I stood up with a wince. Sleeping on the steps with my head between my knees hadn’t been the best idea. My legs and shoulders were cramped and stiff, and I could barely walk at first. I limped all the way back to Cerasaraelia.
When I crept through the front door, I heard activity in the dining room. Adrial and Zhevraine had kept to their normal routine and were having breakfast. Leid wasn’t with them. I moved up the stairs and opened Leid’s bedroom door just a crack.
She was still sleeping; sick and pale, her sheets moving up and down like she was having trouble breathing. I wanted to go in there. Someone should have been with her, but I couldn’t handle it.
I shut the door and shuffled to my room with my head hung.
I felt like climbing into bed and sleeping forever. Adrial and Zhevraine would have understood if I didn’t go to work today, but I needed something to take my mind off of what was happening. I fought my exhaustion instead, taking a shower and getting dressed. I moved into the dining room to grab my briefcase and a pastry, but didn’t stick around. The others watched me. I could feel their eyes on my back as I started to leave.
“Alezair?”
At the sound of Adrial’s voice, I stopped.
“Where are you going?”
“Work,” I muttered.
“An hour and a half early?”
“How are you two just sitting there acting completely fine?” I demanded, ignoring his question. “Leid hasn’t woken up. She looks bad. Have you even gone to see her yet?”
Adrial sighed, throwing his pastry onto his plate and wiping his hands with a napkin. “She’ll wake up, but I don’t know when. Her symptoms are unpredictable and—”
I didn’t want to hear his shit anymore, so I left.
“Alezair!” Adrial shouted, standing after me.
I didn’t stop.
“Leave him,” I heard Zhevraine say as I stepped through Cerasaraelia’s front door. “He needs to mourn.”
Nephilim hadn’t arrived yet and the Court was locked. I fumbled with my keys and let myself in. I waded through the cool darkness, climbing the stairs to the second floor. I paused in our office doorway, looking around.
My desk was in chaos; stacks of files piled two feet high, pens strewn everywhere, old coffee mugs and dog-eared astrophysical plasma books that I’d read during those rare fifteen minutes of freedom. Leid’s was spotless and organized. It was almost like no one ever used it. I couldn’t help but smile. Nothing characterized us better than the state of our desks.
But then my smile faded when I thought about Leid not being here anymore. She wouldn’t be waiting at her desk when I burst in half an hour late, tapping her chin like a clock ticking down to my demise. She wouldn’t be looking over my shoulder, reminding me to use black ink instead of blue or mentioning I’d forgotten to date something.
I’d always complained about her being around. I’d always wanted my own office. My wish was about to be granted, and it made me sick.
I flipped on the lights and took a few steps in, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what Adrial had told me in the library last night. Could he really kill her? Because I sure as fuck couldn’t.
I thought about the mountain pass, and the way she felt against me. She’d smelled like lavender and sweat, salty to the taste. Then I thought about her eyes, the way they sparkled whenever she was interested in something. She loved to read, and always brought science periodicals to the dinner table. No.
“Stop,” I said aloud, as if that would help. But her image stayed in my mind, burned an imprint into my thoughts.
And then the room faded away, and I was standing somewhere else. Another office. Leid was pacing behind a desk, tapping her chin like she always did. She was looking at a schedule. Her clothes were weird.
“Where would you like to eat for lunch?” she asked me. “You’ve got a meeting at two, so it’ll have to be nearby.”
Before I could reply, the Celestial Court came back and Leid had disappeared. I stood there, blinking at the place she’d been seconds ago. What the fuck was happening to me? I was losing my mind.
Pain tore across my shoulders, and I almost fell. I grabbed the corner of Leid’s desk to keep myself upright. It was the same pain I’d felt in the shower room, the morning after Belial’s masquerade. I closed my eyes and begged it away, biting into my lower lip so hard that my canines punctured the skin. Warm blood dripped down my chin, pattering on the floor. Too much was happening at once. I couldn’t take it.
With a scream, I hurled my briefcase at the wall. All the paintings flew off their hooks, crashing to the floor in an explosion of glass.
“Hello?” called a voice from downstairs.
It was Nephilim. Fuck me.
“Uh,” I stammered, barely able to speak because the pain was still savaging my back. “It’s just me!”
“What’s going on up there?” Her voice sounded closer. She was coming up the stairs. “N-Nothing!” I said. “I just dropped some stuff!”
Silence.
I watched the door.
Please don’t come in here. Please don’t come in here.
“… Well, come and get your soulcases.”
I heard her heels click away to the front desk, and I collapsed into Leid’s chair, face in my hands.
***
“Alezair?”
I jolted, coming out of whatever tired, depressed fugue I’d been in. Adrial was standing in the doorway, glaring at all the glass from earlier this morning. Our office was trashed.
“What?” I muttered, glancing at the clock. I’d spaced out for two hours.
“Go home before someone notices you’re a wreck. I shouldn’t have let you come in today, so shame on me.”
I opened another case. “You’re not the boss of me.”
“Please don’t make me physically remove you.”
“Yeah? Try it.”
“Getting the shit beaten out of you won’t make this any better, Alezair. Go home.”
