at the strange reflection to her side.
Stupid maze, she thought, adding another swear at the end.
The female in her reflection wore different clothes, a dress, bright green with a long silver belt and dragons embroidered on the hem of the long skirt. Her hair was longer, reaching down, below her waist. The circlet -no- the crown she wore on her head spoke volumes of whom it once belonged. Cassia snarled loud and clear, forcing Griswold to stop in his tracks and turn to look at her.
Cassia was ensnared. The strange reflection pulled away, its eyes gazing at the other wall across from it, behind Cassia. The reflection smiled, outstretching her hand. In the blurry background beside the reflection, a child appeared. Cassia looked at it stunned, the woman at the reflection took hold of the child's hand as she knelt down, pulling back the boy's brown hair from his small face, the boy smiled up at the female. Cassia curiously gazed at the boy as he suddenly turned around to look at her intensely. She shook her head.
Cassia snarled again. She was not meant to have children; she couldn't have. Not when her mate was somewhere, probably dead. Aine's words were nonsense, hogwash, stupidity and the reflections were another foolish creation of that Snow Maiden. She shook her head manically. Cassia had forever been...immune to having children from someone that was not her soulmate, a gift, a curse for using blood magic to acquire her powers. The King knew, he had always known the consequences of using blood magic, that was the reason he had forced her to undertake the rituals. He was more than willing to extinct his bloodline than having it mingled with the human blood of Cassia's mother.
The child smiled at Cassia, extending his hand as if he could reach out of the ice and touch her. Instead, he placed his hand flat against the wall. Cassia moved forward, placing her hand on the ice where the small one of the boy rested on the other side. She was in a trance.
Whoever had placed that illusion there, was trying to toy with her sanity. No, Cassia never yielded to weak thoughts. By Nature, she didn't even like children. Why would she ever want one?
Foolish, stupid, she chastised herself. She placed her one hand on her sword that hung from her hip and straightened her spine, trying to be intimidating.
"Are you quite finished staring at the ice?"
Cassia's head snapped to the side, glaring at Griswold the sharpest look she could muster. "What was that?"
"What was what?" He questioned, shrugging in annoyance. "If you can't control your fantasies it's not my problem." He huffed. "And you want to save the world. Pathetic."
Cassia rolled her eyes. He was trying to get under her skin. Oh, how she hated him! Loathed and despised him with the most peculiar way.
Griswold turned around, uninterested and bothered to a whole new extent. "Come along, I won't wait to scum like you."
Cassia snarled but continued glaring at the ice with suspicion as the reflection turned foggy and moved in an abstract way and rows to form something else.
Cassia shook her head, trying to clean any unwelcome thoughts about the many treacherous truths the maze showed. The reflection changed, altering itself in a dark, dead land, the trees were burned, the smoke in the field covered most of it.
Cassia heard a voice whispering to her, "Fate will dawn upon you." It was a hiss, but it sent chills down her spine. Cassia knew that her fate was sealed no matter Aine's words. She knew her future, she knew she would die, slowly and painfully.
Ael stood in the middle of the field approaching Cassia's reflect, his hands painted in the crimson blood that escaped from his chest and stomach. He called out to her.
Cassia panicked. No, no, no no...
She screamed at the top of her lungs, her magic went berserk, green sparks flew to every direction, erupting from her chest. She cursed Griswold for leading her there, she turned around and began to run, run away from the silver haired Lord, and into another corridor, into another secret room of the maze.
She felt her back hit something -someone- she turned around and screamed again.
+ + +
Cassia screamed again as she bumped into Ael, she grasped her sword and pressed it firmly onto Ael's throat. He gasped as he felt the cold silver making contact with the tender skin of his throat, Cassia looked at him, her eyes widened, her breathing erratic and spasmodic. Her eyes were flickering between the dimly lightened cave behind Ael to the face of the elf before her. She gazed down at him seeing no blood seeping out of him marring his clothes; she tried to ease her anxiety and vexation. Cassia pulled her sword away, pulling it back inside its sheath by her hip.
