Riven (The Illumine Series)

by Anders, Alivia

  Around them, the fighting had stopped. Siren guards watched in horror as their leader struggled to stay alive, unsure if attacking would help or hinder the situation. Kayden and Ari looked from one to the other, confusion and fear written on their faces. They must have thought I had walked off the deep end, after all.

  Out of the two, Kayden was the one who dared approach. Gently, he placed a hand on Ebony’s shoulder. “Let her go, Essallie, it’s over. She’ll help us.”

  “I don’t think so,” Ebony replied, a frown on her face. I wondered if she was disappointed he didn’t call her by her real name, but then again, how could he know it wasn’t me? Her hands tightened around Arielle’s neck, the sound of tearing flesh making me uneasy. “The minute I let her go, they’ll leap into the fight again.” She turned to face him. “I won’t let them hurt you, Kayden.”

  Hurt him? Kayden’s shock couldn’t be contained. His eyebrows rose high into the tangled mess of curls covering most of his forehead. “Put her down, Essallie.” Ebony shook her head, prompting Kayden to repeat. “Please, put her down. She won’t do us any good dead.”

  For a minute, Ebony seemed to have ignored him. She looked back at the Siren nearly unconscious in her hands, then opened them and stepped back. Arielle fell to the floor, gasping and coughing, dark purple bruises covering her neck like a handprinted tattooed choker.

  Instantly, Ebony played up on her cuteness of impersonating me. “I was only trying to help you,” she pouted, shoulders slumped in defeat like a child caught in the act of doing something naughty. “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do? You know, you and me, together?”

  “When did I become a third wheel?” Ari muttered under his breath.

  Ebony’s gaze snapped to him, eyes narrowed to thin slits. The insult shot from her mouth like a shotgun blast to the chest. “Because you linger like aftereffects of nuclear fallout and can’t take the hint that you’re never going to get laid.”

  In the far back of the room, someone snickered. Ari opened his mouth to argue, when Kayden stepped in front of Ebony’s view, blocking out all the rest. Leaning close, I nearly did a victory shout when the question formed on his lips.

  “Where is she?”

  Ebony tilted her head to the side, like a bird drawn to a new treat. “Who do you mean?”

  “Don’t play games with me,” Kayden smiled, but it didn’t touch his eyes. “Essallie, where is Essallie?”

  “But I, I’m right here,” Ebony tried in vain to persuade him. But Kayden was no fool to her tricks, not any more. For a girl who had brewed to life in my head, she didn’t have the slightest clue how I behaved. “If I’m not Essallie, who am I?”

  A voice, shaky and warbling, came from high on the stairs. Zeevna stood proud and tall, a finger pointed down directly at my body. Fear danced in her eyes, manifesting in her skin like a tremor under the superficial layers. “You are dimi-ani, the other half holding the Nephilim hostage inside of you.”

  Gasps ran amongst the remaining guard, a noticeable fear crossing their faces. Arielle raised a hand, covering her mouth. Ebony spun around, what precious control she had rapidly slipping through her false fingertips. From the other side of the mirror, I cheered Zeevna and Kayden on.

  Emotions flickered past Ebony’s face like tiny flashes of light. Anger, hurt, defiance, bitterness, sadness, defeat, rotating and changing her from the inside out. Finally it stopped, all emotion wiping clean from her face to replace with a lazy, drawling smirk that fluttered her eyes.

  “Oh, Kayden,” she purred, sauntering forward, tantalizingly swaying her hips. Her hands found Kayden’s chest, running up and down in slow, teasing strokes. “It’s been so long, I had almost forgotten what this feels like.” She gave a thoughtful, time-tested pause, hands still moving. “Tell me, how’s Juliet? Nice and dead, I take it?”

  Kayden visibly flinched, but made no attempt to move away from the wolf in my sheep’s clothing. “What have you done with Essallie?”

  “Don’t worry about her, my love,” she said breathily, batting her eyelashes at his impatient gaze. Her hands rested on his upper chest, subtly inching downward. “Worry about what is to come. We’re finally going to have each other, it’s all falling into place.”