“Kindly fuck off. I have a ton of work to do.”
Adrial lunged over the desk and grabbed my shirt. Before I could even grasp what the fuck just happened, I hit the wall on the other side of the room, landing in all the shattered glass. I tried to get up, but he grabbed me again and dragged me to the door, flinging me into the hall.
“Go home,” he snarled. “You’re no good to us like this. And if you ever tell me to fuck off again, you’ll spend the next two hours regenerating your teeth.”
He slammed the door in my face.
I stared at the glass slivers wedged into the palms of my hands, absorbing slowly as my body used them to heal. The pain felt good.
I stormed down the stairs, heading for the door. Nephilim watched my departure.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I’m taking the rest of the day off.”
“You need to sign out.”
I rolled my eyes, not responding.
“Alezair?!” she called after me. “You can’t just leave without signing—”
I slammed the door on her.
***
Cerasaraelia was dark and vacant.
Adrial hadn’t given me a chance to grab my briefcase, so I’d have to get it later. I hung my coat on the rack and headed to the dining room. I’d nurse my pride with a bottle of Pelo Segua and maybe pass out.
But I froze in the hallway, hearing static in my head. The gravity changed, and I felt a presence in the house. The presence wasn’t Leid; it felt different. Out of place.
Leid.
I bolted up the stairs, turning the handle to her bedroom door. It was locked from the inside. I kicked it open and the door flew off its hinges, crashing to the floor in an eruption of splintered wood.
There was a man standing next to Leid’s bed, leaning over her as she slept. The man spun, startled, but I couldn’t see his face because the room was dark and he was covered in shadows.
I charged at him.
At first I thought it
was another demon scumbag trying to finish Leid off, but then he moved like I did, and I realized that he was something else.
We whirred across the room like supersonic blurs, exchanging blows whenever the opportunity arose. He caught my neck and crushed my throat in a single fist, and I choked, pulling back with every bit of strength I could muster. We staggered out of Leid’s bedroom, crashing violently into the hallway.
I miscalculated a step, and then we fell down the stairs in a ball, obliterating the railing. The next several moments were a blur of fists. Somehow I ended up against the wall of our foyer, his hand around my neck in another death grip. This time, I couldn’t shake him off.
I still couldn’t see him because I hadn’t thought to turn a light on when I came home. He was an outline in the dark, incredibly tall, towering over me as he held my back to the wall. He was too strong; I had to call for help.
Adrial, Zhevraine! There’s an intruder; he’s trying to take Leid!
But then another voice invaded my head as the man leaned in:
I can hear you, guardian.
Oh, shit. He was one of us.
He flung me through Cerasaraelia’s front door. Through it.
Head over feet, feet over head, I rolled across the walkway, sliding to a stop face-down on the cement. Wood splinters were caught in my skin and clothes, but fear muted pain.
I struggled to get up, coughing. Blood sputtered from my lips, rolling down my chin in a string of pink saliva. The man stepped through the giant hole in the door, heading down the veranda steps. He slid out of the shadows.
Adrial jumped between us, having appeared from out of nowhere. He looked really scared.
I unleashed my scythes, clenching my teeth. But Adrial whirred behind me, pinning my arms back. I fought him.
“No!” he hissed. “Alezair, no! He’s a noble; he can kill you where you stand!”
A noble.
I looked past Adrial, at the man who stood several feet away. My anger faded when I caught a glimpse of his face. Raven black hair, all the way down his back; silver eyes, just like mine. The tingly feeling in my stomach returned, throttling my nausea.
I recognized him.
I knew him.
I just couldn’t remember how. But he felt the same as Leid.
And it looked like he knew me, too, because his face twisted up when he saw me up close, like he couldn’t believe what he was looking at.
“Qaira?” Ky-ra? “What are you doing here? How are you here?”
Adrial backed away from me, dark revelation churning in his eyes. I glanced at him, confused.
“W-What’s going on?”
The noble ignored me, glaring at Adrial. “What’s he doing here? What has Leid done?”
Adrial shook his head, unable to take his razor-edged stare off me. “I… I-I had no idea that he was—”
“Hey, anyone care to tell me what the fuck is going on?!” I screamed, having had about enough.
The noble gave me a look. After a moment of careful evaluation, he smiled. “You left your memories in the Nexus.”
I blanched. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Because I put you there.”
My heart skipped a beat.
“Calenus, what are you doing here?” demanded Adrial.
Calenus Karim. Our King.
“You know why I’m here.”
Adrial frowned. “How did you find out?”
Calenus cast his eyes left. We followed his stare. Zhevraine stood at the fork, watching us.
Adrial snarled. “You told him?!”
“I had to.”
“Leid forbid us to—”
“Leid is expiring! We have to take her back to Exo’daius! It’s the only way!”
As the two continued screaming at each other, my attention returned to Calenus. He met my gaze, and we studied each other. We didn’t say anything for a while, like we were having an unspoken conversation.
“You’re not taking Leid,” I said.
“I think you’d say otherwise if you could only remember. I can’t believe she did this to you.”
“Did what?”
“Made you into one of us. That’s cruel, even for her.”
