A lost look fills his eyes as he turns away, scanning the trees. His gaze stops, fixating on something. “I was saying . . . it’s so cold . . . has the snow come early?”
Fear crawls beneath my skin as I try and make sense of the dazed look on his face.
“Julius, what is it? What’s wrong?” I follow his gaze, looking into the trees as well.
A large raven is perched in the distance, watching us.
My heart skips sideways in my chest. That same raven was in the abbey courtyard. It followed me the night I fled from the burning keep.
Why is it following me?
“You need to look at me, Julius,” I say, pushing back at the creeping terror surfacing in me. Something’s happening. Something isn’t right. This isn’t just the magic from this place. I did something with my command, or this strange raven has done something. Whatever bit him has cast a fog into his mind.
“Look at me,” I say again when he doesn’t listen. I try and turn him to face me, but he’s rooted to the spot.
“Do you hear that?” he asks, his voice far away. “They call to me.”
Oh, gods, no. It must’ve been a nixie.
“Don’t listen, Julius,” I say, wanting him to hear my voice instead of whatever fae is teasing his mind. There must be a way to snap him out of it. If he hears his name aloud it will keep him grounded.
I force as much of my power into my words as I possibly can. “There’s nothing here but you and me. Listen to my voice, Julius, please look at me and hear only me.”
But it’s as if he’s encased in glass, my glamour slides right off of him, drifting easily away.
It’s all so strange, so wrong. Everything I’ve tried has gone wrong since the moment I met him. Why would the fae bring be into his path—why have they brought us to this place? Could it be something about him? I’ve never seen the fae so determined to play with a single soul. Other than mine.
“It’s singing, not far away.” He points to the other side of the glade, to the stones, the oak tree. “I can hear it—do you hear it?”
“No, it’s not real, Julius,” I say, fear breaking into my voice. I must get him out of here. “You know, you’re right. Come along, Julius, we should leave this place and—”
He pulls from my grasp and steps back into the glade. Back towards the doorway. “Is it a woman singing—or a bird, perhaps? Something fine—damn my bones, it hurts inside. She’s weeping. I can smell it.” He stares, his eyes glassy.
My throat clenches. Terror uncoils in my gut.
Goddess, help me, they have him.
But I can’t lose him, not now . . .
I move to stand in front of him again, searching his face. What do I do? I don’t know what to do.
“We should find her,” he says, dazed. “She needs me.”
He’s looking past me, through me, as if I were a ghost.
My stomach rises. “Please, Julius . . .” I whisper. But I don’t know what I’m pleading for. He has no control of this now. And neither do I.
He’s been taken over.
But where has it come from? And why?
I smell no goblins, sense no alfar or demigod of another kind. What has him held so tight?
The raven . . .
I look to the trees, but the bird is gone.
Julius grumbles indiscernible words under his breath and itches at the spot on his neck again, his mood shifting, sharpening. He groans then, a tormented sound, and presses his palm to his stomach.
“I can’t understand it,” he moans. “She’s so close, but she won’t let me in, she won’t let me see who she is—I must know her secret.”
A new chill works into my bones. Is he talking about me?
“I’m right here, Julius,” I say again, tears rising to choke off my words.
“I want her,” he moans. “I need her. I’m as empty as anything.” He moves then, pushing past me, heading towards the bone path and the doorway.
I snatch at his wrist, trying to tug him backwards, the other direction. “No. You’re not seeing right. It’s a lie. Listen to me—”
He slips easily from my grip, turning on me in a flash, screeching, “Stop pestering me!”
I stumble back, shocked.
His features twist, becoming unrecognizable. “I’ve had enough of you. You and your dark manipulations, your wickedness. You’re wrong inside, you wicked thing.” His words jar though me like a curse. And before I can make sense of it all, make sense of his shifting moods, he’s turning and running, across the glade, heading for the bone path.
And the mother oak tree. The doorway.
