by Sara Thorn
“Okay,” I said before anyone had the chance to say anything else about it. “I’ll figure it out; let’s just do it.”
Bree stood and waited for everyone to do as they were supposed to. Cassius brought forth his fangs so that he could puncture his wrist with them to loosen blood from his arm, and Bree borrowed the stick from Sylva to scrawl out the incantation in the dirt in front of Quinn’s feet for him to read. The only thing they were waiting for to begin was me.
Chapter Fifteen
“Do you know the words to say?” I asked Quinn.
“Yeah, they’re right there,” he said as he pointed down at the ground in front of him.
“No, I mean, do you have them memorized? If not, do it and let me know when you’re ready.”
Quinn stared at the words on the ground for a couple of minutes and then lifted his head. “Okay,” he said. “I’ve got them.”
I turned to Cassius next. “Can you do your blood thing now?”
He looked at me, and I could tell by the pinched brow that he was wondering what I was doing. He sank his fangs into his arms and then pulled them from his pierced skin so the blood streamed down onto his wrist and fingers as it hung by his side.
Bree stood in silence and watched.
I reached out my hand and grabbed Quinn around the waist as I pulled him in toward me until his hips crashed into the side of mine. Before Cassius could say anything in protest about why I was grabbing Quinn, I kissed him. I kissed Cassius with the most passionate, most intense kiss that I could muster within the middle of our circular ritual and let my tongue wrap around his as he stood there, holding me with one arm and letting the blood from the other drip down onto the dirt. And as I kissed Cassius, I held on to Quinn’s waist.
I pulled him against me tightly so I could feel his chest heaving against the side of my ribcage and his hands placed against my waist. I had a hold of both men connected to me, both men that I loved in different measures, and both men who were somehow a part of me and this world. If this didn’t connect us for the incantation, then I didn’t know what would. I felt as close to them as I could possibly get without making love right here on the ground in front of everyone.
I had no idea if it was working or even if I should keep going or just stop. I didn’t feel anything magical happen. I mostly just felt the heated sensation of being pressed between both Cassius and Quinn. I was waiting to hear Bree say something or provide some type of guidance to us, but it seemed like everything was still and silent.
Until suddenly, something was wrong. I felt a hand on the top of my shoulder, and I opened my eyes to see Bree standing right next to us with a frozen look in her eyes. Then everything disappeared from my vision entirely, and it felt as if I had suddenly, and without warning, just fallen asleep.
“What the hell is happening?” Norr asked as he and Sylva jumped to their feet to catch the falling bodies.
One by one, Cassius, Mara, Quinn, and even Bree, too, fell to the ground as if someone had just unplugged their lifeless bodies and left them without the energy to stand. Sylva and Norr watched as they saw the four extremely powerful people in front of them be pulled into some state of unconscious trance. They caught each of them as they all started to fall one by one to the ground and laid them on the dirt next to each other.
“What is going on?” Sylva asked in a panic. “What has happened to them?”
“I don’t know,” Norr answered. “But whatever it is, it’s managed to knock out a dhampir, fae, human, and deity.”
“Look,” Sylva said as she pointed to Cassius’s wrist. The blood that had been pouring out of it had now drawn itself into a blackened tattoo that seemed to sink into his skin and form an inked bracelet around his wrist where the puncture wounds had been.
“Here, too!” Norr said as he pointed to Mara, whose chest was glowing beneath her shirt. Sylva bent down and gently pulled Mara’s shirt down away from her collarbone so that she could see what was glowing from beneath it.
“It looks like there’s something there above where her heart is,” she said. “Like some sort of emblem or something that’s stuck to her. It looks metallic; maybe I can pull it off.”
Sylva reached her hand into Mara’s shirt and tried to loosen the talisman that was furiously glowing, but it seemed anchored to Mara’s skin and wouldn’t budge.
“Sylva,” Norr said in a hushed voice. “It’s happening to all of them.”
They looked around and saw that both Quinn and Bree were also manifesting a visual side effect from the ritual. Quinn now had small buds of horns on either side of his head that were just visible over the top of his hair. Bree was the strangest by far, especially since she wasn’t a part of the ritual at all. She had merely been the one to enact it but wasn’t one of the three who were bound together to Mystreuce. Bree’s closed eyelids were both different colors, and both were reflective with a sheen that looked like fish scales.
“What do we do?” Sylva asked.
“Try to wake them up, I guess.”
Both Norr and Sylva shook and prodded each of the four motionless bodies in an attempt to get them to open their eyes, but nothing seemed to stir them.
“They aren’t dead, are they?” she asked.
“No,” Norr said. “They’re breathing, and they all have a pulse, even Cassius. I guess we’ll just need to sit here and watch over them until they wake up.”
“What if they never wake up?”
“Sylva, that’s not helpful.”
“Well, I’m just saying what if it takes a really long time? We can’t stay out here forever. Without Bree, we’ll die with no water.”
She was right. They wouldn’t last more than a few days, and they still had quite a distance to go before they would reach home.
