Darien gently lifted the hands from the apple, folding them back over the other, and placed it to the side. “I’m going to inspect the body for foul play.”
Diana could only watch on in bewilderment as Darien gently looked over the decayed bones that had once been her great-aunt.
“The only thing I can find appears to be a stab wound through her sternum, the sides of which are charred black.”
“She was stabbed in the heart by a hot blade?” Diana asked, startled by the appalling imagery.
Darien nodded. “It would appear that way.”
“Who would do such a thing?” she asked.
“There’s no way to know for sure,” he said, his mouth forming into a troubled frown. “I’ve seen similar wounds before—from a Shadowstalker’s blade.”
Diana’s suspicions had been proven right. Charlotte had been executed by the elves; but for what reason?
“What does that apple have to do with all this?” Diana asked, hoping Darien could deduce the motive for her aunt’s murder from the item she’d been buried with.
“I’m familiar with this as well,” Darien said with a curious look as he took the apple into his hand and held it closer to his eyes. “At one time, these ornaments decorated the hallowed halls of Silvermoon Palace. How strange; not only had Charlotte been laid to rest in the fashion of the nobles of Qir’Aflonas, she had been buried holding the sigil of the royal house.” Darien’s eyes lit up at a significant realization. “That is where we are meant to go. Flinders and Charlotte left this as a clue to the Chalice’s location.”
“Where is this Qir’Aflonas, exactly?” Diana asked, her curiosity growing ever more intense.
“Qir’Aflonas—the sacred jewel of the Naphalei—was once a beautiful, and very ancient, kingdom on the island you know as Britain. It is now a cursed ruin, destroyed long ago during the War of the Serpent.”
“The War of the Serpent…” Diana repeated the words, thinking them over in conjunction with what she knew of Flinders, Charlotte, and the Chalice of the Moon.
Then, it suddenly all made sense. The White Wraith—Charlotte’s epic Arthurian poem—it had been the true account of history.
“Arthur Pendragon was the Serpent, wasn’t he?” Diana asked, hoping Darien would finally answer her.
The “dangerous” question seemed to pull Darien out of his thoughts, causing him to pay attention to her again.
“Your abilities of deduction still amaze me,” he said with a smile, handing the golden apple to Diana. “Yes, Arthur’s war on Qir’Aflonas was devastating for both our peoples and had to be forgotten by human history.”
“King Arthur destroyed Avalon?” Diana said, hardly able to believe the notion as she shook her head in wonder. Taking the apple into her hand, Diana’s skin started to tingle and every follicle of hair on her body began to raise up as the swirling shadows of the Veil emerged from the darkness of the cavern and sought to consume her in the waking world. As she screamed with fright, reaching out to Darien for support, his image faded into black until all that remained was the deafening silence of the void.
Screams of terror filled Diana’s heart but she quickly realized they were not her own. Somehow, she was being tormented with someone else’s fear. The intense pain in her chest was not emotional, but physical, and carried with it the searing agony of burning skin. No—it’s too soon—Fox—forgive me—I love you—this is not the end.
A white hot flash exploded within the darkness.
Diana opened her eyes to find she was lying on the hard, rocky, floor of the cavern tomb, clutching the golden apple to her chest. Darien knelt on the ground next to her, holding her other hand in his.
“What happened to me?” she asked with groggy shock.
“You blacked out for a moment,” Darien replied, looking rather worried. “I wasn’t fast enough to catch you; I’m sorry. I didn’t want to move you, just in case you hit your head.”
Diana sat herself up, not feeling any sort of head trauma as she did so. “I think I’m fine. The Veil shadows engulfed me and I think I felt Charlotte being murdered.”
Even though he looked rather grim, Darien didn’t seem surprised. “She must have been killed on the grounds and it seems her death scarred the Veil. You carry her blood within you, Diana, and the echo of her spirit calls out to you.”
“It felt so real,” Diana said softly, the emotional and physical pain lingering within her heart like a fading phantom. In Charlotte’s last moments, she had thought only of her beloved Foxwell.
Seeing that Diana was physically unhurt, Darien helped her to her feet. “We found what we needed, let’s not linger in this place.”
She nodded her agreement and Darien used his abilities to replace the lid of the sarcophagus before they made their way back to the spiral staircase. When they reached the top, Darien moved the bookshelf back in place, covering the entrance to the tomb.
Still in a daze, Diana sat on the bed and brought her bag into her lap. She placed Charlotte’s golden apple within, next to the precious antique books, and sighed heavily. Looking to the fire burning in the heath, Diana couldn’t help but shiver at the memory of the searing pain in her chest—in Charlotte’s chest. Why had she been murdered with the burning blade of a Shadowstalker?
The shiver coalesced into the familiar chill that signaled magic use and Diana turned to see what Darien was up to. To her surprise he stood where he had been a moment ago, still lost in thought. That’s strange.
The cold void grew more intense and realization dawned on her.
“We’re not alone!” she yelled out in warning.
