Shadows and Stars

by Becca Fanning

  “Padraic, assist the Queen’s men,” Eoghan ordered him.

  Jonah and Padraic joined the fray while Eoghan remained by my side. He looked at me and I saw worry on his face. “What?” I asked him.

  “You’ve changed in the few weeks that we’ve been apart.”

  I supposed that I had. “Perhaps you just haven’t gotten to fully know me.”

  “I did not know about you killing that man when you were a child.”

  Oh. “Well, now you do.”

  “I wish that I could have known you and rescued you from that life,” he whispered. “I wish that I could have kept you from witnessing such atrocities.”

  “Well, you weren’t and it’s made me who I am today. I must embrace them.”

  There was an odd twang sound that reminded me of a bow and then Eoghan’s hand was in front of my face, an arrow vibrating in his hold two inches from my left eye. He growled and ran off in the direction of where it was fired.

  “They left you all alone,” a small voice whispered. “How stupid.”

  “Retreat!” I yelled at Treyce and Padraic since I had to release my magic to defend myself.

  I didn’t get the chance. The short woman behind me grabbed my arm and coated me in flames. I screamed and doused them before they could do more than singe my arm hair off. The vampires, now freed from my spell, began attacking my guards. She froze me in place and smiled evilly at me. “Were it up to me, I would kill you right here, but our new King has other plans.”

  New King? Who was this King? Who was heading this coup?

  Padraic and Jonah weren’t going down easily, they were still fighting and I tried my hardest to break her spell with one of my own, teleport away from here, or do anything, but once again I was useless.

  Treyce sneaked around behind the witch and cut her arm with his claws. She bellowed in pain and released me. I tried to use my magic, but she’d zapped my powers somehow, making me weak and barely able to stand. I gathered what little magic I had, prepared to take out every vampire nearby, but stopped when a vampire dressed in a formal suit dropped down from the sky with Eoghan in his arms, a knife pressed against his throat and a trail of blood streaming from it.

  “Give up now or I kill him,” the vampire threatened me.

  I raised my hands in the air and said, “I surrender.”

  He smirked. “Good girl.”

  “Alyssa,” Treyce whispered in shock.

  I used the magic I had and teleported Treyce, Jonah, and Padraic to my chambers where they would be out of immediate danger.

  The vampire snarled, but then laughed. “You saved them when you could have saved yourself and Eoghan? How incredibly idiotic.”

  “If you’re going to kill me, get it over with,” I demanded.

  A vampire grabbed me, spun me to face him, and then punched me in the face, knocking me unconscious.

  My head hurt, a lot, and I was really uncomfortable. I opened my eyes and discovered I was chained to a wall, both of my hands hanging above me in strange chains that I could feel siphoning my magic power into them. How did that work? Magic and this dimension were so strange!

  “Are you okay?” Eoghan asked softly.

  I looked away from my chained hands. We were in a large stone cell with a door that had a rectangle across the top center that they could slide to look inside. There were no other prisoners in the room aside from the two of us and I hoped that Treyce and Jonah would find us soon. Eoghan was also chained to a wall with his hands above his head and he had a collar around his neck that looked painfully tight judging by the taut skin around it.

  I nodded and then looked down, embarrassed at my failure to protect them.

  “Does your face hurt?” he asked.

  I barked once with laughter at a joke from my dimension where the person would say, “no” and the asker would then say, “Well it’s killing me!”

  “Yes,” I replied, “but these chains are the worst. They are stealing my magic so I can’t teleport.”

  “Alyssa,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry that I wasn’t able to save you.”

  “You’re both awake!” the vampire who had forced me to surrender said and clapped his hands with a wide smile. “I’m so excited.” He was tall, lean, and creepy in a way that made me believe that we weren’t the first people he had chained up in his basement.

  “Pierre, I should have known that you were the one behind this. You’ve been power mad since we were children,” Eoghan growled at him.

  Pierre grabbed a dagger from his belt and stabbed it into my leg. I screamed from the immense pain and wished I could claw his smug smile off his face.

  “Stop!” Eoghan snapped. “Leave her alone!”

  “You see, I learned something from some of my spies,” Pierre told us as he paced slowly back and forth between Eoghan and me. “They saw you, King Eoghan, bowing, no graveling, to this woman. You who refused Pella’s marriage offer are abasing yourself to get this woman to even let you court her!”

  I had no idea that Pella had offered to marry him. Plus, it wasn’t like I made him bow to me or beg me. I wasn’t playing hard to get. He had broken my trust. I had a right to be wary of him.

  Tears flowed down my cheeks and I sniffed loudly. “You won’t make it as a King. You’re too pathetic,” I gasped out.

  He stopped his pacing to look at me and came to stand in front of me. “Pathetic?”

  “You only defeated us because you hired a witch to freeze me and my powers. Otherwise, you and your cronies would have been disintegrated.”

  His face contorted with rage. He grasped the dagger’s handle and twisted it while still in my leg. I screamed and then blacked out from the pain as Eoghan shouted my name.

  Cold water splashed against my face and I gasped as I awoke.

  “Alyssa,” Eoghan whispered.

