I hear something move behind me and turn.
“Starlet, you can come out, I know you’re there,” I move, keeping my palm clenched. She comes out from behind the door of the throne room where I am suspended, motionless, unable to move forward. She isn’t alone though, and much to my surprise, Azure follows her into the space of stained glass, stained with bad memories and bloodshed surrounding the throne.
“You’re…” I start and they both give a slight smile, but Azure’s eyes flash a warning.
“Together,” Starlet finishes, turning to Azure. “She was worried about you… I mean, we both are. Orion… are you okay?” Starlet has softened, the presence of her soulmate, after all these years of absence, healing her broken heart. My spirits rise and then crash again, looking at their happy faces, a reminder of a kind of happiness I had only grasped for mere moments and will never share again. The kind you only get from finding the other half of yourself.
“She’s gone. It’s really over.”
“No, it isn’t.” Starlet looks over her shoulder.
“You should have seen her Star, her hair, her eyes. That’s not my girl. That’s not my Callie. It’s…”
“Darkness,” Azure says with a soft simplicity, moving around Starlet’s body, coming into full view. Her hair is still black, but her eyes are back to the familial ice blue.
“Yes…” It comes out, a breathless exhalation at the shock of looking directly into those ice blue eyes for the first time in years. Azure looks different, a slight improvement on how she appeared at the coronation. I can’t help but smile. “You look different,” I say, trying to be sweet.
“I got a rather large smack to the head. Put things in perspective for me,” she quips and I rub the back of my neck nervously.
“Sorry about that,” I apologise and she shrugs, moving toward me, head bowed.
“After everything I’ve done, I should be the one apologising. But I don’t really relish the idea of getting all weepy,” she breathes in deeply before continuing. “Instead, I’ll say this… Callie and I, we may not be the same case, but we were infected by the same source. Titus. She can come back from this, Orion, she has to want it, but it’s possible.”
“How do you know that?” I ask her, imploring some magical solution.
“Because if it’s not, then I’m screwed.” Starlet snorts and Azure laughs, it’s a beautiful sound, like a lost relic that’s been missing for centuries, only to reappear, stunning you that you’d not noticed it was gone.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. It’s not like I’m cured. I could turn back into super-bitch on the turn of a dime and if I do, please, just let me be. Tempting the beast only makes it worse,” Azure is pleading with me and I nod.
“Okay. If you want a room…” I offer, gesturing to the surrounding structure. She shakes her head.
“It’s best if I stay nomadic for now. I get smash happy when the darkness…”
“Say no more,” I hold up a palm and she nods. Starlet grasps her hand and they share a look, like one they had shared when they were children, the night I left for war.
“Orion… we need a plan. This whole Psiren thing is getting out of hand,” Starlet reminds me. It’s something I’m constantly aware of, prickling my irritation levels. I quell them.
“Yeah… I know,” I admit, not wanting to think on the amount of action I haven’t taken.
“You know, Orion. Father always thought you could do this. He wouldn’t have told me so if he didn’t,” Starlet puts her hand on my shoulder. She’s being so kind and it’s completely freaking me out.
“Azure… What did you do to Starlet? I think she’s being… nice!” I give a pretend gasp and Azure covers her mouth to stop herself from laughing. I can tell their relationship is on new, very thin ice at her self-consciousness.
“Oh shut up! Hell, I always thought I’d make a good ruler. Give me that damn thing!” Starlet reaches for the crown and I swat her hand away.
“Oh, so you don’t want any of the responsibility, but the pretty hat you’ll take?” Azure cocks an eyebrow at me and Starlet laughs again. Moving back with one simple undulation of her magenta tailfin, she looks cool and collected once more.
“I suppose I don’t have much of a choice with the responsibility. Everyone is looking to me for answers, and I’m just trying not to get everyone killed,” I shrug and Starlet frowns slightly, a serious mood befalling the scene far too quickly.
