Bright Wicked 3: Infernal Dark (A Fantasy Romance)

by Everly Frost

  I want to believe him, but I’m struggling to maintain hope. The sun will set in another two hours. Time is passing and I can’t stop it no matter how desperately I want to. Our next step was to come here, but we don’t know what we’re looking for.

  Nathaniel holds his hand out to me, his dark eyes compelling me to trust him. “We have to keep looking. Will you come with me?”

  My answer is certain, the only certainty in my life. “Always. Wherever you go.”

  We leave the room containing the spyglasses and descend the stairs. The staircase is stone, but it’s inlaid with glittering gems. Torches spring to life as we pass them, lighting up the steps ahead of us. The magic in the Spire is so strong that my skin prickles. I’m gratified that Nathaniel seems to find it as unsettling as I do. He eyes the fiery torches as we pass them, only relaxing when we reach the bottom of the steps and nothing has leaped out at us or threatened us.

  “Mathilda and Imatra are bound to have come inside,” I say. “We should look through each of the rooms on our way down.”

  The stairs let out into another corridor with a floor also inlaid with gems. At the end of the corridor, a wide window allows the sunlight to shine through, providing natural light along with the burning torches.

  One room we pass is pure white—marble walls and floor that remind me of the White Walls where Nathaniel was nearly whipped to death.

  I shudder away from it, finding myself staring into a room across the corridor that holds a living flame in the middle of the floor. The walls here are also white, but golden lettering, the same amber color as the flame, appears and disappears along them. The writing ebbs and flows. Some sections of writing splash and fade. Some of it pulls and pushes while other sections of lettering race along the entire side of each wall.

  As I step closer, a bright light above the doorway catches my eyes. Golden lettering flows across the top of the archway:

  The rule of law.

  Stepping inside, I try to follow the swiftly flowing lettering, catching a train of writing like catching a thought.

  Once invoked, the Law of Champions must be satisfied within three days… One champion must die… The winner takes all on behalf of their queen or king…

  The rules of the Law chase each other across the room.

  I let them go, catching a different set of writing.

  The Vow of the Avenger may only be invoked when pain is undeniable and truth will be revealed…

  Daring to step closer to the hot flame in the center of the room, I take in all of the laws. There are thousands of them. Laws of nature, life, pain, vengeance, even birth and death…

  Nathaniel lightly brushes the back of my arm as he pauses beside me, taking in the entire room before he paces across to the right-hand wall, heading toward a spot where dark lettering ebbs and fades like a waning star.

  I catch only parts of the message because Nathaniel’s body blocks my view of it: A king betrayed may choose the dangerous path…

  “This room holds all of the old laws,” I say, shivering as I study the flame that floats in the middle of the floor. My voice lowers to a hushed whisper as an idea occurs to me. “Maybe we could destroy it.” I spin to Nathaniel. “Or rewrite it?”

  He jolts away from the wall he was studying. The writing fades behind him, replaced with new lettering.

  “No, Aura. The old law is life itself. To destroy it or try to change it would impact life at its most basic level. Each of these laws has been created over time, intertwining with the existing laws. Some of these laws depend on others. Some prevail over others—or are subservient to them. If we pull a single thread, the whole web could collapse.”

  I exhale my disappointment. “Then we need to keep moving.”

  Backing away from the flame, I reach for Nathaniel’s hand, leading him out of the room and toward the second set of steps at the end of the corridor.

  I pause before we descend into the stairwell. “Wait… What are those?”

  To the left of the staircase is another archway leading into the largest room yet. Four statues stand at intervals in a circle around the room, each facing outward and made of a different material—white stone, crimson wood, brilliant gold, and black onyx. From where I stand just outside the door, I can only see the front of two of them, but the sunlight glints off their surfaces, a fascinating mix of white, gold, and crimson, backlit with darkness.

  I shiver as the light washes over them, the memory of my dream coming back to me—as if the three powers I saw in the dream are clashing in this room.

  I check for writing above the archway, but it’s a strange mix of symbols that seem to make up four words. The only one I can read is light.

  “Aura?” Nathaniel’s hand is firm around mine, but I tug against his hold.

  “I need to see this.” I step into the room, surprised to find that the right side of the wall is nearly completely open to the outside—a wall-to-wall window with a wide ledge set at waist height. Just like the spyglasses room, this one is whisper quiet.

  Expanding my senses, I check for threats as I cross to the window and assess the view outside.

  Nathaniel is quiet behind me. I turn to find him pacing around the statues, a wary crease forming on his forehead. He stops in front of the white stone statue, which faces toward the window. It’s the smallest one—a girl wearing a soft dress that floats around her legs, her hair flying free across her shoulders and flowing to one side. Her arms are bent at the elbows, her palms up.

  A book rests on her upturned hands.

  Following Nathaniel’s path around the room, I find that each of the statues holds a book.

  The crimson statue is a woman, her head held high, but her gaze lowered. Flowers cascade from the tiara sitting around her head, down through her hair and across her long dress. She is regal, powerful. The book she holds has blood-red binding with ivory lettering on the front, but I can’t read what it says. It’s not a language I’ve seen before.