“No!” I screech, chasing after him, trying to snatch at his tunic, but it slips through my fingers, a burnt hole left behind from my touch. “Julius, please! It’s a trick.”
Lies, lies. It’s all lies.
“Please!” A sob bursts from my chest, my heart pleading to anyone who might hear me.
“You’ll never stop what’s coming,” he calls over his shoulder, his hysterical laughter echoing off the stones as he runs into their arms.
I was such a fool. Such fool a to let him follow me, to let myself fall in love with him. It’s all twisting, it’s all gone wrong . . .
I scream into the trees, “Leave him alone!” Whatever is doing this— “I’ll rip your bones from your miserable body! He belongs to me! He’s mine!” My pulse shakes me, my power searing every inch of my insides.
Mine!
Julius stops. Right at the edge of the mirror pool. He teeters, staring down, caught by his reflection.
I run up behind him, gasping air into my lungs. Oh, gods, thank the holy Danu. He didn’t go through the passage.
His toes sink into the muddy bones and moss as he looks into the dark mirror in front of the door. I dare not touch him. I’m scared to even speak. He’s so close to danger.
The silence stretches out.
“Come away,” I finally whisper beside him. “Julius, it’s okay.”
“She’s going to show me her crown of stars,” he says, his tone haunted. But as he watches the reflection his features twist in confusion. “No, not stars . . . why is there ice? God, saints be cursed, no!”
My body jerks as he falls to his knees. The damp earth sinks beneath him.
“It’s too late,” he sobs. “She’s gone. Everything’s gone. And you’ve taken her, given me nothing in return.”
I kneel beside him. “What, Julius? Taken what? What do you see?”
His head shakes violently. “She’s his now.”
“Who, Julius?”
“My Lily.”
A new wave of fear runs through me.
“After everything I’ve given her,” he says, beginning to weep, “After everything . . . her soul is his. She loves him. Not me.”
“No, I love you. Lily loves you—”
He shakes his head again, tears spilling down his cheeks. “You gave her to him, you killed her.” He points into the mirror, as if the dark surface held the truth. “You killed them all.”
I stare down into the mirror and see only my reflection looking back at me.
“Show me what he sees!” I demand.
Slowly, a white landscape slinks across the surface, snow-covered hills taking shape, an icy lake, a large raven soaring past, two lovers gripped in each other’s arms among the distant trees, one figure tall and broad, hair black as night, the other with hair of fire—
I lean closer. I can’t be seeing right—is that me?
But before I can understand the icy vision a blaze erupts, erasing the lovers. Screams fill my head, fire engulfing what looks like a stone tower.
No, a keep. Silhouettes run past, through a courtyard with a tree in center. A tree that held a family of doves within its arms the last time I was beneath it. Now flames encase it, they lick up the branches and cling to a collapsing figure near its base, the orange glow turning wool to ash, melting flesh. A woman leaps from a high window of the keep, her dark hair trailing behind
her. Her body breaks over a wooden cart, moats of burning paper fluttering down to rest on her charred corpse—
I jerk back, trying to escape the horrible sight. “It’s a lie,” I gasp. “The fae are lying to you, Julius.”
He’s bent over, pain crushing him. A renewed sob rakes through his body. “They’re all gone. Everything I was. My heart.” He clutches at his chest.
“No!” I say, his agony gripping me by the throat. “They were alive when you left them,” I remind him. “Your sister is well, remember?” I cling to him, trying to hold him, to comfort him, his torment spilling through me, becoming my own. “Everyone is well. I’m here. I’ll always be here—”
His body jerks upright. And his hand shoots out, grabbing my neck. Pressing into me.
He squeezes so hard, shocking me. My head thunders.
Panic overwhelms me. I struggle to pull free.
“I believe nothing you say,” he seethes, his eyes darkening, turning to coal, full of unharnessed rage. “You kill, you lie. You are a demon.”
His fingers cut into my skin as he gives me a jerk.