“Orion, there are things here beyond your control, but there is also a lot within it,” Azure pipes up slightly, her eyes sparkling. I wonder how much of the darkness within her is thinking about ripping the crown off my head for real.
“Meaning?” I ask her, crossing my arms attentively.
“Well… I was with the Psiren’s for a long time. I know how they think. While you’ve been spending your time decorating ballrooms and throwing parties… you know what they’ve been doing?” She starts to swim lengths, a furious whirlwind of acute thought, coming to life. She’s always been smart, been observant, it’s a wonder I hadn’t thought to put her to use before this. She looks at me… answering her own question. “Preparing for this war that you’re all so determined isn’t going to happen.” She looks serious again.
“So you’re saying we’re not doing enough?”
“I’m saying you’re comfortable… a predator with enough food and a warm bed can’t evolve, Orion… it turns into a house cat.” I realise she’s right.
We do drills, we train, but there haven’t been demons for over a century. The last time the Psirens had been in the city they had murdered so many… How strong would they be now that they’ve had an extra five months to train, recruit more?
“We’ve gotten lazy,” I nod at Azure, her dark hair looks sleek as Starlet grabs her hand, calming the flurry of passion that had sparked her little speech. She’s scared Azure is going to turn back to the dark, that she’ll lose her again. I am free of that now. Thank goodness. “We need to start evolving again. Or this is going to turn into a bloodbath.”
“Yes,” they both nod in unison. A twin thing that has always been eerie.
“Will you help?” I ask them both and they look startled.
“You want our help?” Starlet asks me, looking proud.
“Of course.”
“But we’re only maidens…” She continues. “What will Saturnus think?” Her fear of him is evident. I wonder what he’s said to her to make her so unsure of herself. Azure looks at her with a confused, but slightly angry expression.
“You’re not only maidens, Star. Nor will you ever be. You’re my sisters. The blood of the Crowned Ruler runs through you two and Azure has particular knowledge which will be incredibly useful.” She looks at me with wide eyes and I realise that some decisions of a crowned ruler can be easy. It feels right, having all of Atlas’ children helping to rule together. Suddenly I don’t feel so alone. “Come on, we’ve got some family business to attend to,” and with that decree, we get to work.
CALLIE
I open my eyes, having banished my consciousness in the dark of the night before as Vex had fallen into a sex-induced slumber. I don’t remember where I am for a moment, feeling slightly panicked, sore, and above all else: confused. I move, running my fingers through the black of the sheets. Nothing. Vex is gone.
I pull the sheets around myself. How long have I been out? Where the hell is he?
I turn, placing my feet down on the floor, the bare skin of my soles brushing against the cheap tortoiseshell pattern that sucks all light from the room. I stare over at the door in the gloom. The chair isn’t propped under the handle anymore, and a stark, white, lethal light is creeping in through the crack underneath. I know the lock is busted and I instantly worry about the owner of the motel checking the room and finding me inside.
I creep over slowly, as if any movement will cause me to have a panic attack, placing the metal chair beneath the door handle again, barricading myself
inside.
I collapse against the wall next to the door, the black sheets crumpling around my body as I pull them to myself like a cornered animal. My black hair falls around my shoulders in disarray as I feel the cold air prickle at my bare skin. I shudder, alone and vulnerable.
What the hell have I done?
My limbs stretch out in front of me, extending forward from the wall next to the doorway. I examine their tenderness. I’m black and blue with bruises and bite marks all down my legs, even on my feet. Why did I let him do those things to me? Why had I done those things to him?
It had felt good… I can’t deny that, but it was too good, too good not to mean anything. The fact he’d left me here, vulnerable and naked, in a room with a broken lock and the sun at my back tells me exactly what it had meant to him.
I sigh, allowing the cold air to fill my lungs, shocking my system and letting my post-coital haze lift.
