Authors: Nia Davenport
He tucked a wild bronze curl behind her ear. He couldn’t bear the see her so upset. It was an act she would not forgive him for but he would accept her condemnation if it meant not seeing her cry in the final moments they had together. It was selfish but he wanted her last memories of them and him to be happy ones. He pressed his lips to hers and kissed away the last vestiges of worry that marred her features.
The girl allowed him to erase the worry that gnawed at her gut even though she knew better. Hope is an infectious thing. It is both a blessing and a curse. It allows you to keep living through the darkest of times in the knowledge that there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. It also allows you to burrow your head blindly in the sand and ignore the wrongness that exists around you. It allows you to live in the constructed reality of what you want to happen versus the actual reality of what is happening.
The guy and the girl danced the rest of the night away in consciously ignorant bliss. The boy retired to their rooms in the South Tower of the palace before the girl. He urged her to stay behind and bid their remaining guests farewell. She should have objected but Hope caused any protests she may have made to die before they even formed on her lips.
She remained in the palace ballroom while he retired to the South Tower. She did her duty as Queen and bid the fae who attended the annual summer solstice revelry farewell.
She pushed the door to their bedchamber open and found her King still in his royal robes lying in the middle of the bed on top of the duvet.
He is only sleeping
, Hope made her tell herself. She crossed the room and stood over him. His body lay motionless. As still as death.
Fae are immortal. We don’t die. We live for thousands upon thousands of years. He is an Asteroth. He is invincible,”
Hope made her lie to herself.
When she spotted the silver colored chalice with the ancient markings etched into it she could no longer deny the truth her soul already knew. That is when she broke. Her soul splintered at the sight of her heart lying unnaturally still on the bed with the cup of un-making beside him.
He wouldn’t do it. He promised you forever,
Hope screamed in denial inside her head.
Hope was wrong. She should have never listened to it.
A river of tears flowed freely down her cheeks as she struggled for air. The excruciating pain that radiated outward from her chest made it hard to breathe. It was too much to bear. The boy on the bed was her life, her heart and her reason for existing. She couldn’t go on without him. She did not want to go on without him. He promised her forever then robbed her of it in the same expanse of time. She was furious at his selfishness and his deception. If he were conscious she would rage and yell and scream and hurl herself at him in outrage. But she couldn’t do any of those things. The boy she loved more than life itself lay in their chamber in a state more final than death for a fae. His very essence, his essential self had been un-made. It could never be reborn or imbued with life again. It could never make its way back to hers in this eternity or the next.
As she looked down upon him through vision clouded by tears she loathed him for leaving her as much as she loved him. In an impulsive act born out of rage and hurt and a broken heart she did the last thing she knew he would ever want her to do. If he could make selfish decisions with so little regard for her then so could she. She picked up the chalice and drank the last drops of the golden liquid that remained behind. Then she laid on the bed beside the boy she loved. She placed her head on his chest and waited to be un-made. A fresh wave of tears leaked down her face as she did. They weren’t for herself. She wasn’t afraid of ceasing to exist for all of eternity. They were the result of the loss of love and hope and a forever of happiness ripping her heart from her chest.
The image of the pair lying on the bed abruptly changed. The guy morphed into Zander and the girl became me. A hole appeared in Zander's chest and an identical self inflicted one appeared in mine. The surroundings faded and we were no longer in the bedchamber in the South Tower. The space around us was clouded in shadows and muted grays. Then the vision just as abruptly disappeared leaving me with a nagging sense of foreboding
.
I blinked as the vision faded and I returned to the reality of the High Palace in Pleith and the Prince who stood before me. I pondered why my sight was blurred until I felt the wet moisture stinging my eyes and realized I was crying. Zander stepped closer to me and gently wiped my tears away before I could.
“I am sorry.” Whispers of recognition and regret glinted back at me in his eyes when I looked up into them.
“For what? I should be apologizing to you,”
I asked genuinely confused.