Her eyes were gazing intently at his, the strange anger in her spirit was easily visible to him, rendering his mind vexed for a reason he could not identify. He moved forwards and she pulled further away from him, shaking her head.
"Are you hurt?" He asked. "Where is Griswold?"
Griswold appeared around the corner, strolling in perfect boredom towards them. "Delighted to know that you care about my well-being, Captain."
"What did you do to her?" Ael hissed, holding Cassia's gaze for a moment before letting his eyes linger on the silver haired elf.
"I did nothing, I am afraid." Griswold took a few steps closer, hand over his sword. "The mighty heir is not as fearless and sharp as we thought. She allowed the illusions of the maze to sway her away." He hummed. "Foolish, indeed."
Cassia turned to the side, glaring at Griswold. "Illusions?" She shook her head, narrowing her eyes on him. "You said nothing about illusions."
"Oops, my bad." He turned his head to the side and glared at the empty corridor behind him.
"I am going to kill you one day." Cassia set her jaw.
"Delighted to oblige."
Cassia moved to the side so she was able to look at both of the elves around her. Whatever she had seen in that illusion, whatever Aine had said must have been all lies. She had forgotten a great, significant factor: her magic. Whether Cassia wanted to find her lost mate or not, the matter was out of hand, there were a lot more important things to take care at the moment and love was not one of them, it had hardly ever been in her life. Between fighting in wars and battlefields and the King's incessant need for attention, she had little time to see what the future held for her outside of a war camp.
Cassia took a deep breath and shook her head. There were little things that remained secret inside a magical maze. She glanced at Griswold. "Do you, or do you not know where that snow queen is?"
He raised an eyebrow and shrugged. "Of course, I do."
Cassia's face contorted into a stoic mask, but the volume of her voice made the ice crack. "Don't lie to me!" Her clawed hands clashed against the ice wall to her side, talons out like an agitated dragon, Cassia dragged her silver nails down the length of the wall, hoping, believing that this blasphemous monstrosity would stop projecting the illusion she had seen again and again inside her mind.
Ael gasped as he took a step forward, trying. "We should not have parted ways."
Cassia groaned, her nails digging into the ice. "We are back together," she turned her head to the side, a blank expression over her eyes as she looked at Ael. "We are going to try this my way." She tilted her head to the side and glared at Griswold.
Griswold shrugged again. "Suit yourself, princess."
Cassia would have been fuming under other circumstance, she gritted her teeth. She would damn him to hell one day. "You are a good player in this game, Mister Blackthorn. I accept as much but don't delude yourself. If I can find the sword, then anyone else could."
"By all means," Griswold said smiling evilly. "I'd like to see you try taking the sword from its keeper."
"Indeed, you would."
Everyone tw
isted around to the side, towards the commanding female voice. The ice creaked and cracked around them, the maze moved, the ground shook and the world became slower and slower and slower, until the humming from the walls of ice stopped, ceased and silence took place. Then the ice around them shattered, spurting in small and large pieces of sharp, crystalline coldness.
Mist covered the place, damp and desolate and through the mist, a form came forward.
Gray eyes met with Cassia's peculiar gaze and the fairy's white, long hair flashed silver underneath the dim light of the cavern.
Cassia gasped.
+ + +
"Nephew."
Cassia gasped again. The similarity between the two was astounding. Silver hair and grey eyes, the same elegant nose and plump lips save for a few sharp features alienating them. Cassia clenched her jaw. That elf was not just infernal, he could make the King look innocent and pure.
She shook her head, averting her gaze from the fairy before them. “When were you going to tell me?” Her words sharp as a knife as one of the daggers hanging proudly from her belt.
Griswold didn’t even have the decency to flinch. He blinked, thought and said, “I didn’t think it important that you know.”
