The Brawn turned and pulled her up again, onto her knees, facing them again. They hadn’t seen, Grace realised. They hadn’t seen a thing. She wasn’t even certain that she had. Not in this state.
‘I won’t tell you a second time,’ said Kane, all his attention fixed on Bastien. He reached out and stroked Grace’s hair, like he was examining silk, but he didn’t shift his gaze from Bastien’s appalled face.
‘Don’t…’ Grace tried to say again. ‘Don’t…’ She had to stop him, had to distract them all. She had to tell him, command him. The others were coming. Somehow. Lara and Ellyn would save them.
There was only one thing she could think of. She grabbed the Brawn’s arm and, reaching into the void inside her, she dredged up her own magic and let it loose. She didn’t know what it was now, or where it came from, but it was all she had. Flames blazed from her hands and the Brawn screamed at the unexpected shock of it.
She tore herself free, but she wasn’t fast enough. Asher grabbed her – out of the air, it seemed – and slammed her down onto the floorboards. His boot came down on her chest, winding her and holding her down. ‘I might have guessed. Mageborn yourself, and uncollared too. A touch hypocritical, Captain Marchant. Oh, but this is even better.’
He pressed down harder. Divinities, were they just going to crush her to death for their amusement, flatten her as leverage against Bastien?
‘Lar,’ he said. ‘Come here. Show us how to deal with fire.’
The Tide swaggered forward and grinned a rotten-toothed grin as he reached out his hands. His eyes glittered darkly, like a cavern in the depths of the ocean. Instantly Grace felt water coalesce on her skin, every droplet from the air around her, every bead of sweat and every tear. Her mouth dried but then abruptly filled again. It crawled up her face, pushed past her lips and up her nostrils. Panic took over. She coughed up liquid, her body desperately trying to save itself. She was back in the river, hands and feet holding her down. She was in the lagoon, drowning before she reached the boat.
‘Stop it!’ Bastien yelled. ‘Please!’
Asher lifted his foot and Grace rolled onto her side, gasping for air as the water she vomited up splattered onto the floorboards. She tried to stop the convulsions racking her body, tried to persuade her aching lungs it was all right to breathe again. Someone laughed. The Tide, she thought.
God and goddess, she’d throttle him herself given half a chance. She’d enjoy it. No, she’d burn him. She’d incinerate him like kindling.
Bastien stood in front of her, blurred by her tears. He looked so afraid, his mask completely stripped away now.
‘I’m sorry, Grace. I can’t… I can’t let them kill you.’
Before she could recover he reached out to take the warrant, lifting the chain with it.
Deep inside her the darkness surged. Bastien’s eyes widened, shock turning his skin to chalk. He dropped the warrant but it was too late. She knew it was too late. Something raced through her veins, from her toes to the top of her head, screaming along each nerve. A soft, silent concussion shook the room. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Nothing. Her vision went dark, twisted around and turned in on itself.
A sigil cut through the air, more effective than any knife. It struck the Tide standing over her. He cried out, struggling to dislodge it. His magic smothered, he staggered, and then something slammed into the side of his head, bringing him to the ground.
All around her chaos broke out. It was like watching it through deep water, from the bottom of a dark pool. Figures lunged together, flew apart. Swords whirled and flashed and she knelt in the centre, unable to move, barely able to breathe. Bastien pounced on the nearest guard, wrestling the sword from his hands and jamming it up through a chink in the armour. The dying breath rippled around her as he fell to the floor at her feet.
She breathed it in, relishing it.
The Brawn came at him and the Lord of Thorns unfurled his power. Once they’d thought he was a Leech, and that was what he used now, draining every iota of magic from the hulking nightborn.
Bastien staggered back, breathing hard. Grace couldn’t help but watch him. He was alive with magic, glowing with it, his skin iridescent.
‘Where’s Asher?’ he yelled. ‘Where did he go?’
Lara stood in the doorway, a cudgel in one hand and another sigil ready in the other. Behind her, Ellyn had both swords out.
