Sunny's brows lowered. But how did you pull him into your dream? I didn't know you could do that.
I must be getting stronger.
You are, sweet Josephine, that dark voice entered her mind again.
Jo flinched again and Sunny frowned. What's wrong?
Didn't you hear that? Hear what?
A chill ran down her spine. Why am I hearing voices?
Jo felt her chest cave in. She couldn't get enough air inside her lungs-and there was pain. Pain in her chest and a drop of sweat she was focused on that tickled her back as it raced down her shoulder blades.
I really am going to end up like him. People already fear me.
Now I'm hearing voices!
Jo squeezed her eyes shut tightly. Sunny grabbed her shoulders, gently but firmly.
I had a toy Ferris wheel; round and round it went.
There was a song in her brain. Someone was singing, no, shrieking.
I can't tell you the many a times one asked could it be lent!
The words were getting more and more frantic. And Jo realized it was Sunny
.
When the king's daughter came to visit, all for the sake of my toy Ferris wheel, she asked if we could strike a deal!
Sunny was screaming the song inside her head, and when Jo opened her eyes, her sister and Leo were crouched over her, their face's mirror images of concern.
Leo went to reach for Jo's hand, and she yanked it back before he could make contact with her skin. Hurt flashed through his eyes before his face went carefully blank.
Sunny's head tilted to the side, observing her.
Let's get something to drink , Sunny said, lifting Jo up by the hand.
Had I fallen?
You were having a panic attack, Jo. I had to use Zahra's Gift to help. . . bring you back.
That wasn't a panic attack , Jo thought.
You're correct, the voice whispered in her head again and Jo covered her ears.
I keep hearing voices, Sunny.
I can't sense anyone near. Do you think you're overheated and hallucinating? Sunny's voice had a hopeful note to it.
Being dehydrated and incoherent was better than a dark voice going undetected inside her head.
Jo worried her lip. Yeah, that's probably it.
Sunny closed her eyes and sighed. She could always tell when Jo was lying.
Chapter 30
Sunny
Writhia, 5220
The Wastes
Sunny was asleep, the first restful sleep she’d had in days. Every muscle in her body ached; even her throat was sore from calling back and forth to her friends, fighting to have her voice heard over the raging winds near the top of the mountain. During the day her skin burned, made raw and chapped by those same winds that had stolen her voice.
But at last, she was resting. Her sister lay on one side of her and Westin lay on the other. He was finally starting to let her near. Finally beginning to look at her without anger and resentment in his eyes.
She felt a tap on her shoulder, felt the coolness of the fingers even through her suit.
Rolling over, she opened her eyes. And screamed.
Westin lay there, gasping for breath, his abdomen ripped open along that diagonal scar the king had forced him to give himself. His insides were spilling out, a hot, stinking mess covered in blood and mud.
Sitting up, she looked around for help, her breath catching in her throat as she found her friends dead and dismembered around her. Sunny only knew the body next to her was Jo because it was her sister. Had it been a stranger, she wouldn’t have been able to identify her because her head was missing.
She turned back to Westin to find the light dying in his eyes. As he inhaled his last breath, he whispered two words:
“Your fault.”
“No!” Sunny scrambled to her feet, taking in the scene around her, her nails leaving gouges as she dragged them down her face. “No no no. . .”
“Tragic, isn’t it?”
Sunny whirled to find Azmodeous behind her, surveying the disturbing scene with a smirk. Shadows writhed around him, clinging to his tall form, wrapping themselves around his arms and waist in gentle caresses.
"What is this? What have you done?"
His pale eyes landed on her, causing the hair on the back of her neck to stand on end. "I think the question you mean to ask, Eleyna, is what have you done? This is your fault, after all."
Her breath left her in a gasp, "What do you mean, ‘my fault’?"
"This is what will happen if you continue to run, Eleyna." He took a step closer and her feet tingled with the urge to back up. "This is what will happen to you and your little friends when I find you. And I will find you. I'm getting closer by the second."
