by Eva Brandt
Malachai’s approach was a little less gory, but that was probably because he didn’t want to waste blood. I made a mental note to talk to him soon. I hadn’t gotten the chance since we’d ‘reunited’ and it was necessary.
We’d lost something—or rather, someone—during their escape from my father’s forces. I’d only seen Alois once, but my heart knew how important he had been, to all of us. Or maybe to Mathias. I couldn’t tell.
That might’ve been part of the reason why I didn’t feel any pain or guilt when my men attacked the humans. We’d already lost so much. We couldn’t afford to lose anymore.
I threw myself into battle by Malachai’s side, easily subduing the humans that dared to stand in my way. I was getting better at controlling Mathias’s magic, if not his memories. It was so easy to reach into a human and steal his life. Human bodies died almost disappointingly fast when deprived of oxygen, but the screaming caused by the electrocution was beginning to irritate me.
A bullet from an unwise human’s gun hit me in the shoulder. Pain erupted through me, but I didn’t even flinch. After almost being torn to pieces by the Alarian Vow, something like this barely registered on my radar.
Still, it wouldn’t look good to allow the human to get away with what he’d done. The guard needed to suffer for his mistake.
I didn’t get the chance to chase down my attacker. By the time my body pushed the bullet out, Declan had already caught up to him and pinned him down with a clawed hand. I didn’t know at which point he’d shifted back into his two-legged form, but I admired his efficiency.
Even so, Declan’s actions didn’t change the fact that I’d gotten shot. The secret anger bubbling inside me suddenly spilled over and the ground beneath our feet started to shake.
Every single human who’d been trying to put up a fight or escape collapsed, screaming and writhing in pain and fear.
Mathias wasn’t an incubus or a nightmare. His true talents lay in the field of air manipulation, in absorbing the life out of people. But he’d had a lot of time to circumvent his nature and practice other fields of interest. He’d had nothing but time, and now that his body had blended with my mind, we had passed what few limits he’d had before.
In hindsight, I should’ve perhaps used this method outright, without bothering to take the rest of the plagues with me. On the other hand, the whole point of this mission was to get them food. As powerful as I might be, I couldn’t take on both my family and Lucienne’s with just Declan, Malachai, and Bjorn providing support. That unfortunately meant that using such extreme magic was out of the question. The humans might have been incapacitated by it, but my underlings weren’t doing much better.
The only ones who remained upright in the courtyard were Declan and Malachai. The plagues had collapsed, shaking and clutching their heads in visible anguish. This was not at all what I’d intended. I needed to be more careful in the future.
With more effort than I would’ve liked to admit, I reined in Mathias’s abilities. “You know, once upon a time, I believed the human race had worth,” I said, sneering to hide how disturbed I was. “Looks like I was wrong.”
Declan was still holding onto the man who’d shot me. He arched a brow at me, a silent question in his eyes.
“L-Let me go!” the guard stammered, his eyes wide with terror. “No, please. Let me go. Don’t—”
I didn’t have the patience to listen to his whining. He’d made his choice and sealed his fate the moment he’d pressed the trigger, just like I’d made mine when I’d arranged this attack. I snapped my fingers and just like that, Declan snapped the man’s throat.
Life was such a fragile thing, I thought as I watched Declan discard the body on the ground. One mistake, one wrong step, and it would all be over.
There were over two hundred bones in a human being’s body, and all of them broke so easily. Except they didn’t, did they? Sometimes, bones could be like a cage, suffocating, a casket, burying me alive, keeping me trapped in eternal darkness.
“Why?” a voice started screaming at the back of my mind. “Why did you leave me like this? Please. Please, let me die.”
“You won’t die,” someone I couldn’t see replied. “I won’t allow it. I will fix this. I promise, Mathias, I will...”
A sharp wave of purple sliced straight through the strange haze that had started to settle over me, chasing away the voices. “Your Lordship, the facility is secure. Most of the security personnel are either dead or immobilized and the prisoners are no longer an issue. We’ve had no casualties. Orders?”
I turned on my heel and faced Bjorn. There was nothing on his face that could’ve hinted to any kind of fear or doubt, but I knew he was scared for me. And why wouldn’t he be? I’d had a major overreaction to a wound that had been nothing more than a scratch. I’d almost lost myself in my own head. Fortunately, the plagues had been too out of it to notice, but what if the incident kept repeating itself?
I didn’t let any of my dread show. My voice came out completely steady when I provided Bjorn with further instructions. Technically speaking, he already knew what he had to do, but I didn’t blame him for making a redundant request. “Excellent work. Proceed with step two. Start transporting them to the cars. And remember, we want the humans to be in one piece. They’re not useful to us if they die now.”
I doubted that would be an issue. There had been food aplenty in the prison, enough that the plagues wouldn’t feel the need to feed for weeks. It was part of the reason why I’d come here, even if I could’ve chosen another location, where less innocents would’ve been harmed. Still, when it came to creatures like my new underlings, it was better to be safe than sorry, especially since those prisoners would serve as our food supply.
With the issue of feeding out of the way, we could focus on our true problems—giving Lucienne her memories back and helping Mathias recover. I knew better than to try the first project on my own. I might have Mathias’s skills—sort of—but I was in no condition to try them on Lucienne.