‘Clear downstairs,’ she said. ‘Rynn’s safe. Daniel and Misha are okay. They’re seeing to Jehane. The others fled. Divinities, Asher bloody Kane can run fast when he needs to.’
‘Get after him.’ Bastien’s voice rippled with magic, his rage as dangerous as one of the nightborn.
‘We can’t. We don’t have the manpower,’ Lara told him. ‘Jehane is hurt and he’s the only one with a chance apart from—’ She stopped as she looked at Grace, still kneeling there like a statue, watching them all as if through thick smoke. Her face fell. ‘What did he do?’
Darkness rippled through Grace, making her blood run faster, her heart beat louder. She reached out both her hands and Bastien, dropping the weapons he’d so recently seized, took them in his own. He was trembling, hidden from everyone else but not from her. Suddenly the strength in him was gone. Strange, she’d only ever seen him this shaken once before. When she had been dying…
‘Grace?’ he whispered. ‘Let me take it off. Just…’ He reached for the warrant.
Take it off? Why… why would she allow that? It was hers. Marius had given the warrant to her. And with good reason.
The warrant glowed with its own dark light, a light so cold it burned the air itself. The room darkened around Grace as if night was falling and she smiled. Bastien’s grip on her hands tightened. Premonition washed through her. Everything seemed painted in shadows and gold.
‘No,’ she told him. Her voice was a low ripple. And her body felt so strong. Strong and made anew, as if all the hurt had been washed away. No one would lay hands on her now, no Brawn, no jumped-up Tide, not Kane, not even Bastien himself.
Anguish filled his eyes. ‘Listen to me… something happened to the warrant. You need to take it off. You’re a conduit—’
‘I’m already a conduit,’ Grace said, her amusement flooding the words. ‘When you brought me back through the Maegen from the jaws of death. Didn’t you realise, Bastien?’
His features glowed with inner light. She could see it swirling within him, along his veins, pulsing with his heartbeat, so strong. The light of the Maegen, the power of magic itself. He was so powerful, drenched in magic, both his own and that he had stolen from the nightborn he’d taken down. Powerful and at the same time weak. Even like this, at her mercy.
‘Grace, no,’ he whispered.
There was another voice, one from somewhere deep inside her, that emptiness that had been there ever since her rebirth. The voice used her mouth to speak and she didn’t care any more. There was no point in fighting it. She didn’t want to. ‘She was always our way out. We dwell in her. She reached for us, embraced us.’
‘You’re using her. When she reached for her magic… you used her fear.’
‘She still reached.’ It laughed at him, as if he was a mother fussing over a child. ‘She won’t suffer, Bastien, we promise. We will hold her as precious as you do. She’ll live in power and glory. Our glory.’
The rush of pleasure, the spike of adrenaline and endorphins, made her body glow with dark fire. She was whole again, after so long, so many years. She was powerful, endless, as immortal as he was.
Grace looked into Bastien’s eyes, so dark they were a mirror, and saw her own eyes reflected there.
They were black, jet black, entirely, as if they were all pupil. They were windows into the void. Her smile widened further.
‘No,’ Bastien said. ‘Grace, listen to me. Please, my love. Please, this isn’t you.’
Grace released his hands and shoved him aside as if he was nothing more than an obstacle to be moved.
The
laugh that came from her was as empty and draining as the voice inside her. The voice now almost completely in control. It was part of her, fusing with her. And she wanted it to. She’d never felt like this. So strong, so powerful, so free to do exactly what she wanted, to be exactly what she wanted.
‘Listen to you? We are chaos. This body doesn’t contain us. She welcomes us.’
All around her magic rippled through the air. The captive nightborn gazed at her in adoration and something in her thrilled to see it. They smiled as she glanced at them. Offering themselves.
She reached out and pulled the remaining scraps of magic from them, a burst of energy rushing through the air, vanishing into the abyss inside her. Bastien had almost emptied them. But it didn’t matter. They knew what they were offering. They just didn’t care. The magic gone, she drew on their strength and then life itself. They crumpled up like old sacks, falling heavily to the ground.
One source remained, one person with more power inside him than anyone else. Bastien. Her mouth watered at the thought of the magic flowing in his veins, bright as sunlight.