  I lifted my head and couldn’t see who had thrown the water on me, but I found Eoghan bleeding from several wounds on his body. “Eoghan, what happened?”

  “I’m fine. How’re you?” he asked.

  “Good morning!” Pierre called in greeting and entered the cell before I could respond. “You’re both awake again. Wonderful.”

  “What do you want with me?” I asked hoarsely.

  “Why today we begin your torture,” he said smugly.

  Begin? Yesterday didn’t count? A vampire stepped out of the shadows to my right, unhooked my manacles from the wall and pulled me down until I sat on the ground.

  “Please,” Eoghan begged, “Just let her go.”

  “It’s so much more fun to watch your face every time I injure her,” Pierre said. He nodded his head and the vampire holding the chains of my manacles jerked them and forced me onto my back as he dragged me to a wooden rack in the center of the cell. He propped me up on the rack and ripped open the top back of my dress, exposing my skin to the freezing air.

  “No!” Eoghan bellowed and jerked on his constraints. “Don’t you dare!”

  Something slithered along the ground and I gulped nervously. Please don’t let it be snakes. Please don’t let it be snakes. I hated snakes. There was a crack in the air behind me and then it felt like a knife ripped open my back. I screamed in pain and sobbed at the pain so unbearable and unlike anything I had ever experienced before.

  Slither.

  Crack.

  Pain.

  Scream.

  Slither.

  Crack.

  Pain.

  Scream.

  Two more times that pattern repeated and then they released me from the rack to lie on my stomach on the stone floor in the pool of my blood that had gathered beneath me. I sobbed softly and prayed to whatever god might exist to save me.

  Pierre laughed as he left, the door slammed shut behind him, but did not keep his echoing laugh from the cell.

  “Alyssa,” Eoghan called with a choked-up voice. “Alyssa, say something please.”

  “I hate him,” I whispered. “I hate him more than I have ever ha
ted anyone before.”

  “You’re alive,” he breathed.

  I turned my head so I could see him and my eyes widened at the tears falling down his face. “Are you crying?”

  “I thought…” he didn’t finish his statement and I put two and two together. He thought they had killed me.

  I didn’t think I would survive this though. I was weak and without treatment there didn’t seem much hope of recovery. I was human after all and I had no pain tolerance. “I’m sorry,” I whispered to Eoghan, new tears slipped down my cheeks. “I should have listened to you.”

  “Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t talk like that. We’ll get out of this and—”

  “If I could go back, I would change so many things,” I said and then pain tore down my back and I couldn’t speak, move, or even breathe.

  “I would too,” he whispered.

  My fatigue grew and my eyelids grew heavier as I lay there in my own blood. I started to close my eyes and Eoghan yelled my name.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered again.

  “Alyssa!”

  NINE

  MUFFLED VOICES. They sounded like the grownups on the television show I used to watch where you could not understand a word they were saying, they just made noise.

  I stirred and then groaned at my sore body. I was lying on my stomach and my back itched really bad.

  “Don’t move,” Eoghan ordered me.

  “Itches,” I told him as I tried and failed to open my eyes.

  “You have to bear with it for a bit longer,” he whispered.

  I felt his warm hand stroke my face and inhaled his scent. He smelled so good. Warm. Comforting.

  “Step back,” another voice ordered. “I’m going to give her some more pain medicine.”

  “How?” I asked before they put me to sleep.

  “Padraic found us,” Eoghan informed me. “Now, go to sleep and I will be here when you wake up.”

  The next time I woke, my back no longer itched and I was not as sore as I previously had been. I opened my eyes and found Eoghan sleeping next to my bed. He looked tired, so I let him sleep while I surveyed my surroundings. It was only after a moment that I realized we were in his bedroom at his castle.

  Padraic walked in and froze when he saw me sitting up in the bed. “You’re awake!” he shouted and darted towards me to hug me. “I was so worried.”

  He had successfully woken Eoghan with his bellow and Eoghan took my hand in his. “How do you feel?”

  “Much better,” I said and smiled at him.

  “You gave us a great fright,” Padraic told me. “When you teleported us, we tried to get back to you, but they had already taken you and escaped.”

  “How did you find us?” I asked him. Eoghan had started running his hand up and down my arm while staring at our clasped hands.

  “Took me a bit, but I have a pretty good sense of smell too. Not nearly as good as Eoghan’s, but I’d recognize his scent anywhere.”

  “Mm, it’s sweet and tangy at the same time,” I said. “Very unique.”

  Eoghan stopped his stroking and looked at me with shock.

  “That’s exactly what it smells like,” Padraic said with a nod.

  “I wasn’t aware that you had an enhanced sense of smell,” Eoghan whispered.

  “I didn’t know until after being with you a few days,” I admitted.

  “So,” Padraic resumed, “I followed his scent to the dungeons and got there right after they’d whipped you.”

  I cringed at the memory. That was a pain I hoped never to experience again. “Do I have scars?” I asked softly and then wondered if Eoghan would think of me as less attractive with large scars.

  “There are scars,” Eoghan told me with a brush of his hand against my shoulder.

  “You can view them later,” Padraic said.

