by Eva Brandt
In all the commotion, I lost track of the person that mattered most, Lucienne. I didn’t realize something wasn’t right until the ground started to shake beneath my feet. A familiar, much too desperate voice echoed in my head, vibrating with a tense magic I recognized from a different life.
“No! Get away! Help me! Please help me!”
I didn’t see her disappear, but I felt it, felt the moment when she was stolen from us. Her sudden absence struck me like a physical blow and I recoiled, so distracted by her disappearance that I completely forgot about what I was supposed to be doing.
I’d have liked to claim that it was my finely-honed battle skills that saved my life, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. My instincts screamed at me to go find her and utterly ignored my own well-being. But even Accursed got lucky from time to time, and I was no different.
I pivoted on my heel, intending to rush after Lucienne, or at least head in the direction where I’d last seen her. In the process, I tripped on a dead body and fell forward with an alarming lack of grace. I would’ve been more upset about it had my clumsiness not saved me from getting decapitated by a fancy undead blade.
“You will die here, Mathias Vandale,” I heard someone say, “and the woman you love so much won’t mourn you.”
The creature had no idea what he was talking about and I had no desire to explain. I shot to my feet and lunged at him, pouring the full extent of my fury and desperation into my counter-attack.
It took me less than a minute to remove the threat, but by then, it was already too late. When I dumped the corpse of the nosferatu on the ground and looked around, I spotted Lucienne sitting cross-legged on the corpse of a shifter, petting a disembodied head. “You realize, Mathias, that I’m never going to let you go, right?”
She was smiling, and at that moment, I knew we were utterly fucked. That wasn’t her smile at all, not even the cruel, empty one that foretold death and destruction.
If I hadn’t been too busy collapsing on the inside, I would’ve probably laughed. The bitter irony of fate never ceased to astound me. This was all my fault. Once again, I’d failed my soulmate and once again, everyone else would have to pay the price.
* * *
Pierce
When the battle erupted, everything inside me screamed that time was running out. It was worse than I thought. Far too many people already knew that Lucienne was Dahud. It was unclear how they’d figured it out, but they must’ve realized it before I’d blurted out the truth. Otherwise, they never would’ve gathered here in such a large number.
Mathias was dangerous, yes, but he’d been around for over a millennium. The other species had made no effort to cooperate in order to eliminate him. This was all about Lucienne.
We only had one chance, one way out of this. I had to rely on Mathias Vandale and the others to get rid of the people who considered Lucienne a threat. Meanwhile, I’d try to take Lucienne to safety.
It was easier said than done. At first, Lucienne was too shocked by what was going on to argue, but that small respite didn’t last. Mere seconds later, she began to struggle against me.
“Pierce, stop!” she shouted at me. “We have to go back. We have to help them.”
I didn’t stop. I kept going, hoping against all hope that Lucienne’s enemies and her so-called soulmates would be too distracted with each other to focus on us. “They can help themselves. Don’t look back, Lucienne. We need to run.”
“No, what we need to do is stand our ground,” she insisted. Her magic strained against mine and it became far more difficult to drag her along.
I turned to face her, desperation threatening to suffocate me. We were still so very close to the battle, much too close. If we didn’t hurry, we’d lose our chance. “Lucienne, please. This isn’t safe for you. I know you don’t trust me, and you have every reason to hate me. But even if that’s the case, even if you’re furious with me for my lies, at least believe that I’m trying to do the best thing for you.”
Lucienne didn’t question that. “I don’t doubt you, Pierce. I realize you’re trying to protect me, in your own way. But I don’t want to be protected, not like this.”
I flinched. In my heart, I’d known I’d fail at keeping her safe from the moment I’d tried to pull her away from the others. My soulmate had never been prone to hiding and her new memories hadn’t changed that. Lucienne de Hastingues was more malleable than the real Lucienne, but she was just as stubborn and unpredictable as the woman I’d fallen for.