‘My poor faithless Lord of Thorns,’ the other voice said, dripping condescension. ‘You think you can hold her? You think you can bring her back? She’s a sacrifice. Grace is gone. It was the boys before, those two poor boys, so full of love and blind belief. Honour and duty. And what did it get them? Don’t you remember?’
‘Grace… what boys?’
‘Larelwynns,’ the Deep Dark said through her, stopping right in front of him. ‘Don’t you know your own stories any more? She doesn’t either. Your Grace. She’s mageborn. She’s from the kingdom. She’s…’ Grace inhaled and a memory of the two of them entangled, lost in each other, surged forward. Her eyes went wide with the flush of pleasure that rippled through her. The Deep Dark purred with delight. ‘She’s your mate. I smell her all over you. When she kills you, will you weep, little king? Will you cry? Or will you willingly be her sacrifice?’
It was like she tripped over something, like a punch to the stomach knocked her breath from her.
Kill him? No. She wasn’t going to kill Bastien. That was not the plan. Grace tried to scramble for some element of control, something to cling to, to figure this out. Just a moment, a moment to think…
‘What sacrifice?’ he asked. ‘Answer me.’
Her mouth smiled, and now Grace didn’t feel like joining in. This was wrong. She didn’t want to answer, she wanted this to stop. But the Deep Dark was not finished, not yet. She fought back, but there was nothing more she could do. It was so strong. Like water, deep, dark water, pulling her down. And all she had was a faint fire of magic. She was drowning all over again.
‘There is always a sacrifice,’ said the voice that was not her voice. ‘There are always two of them, one to live and one to die. No one can take on that much power and survive, not if they are to let the Hollow King in. When you deal with the oldest gods, the primal powers, there always has to be an offering. Blood. Life. She’s your weakness. She always will be.’
Bastien was strong to begin with but now, for the first time ever, Grace was stronger. Even consumed by the power of the Hollow King, part of Bastien had still been the man she loved. He stared down into her eyes and she felt the gaze of other, terrible things, crawling inside her looking out, studying him.
‘Grace, come back to me.’
He lifted a hand to stroke her hair, the touch so gentle. And she wanted to. She wanted him. But she couldn’t find the strength. Not any more.
‘No,’ the Deep Dark said. ‘You deserted her. There is no forgiveness. There is nothing. Nothing but us. And you belong to us, heart and soul. Just as she does. Or will. Time is difficult. Three times dead. Twice entombed. Let us show you.’
The power possessing her body grabbed him, her hand a fist at his neck pulling his mouth down to hers in a bruising kiss. The other hand closed on the warrant and she wound the command it exerted around him, bound him to her will.
No. Not her will. The Deep Dark had control now. Total control.
This was its will.
Bastien resisted for a moment but he was weak. She was his weakness. And the Deep Dark knew it. The collective mind of his ancient enemy relied on it. In concert, it reached out and dragged Bastien into its embrace.
Chapter 23
The chamber was cavernous. It had never been this large in reality but in his dreams, in his memory, it was endless. Bastien’s footsteps echoed as he walked forwards. The boy was waiting, sitting on the throne. He looked the same. Not a year had passed for him. Caught forever in his teenage years, not quite boy, not quite man. The sword lay across his lap, still too big.
‘They found you then,’ he said.
‘Lucien?’
The first Larelwynn king looked exactly as Bastien remembered from the first time he had ever laid eyes on him. All those years ago in a cave very much like this one. Not as vast, perhaps. And there was no sign of the Maegen. But this was the boy with whom Bastien, the Hollow King, had made the pact. They had both been trying to save their people and Lucien had persuaded him. He’d been desperate. It had seemed like the only way at the time.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
‘I missed you,’ Lucien said.
‘What’s happening?’
‘You’re lost. But… here we are.’ Lucien stood up, putting down the oversized sword, and he walked to Bastien, embracing him. ‘Who did they use as a sacrifice? Someone you care about?’ He studied Bastien’s face. ‘Oh, I see. I’m so sorry, old friend.’
‘What did you do, Lucien?’