For the first time since we met he looked unsure of himself. “I don't know. I just felt the need to say it. You know considering...”
My eyes widened in surprise. “You saw it too?”
“Yes, and it is not the first time I've had visions of the pair. Ever since we returned to Pleith betrothed they have made sporadic appearances during my waking and sleeping hours.
“Me too. They're so like us but not.”
Zander let out an unsteady laugh. “At least I know I’m not going mad now if it’s happening to you too. It's like-“
“You experience two realities at once. The one in the present and the one playing itself out before your eyes,” I finished for him. I knew I was not going mad either. Between that and the guiding voice I had been listening to I was fearful I might have been.
“What do you think it means?” He asked me.
“I wish I knew. I have just as many questions and no answers as you undoubtedly do, but I think I know where we can get them?”
His face automatically hardened at what my words insinuated.
“I promise it's not a ploy to get you to agree to go. The South Tower where she found him at in the vision, I know where it is. I've been there before. It's in the palace in Faerie. The one that Asteroths have occupied since the dawn of the realm’s existence. The boy in the vision, there is a portrait of him hanging in the South Tower. You both share the same eyes. He was one of the rulers of Faerie. I've never seen the girl before. There's no portrait of her beside his.”
Zander combed a hand through his short dark hair as I spoke. I had come to know it as one of his telltale gestures that he was warring for control of his emotions and trying to keep them in check.
“Gods Skyler I don't want to believe you. A part of me barely even wants to be around you right now. You never stopped lying to me. Deceiving me.”
I took the coward’s way out letting my gaze drop to the ground so I would no longer have to meet the weight of his stare. “I know.”
He sat beside me on the balcony wrapping his arms around my shoulders. His strong fingers gripped my chin and forced me to look at him.
“I’m not sure what the couple’s in the vision connection is to us or why we are seeing them but their uncanny resemblance to us makes it hard to deny that there is a connection. Maybe it’s my gut, maybe it’s the gods whispering to me or maybe it’s the universe trying to warn me, but something is telling me that what we saw at the end is a fate we are predetermined to meet. Despite how I feel about your actions at the moment I love you. I have from the moment I first laid eyes on you and will until the moment my eyes permanently close. If that’s my fate I will willingly meet it but I will not allow that to be yours. If going to this realm you call Faerie might help us unravel what we saw and avoid the ending then that is all of the convincing I need. But be clear Skyler, I am not going to challenge a King or take a throne. I am going for the singular purpose of saving you from a fate I refuse to be yours. You have suffered enough and you shouldn’t have to suffer anymore or ever again. You burn too bright for your light to be quelled so early. I should be furious with you. I should refuse to forgive you. I should make every attempt to erase you from my life and my heart. But I cannot. You have embedded yourself too deep into it. Staying angry with you would be as impossible as telling my heart to stop beating. Loving you is as instinctual as breathing. I cannot stop loving you. All that I can do is ask that if your feelings are as real for me as you claim them to be then by the Gods Skyler let this be the last lie between us. If you love me back no more deceptions only the truth.”
“I don't deserve you,” I cried into my hands.
Zander wiped away one tear and then another until none remained. "I suspect it is I who don't deserve you."
I was starting to suspect the same thing but I wasn't yet ready to face what his admission might mean. I was already spread emotionally thin. I could only deal with one crisis at a time and our shared vision had just added one maybe two additional ones to my list. I would worry about Belial and our seemingly impending deaths for now and sort through everything else later.
Chapter 8
“
Z
ander do you have to go?” Kiera spoke to her brother but she stared up at the both of us with moist eyes.
Her brother bent down on one knee and hugged his little sister. “I do Kiera, but I promise not to be gone long. I will be back before you know it.”
He believed the promise he made to his sister. He told her the same thing he told the King and Queen. He’d discovered sympathizers of Krishna’s hiding out in the kingdom of Saywren. The royal family thought we were leaving to quell a growing plot to remove Zander’s father from Anthame’s throne.