“Of course, like the illusions.” She shook her head and snarled at him, hand reaching for her sword. “What else is there that you have not told me about? Dragons and White People?” She snarled again, her hand pulling her sword a little out of the sheath. “Vampires maybe? But, no that is not your style now, is it?”
“Perhaps,” he looked away, giving the fairy a curt bow of the head. “My...” he trailed, rolling his eyes. “They require of the Sword.”
The fairy twisted around, waving her slender hand and conjuring a throne of ice in the middle of the maze’s ruins. Tall, terrifying, with harsh slopes and curves, a tall back and above it all a gigantic pair of a stag’s prongs, towering over her, over them all, as if they had eyes of their own, staring and calculating. The fairy turned and seated herself on her magnificent creation, her grey eyes never leaving Cassia as if sensing, waiting for her to make a wrong move.
“The Sword,” she said. “Is an object that must and should remain hidden. I hadn’t even given it to my own favourite nephew. What makes you think that I would pass one of the most distractive objects in the world to the daughter of Death himself?
Cassia straightened her spine. In the presence of a fairy, the King used to say, one must never show emotion. Cassia willed that emotionless part of her to surface, a smile radiant, defying and petrifying rose to her lips, more like a sneer, a snarl. She took a step forward, throwing a deceitful glance towards the fairy.
“Usually,” she said. “I don’t like fairies mingling with my business and your,” she motioned her head towards Griswold. “Has done enough of mingling and scratching for the past few weeks.”
“Alas, he is like his mother, my late sister.”
“I need the Sword. Not for the King, I swear to my mother’s bones. Do you understand the extent of what he will do if he gets his hands on it?” She shook her head, her face remaining blank. “It will take him nothing to march in here and gut every child, kill every male and rape every female in your lands.”
“Nonsense,” Griswold took a step forward, reaching to stand beside Cassia. “That’s nonsense. He can’t get to you, not as long as I am the sovereign Lord of Kypriantha.”
“You are no match for his power.”
“And I suppose you are.” Griswold snapped at Cassia, the first outburst of emotion she had seen from him. It rendered him imperfect, just like her, made from flesh and bones and a malformed soul. It didn’t take Cassia a lot of time to peel layer over layer from his facade and see the mere male underneath; raw and passionate and protective of what was his own. Powerful.
She nodded. “I know him, I know his style, his habits, what he thinks, what he likes, the extent of his magic, the hours he meditates every day, I know of his opium addiction, I know that he has spies among your people, spies that I don’t even know them-”
“His name,” Griswold said, raising an eyebrow, not to mock but to state the severity. “Do you know his name?”
Cassia shook her head. “I am afraid only his dead daughter knew. It died with her and hopefully it would die with him, too.”
The Snow Maiden shifted on her throne. “I, still, will not give you the Sword.”
Cassia’s head whipped to the fairy. “You don’t understand.” She cleared her throat. “I am not here to take it by force, I won’t kill and I won’t destroy. I am not like him. Yes, I do have silver nails and silver blood and I know that I destroyed most of Nature’s purity, but I have sworn to never aid him, never kill idly. I need the Sword.”
Ael remained silent and unmoving as the fairy’s eyes moved from him to Griswold with frozen anticipation. She tilted her silver head to the side. “Is that all you want?” The fairy stood from her throne, aerial and elegant in her every move; her vibrant magic pulsed around them. “I could give you your mate, point him out with ease. I could give you the life you ever wanted. Silence, away from here, without the memories of the War or the King. You could be a normal housewife, normal.”
Cassia swallowed the lump in her throat. Mate, she shook her head. She had given up on him the night she woke up screaming a foreign name she didn’t even remember. Pathetic, in the most sardonic way, to have crossed so many lands, faced so many terrors and lived through Death and Flames. Cassia had never been weak; she had never been the one to back away with her tail between her legs like a scared dog.