‘Me? I did nothing. It was you.’
‘I don’t…’
Lucien frowned. ‘What do you remember?’
The cave… this cave but not this cave. The Maegen. Being ready to die. Either by Lucien’s hands or by giving himself up to the Maegen and the monstrous power that presided over it. The words, those words on his lips… ‘It is my honour to serve.’
‘Bastien?’ Lucien called his attention back to him. ‘Bastien, what do you remember?’
‘I remember you and the cave. The pact…’
‘But before that?’
‘Before?’ There was no before. There was just… he’d been the Hollow King, the first of the mageborn. He’d battled nightborn and the Deep Dark. ‘When I was the king?’
Lucien’s hands rested on his shoulders and he stared deeply into Bastien’s eyes. ‘No. Before that. Before the Hollow King. Before Thorndale. When you were just Bastien. When we were… we were friends.’
‘Lucien… we were never—’
Darkness swirled around them, pulling at him, dragging him down. It wasn’t cold and hungry like the Deep Dark. It was something else. Something ancient and grim, determined.
Bastien closed his eyes. His memories blurred, resolved themselves again. He remembered the blade at his throat, felt the metal dig in and he welcomed it. He knew it had to happen and he was ready for it. The wild ecstatic sense of love had swept through him.
‘It’s okay, Lucien. It’s okay. It’s for you,’ he had said.
But Lucien had sobbed, helpless, devastated. ‘Please. Please don’t… don’t…’
Bastien forced himself to stillness, made his eyes open. It was the old cave, much smaller, the boiling glow of the Maegen churning before him, throwing light up onto the ceiling.
One boy stood by the broken obsidian throne. The other knelt in front of the pool with a figure towering over him. The knife at his throat glimmered, reflecting the light of the Maegen.
Bastien moved closer.
What do you remember?
Both boys were on the cusp of manhood. Perhaps fifteen. So young and their eyes were fixed on each other, desperate, devastated. But the other one, even while tears gilded his face, made no move to help. Bastien knew him. It was Lucien. Lucien as he had been then, before he became a king, before the pact, before he ruled.
Just a boy.
‘I will always be with you,’
the other boy said with Bastien’s own voice. ‘It has to be this way. A sacrifice.’ He looked at the reflection of his murderer in the pool, a face made of stone and fire, a face that couldn’t be real. And yet it was. ‘I’m willing to die for him. It is my honour to serve.’
And the knife bit deep. Blood fell in the Maegen, swallowed by it, and behind the boy the man froze, light spilling from his eyes. The colour faded from his body, stone climbing up his limbs and torso like vines, petrifying him until only a statue was left behind.
Lucien didn’t move for a moment. On the other side of the pool he sat cradling a broken crown, trying to force himself to keep breathing.
‘Bastien?’ he whispered.
There was no answer.
He watched the other boy get up, his face a mask worn by an unfamiliar power. He stepped into the pool, blood still pouring down his chest. The Maegen boiled around him, drinking him down, swallowing him whole, and then he emerged at the other side, drenched in power, in life, reborn. He stopped in front of Lucien Larelwynn.
The boy with Bastien’s face knelt in front of his king, light spilling from him. ‘Majesty, I am yours to command. Now and always.’
Moving like a puppet, Lucien jerked the broken crown towards him and the boy who had become the Hollow King – a god now sheathed in a human form – took it. Divinities, what had they done?
Was this part of the pact?
The smaller part of the broken crown melted in his cupped hand, until it was a golden disc, the size of a coin. He handed it to Lucien Larelwynn who closed his hand over it. The warrant. Then the rest of the crown transformed, twisting and reshaping itself in his hands, and Bastien felt the weight of the torc nestling around his throat.
‘I’m sorry,’ Lucien whispered from behind him, his voice broken. Not Lucien then. Lucien now. Whenever now was. ‘Three times dead, it said, twice entombed. And you thought it meant you. We’d been through so much. You’d died, or almost died, we both had, and then… It was a mistake. We should never have done it.’
Nightborn: Totally addictive fantasy fiction (The Hollow King Book 2) Page 21