Her warning brought Darien back to reality and he sensed the danger as well. In an inhuman blur, he ran to Diana and clutched her tightly to his chest and Diana held the bag to her own. In a fraction of a second, they crashed through a cracked window, glass debris all around them as they fell to the ground below. Within an instant, Charlotte’s room exploded in an eruption of flames, smoke, and debris, and the force of the blast propelled them further away.
Still clutching her close with one arm, Darien stretched out his other arm towards the ground below, palm down. Diana watched on in astounded wonder as the hard ground erupted in a fountain of soft dirt that took the brunt of the impact and broke their fall.
Darien laid Diana on the ground and then stood with his back to her, surveying the area for the attackers. He stood firm with his hands out in a strange posture that Diana assumed to be a magical battle stance. Darien looked like he was about to kill someone and Diana knew he probably would if it meant keeping her safe.
The next few moments felt like an eternity as Diana stared into the blackness of night, looking for the enemy. Only the nothingness of the dark woods lay before her eyes. Even though she could feel the intense heat of the burning house, she shivered uncontrollably.
She knew where the attack was coming from.
“Behind you!” she shouted, and Darien swiftly turned around to see a ball of fire the size of a basketball hurtling towards them.
Darien’s arms moved with such grace and precision that Diana almost forgot the fiery ball of death. At his movements, the dirt surrounding them moved with lightning speed and form into a shield, turning from a dark brown into an onyx black in a fraction of a second. Diana felt the surge of the impact between the fireball and the now-stone barrier and then quickly fell to the ground in a ball—as tightly as humanly possible—as the heat of the explosion passed by on all sides.
When Diana opened her eyes, she found Darien on the ground as well, covering her with his body. Seeing her unharmed, he formed a small, arrow-head shaped, flint blade in his hand and swiftly stood up to throw it. With a thwip sound, the blade headed in the direction of the fireball attack.
As Diana peeked around the barrier to see if the weapon had hit its mark, she heard the sound of several more blades being thrown from behind her.
It was then that she finally saw the shadowy figure of their attacker,
now illuminated by the raging flames of the burning house. It was a woman—dressed in black leathers with a matching hooded cloak, her face covered by a menacing black mask.
Sensing danger, the shadowy assassin turned around and started to run. Darien quickly threw another flint blade in her direction and the weapon hit its mark at the back of the attacker’s hooded head.
The assailant didn’t fall, however, the blade having only made shallow contact and slicing open the back of her black hood. As the fire mage with murderous intent continued to run, like water from a newly tapped spring, flowed a current of scarlet red hair.
Chapter 13
Though I am Queen I am not free,
Nor is my beloved summer country.
With spear in hand and Chalice at my breast,
I will smite the flames of Rome’s injustice.
“Nothing happened?!” Lani asked in surprise and disbelief from her bed. “How could nothing have happened?”
All Diana could do was shrug. She knew this was going to be an uncomfortable conversation. Then again, almost any conversation with Lani Bradley turned uncomfortable, eventually.
“Let me get this straight,” Lani continued. “The two of you go for a romantic drive through the hills, looking at all the pretty leaves; you find an old abandoned plantation, or farmhouse, or whatever; Eric’s car won’t start, and it’s getting dark, so you decide to spend the night in the creepy old house, snuggled up close by the fire; you roll in the next morning doing the walk of shame; and you have the gall to tell me nothing happened?” Lani laughed hysterically, “Yeah right!”
“Well, it’s true—sort of,” Diana replied from her own bed. She pulled her knees up to her chest.
“What do you mean, sort of?” Lani gnawed on it like a dog with a bone.
“Well, we did kiss and things started to get very intense,” Diana continued. “Intense” is the understatement of the century, she couldn’t help but think. She still couldn’t shake the term “bonded for life” out of her thoughts.
“What, he couldn’t seal the deal or something?” Lani asked.
Diana felt the heat rushing to her cheeks, no doubt reddening with embarrassment. “No; not like that. We were interrupted.”
“Interrupted by what?” Lani sounded rather skeptical.
By a murderous flame throwing bitch name Terra—or Terraiyah—or whatever the hell her name is—that’s what.
“A pack of crazy rabid raccoons,” Diana lied. “They burst out of the attic into the room. Darien took a piece of wood and shooed them away, but there was no way I was going to stay there all night, so we traipsed through the woods with the flashlight. By the time the battery died we could see the town.”
That part of the story was fairly true. After Terra ran off, they decided not stay amongst the burning ruins of Flinders’ house and brave the forest in the dark. The flames had bathed the woods in enough light that they could find their way. When they finally saw the town it had felt as if they had died and gone to heaven. Sometime later, they happened upon an old mechanic’s garage with a beat up old 50’s pickup truck out parked out front. The kindly old man who owned the garage was sensitive to their plight and offered to drive them back to Columbus.
Just to be safe, Darien rode in the truck bed the whole way home.
When they arrived back at campus, Darien had the old man to drop Diana off first and all she had wanted to do was sleep—she’d even been ready to brave the nightmares of the Veil if she’d had to. Unfortunately, Lani had been wide awake and staring at Diana as she walked into the room, eager for juicy gossip.
With an exhausted sigh, Diana looked at the clock on her dresser—it was already 3:00 AM. So much for sleep.