  Ari took a step forward, but Kayden shot him a glance, freezing him in place. “What is falling into place, angel?”

  Her nose wrinkled at the term of endearment. “Poor choice of pet name, but I can forgive it. I can forgive anything you do, unlike that fledgling Essallie.” Venom laced her words, strong enough to feel their sting. Ebony’s tone became calm again as she addressed Kayden. “I’ve wanted you since the day we met, but the world keeps getting in our way. For example,” her hands moved off his lower chest, cupping his chin tenderly. “You were so infatuated with that pesky little mortal, Juliet, that I had to do something to get you to notice me.”

  Kayden’s eyes widened frightfully. “You... you...”

  “Didn’t take much persuasion for that vampire to turn her,” Ebony continued, picking at the memory with a fond grin. “I knew with her out of the way, you’d finally see the real love of your life. But you’re doing it again, falling in love with someone other than me.” Her expression turned dark, her grin souring and twisting. “I’m not worried, though, because I’m so close to finally being here, finally loving you.” Pulling his face down to her level, her lips pressed against his, forcing the kiss. She trailed a line of them, running along his jaw and cheek as he stood there, shell-shocked by her words. “It won’t be long now. Her body is almost mine.”

  Overhead, Zeevna laughed. Ebony turned to snarl at the sea-foam colored woman, only to pause upon seeing the tiny, glass vial filled with grey water in the Siren’s hand. “Not if I have anything to say about it,” she challenged Ebony, flinging the vial with alarming speed. I watched as it shattered against Ebony’s head, shards of glass and droplets of water raining over her face.

  Ebony screeched in agony, pushing back from Kayden and pressing her hands to her head. Grey smoke blew off her skin in waves where the water made contact. Inside my blackened prison, the mirror shook, exploding jagged chunks of glass as Ebony was tossed back inside. She had barely begun to open her mouth when the grey smoke enveloped her, and she vanished completely.

  The shards of glass quickly reformed, showing me the picture outside. My body had frozen in mid-scream, face contorted in a mask of pain. I felt a pull in my chest, tugging at me closer to the mirror until I pressed my chest against it, sucking me through the hole and tossing me back into my body. It was like a spirit returning to its home, or in my case, my soul finding my shell of a body to inhabit again.

  I inhaled sharply, awakening the stilled cells within. I barely made the step to face Ari and Kayden when my knees buckled beneath me, blotches of dark clustering my sight. My eyes fluttered shut, warm arms catching me before I could hit the ground. Only the shaking, frightened whisper Zeevna said reached my ears before I let the dark take me whole.

  “It has begun.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  EVERYTHING BURNS

  Like a piece of paper tossed into an open flame, I was burning alive.

  Fire races along the sides of my bed, engulfing the wood and brass frame of my childhood bedroom. The walls begin to melt, wallpaper curling and blackening at the flames licking up and along the wall. Burning, melting flesh hits my nose, and I double over, gagging. For a second, I believe it’s my skin, but when I stretch out my hands, turning them palms up, nothing but untouched, perfect skin displays before me.

  That’s when I look further into the room.

  A shadowy figure stands inside, shifting from side to side on my engulfed mattress. She giggles, light and airy, and steps down from the bed, walking through the flames without care. Her long, raven black hair swings in a braid behind her, leaving her large and sharp brown eyes open to the world.

  Stopping in front of me, Ebony leans in, hands clasped behind her back. Her lips graze my earlobe, del
iberately enjoying the shiver that shudders down my back.

  “You will lose everything,” she whispers. “Starting with Jayson.”

  Slowly, my eyes opened, fear jolting my chest at the vast darkness that surrounded me. For a moment, I thought I had been locked back in my mind by Ebony, forced to watch her use me and make further advances on Kayden while openly chatting about my doom. Thankfully, once I noticed it was a bed I was lying in, and a sparsely decorated guest room with the lights turned off, I sagged back onto the dampened sheets, breathing a sigh of relief. It was a dream, all of it had been a terrible, mind-numbing dream. There was still time to make things right; time to save Jayson, apologize to Abigail, time to put an end to Lucretia’s reign.

  But I was far from out of the woods. I was running out of time, faster than I had thought.