I gag, choke, writhe, everything blurring.
“Demon,” he hisses again, his voice morphing, shadowed features twisting on the word. Mist the color of night lifts off his shoulders, uncoils from his hands as they crush me.
No. My power surges, sliding through me, and I struggle to hold it tight inside my skin, desperate to be free, desperate not to hurt him. Don’t do this, please!
The darkness . . .
“I can’t believe I ever cared for you,” he grinds out. “Never again.”
I scratch desperately at his face. “No,” I rasp. “Please . . . love you.”
He growls, flipping me onto my back into the pool, my head striking bone and rock. “There is no love in you.” He presses me into the mud, the water splashing over my face cascading down my throat.
I gasp, try to rise, spraying the shallow water from my lungs as he climbs over me, his violence coming alive, the darkness filling him, billowing out around us, an echo of Sister Agnus, of the strange bird, the evil always chasing me. It’s determined to end me.
Somewhere in the shadow of my mind, I know . . . I could fight this energy, but I can’t fight him. Not my love. I can’t win.
Not without killing him.
Let the thing kill me, then. After Julius has wandered away, still caught in a daze, I’ll open my eyes once more, life will find me again eventually. My kind are very, very hard to kill.
Maybe this will free us both.
My hands release their hold on his arms and I go still. I surrender.
I stare up from beneath the mirror’s surface, sorrow coursing through me as I watch his contorted features, bright rage in his mad eyes, breath hissing through his teeth. And I see a stranger. Not the prince that held me in the glade only hours before.
A monster.
He squeezes tighter at my throat, pressing down with a sudden shove.
Bones snap. My pulse stutters, pain flaring through my skull. And the water stills, the grip on my throat loosening.
Darkness clouds my vision, my mind slipping, heart gone silent. My head is full of his urgent gasping lungs above me. Shuffling. Confusion. Before he releases a blood-chilling cry into the trees.
My fire twists in response.
His hands tug as I’m pulled from the water. “No, no, what’ve I done? What’ve I done?” he weeps over me asking the question again and again.
Heat slinks from my chest, across my skin.
The world muffling.
“Come back. My Lily . . . oh, God, help me.”
Everything fades. The golden light in the leaves above me, the sloshing water, the desperate cries of the man I love. Until I am a part of the darkness.
Warmth coats me, and I feel a hand touch my arm gently.
You should have listened, Daughter, a voice says, filled with sorrow.
“Mother?”
I cannot save you now. I tried to hide you, to keep you safe from its claws. But the Shadow has you, it has claimed you, my poor girl.
What does she mean? “Help me, Mother.”
I cannot. Not anymore. If only you’d listened . . .
I try to push away the clinging darkness, to find her, ask her why, why she allowed this? But the void holds me tight. It owns me now.
“I’ll listen, please, Mother. Send me back to him. I love him.”
He’s not meant for you, poor child.
“He is!” my spirit insists.
I feel her hand caress my cheek, gently, her heartache a presence between us. No, my daughter, he is not. He is the curse, the sacrifice that must be paid.
“But . . . why?”
The Shadow placed calamity over his line long ago, it controls him. As it controls you now. It will use you to destroy him. The Shadow has drawn you out. It has led you here. And when the sun sets on this day, when the moon rises, holding sway over the night sky, the darkness will have won your soul from me. You will be meant for another.
My spirit shivers.
No, it can’t be true. “I don’t want anyone else,” I cry.
It is the path you must take. I can hide you from these things no longer. I love you, Daughter.
“No, don’t go! Help me, Mother, please!”
I am watching over you, she whispers, turning away. Always.
“Please!” Desperation chokes me as she drifts from my presence. “No.”
I’m captive to the fear for a moment, denying her words could be true, not fully understanding them.
All I know is, something horrible has been woven over me. I’m trapped.
In darkness.
Lingering in the void of pain and despair.
Until I’m being dragged once more.
Back.