  “Can…can I have a moment?” Eoghan asked.

  I was shocked that he had asked for permission instead of just telling Padraic to leave for a bit. “Sure,” I whispered.

  Padraic bowed and left the room, shutting the door behind him.

  I looked at Eoghan, but he was staring at our hands still. “I have failed very few times in my life, but the times that I have failed are the most terrible failures I have ever witnessed.”

  “Eoghan—”

  He held up his hand to stop me from talking. “Please, let me finish,” he requested.

  I nodded and stayed silent.

  “I tried to escape. I tried to protect you. I couldn’t. I failed and you were injured as a way of getting back at me. I thought you had died…twice. It was unbearable. It was like losing my family all over again.”

  I could not imagine what it felt like to experience the things that he had.

  “I betrayed you. I don’t have any right to ask this, but I know now that my feelings are true and after experiencing what it might be like to live without you, I never want to experience that again. So…” he dropped to his knees and then pressed his head to the floor. “Please, if you can find it in your heart to forgive me and give me a second chance, please allow me to court you.”

  “How do I know that you won’t betray me this time?” I asked despite my initial reaction of just blurting out “yes”.

  “You don’t,” he whispered. “Aside from my promise and the order I gave Padraic?”

  “What order was that?”

  “To protect you at all costs, whether from anyone in my court, or outsiders,” he said. “Or even from me.”

  He had told his own guard to protect me from himself? I liked Padraic and I felt close to him, but would he go against his King to protect me?

  “I can’t bear you an heir,” I told him quietly.

  “What?” he asked and sat back on his heels.

  “I am unable to have children.”

  “I don’t need an heir,” Eoghan said.

  “A King needs an heir,” I said softly.

  “I don’t,” Eoghan said. “Because my sister is next in line and she will have heirs.”

  “I…” I bit my lip against the sob that tried to escape. “Please, excuse me,” I whispered and then ran as fast as I could out of his room and into the garden.

  “Alyssa!” Eoghan called after me.

  I ran with tears blinding me and somehow made it out into the forest without running into anyone or anything and only stopped when my legs burned from running too much. I fell to my knees and cried as my heart beat wildly in my chest.

  Why couldn’t I forget about him? Why did he affect me so much every time that I saw him?

  Warm hands picked me up and then I was in someone’s lap with my head on their chest. I knew his scent before he spoke. “Please, Alyssa. Please give me another chance.”

  “I’m still Queen despite the vampires’ attack,” I whispered as I let myself breathe in his scent and relax in his hold.

  “Is that what you really want? Do you want to be Queen?”

  No, but I couldn’t just give it up. Could I?

  “It’s too late. I already have the title.”

  “Assign someone as Queen,” he whispered. “You can give someone else the ruling title. You can make someone King or Queen.”

  “What if I go back with you and you change your mind?”

  “I won’t change my mind about you. You’ve been gone a month and I have yearned for this every minute of every day. I need you. I miss you.”

  Was it wrong to let myself be happy? Was it wrong to give him another chance? I knew many orphans who were arrested for something when they were wrong only to go on to positive lives and jobs.

  “I love you,” he whispered and kissed the top of my head. “I love you, Alyssa.”

  I loved him too.

  “Then let me love you,” he whispered out loud.

  We both stilled and I looked up at him. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You let your shields down,” he whispered and stroked my face with his fingers. “Please, Alyssa. I’ve never
begged for something before in my life. I’ve never wanted something as much as I want you.”

  “If I say yes, what then?”

  “I scream for joy, kiss you, and then we figure out what to do about your title before you move back to the castle with us permanently.”

  “If I say no?” I asked without looking at him.

  His face fell and he rested his forehead against mine. “Then I return to beg for your forgiveness every single day until you agree.”

  “You can’t run your realm that way,” I argued.

  “I can’t run the realm while all of my thoughts are focused on you as it is,” he whispered.

  I took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. I wanted to be with him. I wanted to stay in this castle, to the place that felt like my home. I stood up and walked away from him, leaned against the nearest tree and decided my fate. “Yes,” I whispered.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes, I’ll let you court me and come back to stay in your castle.”

  He roared loudly, sounding like a lion instead of a lynx, and his roar shook the trees around us. I turned around and watched as he walked towards me with a wide smile and felt that feeling that no other man had been able to give me, that absolute happiness and excitement at his nearness. He slid an arm around my lower back and pulled me closer to him and then kissed me fiercely, a claiming kiss.

  “She agreed?” Padraic asked as he dropped from the tree branch that he had been sitting on.

  Eoghan stepped back and nodded without turning from me. “She did.”

  Padraic cheered and hugged us both from the side. I laughed at his enthusiasm and Eoghan kissed me again.

  “I need to get back to the castle and to Treyce,” I said despite not really wanting to face this.

  “Okay,” Eoghan agreed. “We can go after you eat something. You’ve been asleep for two days.”

  Two days!

  Padraic led the way and Eoghan held my hand the whole way back. It felt right to be here, with him.

  After a quick meal in which I ate almost everything in sight, I teleported us to my chambers where I found Treyce pacing back and forth.