“I’m not sure what else to do,” Norr said. “We can’t just leave them here unconscious and unprotected. And the two of us can’t carry all four of them back with us. We don’t have any other choice than to stay here for as long as we can and hope they wake up.”
Sylva and Norr sat down beside the circle of entranced bodies and waited. When it started to get dark, they curled up closer together in the moonlight.
“It’s getting cold,” Norr said. “I’m going to get some branches to make a fire. Can you spark it?”
“Yes,” Sylva nodded. “I’ll come with you.”
“No, stay here in case they wake up. I won’t go far from you, I promise. I’ll be right back.”
Norr went to gather wood for a fire while Sylva stayed and stared at the motionless bodies of their friends. For a moment, she wondered if they dreamed while they lay there or if their minds had just succumbed to complete darkness. When Norr returned in just a few minutes, it made her jump.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s okay; I just don’t like being out here while they’re all just lying here helpless.”
“You’re a fae,” Norr laughed. “You live outside under the stars in the wilderness.”
“Yes, but that’s different. This wilderness is different.”
“Speaking of wilderness,” Norr said. “I could see where I walked that the land around us is already starting to calm down and return to normal. I’m not sure what happened there at the end of that ritual that caused them to pass out, but it did seem to work on fixing Mystreuce.”
“Well, that’s good at least,” Sylva said as she sparked the pile of wood that Norr had brought to start a fire. Her fingertips produced tiny flames that caught on one of the branches until the fire grew.
“I wonder if this is part of the magical cost that they had to pay to enact the ritual,” he said as he pulled Sylva up against him to hold while they watched the fire.
“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe it’s those new physical features they all have. It’s weird, though, if you noticed, they all match the parts they played in the ritual. The positioning of their new appearance features all match either blood, heart, or thought
. Except for Bree since she didn’t really have a part to play. I don’t know what her eyelids are supposed to mean.”
“Maybe she did have a part to play, and none of us knew it, including her,” Norr said.
They talked for a bit longer and then fell asleep against each other while the fire continued to burn and the others continued to sleep.
When time passed, and all four of them didn’t wake, the young couple tried desperately to figure out what to do. They were left on their own, with no idea of what had happened or how to awaken Mara, Cassius, Quinn, and Bree. It was starting to look like the only two choices they had left were to either stay here with the rest of them to guard the others' bodies and die. Or to leave them and try to make it back home. None of which seemed like good options.
The next night, as they both sat staring into a freshly made fire, with bellies grumbling and thirst scraping at their throats, they heard something.
Norr stood up to see what it was, and they could both see the branches of nearby trees start to rustle as if something were slowly pushing through the trees toward them.
When the creature emerged into sight, Norr took a step back.
It looked like a man, except it was much more massive, and its skin had a coppery sheen to it. The most notable thing that made it look more like a beast than a man was the giant antlers that protruded from its head. It walked slowly closer to them as Norr backed up closely to Sylva and stood protectively in front of her. The creature, or man, was three times the size of the young vampire, so Norr really didn’t stand a chance if it had come to fight.
The creature sat down on the opposite side of the fire from them and rubbed its hands together in the heat the fire was putting off while Norr and Sylva stared with open, aghast mouths and didn’t say a word. “I am here for Bree,” he said.
“Why?” Norr got up the courage to ask.
“Because Bree is not the only deity in Mystreuce, and we are displeased that she has intervened in worldly affairs against our rules and wishes.”
“What are you going to do to her?” Sylva asked timidly.
“I am going to return her to her home, where she will await the consequence levied upon her for her transgressions,” he said.
Norr didn’t understand why he didn’t just take Bree. She was lying unconscious right in front of him, and surely, he knew that Norr and Sylva would be no match to try to stop him. So why wasn’t he just taking her and leaving? Not that Norr wanting anything to happen to Bree; he liked Bree and owed her a lot. He was just confused about what game this thing was playing.
“I am Lithius,” he said. “I am a greater deity who rules over the living things on Mystreuce.”
That explained why it seemed like the animals had been acting strangely, and the wilderness seemed to be bending around him.
“You’re a protector?” Norr asked, hoping to find out if the deity was there with the intent to harm or help.”
“That depends,” Lithius said.
“On what?”
“On what I would be protecting.”
“Why don’t you just attack us or steal the bodies?” Norr asked.
Sylva looked up at him in horror and smacked the side of his leg to get him to stop talking. But it was a reasonable question, and he wanted to know the answer.
“I am one of the more reasonable deities, which you should be thankful for since someone else could have been sent instead. And I assure you that none of the others would be sitting here by the fire as patiently talking to you as I am.”
“Thank you,” Sylva said. She was trying to appease him in the hope that he would just leave them alone.
“As I said, I came for Bree. I can take her back with me without confrontation, or I can kill all of you and then take her back with me anyway. However, I would prefer not to have to kill everyone else. I am a fairly peace-loving deity, and considering it appears you just got Mystreuce back in a good place, I don’t really wish to throw it into chaos again. Your choice. Oh, and I want one other of them to come with Bree as well.”