I’d still needed to try and even now, I couldn’t afford to give up. I’d already taken enough from her, so I didn’t want to barrel over her wishes, but I doubted she really understood everything she was risking by staying behind.
“Lucienne, I’m begging you. Let’s just go and find shelter somewhere. We can track the others down later.”
The promise tasted bitter on my tongue, but I fully intended to keep it, as long as Lucienne agreed to come with me. It didn’t work. She just shook her head, as stubborn as before. “I can’t, Pierce. I won’t. I still don’t understand what’s happening, but I know this. I can’t turn my back on them or on the answers I already have. Maybe I am Dahud or maybe I’m not, but I refuse to let the people I care about suffer needlessly.”
She freed herself from my hold and, as much as I wanted to hold her back, I knew I couldn’t. She was far more powerful than I was. Attempting to feed on her would not work, not anymore, and I wasn’t inclined to use any method that would harm her. There was nothing I could do.
She turned on her heel, ready to intervene in the battle, magic already blooming at her fingertips. That was when it happened, when everything became even worse than before.
I wasn’t sure what triggered it, what caused her psyche to twist and change, but all of a sudden, her body went rigid and the fire dancing over her skin began to turn into a golden glow. Dread rushed over me as I realized what was going on. It was her curse, the same blasted curse that had claimed the lives of millions since it had first appeared. It was pulling Dahud out of Lucienne’s consciousness. It had been happening gradually for the past weeks, but now, she’d been pushed too far.
I pressed my hand to her shoulder, hoping to draw her out of her head, of the madness that was so close to taking her over. “Lucienne, breathe. You can still—”
A jolt of hostile energy flowed through me as soon as I made contact with her. Pain erupted over my body, so intense and surprising that I went down like a sack of potatoes.
Lucienne threw a glance at me over her shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’ve done well so far. You’ve earned your life. I won’t kill you, yet.”
That was when I understood. I remembered Louis’s cryptic words, the way he’d promised that I’d be watched. I thought he’d been referring to the Dames Blanches in our escort, or maybe even to the debt I owed him. Apparently, I’d been mistaken.
Her behavior wasn’t related to her past identity. With everything that had been going on, she’d been vulnerable and Louis must’ve found it easy to slither into her mind. He wouldn’t be able to control her for too long, but he didn’t have to.
She went for Mathias first. He was closest to us and he seemed to sense something wasn’t right, because for a few moments, his effortless grace and fighting skills abandoned him. The way he tripped on one of his own victims would’ve been funny had the circumstances been different.
But it wasn’t funny, not when I knew the real reason why he was acting this way. And when he finally looked at Lucienne and understood what was going on, I cursed myself for my previous stubbornness.
I should’ve never played along with Louis’s schemes. Even if I hated Mathias and the others for everything they’d taken from me, I should’ve still accepted them, instead of turning to him. No matter what my family owed Louis, nothing was worth what was now going to happen.
“You realize, Mathias, that I’m never going to let you go, right?” Louis asked, now petting a d
isembodied head with striking fondness, like it was a fluffy toy or a puppy.
At that, Mathias threw all pretenses out the window. Lucienne had always been his weak spot, the same way she was mine, and with her under Louis’s complete control, he couldn’t be bothered to care about any of his masks. “I don’t give a shit about what you think or feel. You should’ve done everyone a favor and stayed dead.”
“Ah, yes, but if I’d done that, Lucienne wouldn’t exist now, would she?” Louis threw the head in what seemed like a random direction. It hit a Dame Blanche and I wasn’t surprised when it exploded upon impact, killing her and three other people.
Louis had always had a sick sense of humor and an interesting approach to battle strategy.
The explosion was powerful enough that everyone nearby had the sense to take cover. Mathias didn’t even blink. “Lucienne would still be herself no matter what family she was born in,” he said without missing a beat. “You’re irrelevant for her existence.”