Azmodeous smiled a bit as he reached out to brush a strand of hair back from her face, "The closer I get, the more I can feel it, you know. The taste of you on my tongue." Another step closer, "Some nights it's all I can think about."
Sunny jerked away, stepping out of his reach, "You're lying. This is a lie. You wouldn't hurt Jo, she's your heir."
He glanced down at Jo's body, and the emotion that flashed through his eyes was something like grief.
Something like regret. Almost.
"Hurting Josephine was never my intention. But she's been out of my reach for too long, her head filled with lies and ideas that shouldn't be there." He looked back to Sunny, "But we can make more heirs, Eleyna. Jo was an accident, and look at how powerful she is. With the proper spells, imagine what we could create together!"
He reached for her once more, one hand encircling her bicep as the other grabbed at her waist. His eyes bored into hers. "I don't want to kill Josephine, Eleyna. Please believe me, I don't. And I won't, not if you return to me."
He leaned down, resting his forehead against hers. Sunny struggled, tried to fight her way from his grasp, but her body couldn't move. It was like she was frozen, her body a statue that Azmodeous clung to with gentle reverence. "Come back to me, Eleyna." His words were a whisper, his sweet breath ghosting across her cheeks. "Come back and I'll let them live."
Sunny looked up at him, at the look of desperate hope etched across his porcelain features.
It took some effort, but she finally forced her lips to move, her voice to speak. When she did, it was ragged. "Get. Out. Of. My. Head."
A look of surprise crossed Azmodeous' features before she forced herself to wake up, slamming the door of her thoughts closed.
Sunny sat up, gasping, her heart beating wildly in her chest.
She quickly looked around to find her friends and sister asleep beside her. Safe. Alive.
The dreams about Azmodeous had only gotten worse. She could barely think during the day she was so tired. And at night, she was too afraid to even sleep half the time, dreading his inevitable appearance. He was always there with some new horror to try to scare her back to his side.
Tonight was the first night she had succeeded in shutting him out by herself.
Her success fanned the tiny flame of hope in her chest, making it just a little bit bigger.
Jo shifted beside her, letting out a small gasp.
Sunny frowned as she watched her sister sleep, her eyebrows knitting together, her lips turned down in displeasure.
Gently, she laid her hand on Jo's forehead, letting her mind trace along her sister's dream. But...there was nothing there. Jo's mind was blank, dark and heavy with sleep, and yet she kept tossing and turning, her frown deepening.
The sound of leaves shifting had her turning to find Seren moving in his sleep as well, a small, anguished groan leaving his throat. The rest of her friends stirred as well, fidgeting in their sleep as the sun's rays peeked over the horizon.
Something about this place is affecting us, she thought. She was certain of it. It was as if the further south they headed, the worse it got. The nightmares, the restlessness, the sullen silences.
Perhaps, if she got a chance, she would ask the Oracle. T
hat was, if they ever found them.
Realizing she wouldn't be getting any more sleep, she stood up and stretched. Unable to stand the thought that her friends were suffering from their dreams she started shouting, "All right, up and at 'em! Daylight's wastin' guys, rise and shine!"
*****
"This has to be the place," Westin told her, his voice low.
They had been standing outside of the cave for a good fifteen minutes. It didn't look like a special cave that housed a magical Oracle. It was just an ordinary cave, the entrance tunneling deep into the stone of the mountain. A little taller than Leo. A little wider than Westin. As if it was made for their group specifically to squeeze through, single file. Leaves and vines lay draped over the rock, their little white flowers perking up in Marzanna's presence.
It didn't feel like a normal cave, though. Sunny wasn't sure what a normal cave should feel like, but she knew it wasn't this. This...this feeling of...presence. Of being watched. Of something, somewhere, knowing they were there.
But she seemed to be the only one who felt it. The others just looked at it, arguing back and forth over whether it was the right cave.