  The onyx statue is a man with a sharp nose. He wears a crown that sits, not on the top of his head, but around his eyes, concealing them. The crown’s sharp peaks extend up past his head. He’s wearing a long robe, and he holds a book with black binding, golden lettering spelling out a title that I also can’t read. It must be an old language.

  I stop in front of the fourth statue, the golden one. It’s another woman, except that she’s wearing armor and carries a curved blade strapped to her back, only partially visible.

  The words on the cover of the book she holds leap out at me, the first I can read: Light magic.

  Stepping up to it, I open the book in the middle, surprised when the images on the page leap out at me and move across the parchment. A huge golden dragon, as large as the Vanem Dragon, breathes deadly fire across a battlefield filled with people. At first I think the dragon’s targets are humans, but the people running toward the dragon are retaliating the same way Serena shot the glitter bulbs from the sky—with fire pouring from their hands, trying to strike the dragon down.

  They’re fae.

  I shake my head in confusion. This can’t be right. The fae and dragons have always been allies. They’ve never fought each other. Not as far as I was told…

  A fae woman with amber hair rides ahead of her people, a diamond crown glittering on her head, her sword raised. Her horse gallops toward the dragon, zigzagging between the plumes of fire that explode across the ground.

  The dragon roars again, its deadly flames narrowly missing her.

  From behind the dragon, an army of humans runs toward the fae while two more dragons swoop from the sky—also golden, their scales catching the light, their fire lifting off the page and heating the air around my chest and face.

  I plant my hands on either side of the pages as the scent of blood and ash fills my head, along with the shouts of a thousand humans, and the earsplitting shriek of dragon’s fire colliding with fae magic.

  I force myself to turn the page. The paper is thick parchment,
ragged at the edges. The battle continues to rage across the new pages, slowly moving forward as fae and humans clash and fall, churning the ground into mud.

  The Fae Queen evades the dragon’s fire at every turn before she takes another run at the majestic creature. She leaps from her horse, carving a powerful arc toward the dragon, gaining height as the air carries her forward, her magic streaming around her agile body. She raises her sword above her head, perfectly aimed to cut through the dragon’s neck and end its life.

  At the same time, a human woman runs along the dragon’s back, a scream on her lips as she throws herself across the space between the dragon and the Fae Queen.

  She looks just like the woman in the golden statue.

  Her blade slices through the air toward the Queen.

  I jolt with shock as I recognize the weapon she’s holding: a halberd, its gleaming steel blade etched with the sun and the moon. She roars as it cuts clean through the Fae Queen’s sword, slicing the fae weapon in half before the human woman lands lithely at the dragon’s feet.

  The Fae Queen twists and somersaults in the air, landing a few paces away. She retaliates without hesitation, firelight pouring from her hands as she strides toward the human woman.

  At lightning speed, the woman tips her weapon, the steel flashing faster than I can see, using the blade to deflect the fiery shots and send them harmlessly into the ground before she leaps higher than a human should be able to, landing precisely in front of the Fae Queen.

  Just as she drops to ground, she drives the handle of her weapon into the earth in front of her like a shield.

  The Fae Queen pales, screams.

  Magic blasts from the human woman’s halberd, exploding across the space in front of her, the impact knocking the Queen back through the mud, deflecting her magic, and sending the flames roaring back through the Queen’s own army.

  “Leave this place!” the human woman shouts. “You will not steal their eggs.”

  Her brown eyes flash—dark eyes I would recognize anywhere.

  She must be Nathaniel’s ancestor.

  The Fae Queen stumbles to her feet, but her people are already running, some of them racing away on horses, others sprinting on foot. With a snarl, the Queen runs to her stallion, leaps onto its back, and rides away with them.

  The human woman rises to her feet, her chest heaving, the tension around her mouth increasing as the other human warriors gather around her and the dragon.

  “They won’t stop,” she says. “They want to control the next generation of dragons.”

  The golden dragon lowers her head to the woman, nudging the woman’s shoulder before gently exhaling a ring of silver flames around the halberd.

  “Bright Heart,” the dragon whispers. “Keep the light.”

  I grip the edges of the book, gasping for air.

  Memories, moments, wash across me.

  Nathaniel’s father—Tobias—told Nathaniel to keep the light.

  I assumed he was telling Nathaniel to keep the faith, to stay true to his honor, but what if he meant that Nathaniel was supposed to keep the weapon safe? What if the light is Nathaniel’s blade?

  Flashes return to me from my dreamed memories. Imatra tried to kill Tobias with a stream of firelight, but he used his weapon—the same halberd that the human warrior used just now—to deflect her magic. He not only protected himself, but he sent Imatra’s power streaming back at her.

  I’m taken back to the moment Imatra saw the halberd when I first took Nathaniel to her in her Inner Sanctuary. I was holding the halberd and the first rays of sunlight had shone through the windows and lit up its gleaming blade. Imatra froze and the emblem on the steel had blazed in her eyes as if it were a living creature. I’d never seen fear in her eyes before that moment.

  The halberd isn’t just a weapon. It’s an object of magic—light magic—blessed by the dragons themselves.