“You don’t really think that, do you?” Louis shook his—her?—head in disappointment. “After all this time, I’d have thought you’d understand a little more about how true magic works, but you’re as hopeless as always.”
“I guess some things never change.” Mathias’s eyes glinted with savage fury. “Except... Oh, wait, they do.”
The air thickened with dark power, a magic that went beyond anything I’d ever felt before. “Oh, Mathias, you’re always so amusing.” Louis laughed. “You can’t beat me, not when I’m inside her, with all this power at my disposal. It’s almost sad that she’ll never get to use it. She’ll never understand it or fully grasp its potential. The only one who could do it was Dahud and by the end... Well, we all know how that turned out and we don’t want the story to repeat itself.
“No, I think everyone here would agree that it’s high time we ended the curse. I have the perfect method and it doesn’t involve fighting each other.”
It wasn’t true. Yes, the fae, the Dames Blanches, and maybe even all the other people who’d joined the battle might want to end the Accursed as a species. But the plagues were proud of what they were. They’d embraced the curse and used it as the source of their power. They thrived on it and had grown accustomed to seeing mortals as food.
But there was something hypnotic about Louis’s words, when they came from Lucienne’s mouth. As a mind mage, Louis had always been very convincing, and Lucienne’s raw power far surpassed his. Not even the plagues were immune to it.
I watched in a mix of shock and horror as Mathias’s underlings abandoned the fight and began to nod. “You’re right,” they said, one by one. “The Accursed are an anomalous existence. They have to die.”
They were agreeing to their own demise and they didn’t seem to realize it. Their remaining opponents weren’t doing any better. Their eyes glazed and they dropped their weapons, now completely under Louis’s sway.
Lucienne’s soulmates showed a degree of immunity to the enchantment, but they weren’t left unharmed. Mathias’s whole body was shaking, as if he wanted to reach for her, but couldn’t make himself do it. Declan gripped his temples and leaned against Malachai’s shoulder. Bjorn stared at his own hands then back at Lucienne’s face. Judging by the erratic flickers of the magic around him, I guessed he had maybe one minute before he collapsed under the weight of his own emotions.
As for Darius... He was staring at Lucienne, his face twisted in a complicated expression. Just by looking at him, I knew he’d be the one to first succumb to the unavoidable.
By some kind of miracle, though, even from the depths of his shattered psyche, Darius managed to find a way to reach out to Lucienne. “No,” he said, his voice sharp and fierce, like a sentence. “This isn’t right. This isn’t what Lucienne would want. We have too much to live for. Not everything is about the curse, remember? We have a son.”
His words were like a cue and all of Lucienne’s would-be soulmates remembered how to move. “You remember him, don’t you?” Malachai asked. “You remember Alois?”
“We can find him, together,” Bjorn offered, his gaze now clear. “We can find our family again.”
In Lucienne’s body, Louis froze. The dark magic in the air started to falter. “A son. A child.”
Those weren’t Louis’s words. They were Lucienne’s. Yes, she remembered, just like I remembered what Lucienne’s aunt had told me. There was only one thing more powerful than a bond between soulmates, and that was the bond between mother and child.
Granted, the rule wasn’t valid for every single parent. Mothers could reject children, the same way soulmates could reject one another. But for Lucienne and for her family, that had never been an issue.
Lucienne walked up to Mathias on shaky legs. She leaned against his chest, her chest heaving as she struggled to catch her breath. “No, he’s gone. Mathias, he died. I saw him die. Right?”
“He didn’t, Dahud,” Mathias said. “I gave him the pendant. He lived, and he followed our dream, to bring down Rome. He became a leader of his own nation. And he returned to us. You don’t remember everything now, but you don’t have to. Bjorn is right. We can find Alois again, now and forever.”
Lucienne smiled shakily and I could see the spectral figure of her father drifting away from her body. She didn’t get the chance to fully free herself from him. Refusing to let her go without a fight, Louis’s astral self said, “Mathias is lying. Alois died again, a few weeks ago, while helping them escape. His spirit dissipated. There’s no coming back from that. He’s gone and he’s never coming back.”
