by Sara Thorn
“Come,” Cassius said as he took my hand, and we walked a bit farther from the rest of the group.
“Where are we going?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we stay with the others?”
“We aren’t going far,” he said. “There’s nothing here to be worried about. Aside from a few small animals, this wilderness is empty. We’re still within earshot of the others need us for any reason.”
We sat down on a grassy spot of land and then leaned our heads back against the ground to look up at the sky. There were so many brilliant stars to look at, and the moons were exceptionally gorgeous and active tonight.
“Do they always do that?” I asked as I pointed to two of the moons were circling each other rather quickly. During all of my nights here in Mystreuce, I’d never seen the moons act like that before.
“No,” he answered. “Even the moons are behaving strangely. I believe it is like you said, the world is awaiting what will happen with us.”
“Now, if only we couldn’t figure out what that was supposed to be,” I sighed.
Cassius leaned over on his arms and ran his fingers through my hair.
“Don’t worry, Mara,” he said. “We’re together, and that’s all that matters.”
He was right. I looked up at the sky some more as I felt his fingers rub my head. It was so peaceful, almost as if there were nothing else to worry about, even though I knew there was. Maybe things were already written out the way they were supposed to be and there was no point in worrying about any of it because it was all leading to the same point anyway. I had trouble accepting that notion, though, because I was a strong believer in free will. Looking at the moons circling each other reminded me of planets, which in turn reminded me of Cassius and me.
“Remember how we talked about being pulled together like planets?” I asked him as he lowered his head to kiss me.
“Yes,” he said against my face. “I do.”
“I like thinking about us in that way. I like thinking that a force keeps bringing us toward each other no matter what else happens. The entire universe could be falling down around us, but yet we would still pull together in the balance as if it could not be helped. There is a fated beauty and strength in that.”
Cassius smiled, and I could tell that he felt the same way, too.
“Cassius!” I said as I suddenly realized what my thoughts had led me to discover. “I think I know what is wrong with Mystreuce.”
He lifted his head up from my face to look at me.
“You do?”
“Yes,” I said, dragging him up to his feet with me.
We walked back toward the others, and I felt a little bit like I had spoiled an intimate moment with Cassius. But this was something I needed Bree and Quinn to hear, as well, and it was too important to wait until morning. Fortunately, they were both still awake as they sat and talked quietly.
“The three of us need to balance the chaos Mystreuce is spiraling into,” I said as we sat down in front of them. “I had thought that maybe the land had been feeding off of our emotions and interactions with each other, but I think I may have been thinking about it all backward.”
“How so?” Bree asked, clearly intrigued.
“I think it is Mystreuce that is having the conflict, not us.”
“How can a world have a conflict with itself?” Quinn asked.
“Look up,” I said as I pointed up at the moving moons overhead. “Even the moons are out of whack.”
“They look a bit like they’re dancing with each other to me,” Quinn remarked.
“Whatever it looks like is beside the point,” I said. “They’re off-balance, just like the world is off-balance. The three of us need to balance it. I don’t think Mystreuce is reacting to us; I think it needs our help.”
“What do you think caused the world to be off-kilter?” Cassius asked.
“I have no idea,” I replied. “I’m not from here, remember?”
Quinn laughed at my remark. “Well, for someone who just moved in, you seem to know a whole lot about stuff.”
I shrugged. “It’s just a hunch.”
“I think it’s a good one, Bree said. “But again, it leads us to a point in which we don’t know what to do about it. The three of you are all together now, so why is the world still acting up?”
“Are we sure that it is?” Cassius said.
“Yes,” Bree said. “I can tell. The places back home are not getting any better, and the fracturing of the world continues to worsen.”
“How can you—” Cassius stopped himself mid-sentence when he remembered that Bree was a deity and probably just “knew” things a lot of the time.
“It’s like a crack in the iced-top of a frozen lake,” Bree said. “Once it starts, it will continue to spread until the whole thing falls apart. I’m afraid that we’ll start to see some of it along our journey back home a lot sooner than I had expected.”
“Okay, so no big deal,” Quinn joked cavalierly. “We just need to figure out how the three of us are going to balance the forces of Mystreuce in order to keep it from self-destructing before we can do anything to save it.
“Pretty much,” Bree said.
Chapter Fourteen
We stayed with the others for the rest of the night, and after we all tried to get some rest, we started to walk again in the morning.
Bree didn’t talk much on the way. She looked like she was so deep in thought that I imagined there were actually little gears turning inside her head and smoke clouds puffing out of her nose like a cognitive machine.
Quinn had transformed into his raven form to fly faster on ahead of us and see how much worse the situation was and how much time we might have left before things really started to go to hell. I watched his graceful form circle overhead before he flew off past where my eyes could see. If I could shapeshift, I would choose a raven, too. I could only imagine how freeing it would feel to be able to lift off of my feet and soar through the sky to any destination that I wanted.