  From the first moment I had met Kayden, my clock had begun to unwind. The hands wound every which way they wanted, surging me forward and back, bringing me one step closer to burning to a pile of ash, then yanking me back and breathing life into my tired shape. It was a tug and pull, a constant game of betting that held no real prize at the end, just the potential win of another day to fight the way my life had originally intended to play out.

  I sat up, squinting as my eyes adjusted to the dark. The room was small, build like a compact glass dome. Ocean water and different, distinct colored fish swam above, the ocean water tinting the room to a dark blue hue that explained the dark. My bed was tiny like all the furniture in the room, blue-green bed with full sheets and blankets, matched with a glass end-table and handmade seashell lamp, a tiny oval shaped mirror hung on the wall. A drift wood chair took up the remaining, minuscule space. It vaguely reminded me of the compact sleeper pods people used in Japan; tiny, simplistic.

  Within seconds, my mind was racing, trying to place every event into a slot on my short memory bank. Things had spiraled out of my control so quickly, it was almost a head rush just to keep up with all of it. What started as a battle between Kayden and I had rapidly involved Ursula and Leo, two people now dead because of me. The sting of tears began to cloud my eyes, each death flashing in my mind. Then came my grandparents, two people who probably never knew what was going on, that their granddaughter was a half-angel wielding fire like her life counted on it. Who knew where Serena or Lilix was, or if Abigail and Jayson were okay.

  Jayson. Hot tears ran over my cheeks as I thought of my brother. We’d gone from hardly knowing another to becoming best friends, only for me to leave him with a cryptic call that didn’t promise a safe return home. Even if I did make it through this, whatever was happening to me both inside and out, who was to say he would still be there? Who was to say he’d even want to see me?

  I shifted onto my side on the tiny wooden bed, biting on my lower lip to stifle the sobs bubbling in my chest. This was too much, way too much for any adult to go through, let alone a teenager. The life of a Nephilim was hard, cruel and cold. Part of me was almost glad I would die soon; I wasn’t sure I could handle the pain that came with fighting the world and everyone in it.

  Sitting up again, I stretched and turned on the lamp perched on the end table. A flash of red caught my eyes, and I froze. Lifting my hand out in front of me, I noticed a red band, thin and made of some type of paper, knitted around my wrist. Looking at my other hand, I saw it again. The bands had definitely not been there before, and I wondered if they were a gift of some sort from Zeevna, or Arielle. I laughed, shaking my head. Arielle giving me a gift would be like Kayden leaving me in peace. Never going to happen.

  I stood, crossing the short space to stare at the mirror mounted on the wall. Fear tickled at my chest; what if I looked in it and was sucked back into my mind? A nervous laugh passed my lips. Surely I wouldn’t fall to pieces over seeing a mirror. Falling to pieces seeing what I looked like, on the other hand, that was a different matter entirely.

  I could feel myself being torn in half, riven by the spiral I had endured these last few hours. Was this really how my life was going to be, a roller-coaster of captures and battles, trying to find allies hidden amongst the enemies waiting for me to fall? In a blink of an eye, I went from being held in a cell, destined to torture, to the hands of a Siren Queen who had unleashed some wild monster inside of me. I only briefly dared wonder what else could, and would, go wrong when I’d find Rinae and Euriel.

  Facing the small, oval shaped mirror, the person staring back at me bared little resemblance to the scared, terrified girl I had first been when this all started. My skin clung to my thinned, deeply aged face from lack of food and sunlight. Dark, purplish bruises littered my body, some shades of dark green or sickly yellow as they tried to heal. But my eyes were the biggest shock of all; long had the dark, muddy brown gaze of constant worry and apprehension vanished. Instead, a sharp, strong, willful pair of eyes stared back, assuring me that what I was doing was right. My body may have been failing, but my supply of willpower was barely being tapped into. And in one move, I would change that.

  “Your time has come, Lucretia. No more pretending. I will slaughter the poison you’ve pushed into my veins, until every last drop is free. And then I will come back for you, and I will kill you.”

  A promise is a promise, after all.