The last time I’d used mental magic on her hadn’t ended well. To this day, I wasn’t sure if my blunder hadn’t had something to do with her ultimate fate. I liked to think I’d been in perfect control of my abilities at the time, even if I’d been shaken by meeting her, but I couldn’t be sure.
I was certainly not in perfect control now, as evidenced by the earlier episode, which meant the risks involved in casting a simple mind blur would be extreme.
It was strange, but now that I thought about it, this whole thing reminded me an awful lot of that fateful day when I’d met Lucienne at the club. Just like then, we needed to do some clean up and make sure the rest of the humans didn’t realize what had happened here.
This time around, I didn’t have any convenient fire wielding abilities. It was regrettable, but not a problem. In a place like this, electricity was far more powerful than fire anyway. “Everyone, start moving,” I ordered. “If you’re not out of the compound in two minutes, we’re leaving you behind.”
Declan and Malachai pulled several of the fallen plagues upright. “Come on, you useless maggots,” Declan said. “On your feet. You heard His Lordship.”
My underlings obeyed without comment. I found it both humorous and worrisome that they expected Mathias to treat them this way. I was having trouble because I’d been thrust in a mind and a body not my own. What did Mathias usually feel that made him lash out at his minions?
I almost laughed at my own stupid dilemma. I knew the answer to that question very well, and I’d known it even before I’d ended up a captive in my enemy’s body.
Darkness. A coffin of bone. Desperation. A pile of bodies, all with his own face.
Death, so much death.
That was what had always followed Mathias, and that was why the plagues were following him.
Tasting blood in my mouth, I watched Declan and Malachai usher everyone away. My subordinates were moving pretty quickly, considering what I’d just done to them, but I
’d already noticed they had a remarkable pain tolerance. They were also far more in control of their magic than I was and, despite the damage they’d received, levitated the unconscious humans out of the area with ease.
They didn’t ask any questions and didn’t look back. In the wake of their departure, I was left standing alone in the courtyard.
No, not alone. Bjorn stayed, and I would’ve been angry with him for disobeying me had his presence not helped me so much. “I thought I gave you an order, Bjorn,” I told him. “You’re hopeless, you know that?”
“I’m not very good at following orders when it comes to you, Your Highness. There are very few rules I won’t break and very few betrayals I won’t commit as long as it means getting what I want.”
This was a dangerous game to play here, when so much depended on the plagues believing I was Mathias. Mathias didn’t have any real attachments and always demanded complete obedience from his subordinates. The fact that Bjorn had ignored my command could have severe consequences.
Then again, the hold Mathias had on the plagues was much too powerful to be shaken by something like that. And really, at this point, it wasn’t a secret that Mathias had somehow managed to corrupt three former members of Alarian military forces. I was sort of encouraging the concept that I’d done the same to Darius and that was the reason why he was ill and out cold.
Showing Bjorn some favor wouldn’t be so out of character. Presumably, Mathias had done it a lot with Declan, and everything had worked out just fine. Still, Bjorn tended to be a little more discreet than this. The fact that he’d taken such a risk spoke volumes of his concern for me.
“You don’t need to break any rules now on my account, Bjorn,” I told him. “I’m fine. Or at least, I will be.”
Bjorn frowned, but didn’t call me out on my obvious lie. Instead, he placed his hand on my shoulder. A small shudder coursed through him and a veil of icy, but comforting magic settled over me, clearing my head.
“I apologize for my presumptuousness then,” he said. “I tend to err on the side of caution these days.”
“Well, it’s not paranoia when they’re out to get you,” I answered. “Or, incidentally, when we’re out to get them. Come on, Bjorn. Let’s end this and go back to headquarters. I have a headache and this place is foul. I’ll feel much better once I burn it to the ground.”
I half-expected Bjorn to offer to do the honors in my stead. He didn’t. Perhaps he realized that I’d refuse if he made the attempt. Still, when I found the closest electrical panel and accessed it, he was right there by my side. When I willed Mathias’s power into the circuits, he stayed with me and watched my back. When I began having trouble controlling the overwhelming magic that refused to be tamed, he took my hand and anchored me. And later, when we all drove away from the burning compound, he, like Malachai and Declan, kept a close eye on me.
I didn’t know why, but I got the feeling that this was not the first time this had happened. And despite myself, I couldn’t help but wonder exactly who I’d been in the past lives we’d shared with Lucienne.
There was only one person now who could tell me, one person who knew the truth. Did I dare to ask Declan what had truly made him reach out to me?
Lucienne, what am I supposed to do? High King help me, being emotionless had been so much easier.
Three
True Soulmates
Lucienne
As far as I knew, most people didn’t remember their dreams. The shadows that haunted the sleeping mind usually couldn’t follow us into the light of day, when our consciousness protected us from our worst fears.
It shouldn’t have been as surprising as it was that my dreams were different, and not in a good way.
“Murderer!”
“Monster!”
“Witch!”
“Kill them! Kill them all.”
“The ocean will swallow your pestilent lives.”
“Burn them. Burn them all.”