In truth the plot died with Krishna. We were really leaving for Faerie. Zander had his mind set on discovering our link to the couple from our shared vision and finding out how to avert the vision of our future we both saw. Once he saw those two tasks accomplished he insisted on leaving Faerie and returning to the mortal realm. I couldn’t let that happen. Faerie needed him even if he didn’t want it to or think it did.
I hadn’t given up on mine and the Order’s mission. Belial had to be dealt with. I would just have to try harder to convince Zander of that fact. I hoped that once we were in Faerie and he witnessed the destructiveness of Belial’s reign for himself it would make it easier to get him onboard.
I knelt down and hugged Kiera next. The Princess occupied a soft spot in my heart. “Emily will take good care of you while Zander is gone. She’s even more fun than he is.”
Emily gave Kiera’s hand a supportive squeeze from her spot beside the princess. “I promise we will have loads of fun. I’m not Skyler or your brother, but I will do my best. Whatever you want to do just name it. I am at your service Princess.”
“Even archery?” Kiera eyed her making it clear she had yet to make up her mind about Emily.
Emily chewed her bottom lip. “Well…I admit I have never strung a bow or shot an arrow, but it seems like it will be fun to learn. Maybe you can teach me?”
Kiera beamed at the prospect of being the teacher to someone older. “Okay.” She squeezed Emily’s hand back finally making up her mind about the noble girl and deciding she would do as a suitable companion until her brother and new sister returned.
Chapter 9
M
y magic only worked to open a portal to Faerie at places where the mortal realm and the realm of Faerie backed up to one another. I knew for sure the spot that I initially stepped from Faerie into the mortal world in was one of them.
Zander and I traveled the half-day ride to Arythmia in near silence. We were both lost in our own thoughts of the vision we shared, what it meant and the events that led up to it.
Being too noble for any outward displays of anger, he let it stew just beneath the surface. Zander was both hurt and angry that I lied to him yet again, or really never stopped.
I felt bad about it and it pained me to do so, but there was no other way. If I’d told him the truth of my nature, the Order, Faerie and his lineage outright he would have immediately dismissed me as insane. I wouldn’t have had a hope in hell of convincing him there was a thread of truth in my claims and to return to the realm of Faerie with me. As we stood now, he believed me but only agreed to return to Faerie to avoid the vision of our predetermined fates. He refused to talk about Belial or the Order or the Roths’ link to the Asteroth bloodline.
---
As we crossed over Arythimia’s border, its high society streets sat undisturbed and as taciturn as ever. Even the air around us stilled.
The elegant residences that lined row after row of cobblestone streets rose haughtily above us. My mind briefly wandered to Samael. I tried in vain to push away its thoughts of him. The last time I saw him Zander and I were leaving Arythmia for Garreth to rescue his sister from Krishna’s vile clutches. He’d pulled me aside in an uncharacteristic display of emotion and fatherly-like concern. I shifted uncomfortably in my saddle at the memory of it.
The last word I would ever use to describe the Master of the Assassin’s Guild that took me in off the streets when I posed as a mortal in Emilia’s place was fatherly. Ironically I had once thought of him as sort of being akin to a surrogate one. He rescued me from a group of attackers, welcomed me into his home and provided me a warm bed and an abundance of food. He even offered what he assumed to be an orphaned common girl starving and living on the streets of Arythmia’s low society a way to fend for and protect herself. Despite my training to become one of his assassins, he actually did treat me much like a father would a daughter for the first two years that I lived with him. He doted on me and saw to my every whim.
The seams of our constructed reality ripped when I supposedly became of age two years later and he gave me my first assignment. It was then that the harsh reality that Samael only saw me as a means to further line his pockets slapped me in the face. I had never killed before in Faerie or in the mortal realm. I witnessed so much death up close and personal at the hands of Belial that the mere thought of having to do so made me physically ill.