“Which one?” Norr asked.
“I don’t care. Just pick one as a gesture of goodwill. I’ll give you a moment to decide.”
Norr turned and sat down next to Sylva to whisper in her ear.
“We can’t let him take Bree or anyone else,” he said.
“Yeah, I agree, but what choice do we have? He’s going to take them anyway, with the only difference being that the rest of us will be dead,” Sylva responded.
“This is an impossible position to be in and an impossible choice to make,” Norr said as he shook his head and rubbed his temple with his fingers.
“It’s a horrible choice to make,” Sylva said. “But not an impossible one. What do you think the others would want us to do? Do you think they would want us to try to fight this deity, most surely die, and be responsible for three additional deaths of theirs on our hands, too? Or do you think that they would want us to make the horrible choice of who to send off with Bree in the hands of this deity?”
“They would want us to choose someone and save the others because they would realize that we have no other choice. But how do we do that? How do we choose one of our friends and leaders to sacrifice?”
“I would choose Cassius,” Sylva said with certainty.
“Why?”
“Because he is the strongest and therefore would stand the best chance of surviving, and probably the best chance at keeping Bree alive, too.”
What she said made sense, but it still didn’t sit well with Norr. But there was no choice in the matter of what to do, and Sylva was probably right about choosing Cassius for those reasons.
“Okay,” Norr said as he turned around to face Lithius.
Chapter Sixteen
Norr took guidance from what he thought Cassius would do if he were put in this same disadvantageous position. He played it for all that he could.
“We’ll agree to let you take Bree and one other of our choosing, but we’d like something in return,” Norr said as he tried to sound confident, even though his insides were quivering.
“You mean aside from letting you live?” Lithius said.
“Yes.” Norr was pretty sure that Lithius was mocking him, but he stayed pressed to the point. “We’d like you to wake them all up.”
“Why would I do that?” Lithius asked.
“You’re a greater deity, aren’t you? We can’t wake them, but I’m assuming that a deity of your magnitude can.”
“Yes, I can,” Lithius replied. “I’m just not sure why I would want to do that for you.”
“Please,” Sylva said. It was her first time addressing Lithius at all. “It won’t matter to you if they’re awake or not, but it matters to us.”
“Fine,” Lithius conceded. “I’ll wake them up right after you tell me which other of these people is coming along with Bree.”
Norr looked as though he was biting his lip and his fists clenched down at his sides while he cocked his head and hesitated to answer. He didn’t want to do this, but he knew he didn’t have another choice. He also knew that Cassius would want him to protect Mara at all costs, just as Norr would do for Sylva.
“You can take Cassius,” Norr said as he pointed to his sleeping body.
It was instantaneous.
Lithius stood up, and his eyes flared red for a single moment. Then, suddenly Bree and Cassius were gone, and the other two were waking up.
It seemed as if there were a minuscule sliver of time that overlapped, a tiny sliver of a second in which my eyes and Cassius’s eyes were both opening and we saw that we were being pulled apart. It was like watching a bullet in slow motion before it crashed into your chest. But as quickly as that time crossed, it vanished.
“What’s going on?” Quinn asked as he quickly got to his feet. “Where’s Bree?”
I stood up and could feel the frenzied look on my face as if the tiny veins in my eyeballs were popping.
“What have you done?
Where have the others gone?” I asked.
“Mara, we didn’t have a choice,” Norr said to me as he launched into his explanation about Lithius and the horrible decision that they had to make. “If we hadn’t given him Cassius, Lithius would have killed all of us.”
“You don’t know that!” I shouted at him. “He could have been calling your bluff, and you simply handed Bree and Cassius over to him. How could you have let them be taken without even attempting to fight for them?”
I was furious, furious that Norr would allow any of them to be taken, but mostly furious that he would allow it to happen to Cassius.
“What do you think we are supposed to do now?” I growled. “Cassius is the ruler here, and now he has been taken, and we have no idea where. We just finished fixing the problem on Mystreuce, and now one of the three of us is gone. How do you think the land is going to react to that?”
“Mara, try to calm down,” Quinn said as he reached to put his hand onto my shoulder.
“I will not calm down,” I hissed and pushed his hand away. “Are you not at all concerned about Bree’s wellbeing?”
“Of course I am,” Quinn said in an offended tone. “But I’m not going to fly off the handle irrationally in the midst of this. Norr and Sylva did the best they could in an awful situation. They probably saved all of our lives.”
“You don’t know that,” I shot back. “You don’t know that Cassius and Bree are even still alive or what that thing has done to them.”
“That’s true,” Quinn said. “But getting angry at each other isn’t going to do any good.”
“You’re right,” I said. I stormed ahead toward the direction that led home to the castle.
“What are you doing?” Quinn called after me as the three of them hurried to catch up to me.
“I’m going to go do something that will do us some good,” I said without stopping.