"This is it," she finally spoke up, interrupting whatever Leo was saying. Her eyes remained on the entrance as she spoke. She felt that if she looked away it would move somehow. "I can feel it. There's something inside. Something. . . powerful."
Westin looked at Leo as if to say I told you so. Though everyone else was bitter and on edge, Westin seemed more or less the same. Still angry and exhausted, but no worse than when she'd first found him.
She had started to wonder if he was somehow immune to the impending darkness, or if he had been in the Wastes for so long that he had simply grown accustomed to the dark thoughts and terrifying nightmares the rest of them seemed to be experiencing.
Kian pulled a pulselight out of his bag. "Then let's go."
"Alright, but I'm not going first," Khione said, peering into the darkness, her eyes wide.
"I'll go first," Sunny and Westin said at the same time. Their heads whipped around to glare at each other. "I'll go," Westin said, his voice hard. "I have the most combat experience here."
"Yeah, well I'm. . ." she scrambled for a reason, "I'm going to be queen! So you need to listen."
He rolled his eyes.
Daiya chuckled, "You tell him, heh."
Sunny turned to glare at her but she assumed a look of innocence.
"How about I guard the entrance?" Gordo said, eyeing the mouth of the cave. "And you all can just yell if you need me. Daiya can stay here with me."
Before Sunny could explain to him that he was dead, she was interrupted.
"Actually," Kian called from the mouth of the cave, pulselight in hand, "I have the most combat experience." His eyes passed from Westin to Sunny, "And Lorleans have no queen."
He turned and walked into the cave, Zahra and Seren following close behind. Sunny and Westin glanced at each other before racing for the entrance.
The further in they got, the darker it seemed. The soft yellow light coming from the pulselight hovering over Kian's shoulder barely seemed to make a dent in the thick shadows.
And the darker it became the more Sunny's feeling of being watched intensified. She could feel it coming from every angle. Above. Below. From the front. From behind. She felt it take her measure carefully and she felt it come to the conclusion that it was unimpressed.
Why wouldn’t it be? a dark voice whispered in her mind. You use your claim to the throne the way a child uses their tears: to get what you want. You’re no queen. You never will be.
Sunny shuddered as the words raked through her thoughts, leaving her feeling exposed and empty.
Worse than the feeling of rawness the words caused was the fact that she couldn't deny their truth.
The sound of their footsteps began to echo louder and louder, and soon they emerged into a large cavern.
There was no light, save for the one coming from Kian's pulselight. Nothing but endless, echoing darkness.
And then came movement.
A scuttle and a scrape, somewhere to the left.
Kian directed the light to swing around and caught the tail end of fluttering, dingy, white fabric. The sound echoed again to the right and the light swung once more, catching the outline of a small figure, about Zahra's height, but so thin it was practically a skeleton.
Then she heard laughter. It echoed off the walls, high and bright.
I know that laughter, Sunny thought. She had heard it twice before.
Finally, two small lights began glowing, illuminating the two little sprites that had helped Sunny and Jo escape the palace. The same sprites who had poisoned Jo with rotten fruit.
Sunny glared at them. "What the hell are they doing here?"
They tittered at her anger, their tiny hands covering their even tinier mouths.
"They are disciples of mine," spoke a voice, and the small form emerged into the circle of light.
Sunny gasped, Jo's gasp echoing hers. "Mom?"
Before her stood Eleyna, her mother. The same golden curls. The same blue eyes. The same loving expression.
Then the figure shifted, skin darkening to a golden brown. Golden curls straightening into silky black locks. It grew a few inches in height and its eyes darkened, changing shape.
"Mother?" Leo whispered, staring at the woman as if he'd seen a ghost.
"I am no mother. No parent," she said, her voice lilting in an unfamiliar accent. "I am knowledge."
The being shifted again, their form stretching and changing into a replica of Orrin, the leader of Kian, Zarha, and Seren's tribe. Seren's fingers drummed against his thigh as he looked at the figure with narrowed eyes.
