As I walked through the ruins of the old gate, I found a piece of the statue that had once held my brother’s spirit trapped inside while the town waited for its Prima to come home. I sat down beside it and pulled out the memory stone again, then let my thoughts drift back to the day this gate had first opened over a hundred years ago.
The day the Order of Shadows ripped my brother from my life.
Broken
The Shadow World – 101 Years Ago
Lea’s lips touched mine, not out of passion but out of desperation.
The veil surrounding us lifted and a gasp rushed through the crowd.
I tried to lift myself from the ground, but my legs were too weak to hold me. Lea gripped my hand as her father came rushing forward off the throne.
"What is it?" he asked.
"It’s Aerden," she said, low so the crowd couldn’t hear. "Something horrible’s happened."
My father appeared at my side, his face stricken with panic. I had never in my life seen him lose control or show emotion. He was a rock, always accepting fate as it came to him.
But that day, in that brief moment in the throne room, I saw a side to my father I never knew existed.
"We must get him out of here," he said. He lifted me from Lea’s grasp and shifted, soaring through the air so fast it turned my stomach.
Behind us in the hall, there was shouting and movement as the crowd tried to understand what was happening.
"I don’t understand," someone said before the door to the king’s chambers had closed. "Did they kiss?"
My father set me down on a stone bench near the wall and I leaned over, retching.
I felt as if I had fallen from a great height with no ability to fly or shift. Having Aerden’s presence taken from me was like hitting the ground at full speed. My muscles were sore and weak and my connection to my magic felt distant. Broken.
"What’s happening to me?" I asked.
My father paced the floor beside me. For the moment, we were alone in the chamber room. "Did you have a vision? You must tell me what you saw.”
I tried to sit up and he rushed to my side, helping to prop me against the wall.
I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths, each one hurting more than the last. I winced in pain, then shook my head. "I don’t think it was a vision," I said. "This was different."
"Different how?"
"It wasn’t like being pulled into a picture of the future," I explained, trying to remember exactly what I’d seen and felt. "I still saw images of him in my head, the same as when I have visions, but this time, I felt him. It was almost like I was standing by his side, watching it happen. I could hear him, father. It’s never been like that before."
My father turned his back to me and lowered his head.
I wanted to tell him more, if only to try to make sense of it in my head, but the chamber door burst open. Lea and her parents walked in, followed by my mother. A maidservant bowed and left the room, shutting the door behind her.
Lea rushed straight to my side and knelt at my feet. She rested her head against my leg and reached up to take my hand. "Are you okay?" she whispered.
I didn’t have an answer. Was I okay? Would I ever be okay?
"Tell us exactly what happened," the king commanded.
The small group in the room formed a circle around Lea and I.
Pain surged through me and I clutched my side. How could I explain to them what I had experienced when I didn’t even understand it myself?
I nearly lost consciousness, but Lea’s hand on mine held me to this moment.
"Aerden and I have always had a bond," I said. I pushed through the pain, but my voice was strained and rough against my throat. "Even when we’re separated, I have always been able to reach out to him with my mind and my magic."
My vision blurred and I let my head fall back against the cool glass wall.
"He’s ill, can’t you see that?" Lea said, standing and placing herself between her parents and me. "He needs rest and a shaman, not questions."
"It is not your place to give me orders," the king said. His voice echoed through the chamber room. "Now, stand aside."
Lea lifted her chin, but sat down as she was told.
I reached for her hand and she clasped it tight.
"This morning, I went looking for Aerden and he was gone," I said. "I can’t tell you why he left, but it unsettled me the rest of the day."
"Did you know about this?" the king asked my father.
He nodded. "Yes, we knew Aerden was gone, but he had left of his own will."
I studied my father. I couldn’t help but feel there was an undertone of secrecy in his voice. What was he keeping from me?
"Go on," the king said, looking to me.
"Throughout the ceremony, I couldn’t stop thinking of him," I said. I paused as pain pulsed through my chest. "I couldn’t help but feel something was wrong, so I reached out with my magic like I’d done a million times before."
"And you found him?" my mother asked, bringing a trembling hand to her mouth.
I met her eyes and shook my head. "Not at first," I said. "I wondered if maybe he had gotten too far away, beyond the reach of my bond with him. It had never happened before, but we hadn’t really ever tested it."
Lea stroked my arm and having her by my side made this moment both worse and better at the same time. I was glad to have her support when I was being questioned this way. But at the same time, with her there, I couldn’t be completely honest, either.
"But then, when we were inside the veil, exchanging our stones, I felt him appear at the edge of my awareness," I said. I couldn’t tell them why I was thinking of him when Lea touched her stone, so I pushed slightly beyond the boundaries of the truth. "I think he was reaching out to me, to tell me he was in trouble."
"What did you see?"
"I saw my brother," I said, the vision of him in chains bringing new pain to the surface. I tightened my jaw, anger and agony running through my body. "He was shackled and bleeding, kneeling in a field of black roses."