After a long while of walking, we stopped for Bree to conjure up some water for us and to rest our feet for a few moments. While we sat and drank the fresh, cool water, Sylva picked up a nearby stick and doodled around in the dirt. I watched her as I wondered what sight would meet us when we got back closer to home, and I worried about what Quinn would say he found on his flight. I hoped that it wasn’t too bad.
The doodles that Sylva had etched into the ground caught my eye. They started to resemble some sort of symbol, and I was curious about what it meant.
“What is that you’re drawing?” I asked.
Bree looked over to see, too.
“I don’t know,” Sylva shrugged. “It was just an idea that came to my mind after I heard you guys talking about the prophecy last night.”
“You heard us?” I asked. “I thought you were asleep.”
“I’m a light sleeper,” she smiled. “But yeah, I heard you. It made me think about these concepts—thought, heart, and blood.”
Sylva pointed to the three symbols that she had drawn, each representing one of the three things that she mentioned and wrapped inside a circle that looked as if it had a tail coming out of the bottom of it.
“You said that the three of you represented nature, magic, and power. So it made me think of these things. Magic requires thought, nature requires heart, and power requires blood. It also made me think of the three of you and how you guys are always acting around each other.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, for starters, the whole power and blood thing fit right in with Cassius being a dhampir, but even more than that, he seems to be completely consumed by you, almost as if you’re in his blood. Then there’s Quinn, who lets his thoughts get so wrapped around himself that he literally kills himself in silence over things that are out of his control. And then you; you let your heart guide you even if you know you shouldn’t. It just all seemed kind of perfect to me.”
Sylva rubbed away the symbol wit
h her foot as if it were a stupid afterthought for her to have even drawn. But Bree glanced over at me, and I immediately knew that there was something there in her look.
“I know what to do,” Bree said. She looked as if she were going to scream with excitement. “I know how to combine the three of your powers together to balance Mystreuce.”
“You do?” I asked in shock. “Because of that drawing?”
“Yes. There is an ancient ritual that is buried in vampire lore. I read about it many years ago, and I’ve remembered it to this day. I just didn’t make the connection until Sylva did.”
“What connection did I make?” Sylva asked as she looked up at Bree with confusion.
“The ritual uses blood, heart, and thought,” Bree said. “I just didn’t see that it was what we needed, but now I do. I know how to perform it; I just don’t know what the effects on the three of you will be.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Well, unless one of the effects is death, then it matters.”
“No, it won’t kill you. I just don’t know what the cost of the magical exchange will be. But it’s not shadow magic, so it won’t be anything lethal, that much I do know.”
“Okay then,” I said. “Then it doesn’t matter. If this will help us to restore Mystreuce, then that’s what we will do.”
Cassius came walking up from around the corner.
“Where have you been?” Norr asked him.
“I had to relieve myself of all the water I drank. Then I thought I saw something in the brush, but it ended up just being a very forlorn snake. Why? Did I miss something?”
“Yeah, you missed these three girls hatching out a whole entire plan,” Norr chuckled.
Cassius looked between the three of us with intrigue as he waited for us to tell him what we had figured out. When he looked down at Sylva, she just shrugged.
Bree explained what we had discovered and told him the same thing about not really knowing the ritual’s effect but assuring us that it wouldn’t be anything horrific or permanent. Cassius agreed that we would perform the ritual as soon as possible, even before we made it back home, to prevent any more damage to Mystreuce. We just needed to wait for Quinn to return. As we waited, we continued to walk. No matter what resulted from the ritual, we still needed to get back home. Cassius held my hand as we walked, and I was hopeful that things would start going back to normal once we did the ritual and got home.
When Quinn returned, he swooped down in front of us on widespread, ebony wings. It was so incredible to watch him shift so seamlessly from bird to man. I noticed with the fae that the eyes were always the last thing to change as if they held on to the soul of whatever form they were in until the very last moment. It made me think of Sen. When the last bit of raven had left him, and his eyes were a clear and glinting green, Quinn took a deep breath and looked around at all of us. Bree handed him the flask, and he took a long sip of cool water.
“What did you see?” Cassius asked him.
“Well, it’s not good. That much is for sure. Being able to see it from the sky helped to see the effect and range of the damage. The surface of Mystreuce is quite literally cracking open.” Quinn looked at me and then back at Cassius. “I sure hope you guys figured out a solution while I was gone.”
“We did, actually,” Bree smiled.
We walked for a bit more to give Bree time to fill Quinn in on the symbols that Sylva had drawn and the ritual that she connected it to. She gave him the same disclaimer about the cost of performing the magic. Quinn told us that the damage began to start just a couple of miles up ahead of us, so Bree thought that it was a good time to stop and ready ourselves for the ritual.
“I don’t think it would matter much if we did it here, in a still healthy part of the land, or in a space that has already been damaged. But I just feel like it will be better for morale if we stop and do it before we look at something that we would rather not see.”
“Agreed,” I said. I didn’t want to start feeling bleak or sorrowful before entering into a ritual with unknown repercussions. I’d prefer to just stay in a semi-hopeful mood, if at all possible.