“We will leave and die for you, my queen.”
The voices started coming to me in my dreams the same day I’d made my tentative decision to keep my distance from Diane and Clara. I didn’t know what that meant, but it certainly couldn’t be good.
I wasn’t unaware of the part I’d played in the wedding fiasco. If not for my behavior and hesitation, we might have been able to prevent the escape of Mathias Vandale and his accomplices. But blaming myself for it wasn’t very productive, nor did it help my long-term goals.
Three days after I’d sworn to myself that I’d learn to control my power, I sat on my ass in my aunt Delphine’s meditation chamber, coughing and still a little dazed from the explosion I’d just caused. Delphine eyed me with a mix of concern, fondness, and exasperation. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself, Lucienne,” she said. “How long has it been since you’ve slept properly?”
“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies,” I answered, because I didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a good night’s sleep, which, come to think of it, was a little unnerving.
My aunts had always been kind to me, but Delphine was far less inclined to take bullshit than the other Dames Blanches were. She dropped to her knees next to me and slapped me so hard I saw stars.
Physical violence wasn’t something the Dames Blanches shied away from. Despite their delicate appearance, they could be pretty brutal if crossed. They very rarely lifted a hand to one of their own, though, and the fact that Delphine had done it made it clear that she was as upset about this whole thing as I was, if not more so.
“Lucienne, do you think this is a joke? The power you have is not something you can play games with.”
It was an unfair comment to make. I was well aware this wasn’t a game. But I was trying my best, and my best wasn’t good enough. Augustine kept telling me that I needed to stop and reassess my options, but I just couldn’t see any alternatives to what I was already doing.
A fierce anger bubbled inside me at the injustice of it all. “Tell me something, Aunt Delphine. My power... It’s not really spiritual in nature. It’s not something you’re aligned to. Why do you think you can judge me, when you have no fucking clue what I’m going through?”
My words were foolish and childish and I knew it even as I said them. The difference in the essence of our respective abilities didn’t mean my aunt couldn’t understand my situation. But I was tired, angry, and upset. I wanted to crawl into bed and sleep one single hour without having nightmares. I wanted my father and Clara to open their eyes already. I wanted to chase down the scavengers who’d hurt them and avenge my loved ones. I wanted to be with Pierce, to live a happy life with my family.
Maybe Delphine realized that, because she didn’t reprimand me for my rudeness. Instead, she just gripped my palm and threaded our fingers together. “Okay,” she said, her voice almost impossibly level and calm. “Training isn’t what you need. It’s time for something a little more... practical.”
Practical? I didn’t understand. Training was practical. I wasn’t exactly learning the theoretical value of energy blasts and the subtle differences between the properties of fire magic and natural flame when it came to chemical interactions. Granted, I’d done plenty of meditation in an attempt to get my astral projection skills in a better place, but that was practical application too.
“What did you have in mind?” I asked her, unable to hide my apprehension.
She got up and offered me her hand. “You’re unable to focus because you feel like you’re not doing enough, so it’s time for you to actually do something.
“You’re right. I don’t fully understand what you’re going through. But I do know this. I’m more than just my magic and so are you. If you want to help us find Vandale, you can do it in another way.”
With that, Delphine grabbed my arm and guided me out of the training room, toward the main communication center. The moment I stepped inside, I wanted to leave. I hadn’t been here a lot in the pas
t and didn’t know how the systems worked. If my aunts wanted me to learn, I’d try, but I was sort of worried I’d get frustrated over a stupid email and end up blowing the whole place up.
Still, I’d never been a quitter, and Delphine seemed to think that I could be of use here. “What do you need me to do?”
“We’re monitoring signs of suspicious activity in the human world,” she explained. “So far, we haven’t had much luck, but we received some information yesterday from our fae contacts in the US. There was a fire at a maximum security prison that drew their eye. At this time, the humans seem to believe it was caused by a malfunction in the electrical system.”
“A plague would easily be able to wreak havoc through the electrical mainframe of a compound like that,” I mused. “Is it Vandale? Does that mean I can—?”
“No,” Delphine cut me off before I could even finish making the request. “You can’t go after him, not yet. But what you can do is meet up with these people in our stead.”
“Me?” I asked with a frown. “I’m no diplomat.”
“You didn’t let me finish. You’re not a diplomat, no, but you are your father’s daughter and you have more talents than you think. You’d be going there not just to speak to the fae, but to make sure they don’t start another fight with the Alarians.”
A fierce headache started pounding at my skull at the implications of that statement. “The fae won’t attack Alaria without just cause. What is their king up to now?”
“Queen Sarai is said to have died in the attack on the wedding venue and Prince Darius is missing. He’s believed to have been taken captive by Mathias Vandale. They’re pushing hard to find him and they might make a bigger mess of things if we’re not careful.”
Wonderful. The Accursed didn’t have a great reputation in the paranormal world, and some days, I thought Alarians were the only reason why there wasn’t an outright hunt decreed for the whole species. It was very unfair, since it wasn’t their fault that they’d been born and created in this way, but there was nothing I could do about it. And if The Pure Kingdom of Alaria became less inclined to cooperate with the rest of us, things would worsen.