Lea’s mother gasped and turned away. The king’s head snapped toward his wife, but the look on his face was one of warning rather than comfort. It struck me as odd, and I wondered if I was wrong to tell them everything I had seen. I felt separated from them, as if they were keeping a great secret.
But I had to tell them. If they knew more than they were telling me, then they were our best hope for finding Aerden’s killers and bringing them to justice.
"Some kind of bright light hovered in the air in front of him. It was almost like a shimmering waterfall, but it was oval and perfectly formed," I said.
"An emerald light?" my mother asked. She clutched her robes in her fists.
I met her eyes. She definitely knew something about this light. I could see it in her face. In all their faces.
"No," I said, not taking my eyes from her. "A sapphire blue light, as bright and clear as the garden of lillies in your back yard."
She swallowed, her lips trembling, betraying the importance of the light. She turned to my father, her eyes filled with rage and terror.
He held his palm up, silencing her before she had a chance to say another word.
The others stood stone-still. I saw fear in their eyes. Even the eyes of the King of the North.
"What else?" my father asked when he’d found his voice again.
"A woman," I said. "I couldn’t see her face or her form. She wore a hood of blue velvet over her head. She appeared inside the portal. Then, a flash of something that looked like the insignia of a dragon on a man’s coat. That was when Aerden seemed to look straight at me. He said my name and then he was just gone."
I lowered my head, tears flowing from somewhere deep inside my soul. The pain and regret in my brother’s voice would haunt me forever.
"That’s how I knew this wasn’t a vision of the future," I said. "Because he knew I was there with him. He was trying to tell me something, but he never go
t the chance. Whoever they were, they killed him. I felt him ripped from me as if he’d been cut from my own flesh."
I cried out and struggled to my feet. I wanted to ask them what they knew. I wanted to demand the truth from them all.
But the moment I stood, a darkness washed over me. I fell to the marble floor, unable to control the seizure that hammered its way through my body.
When it stopped, my mother’s face appeared above me, stained with tears and lined with worry. She stroked my forehead, then lifted her eyes to my father.
"It was them, wasn’t it?" she asked him. "What have we done?"
That was the last thing I heard before the pain dragged me under its dark curtain.
If Given A Choice
When I awoke, Lea was sitting by my side. Her head rested against the blanket covering my legs and her hand lay stretched out toward mine.
I tried to swallow, but my throat was dry and cracked. My tongue seemed to be permanently stuck to the roof of my mouth.
I lifted my head, pushing up on the bed with my arms. Some of my strength had returned, but I still felt less. Diminished, somehow. Would I ever be whole again? Or would I spend the rest of my life as half of a demon, eternally missing my brother’s presence at my side?
Lea woke, her dark eyes searching mine.
Her lower lip trembled and she reached for my hand. “Denaer, how are you feeling?”
An impossible question. “I feel broken,” I said, my voice rough as the rocky shore of the Sea of Glass.
Lea stood and walked to a cart that held water, cheese, fruit and breads that smelled freshly made. She poured a glass of water and brought it to me. “Here, this will help,” she said.
I drank it down, then asked for more.
“How long have I been asleep?” I cursed myself for being too weak to stay conscious. With every moment that passed, Aerden’s killer had a chance to get farther away. We couldn’t let the trail go cold. We had to find that field of black roses and search for any clues that might have been left behind.
Lea handed me a fresh glass of water. She pressed her lips together and furrowed her brow.
“It’s been two weeks,” she said, sinking back down into the chair by the bed.
I sat up with a jerk, then immediately regretted it. The sore muscles on my side burned as if they’d been ripped open and held to a flame.
Lea placed her hands on my shoulders and gently pushed me back against the pillows. “It’s going to take time,” she said. “You have to be patient.”
“What’s happening to me?” I asked.
She shook her head. “They aren’t sure,” she said. “We’ve had three shamans in to examine you, but they can’t seem to find anything physically wrong with you except that your aura is weak. In meditation, father’s shaman could sense a rip down the left side of your power, as if—”
“As if a piece of myself had been ripped from my body.” I already knew. I felt it the moment my brother was taken from me.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. She lifted my hand toward her face and nuzzled her cheek against my knuckles.
I pulled away.
I didn’t deserve her affections. If it had been Aerden standing inside the veil with her, he never would have died. Instead, I took his sacrifice and passed it off as my own truth while he was being tortured.
I would never forgive myself.
Hurt registered on Lea’s face, but she recovered quickly, standing and pacing the floor beside my bed.
“Your parents will want to know you’re awake,” she said. “Do you want me to go get them?”
I looked around for the first time since I’d regained consciousness. Instead of my own room, I was in a room I didn’t recognize. The walls here were adorned with strips of gold woven together in an intricate pattern. The fabrics were lush and heavy in colors like deep navy and burgundy.
“Where am I?” I asked. “Are we in the castle?”
“Yes,” she said. Her hand fluttered to the golden locket she now wore on a long chain around her neck. “Your home is here now that we are officially promised to each other.”
