“When I told you I was an assassin sent to the palace to kill you it was not really the truth. I mean I was hired to kill you, but doing so was never my intent. I only used it as a cover and a means to get close to you.” I was babbling. I didn’t know exactly what to say and how to say it.
Confusion and hurt flashed in Zander’s eyes, but he remained quiet waiting for me to finish before he rendered judgment. It was one of the traits I loved most about him. He looked for the best in people. He measured them by their hearts and their intentions instead of merely by their actions. He knew things were not always as they appeared and he waited to learn the truth in its entirety before passing judgment.
“My name is Skyler Errin but I don’t belong to Anthame’s low society or in any other place in the mortal realm.”
Disbelief mingled with the confusion on his face.
“I suppose I should start at the beginning,” I sighed. “It might make what I tell you more believable.”
I told him about Faerie and how our legends say it and the mortal realm were created by Chaos and Order after Chaos introduced magic into the world. I told him about King Regias and Belial’s coup and his subsequent reign of tyranny. I told him about the one atrocity after another that Belial committed. I told him about the Order and its leaders and how I came to be Belial’s ward and what he sought to use me for. The Order unearthed the same information Belial did from his very own Seer, a fae with the magic of both foresight and hindsight. I told him that instead of taking him to Faerie and delivering him to Belial who would see him dead in order to eliminate the threat he posed to his rule, the Order had come to me with a different plan that I willingly went along with. We planned for me to bring Zander to Faerie but to deliver him to the Order’s leaders instead.
Once Zander crossed into Faerie the magic of the realm would recognize him as one of the Asteroth bloodline. He would immediately begin to change from mortal to fae. It would take time, but as he did he would develop and be able to wield magic as well. The type could not be predicted until it started to manifest but all of the Asteroths to ever exist claimed powerful magic. The Order’s leaders would hide him while Faerie changed him and help him learn to use his magic as it manifested. Faerie needed him to challenge and kill Belial. His Roth blood was through his mother’s line and for reasons Belial’s seer refused to reveal, Zander in particular was the only living Roth whose blood Faerie would recognize as Asteroth.
To Zander’s credit he did not automatically dismiss my confession as the ramblings of a young girl gone mad. He did however take a step back from me and regard me through suspicious eyes.
“Let’s say I believe you. Did you ever love me at all? Was any of what you appeared to feel for me ever real? Or was it simply all a part of your plan to gain my trust so that what you just told me would be more digestible? Was I always just some pawn to be used in a game of political scheming?” His tone grew more disgusted as he spoke.
He flung the words at me. They hit me with such force that I physically recoiled from them.
The knife to my heart sparked a bitter, ugly, furious emotion that bubbled up and out of me. I had no idea where the context of the words I spoke next came from but the truth in them reverberated through every cell in my body.
“How dare you accuse me of not feeling for you? Not loving you? How dare you stand before me with condemnation in your eyes? You deceived me far greater than any wrong you feel I have committed against you. You lied to me. You broke me. I loved you and you promised our bond would last for an eternity. You held me in your arms and twirled me across a ballroom floor and promised you would forever be my King and I would forever be your Queen. You made me need you more than I needed oxygen to breathe or a life to live. You made be believe we would have forever together. Then you left me. You drank from the cup of un-making and left me. Not just for a millennium or two but for forever. You could never be re-made. Never be reborn. When I found you soulless and forever lost to me in our chambers I shattered into a million, tiny, fractured pieces. You left me forever after promising and making me believe we would have forever.”
My entire body shook violently from the strength of the emotion that overtook me. I wanted to launch myself across the space he had put between us, both to close the distance and to attack him for placing it and an endless eternity between us. I forced my limbs not to obey the madness that had overcome me. I clenched my fists together and held them tightly at my sides. As I fought for oxygen awareness of my surroundings faded.
I was back in the other ballroom that overwhelmed my consciousness when I first entered the one that contained Zander, the royal family, and all of Anthame’s high society. Only this time I was an observer instead of a participant in the scene that played out. A girl who looked like me but not danced in the middle of the room with a boy whose eyes were identical to Zander’s. She laughed and looked up at him lovingly as he twirled her in his arms. He looked down at her with love and adoration but when he smiled back, it did not reach his eyes. There was a sad darkness that lurked beneath their surface.
“I love you,” she said to him.
“I love you more,” he said back to her. His words were genuine but his tone held an odd note.
The girl was not naïve. She was more perceptive and aware of others’ emotions than most and picked up on the wrongness. “Promise me we will have forever,” she half demanded half pleaded. Her voice came out strained and desperate sounding.
The boy hesitated. When he did not immediately respond the girl grew more frantic. Tears threatened to spill from her eyes as she gulped in large panicked breaths of air. He hated to see her upset and hated even more to see her cry. He truly did love her with every fiber of his being. But even though they both looked no older than eighteen, he was millennia older than she. The expanse of time she had been alive was only a hairsbreadth in comparison to the thousands of years he had lived. Immortality wasn’t the prize most mortals thought it was. Ennui was weighing on him again. More heavily than ever. He’d loved the girl in front of him at first sight and thought she would relieve his burden. She did at first. He loved her more passionately and more strongly than he had ever loved another. She was vibrant and fierce and beautiful and full of life. But the strength of his love for her only caused the truth of his existence and hers to press down upon him more heavily. They could have an eternity together but she would eventually fade. He would not. Even knowing what he planned to do he looked down at her and allowed the lie to pass from his lips. “We will have forever.”