  Nathaniel needs it when he fights me.

  He’ll need it to regain his throne.

  The fae have it now—the worst outcome, judging from the war I just witnessed.

  I have to make sure he gets it back.

  Stumbling away from the book, my head shoots up at the same time that Nathaniel steps away from the book he was looking at it. His eyes are glazed, but he shakes himself, suddenly alert as he looks at me.

  “I know what you need to do,” we both say at once.

  I blink at him.

  He stares at me.

  Our twin declarations echo in the silence.

  I start to speak again, but I’m suddenly aware of the change in the room.

  Darkness has fallen around us, deep shadows casting across the floor. Spinning to the window, I’m shocked to see the outline of the moon in the darkening sky.

  I gasp. “How much time has passed?”

  Tension thrums through Nathaniel’s posture. “Too much time. The sun has set.”

  He strides toward me but stops before he touches me.

  Despite the darkness falling around us, I am his focus.

  The look on his face reminds me of Cyrian when he tried to torture me, when Cyrian had stopped, startled, and asked me how I exist.

  The look in Nathaniel’s eyes now… It’s as if he’s seeing me for the first time.

  Behind his expression is fear. Raw, exposed, genuine dread.

  “I think I know what happened to you,” he says.

  Chapter 13

  I take a step away from him.

  He keeps his voice low, cautious as he gestures to the book held by the stone girl. “You need to see this book.”

  The darkness inside the room suddenly presses in around me. I take another instinctive step back. My heart squeezes inside my chest, my wary gaze flicking to the book and back to Nathaniel. “Why that book?”

  He relaxes, his shoulders lowering. He inhales calmly, but it feels forced. “These books contain the history of the four magics. It was difficult to read their titles, but I recognize parts of the ancient languages. I should have realized we would get pulled into the pages. We’ve lost two hours. That was my mistake, but we can’t change it now.”

  Pointing at the book held by the golden woman—the one I was reading—he avoids looking at its open pages as he says, “That is the history of light magic. The dark statue holds the book of dark magic. The crimson woman holds the history of fae magic. And the book I read…”

  He steps to the book he was studying, pausing in front of it. “This book is about old magic.”

  Gripping the edges of the book without looking at the pages, he focuses on the stone girl’s face.

  He whispers, “I saw her in this book… Her name is Lucidia.”

  I stiffen. “That’s my name.”

  “Imatra gave you that name. It means brightest light, doesn’t it?” he asks.

  “Yes, because of my Twilight power.” My breath catches in my throat, a sense of dread filling me.

  “You need to see this, but don’t look at the pages for too long,” he says. “We can’t afford to lose more time. I’ll be here to pull you out, just in case.”

  My feet are leaden as I force myself to move to Nathaniel’s side. He has never given me any reason to distrust him. Even right from the start, he promised to always tell me the truth.

  I swallow my anxiety as I step up to the book.

  The paper is pitch black, a dark abyss, an endless space that appears to have no boundaries, bleeding beyond the edges of the page and spreading across my vision. I shiver as I recognize the nothing that I sink into when I sleep, the nothing that I remember before my first memories of waking up at the burn site.

  A splash of light appears within the darkness. It’s the smallest wisp, dancing across the page, growing brighter. It expands as it comes closer before it turns and glides to the left. Tiny lights surround it, making it sparkle. It hovers, gaining form, humanoid for a moment before it brightens again, the glow around it obscuring its silhouette.

  The glow washes across the page,
fading into darkness but never quite gone.

  “Brightest light,” I whisper, a painful hollow forming in my chest as I press my fingers to the page. “What is it?”

  “It’s old magic in its original form.” Nathaniel’s arms close around me as he pulls me gently away from the book, urging me to look up at him.

  I blink as I surface into the dark room. Unlike our descent down the stairs, torches haven’t sprung to life around us, leaving us in increasing gloom brightened only by the moon outside.

  Nathaniel’s voice is low and soft. “Do you remember when you showed me the diamond at the heart of the Spinning Lake and I told you—”

  “I was being childish.”

  He shakes his head, a small smile forming and then fading from his lips. “I said there was a playful heart locked up inside you. When you’re happy, you’re like a dancing star.”

  The hollow in my chest widens. I push myself out of his arms, suddenly needing to put distance between him and me. He doesn’t try to reach for me. Instead, he steps away from the book and quietly removes his weapons, his harness, and finally his shirt.

  He pauses then, a beautiful, strong man who looks at me as if he would do anything to stop the pain of the wounds he’s about to cut open.

  He presses his forefinger to the invisible stone he wears next to his heart. “I’ve carried this stone with me every day and night since I was ten years old. I wore it next to my heart. I rarely removed it. The longest I’ve been separated from it was the last two days. Over time—in fact, there were many days when—I felt like this stone had become a part of me. Or maybe that I had become a part of it.”

  He takes a step toward me.

  I take a step back.

  He stops. “I have been pushing away the things I see in you, denying them, because the answers seem too far beyond my reach. But the truth is that you…” His gaze passes across my face from my dull eyes to my pale lips. “You are beyond my reach.”