I brought my hand to my lips. Our kiss hadn’t been mutual, but all the veil needed was a kiss.
And now I was promised to a princess I didn’t love.
But I had also made a promise to my brother. I told him I would never hurt Lea. I promised that she would never know the truth about the stone I gave to her.
I held my hand out to her and she walked toward me. She placed her small hand inside mine and I slowly brought it to my lips, tears welling up in my eyes.
“Lea,” I said.
“Yes?” she whispered.
“Can I trust you?” I asked.
She drew her eyebrows together and tilted her head to the side. “Of course,” she said. “Why are you asking me that?”
I pushed myself up again, wincing slightly at the pain, but learning now to ignore it and move beyond it. I had no time for rest. I’d already lost way too much time as it was.
“Because I need to know that if given a choice of loyalty, you would choose me above all others,” I said. I knew I was asking too much of her. I knew it was wrong when she believed my love for her ran deeper than it did, but I needed her. She was all I had in this world. “I need to know that you would never betray me. Not even if the king himself asked you to.”
My heart thrummed in my ears.
Her lips parted and she sucked in a deep breath. She raised a hand again to her locket, closing her fist around it.
Finally, she nodded. “I am yours now,” she said. “I would die for you if you asked me to. And I will never, ever betray you.”
I kissed her hand again, then leaned back against the pillows, worn out from even such small exertions.
Guilt pierced through my chest.
Would she have given so much of herself and been willing to make such sacrifices if she had known the truth?
But it was too late to worry about things like that. Aerden was gone and even those we should have trusted most knew more than they were willing to admit. I was determined to reveal their secrets and find the truth about what happened to my brother.
And someday, whoever took him would pay for what they had done.
I would never rest until that day came.
This Won’t Bring Him Back
No matter how many times I questioned my parents, they insisted they knew nothing about what happened to Aerden or who would have wanted to hurt him.
They claimed the king had dispatched a group of guards to investigate the murder, but that so far, no one had found any evidence of who might have taken him.
Months passed with no answers, and every time I asked about the guards’ progress, I was given a vague answer with no concrete details.
Lea and I spent hours going through maps of the Northern Kingdom, searching for any mention of black roses. Even in the older maps, we couldn’t find anything promising.
The search for Aerden’s killer ruled my days and nightmares of his death ruled my nights.
Always, he was kneeling across the thorns, crying out for me.
Some nights, I could feel the silver shackles cutting into my wrists. They were real to me and when I woke my wrists would be sore and red, as if my nightmares were taking over my life. The only way I could shake them was to draw exactly what I saw.
I’d never been interested in art or drawing, but I found that it helped me to get my memories and my visions on paper.
Sometimes, I stayed up several days in a row working to perfect a single image. I couldn’t rest until every single detail was exactly the way I’d seen it in my mind. What if something that seemed insignificant turned out to be the key to it all? So I learned to pay attention to my visions in a new way. I learned to see the entire picture, piece by piece, and hold it there in my mind until I could get it on paper.
Years went by like this.
When we’d been through all of the maps, I started going from vil
lage to village with my drawings in hand, asking for any information on black roses, a silver dagger with blue stones, a woman in blue velvet robes with intricately woven patterns of silver. A red dragon. No one would talk to me.
After ten years, I was beginning to lose hope.
“Someone has to know something,” I said to Lea one day on our way home from the village of Baurmon. “Aerden had only been gone a day. Hours, really. He could only have gone so far away in that short of time. Someone within that radius around the city has to know where there is a field of black roses. They are too rare to miss.”
“I don’t know.” She sighed. “We’ve been over this a thousand times. What if we never find the answers?”
I snapped my head toward her. “Don’t say that. It’s only been ten years. We have an eternity to find answers.”
She closed her eyes and swallowed. “We cannot spend the rest of our days tirelessly searching for answers,” she said. She placed her hand on my arm. “This won’t bring him back.”
I yanked my arm from her touch, my jaw tense. “It isn’t about bringing him back,” I said.
“Then what is it about?”
“Do you really have to ask me that?” I pushed up the sleeves of my long coat. “You don’t know me at all.”
Lea lifted her chin. “I know this is all you think about,” she said. “You’re obsessed to the point of losing yourself, Denaer.”
I turned away from her, but she stepped behind me, gripping my arm.
“We’ve been engaged for ten years and not once have we talked about our future,” she said. “You don’t kiss me or hold me or dream of having a child with me. You don’t even talk about what it will be like someday to rule this kingdom. All you do is talk about a brother who is gone and never coming back.”
I shifted into black smoke, pulling away from her grasp and reforming several steps away. “He was my twin. He was a piece of me,” I said. “It’s my duty to avenge his death, but I can’t do that until I can find the demon who took his life. After ten long years, we are no closer to finding the truth and yes, it eats at me to the point of obsession. It lives with me every second of every day, and I will not let it go. Not until I know the truth. So don’t ask me to dream of some future happiness when I am missing half of my own soul.”
A Demon's Wrath: Part I (Peachville High Demons) Page 5