by Eva Brandt
“No,” I told the representation of the afterlife. “You’re not taking them. You’re not taking my future.”
The Source didn’t answer, but my soulmates did. They looked between me and the light and grew even more desperate. “Lucienne, please,” Darius whispered, his eyes glowing gold. “You can’t stop this. No one can.”
“I won’t ever abandon a battle before I’ve fought it, Darius,” I told him. “You know that. I’ve made my decision and I won’t turn back.”
I was afraid, of course. Ironically, it wasn’t death or oblivion that I feared. If The Source ended up claiming me because of my defiance, that was a price I was willing to pay. But I was afraid of losing everything I’d found by their side, of forgetting not just the beautiful memories we’d forged together, but also the genuine love born from those experiences. Just the same, I’d never let fear of any kind stand in my way. I wouldn’t start today.
I couldn’t overpower The Source, not on my own. I knew I couldn’t. But the power of souls couldn’t fight itself, and that was what I had at my fingertips.
My soulmates had died, but I was still alive. The Source couldn’t absorb me, not without breaking its own rules. So I dug my metaphorical heels in and anchored the men I loved within me, hoping and praying it would work.
It shouldn’t have. Such powers didn’t like to be defied and they could easily tear apart one grief-stricken woman.
But as I fought the fate that had befallen me, a thought drifted into my mind. If you take them from me, I will take every single thing from everyone else.
It wasn’t a threat. It was a promise. Against all odds, The Source believed me. It accepted my bargain and my plan. It stopped trying to pull them away. But it also punished me.
My body began to glow a bright gold. At the same time, the forms of my soulmates solidified. The last thing I felt was a mix of overwhelming relief, gratitude, and love, and then, my emotions faded, crushed under the weight of my own magic.
Lucienne Hastings was gone. Queen Dahud of Kerys was back, for good.
Fifteen
Epilogue
Dahud
When I opened my eyes, the first thing that hit me was the vile stench. The room I was in smelled like blood, burnt flesh, and death. It was a familiar scent, but not one I’d ever found pleasing.
I wrinkled my nose and got up. The whole place was filthy and my clothes were a mess. The amount of mud around me looked like something I’d have found in a pigsty. And all the ash... Dear gods, how distasteful. I was pretty sure the source of that was a human body. Some of it had even gotten in my mouth.
Honestly, if people decided to burst into flames, they should at least have the decency of doing so while at a safe distance from anyone who might ingest their remains.
I supposed I could give Pierce a free pass on that one—and on everything else, for that matter. In the big picture, his slights against me had been minor, especially when compared to his skills and usefulness. He’d given me pleasure and would’ve been a wonderful asset in my quest for power.
I’d lost him and my other five weapons, the men who’d been my protectors, my servants, my knights. This wasn’t a situation I could allow. I needed them to fulfill my plan.
A millennium or so ago, a woman with my power at her fingertips would’ve been able to take over the world and lay waste to all the armies that dared to stand in her path. That was no longer the case. Even with magic, I’d have trouble taking over a world where several countries had nuclear weaponry at their disposal. I doubted that in this body, I’d be vaporized as easily as I had been in the past, but there was no point in leading a world shattered by a nuclear war.
In other words, I needed a subtler approach. And I had to start by bringing them back.
So far, through Lucienne’s little trick, I’d anchored them to this world and kept them from drifting away altogether. But I knew better than to believe that would hold. The Source was much too powerful. It had granted me my wish, but as long as my knights were within its reach, that could easily change.
I couldn’t find a solution to my problem right this instant, but I had a few ideas on where to start. I took a quick look around to see if anyone else had survived the ritual. The Dames Blanches had been killed, a side-effect of the onslaught of spiritual energy, no doubt. Miraculously, Diane Garnier still appeared to be breathing. Louis was alive as well, although that didn’t surprise me.
The man was like a cockroach. He simply refused to die. I’d soon need to figure out a method to neutralize him permanently. Killing him was too dangerous since I had no way to be sure he wouldn’t be reborn and become a pest in the future. Granted, I wasn’t sure I had enough time at my disposal to worry about that, but still, it was better to be safe than sorry.