It shifted again and Sunny felt Westin stiffen beside her as it took the form of his father, Philip. On and on it went, ever changing.
A woman who looked like Khione, her eyes full of disappointment.
A girl who looked like she could be Marzanna's twin, a deep dimple appearing in her cheek when she smiled at her.
A young adolescent boy who winked at Kian.
An old woman with light brown skin, her hair covered in a scarf. A tear formed in Zahra's eye as she looked at her.
Sunny stepped forward, "We came here for answers."
The figure focused its eyes on her, its form settling back on Eleyna. "You may ask three questions. Choose wisely."
Sunny took a deep breath, her mind racing as she tried to figure out how to phrase her question. "What, specifically, is the darkness we saw in Seren's vision?"
The sprites looked at each other and giggled. Sunny struggled not to go step on one.
The Oracle's eyes, Eleyna's eyes, lost focus as if it were looking at something no one else could see.
"The darkness is power, ancient and unstoppable. You have faced it before, yet it is something brand new. It is both known and unknown. He is waiting for you."
A scene burst forth in Sunny's mind, vivid and full of color. A man around Jo and Sunny's age, standing tall. Wickedly handsome with golden blond curls and bright blue eyes. He smiled and it was Jo's smile. Sunny's smile. His features were sharp and high, aristocratic. He moved and it was Sunny's movements, graceful and sure. He focused on the crowd kneeling before him, his head cocking inquisitively to the side as he watched them look up at him with adoration in their glazed eyes.
The vision faded and Sunny bent forward, putting her hands on her knees, breathing hard. She looked at Jo, "Did you see that?"
Jo nodded, as did everyone else.
"Who was that?" Sunny asked.
The figure, Eleyna, smiled. "You already know who it is."
Irritation flooded through her. "That's a shit answer." The Oracle smiled again. "It was a shit question." Sunny blinked in surprise and they chuckled,
Eleyna's laughter bursting forth.
"I asked for specificity," Sunny said, attempting to school her anger. That thing-person-whatever it was, was toying with them.
The Oracle grinned Eleyna's grin. "You didn't say how specific."
"Since when are there varying degrees of specificity?" Jo asked, her glare turned on the Oracle.
They only smiled.
"You have one more question. Choose wisely."
Chapter 31
Westin
Writhia, 5220
The Waste
Seren raised his chin, bravery shining in his eyes. "Since we've arrived here, we've been having dark thoughts and dreams. Tell us everything you know about that."
The Oracle, now in the shape of Orrin, smiled sagely in the dark light. Stalactites and rivulets of water ran along the cave walls.
Westin wanted to tell them that this was what the Wastes did. They were full of parasites that slowly inserted themselves inside someone until they became fully infected and hated themselves and everything else.
"The darkness is a glutton for fear. You have fed its ravenous hunger." The voice modulated in the exact way Orrin's did, echoing off the cave walls in a mixed rhythm of the stalactite tunes and water droplets giving an eerie ambiance to the cave. Then, the Oracle's gaze landed on Jo and Noelani, its eyes fervently observing them, touching their souls. It had Westin moving closer to Noelani on instinct. In his peripheral, he saw Leo doing the same, the whole group moving to surround the sisters.
"You two have hard choices coming. Strength or weakness, what will it be? Will you stay? Or will you flee?"
The sister's backs stiffened, and they shared a look. A silent conversation of the minds before Noelani slowly turned her head back to them. "Are you working for him?" she spat. Her eyes as venomous as the Gavs' poison. Westin knew by him, she meant Azmodeous.
The Oracle stood. "I believe your three questions are up."
Noelani growled and charged at him, its eyes not the least bit surprised. It had known she'd lose her temper.
But, with a snap of his fingers, it drifted upward. "Until next time, friends."
And with that, it disappeared, and a chill ran through the group.
A rock the size of Westin fell, blocking the exit.
Palace of Moonlight Page 21