Into my new world.
Light filling my vision. Gold and orange unfurling around me. Like ribbons being cut, the binding of death breaking off. My power searing across my skin in a rush, bringing me back to life.
And I open my eyes.
To fire.
My fire. My flesh is steeped in heat, my power anxious for release, springing forth like a beast to catch hold of my clothes, licking up my body in a rush.
Before I can understand, before I realize—
It quickly catches the arms holding me.
Holding me . . .
No! “Julius!” I try and pull it back, to find control again.
But it’s too late.
His screams rise. Rise into the sky.
He cries out, looking from his fire-wrapped arms into my face. Confusion. Betrayal. His eyes reflecting the blaze.
I can’t stop it, I can’t understand any of it. The flames push their will, boring down to bones, slinking up, over shoulders, neck.
And his screams twist.
Coming alive.
Like a thunder in my soul.
Until the blaze cascades into his mouth. Swallowing him whole.
Leaving only the hiss of seared flesh in its wake.
And the cry of a raven in the trees.
TEN
Sorrow
I’m unsure how long I sit beside his smoking bones. Julius . . . my love. Gone. My mind drifts in and out of awareness, playing my mother’s words through my head, over and over, reliving the moment of my death. When it all went wrong. The sounds of the forest creak around me. Daylight fading into night. And I remain by his side.
What have I done?
Lost control.
No. No, it can’t be true.
The darkness has claimed me. Too late to be saved.
But it can’t be too late.
And yet, there he is. Ashes and ivory. A sacrifice, cursed, just like my mother said. Death created by my own hand.
I ache. My heart. My soul . . .
My love.
I can’t breathe. What’ve I—?
My Queen, comes a soft voice. Why do you cry?
I resurface from my storm of
thoughts, the agony in me, throbbing in my spirit. “I killed him,” I say, releasing a renewed sob. How could I have let this happen? He’s gone.
Well, the voice says, not true as it were.
I turn. Nearby the blurred shape of the ghost bird perches on a branch.
The naughty prince, he did kill you first, it clarifies.
I stare with throbbing eyes, my confusion, my horror, sparking into rage. This is the creature that tempted me to begin this horrible journey. It’s a part of the darkness. It’s not a friend.
“He didn’t mean to hurt me!” I lunge forward at the creature, but my weakness makes me stumble, and I crumble to my knees once more.
I grip the earth and scream, digging my hands into the mud. Several dry leaves near me burst into flames. “You did this!” I say through my tears, through this horrible agony inside me. But no, it’s all my fault. My foolishness that brought us here, that led him to his end. Mother told me, and I should have listened. I should have obeyed. I know this. But instead, I accuse. “You brought me to his path. He’d still be alive if it wasn’t for you and your wicked hunt.”
No, no, he and his are cursed, this was always to be his end. The bird makes a tittering sound as if it were laughing. Now, my master can use it wisely, though. Weave it into the right path for you.
And the scent of rot and ruin lifts into the air, as if in response.
Yes, yes, says a gruff voice. A path most twisty.
Most tumbly and bumbly.
Yes, stumbly.
Three familiar goblins rise from the stone and bones in the earth near my feet, taking shape, all crooked bodies, protruding black eyes, and mossy skin. The larger one holds out its boney fingers, pointing at me with its talon, reminding me of the agreement I made with it. Of the sharp edge cutting into me, drawing my blood to seal the oath.
It steps forward, speaking out loud, echoing those same haunting words, “First made in blood, and then fire. A bargain made, a bargain kept.” It grins, revealing its dirty sharp stone teeth. “Your new life has come for you, little queen of nothing—creature and castoff, caught in the web of her own rebellion. This will be where your path splinters.”
“Curse you and your bargain.” I spit at the creature’s talon-tipped feet. “Whatever you’ve done I won’t follow you. I’ll burn you to ashes for your trickery, you filthy beast.”
Spark and Sorrow Page 12