He tucked a wild bronze curl behind her ear. He couldn’t bear the see her so upset. It was an act she would not forgive him for but he would accept her condemnation if it meant not seeing her cry in the final moments they had together. It was selfish but he wanted her last memories of them and him to be happy ones. He pressed his lips to hers and kissed away the last vestiges of worry that marred her features.
The girl allowed him to erase the worry that gnawed at her gut even though she knew better. Hope is an infectious thing. It is both a blessing and a curse. It allows you to keep living through the darkest of times in the knowledge that there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. It also allows you to burrow your head blindly in the sand and ignore the wrongness that exists around you. It allows you to live in the constructed reality of what you want to happen versus the actual reality of what is happening.
The guy and the girl danced the rest of the night away in consciously ignorant bliss. The boy retired to their rooms in the South Tower of the palace before the girl. He urged her to stay behind and bid their remaining guests farewell. She should have objected but Hope caused any protests she may have made to die before they even formed on her lips.
She remained in the palace ballroom while he retired to the South Tower. She did her duty as Queen and bid the fae who attended the annual summer solstice revelry farewell.
She pushed the door to their bedchamber open and found her King still in his roya
l robes lying in the middle of the bed on top of the duvet.
He is only sleeping, Hope made her tell herself. She crossed the room and stood over him. His body lay motionless. As still as death.
Fae are immortal. We don’t die. We live for thousands upon thousands of years. He is an Asteroth. He is invincible,” Hope made her lie to herself.
When she spotted the silver colored chalice with the ancient markings etched into it she could no longer deny the truth her soul already knew. That is when she broke. Her soul splintered at the sight of her heart lying unnaturally still on the bed with the cup of un-making beside him.
He wouldn’t do it. He promised you forever, Hope screamed in denial inside her head.
Hope was wrong. She should have never listened to it.
A river of tears flowed freely down her cheeks as she struggled for air. The excruciating pain that radiated outward from her chest made it hard to breathe. It was too much to bear. The boy on the bed was her life, her heart and her reason for existing. She couldn’t go on without him. She did not want to go on without him. He promised her forever then robbed her of it in the same expanse of time. She was furious at his selfishness and his deception. If he were conscious she would rage and yell and scream and hurl herself at him in outrage. But she couldn’t do any of those things. The boy she loved more than life itself lay in their chamber in a state more final than death for a fae. His very essence, his essential self had been un-made. It could never be reborn or imbued with life again. It could never make its way back to hers in this eternity or the next.
As she looked down upon him through vision clouded by tears she loathed him for leaving her as much as she loved him. In an impulsive act born out of rage and hurt and a broken heart she did the last thing she knew he would ever want her to do. If he could make selfish decisions with so little regard for her then so could she. She picked up the chalice and drank the last drops of the golden liquid that remained behind. Then she laid on the bed beside the boy she loved. She placed her head on his chest and waited to be un-made. A fresh wave of tears leaked down her face as she did. They weren’t for herself. She wasn’t afraid of ceasing to exist for all of eternity. They were the result of the loss of love and hope and a forever of happiness ripping her heart from her chest.
The image of the pair lying on the bed abruptly changed. The guy morphed into Zander and the girl became me. A hole appeared in Zander's chest and an identical self inflicted one appeared in mine. The surroundings faded and we were no longer in the bedchamber in the South Tower. The space around us was clouded in shadows and muted grays. Then the vision just as abruptly disappeared leaving me with a nagging sense of foreboding.
I blinked as the vision faded and I returned to the reality of the High Palace in Pleith and the Prince who stood before me. I pondered why my sight was blurred until I felt the wet moisture stinging my eyes and realized I was crying. Zander stepped closer to me and gently wiped my tears away before I could.
“I am sorry.” Whispers of recognition and regret glinted back at me in his eyes when I looked up into them.
“For what? I should be apologizing to you,”
I asked genuinely confused.
For the first time since we met he looked unsure of himself. “I don't know. I just felt the need to say it. You know considering...”
My eyes widened in surprise. “You saw it too?”
“Yes, and it is not the first time I've had visions of the pair. Ever since we returned to Pleith betrothed they have made sporadic appearances during my waking and sleeping hours.
“Me too. They're so like us but not.”
Zander let out an unsteady laugh. “At least I know I’m not going mad now if it’s happening to you too. It's like-“
“You experience two realities at once. The one in the present and the one playing itself out before your eyes,” I finished for him. I knew I was not going mad either. Between that and the guiding voice I had been listening to I was fearful I might have been.
“What do you think it means?” He asked me.