I had broken away from everything I had thought was causing the problems in my life, and yet I’m still not free, not really… who am I kidding? I’m more trapped now than I’d ever been. In a seedy motel room, caged by the light of the sun, by a man who I’d trusted with my body. I’m scared, no longer fooled with feelings of grandeur, of power; I am no more than a mouse in a mousetrap.
I get to my feet, feeling my joints creak in protest as I stand. Everything is sore on the outside, but my insides are numb.
I walk across the room, past the bed and stand in front of the double mirror, looking at myself hard. My eyes are bloodshot, really bloodshot. My skin is mapped with dark veins and my hair is black as soot, messy and knotted down my spine. My body is a paint by numbers of pleasures and pains that now haunt me… I had given in to the darkness, I had let Titus take control of me… I think. It couldn’t have been me doing those things. That’s not who I am. I know that now. I also know I’m alone. I have nobody, and that’s just what I had wanted. How stupid can you get?
I had only ever been with Orion, and now I have given myself to someone who doesn’t… who can’t, respect me. I have given myself willingly and mere hours after I’d ended things with somebody who had meant so much.
I feel dirty, like my skin is crawling with the scent of perversion, it is invisible, but just like Vex’s post-climax smoke it has crawled over me, leaving only memories behind.
Tears find their way into my reflection, the blacks of my eyes expanding as I watch the darkness move through me, following the regret that I am riding like a storm. I reach out to the glass, wrapped in the black sheet like some kind of gothic tragedy. The feel of the mirror on my palm is cool, hard. My reflection watches the outline of my hand as it traces over the image of my cheek, pale and spiked with black magic. I let a tear fall, the image of Orion’s face slowly passing through my mind like a dream. It hadn’t been like it was with him; it had been fuelled by careless abandon, of wanting to be free. It hadn’t been right and I wonder if after this, anything would ever be again.
Oh stop whimpering. You loved it.
The voice of slithering, snake-like tongues comes to me just at the wrong moment and I snap.
“GET OUT OF MY HEAD YOU BASTARD!” I scream without restraint, slamming my fist into the mirror. It shatters. Blood trickles down my arm as pieces of the reflective glass fall into the sink below. The scarlet fluid runs down my wrist in lines. I try to mop it up but end up cutting my palm on a piece of shattered glass that’s fallen behind the basin as I move to turn the tap. I gasp, shit, as more blood runs down the clean white skin of my previously uninjured limb.
I look up momentarily and the image that greets me is like something out of a horror film. My eyes and hair are a nightmare in onyx and my arms are stained and soaked with my own blood. The fractures of the glass edges crawl outward in jagged cracks, some pieces still remaining in the mirror’s frame. The image of myself is broken, just like my insides.
I realise I don’t want to be looking at the broken image anymore; its unfaltering reality is a display of how much of a mess I am.
Moving briskly from the mirror, I fall into the bathroom door, my arms held upward trying to stop the blood from trickling down my limbs. The door opens and I move inside, pulling back a cheap, semi-transparent and partially mouldy shower curtain that is falling off its rings. I turn the shower on, untie the sheet I’m wrapped in, and step into the bath, the showerhead looming over me. The water is scalding, but I let it burn, surprised at how good the pressure is considering how crappy the rest of the facilities are.
I watch the fluid run red, my blood mixing in with it and swirling down the drain in a torrent. I sit on the floor, huddled in the corner as I let the shower beat down on me, erasing the last twelve hours from my mind. I try to let everything clear in my head and with the achievement of this come to a startling realisation. I’m responsible for the decisions that I have made. Titus is with me that’s for sure, but I had asked Vex to sleep with me, I had hopped on his bike with him, I had chosen to follow him to the rave the night we’d first met. Those were my choices. Nobody had forced me. Vex certainly hadn’t. In fact, I doubt if he would have cared much for my company at all if I hadn’t persistently hung around with him, drinking with him at the party and luring him into bed.
I could have gone with Daryl. But no. It was always him. And as with everything that has happened as of late, he was the wrong choice.