I accepted Samael’s offer for room and board in exchange to train as one of his assassins, but I never expected to remain with him long enough to be made to uphold my end of the bargain.
When I first encountered Samael the inner voice I allowed to guide my decisions ever since entering the mortal realm told me that through Samael I would get close to the last living male in the Roth line. It did not however tell me how long it would take. So I remained with him biding my time and waiting on the guiding voice to speak to me again. It stayed silent and I stayed with Samael waiting for further direction. I thought it would come before I had to actually make good on the bargain I struck with him. It did not.
The prospect of becoming a killer terrified me. Belial was the monster of all monsters and I did not want to be like him. If I killed once I would kill twice and the more I did the easier it would become until life held as little meaning for me as it did for Belial.
I foolishly believed that Samael thought of me as a daughter as I had come to think of him as a surrogate father. He could never take the place of my real one, the man I loved with all of my being that Belial stole away from me, but he made a good runner-up.
When I went to him with my reservations about fulfilling my first assignment I knew he would do what he normally did when I was upset or anxious about something. Smooth the hair atop my head and tell me everything would be okay. Not to worry about it and he would take care of things. He proved me wrong. He looked at me in cold detachment and told me he had invested enough time and money into me. My time had come to start repaying him. I could either complete my assignment or find myself on the street like he initially found me.
I needed Samael. The success of my mission in the mortal realm depended on my continued association with him. So I sucked up my reservations along with my feelings of trepidation and apprehension and completed the assignment. It ended up being everything that I feared it would.
The first kill proved brutal, the second was hard, the third not too bad, and the fourth too easy. By the time I got to the fifth I reveled in the heady rush of my blade slicing through flesh and muscle and tendon.
Samael didn’t care about me. He confirmed me a fool to ever liken him to a father figure. A father wouldn’t turn his child into a monster. The only thing that Samael cared for was money and how much of it his assassins brought him.
I almost cried in relief the day I read Zander’s name scrawled across the thick white paper within the envelope Krishna handed me. It was the first time in four mortal years that the guiding voice spoke inside of my head.
It is time
, it told me.
---
Zander and I made it to the wall that closed off Arythmia’s high society from its low society before being intercepted. A trio of men I recognized as belonging to Samael’s employ surrounded us.
“Samael wishes a word with you Skyler,” one of them spoke.
“Samael can shove it,” I snapped at him.
A ghost of a smile played about his lips. “Your feistiness always did amuse me. I hoped you would resist. Dragging you to him shall be all the more fun.”
“Touch her and you die,” Zander drew his sword from the sheath at his side.
“Put the blade away
Your Highness
. You wouldn’t want to hurt yourself,” Samael’s man mocked him.
Zander’s eyes flashed with an uncustomary darkness that I was momentarily taken aback by.
“The only one who will end up hurt is you.”
Samael’s man drew his own blade along with the other two who were with him.
I sighed and drew mine as well.
“Clearly, we are doing this the hard way,” I said to the trio whose lives were about to become short-lived.
Samael would be pissed at me for leaving him with three less men who lined his pockets but he would have to get over it. The one who spoke looked at Zander with death in his eyes and I would not abide any harm coming to him.
“No we are not.”
I spotted Samael stepping out of the shadows from the corner of my eye a split second before he spoke.
“What do you want?” I snarled at him through clenched teeth.
He raised his hands to gesture he meant us no threat. “Only to talk dear Skyler.”
I kept my blade leveled. “We don’t have time. At the moment there are more pressing matters we need to attend.”
“I think you will want to hear this…Ysabeau sends a message.”
The odd way the name rolled off his tongue made it clear the fae girl was foreign to him, which begged the question how he knew about her and how she had gotten a message to him from Faerie. Ysabeau’s magic was more powerful than I thought.
“I’m listening.”
Samael looked at each of his men. “You are dismissed.”
They immediately obeyed his command fading silently into the night.