  The sound of knuckles rapped at the door, and I let out a little shriek. I paused, holding my breath, when the sound happened again. A sigh sounded from the other side, followed by one more knock.

  “Essallie, are you up?” Zeevna called to me from the other end of the door.

  My shoulders dropped, and I nearly laughed in hysterics. Zeevna wasn’t a threat. If anything, I owed her one hell of an apology, and a thank you for saving me with that odd bottle of grey water. Opening the door, I squinted automatically as light flooded in, shining over my face, bathing me in a buttercup yellow hue.

  “Ummm, hey,” I offered, glancing at the room behind me. “You weren’t planning on coming in, were you?”

  She laughed, smiling. “Not at all. I was actually just coming to fetch you. Arielle is asking to see you.”

  What little happiness I had built up swirled down the drain of my spoiled mood. Frowning, I moved to close the door. “No thanks. I think I’d rather eat a lionfish raw.”

  “Essallie, wait,” Zeevna said hurriedly, shoving a bare, green foot in the room. A large, navy blue birthmark covered half of her foot, like a blob of paint carelessly dropped on her skin at birth. The mark tickled at my brain, dragging a faint memory of another certain someone I knew with green skin and a blue mark. “Please, she wants to help. It’s the least she can do after nearly killing you.”

  I carefully weighed my options, pursing my lips. Flinging the door all the way open, I strode out past Zeevna. “I so better get some kind of good karma for doing this.”

  She was beside me in the second, the door swinging shut by itself in the growing distance. “Come on,” she said, reaching for my hand. “You’re going to love seeing the palace. Not everyone does, you know.”

  Together we walked, Zeevna leading the way through the spiral marble paths turning every which way. Occasionally she’d point out a spot along the way, sharing a moment of her past that made it a memorable location. While it was cute and all, I had a different line of memories I wanted to ask her about.

  “Sorry about leaving you in a guest pod alone like that,” she sheepishly confessed, catching my attention. “We weren’t sure what to do once you passed out. Arielle thought it best we keep you in a holding cell, for your own good,” she added in a rush. “But I told her you’d be fine in a normal bed.”

  I nodded, staring around us. Nothing had changed; no funeral procession of Siren to mourn the ones Ari and Kayden had slaughtered defending all three of us, no sheets of black hanging outside of the crystal and gold houses. Even the weather, perfect and untouched in sunny shades and light blue ocean overhead, remained unchanged. It seemed odd, surreal.

  “The main dome doesn’t change,” she said, startling me. I wondered i
f she could read my mind. “That’s why we crafted those little chambers you woke up in. Sleep in dark, wake up to light, makes scheduling things much easier than working with the sun. It is a neat little trick, though. Some centuries old enchantress did it for us, long before humans documented anything. Back when it was mainly all the supernaturals ruling the planet, existing out in the open.”

  “Does it bother you?” I asked, scratching at the bands on my wrists. “Having to hide from a lesser race, letting them govern your life?”

  She shrugged, her multiple strands of beads rustling with the movement. “It used to, honestly. After a while you want to know more about their world, and how they perceive you, but then you actually do and you see they’re so wrapped in their small worlds they hardly notice you’re there.” For a moment, she looked like she was on the verge of tears. “I’m just glad I’m not the idiot who told them about our home.”

  “One of your own sold you out?”

  “You could say that.” Zeevna licked her lips, scrunching her face. “Before we placed a barrier over the portal, that little pool on the island where we first met, other supernaturals came and went as they pleased. Vampires, Fae, Goblin,” she shuddered at the last one, muttering something I couldn’t hear. “Basically, one of them came by for the first time, and fell in love. When Arielle wouldn’t let him stay, he disguised himself as a human, went to the press and claimed he knew of an underwater paradise, talking about our vast riches of gold and jewels. Atlantis, he called it. Apparently, humans eat that kind of story up, because years later, mortals still go diving in their waters trying to find us.”

  I snorted. Definitely sounded like a human thing; nothing screamed cliché like a get-rich quick through discovery diving plan. My mind urged me on, turning to the questions that I really itched to have answered. “So, you’re- are you- technically are you immortal, or are you really immortal?”