Until then, I had no choice but to pick captivity. But first, I needed to ask him some questions. I doubted he’d go along with what I had in mind, but there were plenty of methods of persuasion I could use.
Ignoring the twice-blessed woman, I made my way to Louis’s side. He didn’t attempt to escape. Instead, he looked up at me and leaned against the wall, battered, exhausted, but seemingly at peace.
If I’d been able to experience emotion, I would’ve torn him apart on the spot. But there were advantages to not having feelings and one of them was this simple clarity, the dagger-sharp rational thinking I’d lost when the curse on me had started to crack.
I realized all too well that like this, I was less than I’d been, but I was not beneath using my flaws as my weapons.
“You and I have a conversation pending,” I told him, placing my foot on his chest and willing my magic into his body.
A rib snapped under the pressure of my weight and my elemental power. He didn’t even flinch, as if he couldn’t feel the pain at all. “I thought you didn’t want to talk to me, Queen Dahud,” he answered with a crooked smirk.
So, I was a queen now. Charming of him to acknowledge that. “I’ve changed my mind,” I replied. With a thought, I broke another of his ribs, then a third one, just because I could. “But I don’t think that surprises you.”
Louis twitched underneath me, but still didn’t try to fight back. “No, it doesn’t. It’s too late to change anything. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, that Pierce would do the right thing. Believe it or not, I did want you to be happy. No matter who you were in your past life, I do see you, Lucienne, as my daughter.”
“Happiness is overrated,” I replied, ignoring the sentimental comment. “It’s power that counts. I will bring order to the chaos in this world, and I’ll start with you.”
I knelt next to him and cupped his cheek in a gesture that immobilized him as efficiently as my earlier hold. “Now... Tell me, how do I undo the spell you cast?”
The magic coursing through my fingertips made Louis wheeze, but he managed to reply anyway. “It’s not something you can undo. They’re gone. That was the whole point. To end this whole vicious circle and eliminate the Accursed Syndrome. To give soulmates the freedom of being with their destined partner, without having to fear dying from some kind of exotic disease.”
He had no idea that I’d kept my soulmates from permanently dying, and his smugness made my power fiercer. His skin started blistering under my touch. “How nice of you to worry about the soulmates of every single person on the planet. Maybe you should’ve been just as noble when you decided to shatter Pierce’s soul. And when you decided to populate the world with Accursed.”
“I-I made a mistake and I’ve been trying to fix it,” he stammered. “My meddling might have created this species, but in the end, it turned out for the best. It did bring me to Lucienne, just like I had hoped. And now, the Accursed will be gone, and with them, so will all my errors. That’s all there is to it.”
“Except that’s not quite true, is it?” I pointed out. “I’m still here. I don’t have my emotions. We’ve just returned to the beginning. You haven’t undone anything. It didn’t work, not really. The en
chantment on the Accursed still exists.”
“It worked,” Louis contradicted me. “It just left you with some side-effects. I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about that, not anymore.”
I deemed it remarkable that he could hold a coherent conversation with me considering all the pain he had to be in. At the same time, though, his resilience was an obstacle, one that, like Louis himself, needed to be removed.
My interest in the conversation faded. “I see,” I said simply. Without further ado, I attacked his mind.
I encountered significant resistance, a shield that reminded me of the shell that protected his astral, shape-shifting form. It was something I’d expected. He was one of the most powerful mind mages on Earth, a nightmare, a creature born out of the worst fears of mankind. When I’d been Lucienne Hastings, he’d manipulated me with ease. It stood to reason that he’d be a formidable opponent in this field.
But things had changed considerably now. He was exhausted after the ritual and the damage I’d already done to him, and I’d always been stronger. I just hadn’t known it.
I exerted more power, and the shield around his mind cracked like an egg. At the back of my consciousness, I could see his astral form, Lou Carcolh, trying to defend him. I batted its attack away with ease and ripped through Louis’s memories, seeking the answers to all my questions.
Louis had been honest with me regarding his intentions and the purpose of the spell, which was unfortunate. The details of the ritual did come in handy, though, and I was confident that I could reverse the process. It would take time, effort, and a lot of bloodshed, but most things that mattered always did.
