A part of me hungers for this. Here is a chance, offered on a platter, to walk once more beneath the light. I can see myself sitting in Muthem’s highest tower, gazing upon the stars, sipping wine with my new family. I can hear myself laughing, my numbness forgotten. What a chance this might be! What luck to keep me from returning to Graehelm, where I doubt I shall ever return.
I closed my eyes. I almost laid my quill down and went to sleep. Almost. I rested my head against a mound of silk-swathed pillows and pulled the sheet tight to my chin, but I soon sat up again. This final page is still empty, and I am not finished. To think that I might settle into a normal life, no magic, no darkness, no dreaming of lank, looming shadows in every corner of every room. No. It will never be so. I might be comfortable in Muthem. I might have all my needs met and more. But it will not matter. I know this. I have always known. Even now, as the barest sliver of moonlight glides into my window, the clouds are quick to reclaim it. The wind is cold. I am naked. And yet I feel as warm as beneath the sun.
There you are, my impious Pages. I see you. Your corner juts from my bag. I made promises never to open you. I swore it to Saul, to myself. I told Rellen I would be strong and live a good life, all without you. Though I never got to it, I meant to say to Garrett that if he would only stay and be with me, I would bind you in iron chains and sink you into the sea. Such promises. They seem so fragile now. Would anyone care if I opened your cover? Would anyone know? What harm could it be to have power with no intention of using it? I would never raise the dead, call upon the black fire, or cast curses upon my fellow man. I am not evil, nor bewitched with such rage and self-loathing as father. I am good. I believe it. Nothing on this earth can change the truth of that.
A roll of thunder, lasting five heartbeats, roiled in the night just now. The wind blew my shutters open. A storm is coming, though not from me. It marches in from the north, broiling in the sky and crawling up from the cauldron of the sea. My inkwell is almost dry. This last page is almost full. Beyond my window, I see the clouds break in one sliver of the sky. I thought to glimpse Mother Moon shining bright above the storm. But no. I see a moon, but not pale and perfect. It looks black to my eyes. A sphere, darker than all the night. An eye in the heavens, smoking with shadows.
I see it.
I understand.
They are real.
They are watching.
About the author
A reader of mass quantities of fantasy and sci-fi, J Edward Neill became obsessed with writing fiction in early 2001. On one bitterly cold morning in the lowest corridor of his candlelit man-cave, he set pen to paper (or rather fingers to keyboard) and began hammering away on what would become a much larger project than he ever imagined. Since that day, J Edward has spent nearly all his free time lost in his daydreams, conjuring ways to write the kind of stories he always loved as a child. When he's not glooming in front of his laptop or iPad, J Edward haunts the internet via his websites, Tessera Guild and Down the Dark Path. While writing is his prime passion, he also has a powerful affinity for visual arts, quirky foreign films, and his seven-string Ibanez guitar, Beelzebub. J Edward currently lives in the 'burbs of North Georgia, where he moonlights as a foodie, a sipper of too much pinot noir, and the most biggest-armed quarterback never to sniff the NFL.
Other works by J Edward Neill:
Down the Dark Path – Book I in the Tyrants of the Dead trilogy (4 Part Series)
Dark Moon Daughter – Book II in the Tyrants of the Dead trilogy
Nether Kingdom – Book III in the Tyrants of the Dead trilogy
The Sleepers – A Sci-Fi Horror Short
Hollow Empire – A post-apocalyptic serial co-authored with John McGuire
Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows
A Door Never Dreamed Of
101 Questions for Humanity
101 Deeper, Darker Questions for Humanity
101 Questions for Men
101 Questions for Women
101 Questions for Midnight
101 Sex Questions
444 Questions for the Universe
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