In the wake of Louis’s revelation, an ominous silence fell over the grove. Lucienne stepped away from Mathias. “Of course,” she said, her voice now level and calm. “I remember now.”
Louis’s astral figure vanished, sliding back into her. The taste of grief, helplessness and guilt was the last thing I managed to process before my world turned to fire and pain.
Eleven
Captivity
Declan
Waking up a captive was never fun. I hadn’t enjoyed captivity when the Alarians had been the ones to imprison me and my brief stint in Mathias’s cells hadn’t been pleasant either.
Waking up a captive, with your worst enemy looming over you, holding a ritualistic dagger against your chest, was a whole new level of shitty, even for me.
“Hello there, Declan,” Louis said as he brought the dagger down and started to slice into my skin. “It’s so nice of you to wake up, just in time for the proceedings.”
Each motion of the blade burned me like acid, but I didn’t flinch. In fact, I wasn’t focusing on him at all. “I’d thank you for the greeting, but I can’t say I appreciate it that much,” I said, to distract him and fill the silence.
As I spoke, I quickly took note of my current location and drew a few conclusions on what had happened. The last thing I remembered was Lucienne going berserk at the meeting with the fae. She’d been controlled by her father, but only up to a point.
In the end, it had been the comment about Alois’s death that had driven her over the edge.
When the fire had erupted from her body, I’d thrown myself over Malachai who was more vulnerable to such magic. Darius and the others must have tried to protect us, but it hadn’t ended well. I’d blacked out, and now, here I was, trapped and at my foe’s mercy. But I didn’t lose hope. I could still find my way out of this place, and to do that, I needed information.
Louis had bound me against the floor, with silver shackles pinning down my limbs. The collar around my neck made it impossible for me to lift my head and see more. There was a familiar scent in the air, though, and the feeling of a familiar presence. Lucienne and the others weren’t far.
If Louis noticed what I was doing, he didn’t show it. He hummed thoughtfully under his breath, still working on the strange pattern he was cutting into my chest. “I’d apologize for the unpleasantness, but it would be pointless. Believe it or not, I didn’t set out to kill or hurt anyone.
But we all do what we must. I have my penance to pay and a curse to break.”
“Is this where you tell me your evil plan and threaten to kill me?” I asked. “I hate to disappoint you, but it won’t work.”
Louis’s hold on the knife didn’t falter for a second. My words didn’t even give him pause. “Oh, but it will. You know what the best thing about reincarnation is, Declan? You have plenty of time to do whatever you want. Even if a plan might not work tomorrow, the day after, this month, this year, or even this century, you can try again and again, safe in the knowledge that should you fail, you’ll have another attempt. That’s always been such a comforting thought for me.”
“I can’t say I agree. I would’ve preferred to get it right the first time around.”
Louis chuckled, as if I’d said something very humorous. “The first time around was wrong to begin with, because you weren’t supposed to exist. But that’s okay. Today, we’ll finally fix it.”
Great. Fucking wonderful. Bjorn had been right about Louis’s goal. It wasn’t a huge surprise. Bjorn tended to be correct about these things and I’d trusted his assessment. Still, I’d have preferred any other plan except this one.
I didn’t much like the whole circle of reincarnation, but in some ways, I had to agree with Louis. There was freedom in the knowledge that, if everything fell apart all over again, we could always start over. Mathias would always be there. As far as I could tell, nothing could kill him, although some things could take him out of commission longer than others.
The Hiroshima nuclear bomb was a gruesome example, and he’d walked away from that one too. Lucienne and I hadn’t been so lucky.
But atomic energy could only destroy bodies. It couldn’t shatter souls. Magic was far more powerful. If Louis claimed that he’d found a way around his previous limitations, I believed him. He had no reason to lie, not when I was his captive.