“I wish I knew. I have just as many questions and no answers as you undoubtedly do, but I think I know where we can get them?”
His face automatically hardened at what my words insinuated.
“I promise it's not a ploy to get you to agree to go. The South Tower where she found him at in the vision, I know where it is. I've been there before. It's in the palace in Faerie. The one that Asteroths have occupied since the dawn of the realm’s existence. The boy in the vision, there is a portrait of him hanging in the South Tower. You both share the same eyes. He was one of the rulers of Faerie. I've never seen the girl before. There's no portrait of her beside his.”
Zander combed a hand through his short dark hair as I spoke. I had come to know it as one of his telltale gestures that he was warring for control of his emotions and trying to keep them in check.
“Gods Skyler I don't want to believe you. A part of me barely even wants to be around you right now. You never stopped lying to me. Deceiving me.”
I took the coward’s way out letting my gaze drop to the ground so I would no longer have to meet the weight of his stare. “I know.”
He sat beside me on the balcony wrapping his arms around my shoulders. His strong fingers gripped my chin and forced me to look at him.
“I’m not sure what the couple’s in the vision connection is to us or why we are seeing them but their uncanny resemblance to us makes it hard to deny that there is a connection. Maybe it’s my gut, maybe it’s the gods whispering to me or maybe it’s the universe trying to warn me, but something is telling me that what we saw at the end is a fate we are predetermined to meet. Despite how I feel about your actions at the moment I love you. I have from the moment I first laid eyes on you and will until the moment my eyes permanently close. If that’s my fate I will willingly meet it but I will not allow that to be yours. If going to this realm you call Faerie might help us unravel what we saw and avoid the ending then that is all of the convincing I need. But be clear Skyler, I am not going to challenge a King or take a throne. I am going for the singular purpose of saving you from a fate I refuse to be yours. You have suffered enough and you shouldn’t have to suffer anymore or ever again. You burn too bright for your light to be quelled so early. I should be furious with you. I should refuse to forgive you. I should make every attempt to erase you from my life and my heart. But I cannot. You have embedded yourself too deep into it. Staying angry with you would be as impossible as telling my heart to stop beating. Loving you is as instinctual as breathing. I cannot stop loving you. All that I can do is ask that if your feelings are as real for me as you claim them to be then by the Gods Skyler let this be the last lie between us. If you love me back no more deceptions only the truth.”
“I don't deserve you,” I cried into my hands.
Zander wiped away one tear and then another until none remained. "I suspect it is I who don't deserve you."
I was starting to suspect the same thing but I wasn't yet ready to face what his admission might mean. I was already spread emotionally thin. I could only deal with one crisis at a time and our shared vision had just added one maybe two additional ones to my list. I would worry about Belial and our seemingly impending deaths for now and sort through everything else later.
Chapter 8
“Zander do you have to go?” Kiera spoke to her brother but she stared up at the both of us with moist eyes.
Her brother bent down on one knee and hugged his little sister. “I do Kiera, but I promise not to be gone long. I will be back before you know it.”
He believed the promise he made to his sister. He told her the same thing he told the King and Queen. He’d discovered sympathizers of Krishna’s hiding out in the kingdom of Saywren. The royal family thought we were leaving to quell a growing plot to remove Zander’s father from Anthame’s throne.
In truth the plot died with Krishna. We were really leaving for Faerie. Zander had his mind s
et on discovering our link to the couple from our shared vision and finding out how to avert the vision of our future we both saw. Once he saw those two tasks accomplished he insisted on leaving Faerie and returning to the mortal realm. I couldn’t let that happen. Faerie needed him even if he didn’t want it to or think it did.
I hadn’t given up on mine and the Order’s mission. Belial had to be dealt with. I would just have to try harder to convince Zander of that fact. I hoped that once we were in Faerie and he witnessed the destructiveness of Belial’s reign for himself it would make it easier to get him onboard.
I knelt down and hugged Kiera next. The Princess occupied a soft spot in my heart. “Emily will take good care of you while Zander is gone. She’s even more fun than he is.”
Emily gave Kiera’s hand a supportive squeeze from her spot beside the princess. “I promise we will have loads of fun. I’m not Skyler or your brother, but I will do my best. Whatever you want to do just name it. I am at your service Princess.”
“Even archery?” Kiera eyed her making it clear she had yet to make up her mind about Emily.
Emily chewed her bottom lip. “Well…I admit I have never strung a bow or shot an arrow, but it seems like it will be fun to learn. Maybe you can teach me?”
Kiera beamed at the prospect of being the teacher to someone older. “Okay.” She squeezed Emily’s hand back finally making up her mind about the noble girl and deciding she would do as a suitable companion until her brother and new sister returned.
Chapter 9
My magic only worked to open a portal to Faerie at places where the mortal realm and the realm of Faerie backed up to one another. I knew for sure the spot that I initially stepped from Faerie into the mortal world in was one of them.
Zander and I traveled the half-day ride to Arythmia in near silence. We were both lost in our own thoughts of the vision we shared, what it meant and the events that led up to it.
Chaos Page 4