Once they were gone, the green of Samael’s eyes faded until nothing remained but the pure uninterrupted white of Ysabeau’s. He opened his mouth and his voice spoke her words.
“You cannot return the way you came Skyler. Belial has eyes that will see you and men that will capture you. You must find a different entrance. Once you do stick to the plan we initially laid.”
“How are you doing that?” I asked Samael who was not actually Samael at the moment.
“Your magic allows you to physically cross into the mortal realm. Mine allows me to see into it and telepathically link to certain individuals like I can with fae in Faerie.”
“Can you also speak to them?” I asked seeking an answer to a nagging question.
“In a fashion. I can speak through their subconscious,” she said confirming what I long suspected.
The guiding voice within me sounded suspiciously like Ysabeau inside my head. It was the reason I so readily trusted it as real and allowed it to guide my actions.
“Are you responsible for the visions Zander and I keep having as well?” Now that I knew Ysabeau could telepathically link to individuals in the mortal realm it would make sense.
“No Skyler I am not and I cannot help you or explain them. Like I told you before you left Faerie, it is a path you have to find for yourself. It is both separate from and entwined with the task you left with.”
I would have questioned her more but the green of Samael’s eyes started to seep back into the white.
“Wait Ysabeau!” I called out.
“Be quick Skyler. The mortal is weakening from my linking. I’m sorry. I needed to warn you and there was no other way. Consent is needed to be able to establish a link.”
“Where else can I create a portal?”
Ysabeau never answered. By the time I finished my question the green of Samael’s eyes had fully returned and with it rivulets of blood that poured from their sockets. He collapsed onto the cobblestone.
My sword clattered to the ground as I jumped from my horse and rushed to his side. Samael was a ruthless, greedy bastard who had used me for his own selfish gain and would do so again without hesitation. I intensely disliked him most of the time, but somewhere deep down inside I could never shake the paternal-like attachment that I developed towards him during the first years I lived with him.
“It’s okay Skyler,” he weakly raised a hand to wave me away as if him dying was no big deal. “She came to me in my dreams. Said you were in danger and asked if I cared enough about you to help. The answer didn’t change even after I knew I’d be forfeiting my life. I know you think I’m a bastard and you are correct. I’ve done despicable things. I am not sorry for them and if given the chance I would do nothing different. I toughened you up. You wouldn’t have survived in the world otherwise. I won’t apologize for it. There are two kinds of people in this world-- those who are prey and those who are not. You were prey when I first found you in that alley. You aren’t anymore. You will survive in this world or any other one now.”
Samael’s voice grew weaker by the minute. I tried to shush him, tell him to conserve his strength, but he refused to listen.
“I am dying regardless. I need to say this before I go,” he told me. “I had a daughter. You remind me of her. You both have the same fiery but sensitive spirit. I think you are what she would have been like had she lived past her sixth birthday. Her mother was taken from me in childbirth. Then an illness that could have been cured had I the money to pay for the herbs took her from me. The Assassin’s Guild was never about the amount of money I accumulated. It was about ensuring nothing would ever be taken from me again. You became the daughter I lost and I had to protect you. Even if it meant making you hate me to toughen you up. I sacrificed to protect you then just as I chose to sacrifice to protect you now. I don’t know what you have gotten yourself into this time, but don’t let my sacrifice be in vain. Stay safe Skyler. I will no longer be around to watch out for you. You are on your own.”
“She’s not on her own,” a low voice said from beside me. “She has me and on my life I will never let anything happen to her.”
Samael’s face relaxed into a relieved expression at Zander’s words. His grip on my hand loosened. His eyes closed and I knew they would not reopen.
“We can’t leave him here,” I cried into Zander’s chest as his arms closed around me.
“We won’t. Just tell me what you want me to do and I will. I meant what I said. You are not alone. You have me now, forever and always.”
His words should have comforted me but they did not. I could not shake the bitter feeling that I’d heard them before and they’d proved false.