I couldn’t wade through his cryptic response. “Leid doesn’t want to go with you.”
Calenus laughed softly. “Here we are again; fighting over the same woman. Hundreds of years later and not a thing has changed, Qaira.”
“Why don’t you refresh my memory?”
Adrial shot out his hand. “Calenus, don’t.”
Calenus hesitated, eyeing him. “I’m afraid it’s not my place to tell you. If you want to know, take the Europydes Minor portal in the cephalon. Follow the Astral Trail. You’ll find the Nexus.”
“No!” Adrial shouted.
“He deserves to know, Adrial.”
“And what about Leid?”
“After everything that’s happened, I can’t let her expire here. Would you have Leid kill everyone in The Atrium again?”
…Again?
“She hasn’t expired yet.”
“The longer you wait, the worse the situation will become.”
“Until she expires, Leid is still my noble and I am still obligated to honor her charge.” Adrial took a step forward, warningly. “If you try to take my noble, I’ll have no choice but to defend her. I’m certain that you’ll kill me, but I hope you don’t want it to come to that.”
Calenus said nothing at first. He and Adrial stared at each other, until he said, “Fine, until then. But you need to promise that you’ll tell me the moment she goes into her coma. As your King, that’s an order.”
“Of course,” he breathed, but it didn’t sound sincere.
He nodded, heading for Cerasaraelia. “Pray she comes around before everyone dies; it won’t be on my hands this time, but yours.”
The Silver King disappeared into our house. Where was he going?
I chased him, but he’d vanished. I searched every room on every floor, but Calenus was gone. My search ended at Leid’s bedroom. She’d slept through the whole ordeal.
I sat beside her bed, holding my head. She had known who I was all along. Actually, I wasn’t that surprised; somewhere deep down, I’d known that as well. But I needed to know more. I wanted the entire story, and Leid couldn’t tell me. What had I been to her? How did everything end up like this?
The Europydes Minor portal, Calenus had said.
I left her room and headed for the stairs.
***
Adrial tried to stop me from going to the cephalon.
“Don’t,” he warned, reaching for my arm.
I shook him off, pressing on. “Stop touching me.”
He moved to block me and I was forced to stop. “Alezair, you don’t want to do this.”
“Why not?”
“Because whoever you were, you aren’t anymore.”
“Who am I, Adrial?”
He didn’t respond, lowering his gaze.
“Why won’t you tell me?”
“Because you don’t want to know.”
“Yeah, I really do.”
“Qaira was a monster.”
That made me flinch, but I hid my surprise with a nervous laugh. So, it was true; I was sent to the Nexus because I’d been a cosmic villain.
“I believe you,” I muttered, pushing past him. “But I deserve to know.”
“You deserve shit!” he screamed. “Leid didn’t tell you who you were for an extremely good reason! If you go back there, everything will change!”
“Well something needs to fucking change, because I can’t live like this anymore! I can’t live in the dark the way everyone keeps forcing me to!”
Adrial gave up, letting me go.
“Goodbye,” I said quietly.
“You won’t love her anymore,” he said to my back. “You’ll go there and remember, and then you’ll hate her.”
I kept walking.
“But it’s not what she did
, Qaira.”
I turned the corner and followed the path through the city. When I reached the cephalon, I realized that I didn’t know which portal to take. They all looked the same.
Crap, I needed Nephilim. I hoped she wasn’t still angry at me.
XXIII
THE NEXUS
IN HINDSIGHT, I SHOULD HAVE ASKED Nephilim or Calenus what an Astral Trail was before I’d left.
When I emerged from the Europydes Minor portal, all I could do for the first several minutes was stand there and gape in awe. I couldn’t tell if I was in a world, a universe, or a gateway in between.
It was like I was trapped in a canvas painting; on a single road amid still-standing clouds. The sky was washed with sunset-orange, peppered with tiny blue stars that I had to squint to see. I was standing on a road that floated on nothingness, translucent yet shimmering, like it was made out of gems. As far as I could tell, this place didn’t have a ground. It was all sky.
It didn’t take me long to figure out that I was on the Astral Trail. At least I hoped I was, since there wasn’t any other path.
The quiet was condemning.
There was no sound here. My watch had stopped working at the portal, too, so I lost track of time. That wasn’t difficult, since the scenery never changed and the path led on forever. I was beginning to suspect that Calenus had set me up to wander amiss, never able to find my way back. Hunger gnawed at my stomach, so I figured I’d been walking for half a day, maybe more. I had to fight down panic, as the threat of starving to death was becoming pretty real. Maybe I should have listened to Adrial.
But then I saw a door up ahead— a literal door, just hanging out on the trail. It wasn’t attached to anything and the trail stopped with it. I stood there staring at the door for a while, gathering enough nerve to open it.
“Unreal,” I said aloud, but since there was no sound here I’d only mouthed it.
Well, I was this far. Might as well get the other foot wet. I turned the handle, pushed the door open and stepped through.
***
Blinding light sliced into my retinas like a chainsaw, and I collapsed with a scream. The scenery had switched from a dim, cloudy sky to a bright white room in a second flat. It felt like my skull was split in half.
The Antithesis- The Complete Pentalogy Page 21