As I searched, I caught glimpses of countless memories and emotions, some of them involving me or Mathias. Louis’s psyche was very well-organized—a side-effect of him being a mind mage, no doubt—and all of his lives had their own areas they inhabited. I could explore them at leisure, see Ys through his eyes, remember my parents, as they’d been before I’d turned on them. I could smell the scent of the sea and feel the ocean breeze, just like I had every single time I’d walked on the beach, as a child.
There were other places, some more beautiful than others. An oasis in the desert, an American metropolis, a bustling Asian city. France, of course, the village of Hastingues where the legend of Lou Carcolh had been created. Louis had always been on a quest to undo the spell he’d cast, and to this end, he’d even accidentally created the Accursed. He’d carried a burden almost as heavy as mine, and most people didn’t realize it had been him, and not me, who’d birthed one of the most hated species on the planet.
It was strange to acknowledge everything he’d done for my sake, from his perspective. It might have made me empathize with him, had I not found other things.
Memories of my soulmates and my son, dying at his hands. The utter satisfaction he felt now, when he could taste Pierce’s ash in his mouth.
An image of the mother I’d never known, another victim of his schemes.
He didn’t want to continue living. He didn’t think he would be reborn now that he’d achieved his purpose, and he was more than ready to join his family in The Source. As far as I was concerned, he didn’t deserve that.
A flicker of something dark and fierce rushed over me, and I knew I’d have denied him this comfort even if I hadn’t deemed his death too dangerous. After all, why would he have peace and happiness when we did not? No, he needed to suffer, just like I had. He needed to pay for killing the people I loved.
As that surge of unexpected power—no, of emotion—coursed through me, my astral self reacted to it and I ripped through his mindscape far more viciously than before. I couldn’t focus on searching for more information. I just wanted to destroy, to obliterate everything he’d ever been, all the hopes and dreams he’d ever dared to have, at a time when he’d denied us ours.
He did scream then, and his human shouts merged with the piercing screeches of the massive snail. I took great satisfaction in it, in demolishing each and every little world he’d created. I sank Kerys all over again and shattered every careful structure he’d built throughout the centuries he’d lived. I burned down Hastingues and severed the delicate threads of magic that formed Louis’s mindscape.
It was only when I let out all my fury that I realized what I’d done. I found myself standing in the ruin of what had been his psyche and everywhere I looked, I saw devastation. The ocean alone remained, but it had gone crimson with blood, the mental wound I’d inflicted polluting the representation of his subconscious.
My lingering anger faded, my emotions vanishing yet again. What a waste. I could’ve still used him, used the information he might’ve provided.
Oh, well. After this episode, there was no way he’d recover. He couldn’t heal from a mental assault again, not when he’d just woken up from a coma and had cast a very powerful, strenuous spell.
For good or ill, he was no longer an issue. Maybe it was a suitable end, for him to be a captive of his own mind, just like Mathias had been for centuries. Maybe it was too merciful or too harsh. But such things were irrelevant for me.
I emerged from his mind, having already created a tentative plan of action. I’d found most of the answers I’d needed. Now, it was time to use them.
Soon, everyone would know and fear the power of Queen Dahud. Soon, I would create a new world order in my image. But before I could accomplish those goals, I’d bring back my family. And I’d find a way to make sure we were never separated again, no matter what I needed to destroy.
THE END
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Now available, free for download - the interlude/prequel to my Soulmates of Seasons series Winter’s Dragons. Draconic Affairs.
Once upon a time, a firedrake, a ryu and a wyvern melted a snow queen’s heart and learned to love and be loved in the process. But before they were her soulmates, they were bitter rivals. What secrets does their past hold?
About the Author
Eva Brandt is a romance aficionado who likes to spice up her stories with an extra bit of something special. Dragons? Perfect. Vampires? You got it. Any other type of mythological creature you might not have heard of? Absolutely. Sexy, snarky heroines and heroes with a penchant for falling head over heels in love with them? Yes and double yes.
She also believes in a very simple motto. Be passionate about passion. Embrace temptation. Life is too short to deny yourselves the most beautiful things about it.
When she’s not weaving her latest sexy tale, she enjoys relaxing in bed with a nice mug of tea and her ebook reader. Because nothing is better than writing a book, excepting reading one.
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