I have made bad decisions and there is nobody to pick me back up but me. In this moment I want so badly to feel my mother’s arms holding me, making me the baby, taking care of me and fixing all my wrongs, but she isn’t here. Orion isn’t either and now I think about it, he’s been cleaning up after me all this time. I had thought that he couldn’t love for me who I am, but perhaps the problem was that I was too immature to love myself enough to make choices that were best for me. I place my head in my hands, my black hair beaten smooth and wet by the showerhead, my palm and wrist still stinging from the glass. I guess I hadn’t really known what I was asking for when I had asked for independence. I had thought it meant doing whatever you wanted without anyone to stop you. I realise now that it’s being wise enough to stop yourself, in having maturity enough to see the consequences of your choices before you make them.
That takes a kind of strength no magic can give you, only time.
SOLUSTUS
Something stirs behind me, prickling my acute senses. I turn, as though pivoting on a knife’s edge, irritated at the intrusion. The throne room isn’t somewhere you just decide to visit. I really need to get some guards up here. After all, I am ruler.
“Solustus,” Vex is inching around the doorway, a look on his face familiar to me only in one respect. I smile to myself slightly, amused.
“Yes?” I move back from the mirror where I’ve been hovering, going over the conversation with my brother, intrigued as to the girl’s new role in events. Who would have thought someone so pure looking would have the devil in her, so to speak? Who would have thought she’d be the one communicating with the Necrimad?
I let myself drop, stretching out in the water as I fall, draping myself sideways across the throne of bones. Vex hovers above the floor a few feet, his tentacles pluming outward, curling and recoiling as they propel him through the bloody dim light.
“I’ve just left the girl, but I have to admit, she’s not as powerful as you indicated, Solustus. I find myself… disappointed.” I almost snort at this statement. What does he think I am, stupid? It amuses me that he thinks he’s less than completely transparent.
“Oh I see… what a shame,” I faux pout, playing it up for the smitten man in front of me. What the hell had that girl done to him?
“So that’s what you came to tell me?” I ask him, stroking a long fingernail along my scales, it makes my internals whir with satisfaction.
“Yes…”
“Very well, there’s no reason to keep the girl here if you don’t see any usable power in her. Tell her to come to me. Tell her… it’s about Gideon. She’ll know what
I mean,” I find myself playing this casual character rather skilfully. Vex’s face falls and I almost want to exhale, hysterical at the mere thought that he could outwit someone as old as I. Stupid boy. Surely, someone with the dark magic of Poseidon running through their veins doesn’t think the first of his kind wouldn’t see right through him.
“Vex…” I begin, wanting to give him some indicator that I know his game, rattle him.
“Yes?” He looks back over his shoulder as he turns to leave.
“Remember… Psirens can’t love. It’s not who we are.” With that, his eyes narrow and an angry flash passes beneath the darks of his lilac irises.
“I know that,” he snaps, leaving with increased speed. I smile to myself, thinking of the one person who I know had learned the truth of love the hard way…
The door creeps open, a draft from the sea spilling into the stagnant air. I watch under the crack… relieved that Saturnus is finally home. Caedes is asleep behind me, his hair ratted and his body bruised. He could be dead for all I know. Father’s beatings were taking their toll and he has found a deep unconsciousness that I pray will, at some point tonight, be mine.
“Father… We need to talk.” What’s this I wonder? A stand… has Saturnus come to take us away from all this? To somewhere better.
“What is it boy? Have you got my money? I’m out of spirit,” my father is drunk, as usual. Saturnus stammers.
“No… I’m leaving… I’m marrying Delphine tomorrow. We’re leaving,” he almost vomits the words, like he’s been waiting to spew them for months. My heart drops, how can he leave us? How can he leave us with him?
“Listen here, boy… You’re responsible for this family. Your brothers need food in their bellies and I need spirits in my tankard. You’re not going anywhere,” he barks it, not as angry as he would be if he were sober.
The Kiss That Saved Me (The Tidal Kiss Trilogy Book 2) Page 24