Before Bree started the ceremony, she gave us each a moment. It worried me because I thought it made things seem more dangerous and permanent than she had first let on, but Bree assured me that it was just good to take a moment before doing any sort of weighty magic. I wasn’t sure whether I believed her or not. Still, there was something that I had been holding onto for Cassius, and I wanted him to have it.
“What’s this?” he asked as I pulled the note out of my jeans pocket to hand to him.
“I wrote this when I didn’t think I was going to survive. Bree helped me. I wanted you to have it and know that no matter what happened, I would always be with you, loving you from whatever distance spanned between us, even death.”
Cassius took the note and started to unfold it.
“No,” I said as I gently clasped my hand over his to keep the worn note folded. “I don’t want you to open it yet.”
“Then why give it to me now?” he asked.
“I just want you to have it and hold it, and to keep it with you. When it’s time for you to open it, you’ll know. But for right now, I just wanted you to have it.”
“Okay,” he smiled as he leaned forward to kiss me before putting it in his pocket.
“Don’t lose it,” I teased.
“I will never lose it,” he smiled. “And no matter what happens, Mara, I will always be with you, too. I will love you until the end of time and even after that.”
I leaned up and kissed him, and when our mouths met, I wanted so badly just to be back in the castle bedroom, making love to him right now.
“I have something else to say as well,” he said as the tender skin on our lips still clung to each other for a second longer while our mouths pulled apart.
“What is it?” I asked.
His tone had changed a bit, and I could tell that whatever it was, he meant it to be serious. “I forgive Quinn,” he said while he stared fast into my eyes.
“What?”
“I forgive him for kissing you. I would have kissed you, too, if I had been in his place. And, even after this ritual is over and hopefully all is well and quiet for a while, I know that Quinn will continue to be a part of our lives. I welcome him to stay. Not in our bedroom, of course, or even inside the castle for that matter, but in our lives.”
I laughed at that last part. I knew what he meant. The fact that Cassius had suddenly had this touching change of heart meant so much to me that I started to tear up. It had less to do with Quinn than it had to do with Cassius and me and the fact that this wasn’t a barrier between us any longer.
“I love you,” I said.
“I know.” Cassius grinned widely at me.
I glanced over at Quinn, who was whispering with Bree a few yards away. I saw the way he was engaging with her and touching the side of her arm. It looked like he was finally able to let me go and have a meaningful moment with her.
“Are you eavesdropping?” Cassius asked with a smirk when he saw me silently staring at them.
“Shh,” I said, grinning. “Maybe just a little bit.”
I hadn’t heard much of anything that Quinn and Bree were saying to each other. But just as they seemed to be about done talking. I heard Quinn ask her a question.
“So is a relationship between a fae and a deity even possible?” he asked.
“All relationships are possible,” Bree answered him with a smile.
I turned back to look at Cassius and saw that he was smiling, too. It may have been for different reasons, but we were happy to see Quinn attempting to move on. I thought it provided a renewed hope for Sylva and Norr, too. They were looking on as well, and they smiled at each other when they heard Bree’s words.
“Okay,” Bree said as she turned and walked toward us with Quinn right behind her. “Ready?”
“I think so,” I answered.
Cassius nodd
ed.
“So, here’s how it’s going to work. The ritual requires three things, one corresponding thing from each of you. It’s going to seem a little weird, but it will do the trick.”
“Weird like how?” Quinn asked as we all stood in a semi-circle facing Bree.
“Cassius, we’re going to need you to draw some of your own blood. That will obviously fulfill your blood obligation,” she said. “And Quinn, you’re going to speak the words of the incantation that takes care of the thought part.”
“What about me?” I asked when Bree paused for a moment.
“Yours is a little more difficult,” she said hesitantly.
“Don’t tell me you’re going to need to remove my heart,” I joked.
But when she didn’t laugh, I got scared that maybe that was exactly what she planned on doing. She had already told me none of these was fatal, though, and taking my heart out seemed pretty deadly.
“Well, it might be almost as uncomfortable,” she said with a slightly forced smile. “For all three of you.”
Cassius and Quinn exchanged glances. I wanted her to just hurry up and tell me what horrid thing I would need to do already.
“Your connection is love because that is what stems from the heart.”
Oh no, I already hated where this was going.
“You need to bind together both men with your love for them.”
“What exactly does that mean?” I asked.
“You have to figure that part out on your own,” Bree said. “Unfortunately, love is a more finicky thing to deal with. I can’t tell you how to use it within the ritual because it cannot be a forced emotion. All I can tell you is that is what must be done, and you must be the one to do it.”
“She doesn’t love him,” Cassius blurted out. “No offense,” he said quickly to Quinn as he put up the palm of his hand in apology.
Quinn ignored him, which was the best possible reaction.
“She does love you both,” Bree said. “Just not in the same way. I’m telling you that this is what must be done if you want the ritual to work and undo the damage on Mystreuce.”