No, no amount of promises, no amount of normalcy could ever make her forget the faces of those she had killed, those she had faulted, the children she had left parentless, the widows, the pleading females. The face of her mother as she died, her father’s sacrifice. The blood, all that blood she had spilt and had been spilt for her to live, to survive to this very moment. No, she would never cower in the face of evil, she would stand her ground, tall and proud and she would be the dictator of her own fate, no one else, no one.
Not her mate, whoever he was, not the King, not her mother and father, not Ael, not even Griswold, no one. They were at war to go away, to abandon her ideas, what was right, felt foreign, something she didn’t like. Cassia would stay, she would fight till her very last breath leaves her body cold and lifeless, till she was nothing more but dust to be carried by the swift winds of Nature.
She set her jaw, gripped the handle of her sword and raised her eyes to the fairy. “There will be ample time for that after we survive the war. For now,” Cassia tipped her chin up. “Please, may I have the Sword?”
The Snow Maiden stilled, her fingers flexing at her sides. “Very well,” she shook her head. “I am not giving it willingly, but I want you to swear to never give it to the King, never even mention that it passed to your possession, and I want you to hide it somewhere he will never find.”
Cassia blinked rapidly. “I swear, that was my intention from the beginning.”
The fairy nodded and waved her hand.
The firm metal was pressed onto Cassia’s hands, concealed, wrapped in a white cloth with embroidered silver prayers and charms.
The fairy smiled, her eyes clouding with magic, “Now, be gone.”
White mist suffocated them all, moving them, flashing them away, back to Feremony’s Palace in the council room.
Griswold threw them a sharp look speaking of all the hate and spite he felt for them, for his traitorous aunt. He turned on his heels and left the chamber with a dark promise of revenge, revenge if Cassia tried to destroy and harm by using the power of the Sword.
53
The council hadn’t gone long after. It was a short debriefing on the matter around the borders. Beathan had stood proudly from his seat and suggested for another dinner in the city. He did enjoy his joyous city. Who could blame him! Beathan was so unlike his father, so different Cassia could have been able to place the pieces together and figure the identity
of his father.
She retreated to her room for the rest of the day, meditating silently on the carpet before her bed with the Sword not far from the reach of her hand. She opened her eyes; slowly the heavy lashes grew heftier and harder to keep open. She sighed heavily. The Sword to her side pulsed with magic almost all the time, it was not easy to hide, a golden handle with a familiar red ruby in the middle reflecting the light in crimson hues. Cassia hadn’t unsheathed the longsword’s blade from the white sheath.
Cassia shook her head. She held a part of infinity in her hands.
The breeze blew inside the room; the papers on the desk flew around in a white swirl, hitting slapping stopping upon various items. The curtains around the bed billowed around it, twisting it in a cocoon. A vase dropped onto the floor, but it didn’t break, the heavy carpet must have absorbed the force of the impact.
She didn’t move to gather it from the carpet; she remained there and closed her eyes again. She lost count of the minutes, the hours she passed meditating. Her biological clock rang a bell inside her when the sun had begun its descent behind the mountains.
She stood; glancing about the chaos in the room. She couldn’t care less for the untidy state of her chamber. Waving her hand a blue glow appeared over her as she turned around to glance at herself in the mirror in the other side of the room, even though papers were draped over the extent of the reflecting surface.
She glowered at herself. It was a strange thing, but she had chosen a dress to wear for the evening. She was finally free, free of the King’s vicious grasp, free. She possessed the Sword.
A green satin dress went over her, proudly wrapping itself around her ample, firm breast with silver lace circling her chest. A simple, integrated corset pressed around her waist, giving her the womanly shape her warrior's body heavily lacked. The long skirt fell smoothly onto the floor, aerial and free. The light long green belt fabricated from the same material as the dress was pulled in place with a silver rhomboid buckle with a little gem on each edge. The light veil around her began forming a collar around her neck with lace embroidered onto little flowers and held in place with a silver rectangular brooch, it reached down to meet the dress's length on the floor.
A War of Silver and Gold Page 44