“Raccoons chased you off, eh?” Lani repeated, obviously not buying Diana’s story. “Have any plans to take up where you left off?”
“I don’t know,” Diana replied sardonically. “Do you and Eric have any plans to actually go out to a nice dinner or something besides just going at it all the time?”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Lani said playfully. “We are usually so busy that it’s a miracle when we actually do get to spend some time together. Why waste it on the pre-game when the main event is much more fun?”
“I suppose you do have a point,” Diana admitted. “But there’s a lot more to a healthy relationship than sex, you know.”
“Oh yeah, what?” Lani called her out.
“Well, there’s having a meaningful conversation.”
“What do you think pillow talk is?”
“Okay; there’s sharing a nice meal together.”
“We order take out, eat a little before, and eat a little after,” Lani said with a smug smile and a taunting wave of her hand. “Keep them coming.”
“What about getting to know each other’s friends and family?” Diana knew she was grasping at straws.
“Both of our families are hundreds of miles away and we already know our friends. You done?”
“Yes,” Diana admitted in defeat. “I’m sorry; I guess sex is just the greatest thing in the world and it solves everyone’s problems and makes everyone’s relationship perfect.”
Lani smiled wide with satisfaction. “Yep; pretty much.”
Diana sighed in frustration. She knew Lani was just playing but the whole situation had reached a world-crushing magnitude. Since Diana last spoke to Lani, the simple act of having sex with her boyfriend had gotten exponentially more complicated. Not only would Darien be bonded to her for the rest of his life—which would be a great deal longer than hers—if the wrong people found out, he would be sentenced to the Nightmare and she would be put to death. Was having sex that worth it? According to her roommate it was.
“What’s the matter, kiddo?” Lani asked, sensing Diana’s inner turmoil. “I was just messing around.”
“Things are a lot more complicated than it seems,” Diana blurted out and then immediately regretted it.
“How so?” Lani asked her.
Diana scrambled inside her head for an adequate cover story but couldn’t think of much.
“Darien can’t have sex until he’s married,” she finally said, and supposed it was sort of true.
The look of surprise on Lani’s face was priceless. The whole notion seemed ridiculous to her.
“What—is he super religious or something?” she asked.
“Kind of,” Diana replied. “He was forced to pledge to only have sex with the woman he was betrothed to—or something like that. If he breaks his vow, he loses his inheritance.”
“So the parents are super traditional,” Lani said with a nod.
“Um yeah, his great-grandfather—Lord Gregory Shepherd—was a religious zealot in England and drew up all these contracts for his descendants and whatnot.” Wow; where did that come from? I’m a better liar than I thought.
“That’s rough,” Lani said as she got up from her bed. “Well, you better be earning that diamond ring m’Lady.” She finished with a mock curtsey.
“Wha—what?” Diana said in shock. “We’ve only been dating a few weeks, Lani! Plus, I’m only eighteen. I can’t even begin thinking about spending the rest of my life with someone.”
“Who said anything about the rest of your life?” Lani replied. “No one ever said you had to stay married. You get the rock on your finger, and he gets to finally mine your nethers without losing his inheritance. It’s a win-win for all parties involved.”
Diana just shook her head. “You really have no shame, do you?”
“Nope, none at all,” she replied. “And you love it.”
Diana laughed. “That I do, my trollopy friend. That I do.”
With Lani’s hunger for gossip satisfied, Diana was finally able to get a few hours of much desired sleep.
—
In the morning, breakfast didn’t go quite as smooth as Diana had hoped.
“You left my car where?!” Eric demanded a repeat.
“In a forest clearing in the Hocki
ng Hills,” Diana said with a look of anguish, preparing for the backlash. “It wouldn’t start and we were forced to walk into town to get a ride home.”
“Why didn’t you have someone tow it home?” he asked.
Honestly, the thought had never occurred to Diana. She had been so distraught over the evening’s ordeals, that the fate of Eric’s car had been the least of her worries. It was just as well—whoever towed the car would have likely asked why it was parked in front of a burning house.
“We thought that you’d want to take care of it yourself,” she said, hoping it would be enough.
Eric was fuming and Diana couldn’t blame him—she would be too if their places were reversed.
Lani finally came to her rescue.
“Calm down, Eric,” she commanded. “It wasn’t her fault. It was your car that broke down on them in the middle of nowhere. And why was that, hmm? Maybe you aren’t the awesome mechanic you think you are.”
“That’s not the point,” he said, still mad.
“Then what is the point?” Lani demanded to know. “Your piece of junk car got our friends stranded, at night, in Deliverance-town, Ohio. They both could have been raped and murdered.” Her words had broken through his berserker rage and he appeared to calm down.
“I’m sorry,” Diana sheepishly apologized. “I’ll pay for the tow, just let me know how much it costs.”
Eric sighed. “It’s fine. I’m just glad the two of you are all right. I’m sorry for flying off the handle.”
Lani patted him on the head. “Good boy.”
“I’m not your dog,” he said, annoyed at the patronization.
“No, you’re my bitch,” Lani replied with an amused grin.
Diana burst out in laughter and Lani followed suit.
Eric just smirked. “Well played.”
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