by Eva Brandt
Eranthe let out a distressed gasp at the sight that met her eyes. “What happened here? What could have done this?”
The glowing waters of the lake had turned into a sickly shade of red. The surface of the liquid seemed to bubble from within, emanating dark vapors that filled the air with the scent of rotten blood.
Eranthe dropped to her knees and reached for the water, obviously intending to analyze the enchantment that had polluted the lake. I grabbed her shoulder, keeping her from making such a horrible mistake. “Don’t. Don’t touch it.”
“I don’t intend to,” she said. “I think I’ve had enough of making contact with water that possesses powers I don’t completely understand. But I do need to find out what happened here. I can’t allow this situation to continue.”
“There’s no need for you to take unnecessary risks. I know exactly what this is.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Pandora offered. “Have you encountered this type of magic in The Voievodat? What kind of undead creature can do this?”
“This plague isn’t something spread by a simple undead,” I said between gritted teeth. “It’s caused by lamia venom. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, this is my mother’s work.”
I hadn’t seen my mother in many years, but I would never completely forget the feel of her magic or the taste of her blood. Contrary to popular belief, lamiae didn’t hate their young, nor did they want to kill them. They were just cursed, and as soon as they gave birth, they were seized by the sudden desire to consume their children.
I didn’t remember her attempt to murder me, but I did know she’d made arrangements with my father beforehand. He’d been present for the birth and had protected me from her and her sisters.
He’d also been the one who’d later helped me write to her and get to know her from the distance. Once, I’d blamed her for her actions, but I’d long ago understood that it was an instinct, a madness she could not contain.
Even so, I didn’t fool myself. I knew my mother was dangerous, and if she’d come to Chronikos, it must have been because she’d taken my disappearance as a personal slight.
“It’s not safe here,” I told my companions. “Lamiae always make their nests close to their power supplies. That must mean that they’re still nearby, probably feeding on the power in the pool. And considering the magic this lake possessed, I’m not looking forward to facing them.”
“Don’t be so cruel with me, darling,” a familiar voice said, coming from inside the lake. “You know I’d never hurt you. In fact, that’s exactly why I’m here, to keep you safe.”
I dragged Eranthe away, shielding my soulmate from the threat with my own body. “Mother. What are you doing here?”
“We came to find you and take you home, of course. That Grand Lich creature could never be trusted to take care of you. I see I was right to be concerned. You keep company with the strangest people, my darling.”
As she spoke, she shot Eranthe a telling look. I opened my mouth to defend my soulmate. My mother had no room to point fingers considering the peculiarity of her lifestyle.
Eranthe didn’t give me the chance to speak. “You’re not wrong. I’m not a very common person. Maybe a regular woman would be nicer when meeting the parent of her soulmate for the first time. But at this point, I don’t care who and what you are. You’ve killed beings I cared about and as far as I’m concerned, that is unforgivable.”
She walked around me and much to my dismay, she was smiling. Once again, I was reminded of the day I’d met her, when I’d foolishly believed that she was an innocent child-like being who didn’t understand the threat we posed.
My mother made the same mistake. She sneered at Eranthe, obviously not feeling in the least bit concerned about her presence. “Do you think you scare me, little girl? You’re only the shadow of a queen. Your powers don’t frighten me. I carry the blessings of death and fire. Your magic cannot fight that.
“Are you perhaps relying on my son and his friends? They won’t fight me, you know. It’s against the law of The Voievodat to kill lamiae.”
Cezar crossed his arms over his chest and barred his fangs at her. “We aren’t in The Voievodat any longer, Mormo. We don’t obey you, and we don’t obey my uncle any longer.”
“How charming.” My mother let out a disgruntled sigh, as if put out by our disobedience. “So be it. It would seem that I’m going to have to teach you a lesson.”
As she spoke, my aunts emerged from the lake, their naked bodies covered in blood clots and withered, glowing vegetation. I knew just by looking at them that they meant business. “Stop this. I beg you. This is unnecessary.”
While I addressed my request to my mother, Eranthe was the one who replied. “No, Baltasar. It’s very necessary. I told you before, didn’t I? This has long ago stopped being about us. Maybe it was, once, but as royals, we don’t always have the right to follow our hearts. I won’t apologize for this, or for doing what needs to be done.”
“Is that a threat, avatar of spring?” My mother’s eyes flashed crimson. “Are you planning to kill me to avenge your fallen creatures?”
Eranthe tilted her head at Mormo, as if genuinely considering her answer. “Eventually, yes,” she said. “You might be protected by the law of The Immortuos Voievodat, but here, you are a criminal and a murderer. You need to be punished for your actions. You will rue the day you stepped into this forest and dared to corrupt it with your foul venom.”
It shouldn’t have hurt to hear Eranthe talk about my mother like that. It stood to reason that she was angry after what my family had done. Even so, I couldn’t help but flinch.
Was that what we truly were for Eranthe? Foul, loathsome murderers? In the big picture, I wasn’t that different from my mother. I’d killed plenty of people in the king’s service and I’d never cared or minded. It was just the way things had always been.
What did Eranthe’s rejection of the Grand Lich’s prophecy mean? I didn’t believe in things like that either, but there was something deeper hidden behind Eranthe’s refusal—a rejection of not only her supposed fate but also of our twisted, undead natures.
Judging by my friends’ expressions, they’d gotten the same feeling. But could we really blame Eranthe for her attitude? She had lived in Tis Ánoixis all her life and she had cared deeply about the unicorn herd that had been decimated. How could she not be angry and disgusted with every single undead in the word? We had no right to ask anything of her, not when our arrival here had been the one to indirectly bring about this disaster.
She might be our soulmate, but that was no guarantee. In the end, there was a reason why the undead never had real relationships with their soulmates. Maybe it wasn’t just because they couldn’t find their other halves. Maybe it was because we were repulsive to everything that was alive.
My mother and my aunts slithered out of the lake, finally exposing their serpentine lower halves. “Poison and blood will claim you, Queen Eiar, and you cannot escape it,” my mother hissed.
Bright, red light flared around her, her scales pulsing a vivid, threatening crimson. The sharp, almost sulphurous scent of demonic venom reached my nostrils. The water in the lake began to glow more brightly as my mother reached into the source of magic she had polluted to feed her spell.
My aunts didn’t seem to be doing anything, but I knew that wasn’t true. Their scales were shining and vibrating as well, mimicking the exact patterns of my mother’s body. Since Mormo was the leader of their nest, she could channel their magic into herself, creating a concentrated attack that could easily turn a vampire into dust.
I panicked, knowing full well that demonic magic could hurt the avatars of the seasons. “Eranthe, watch—”
The magic harmlessly clashed against Eranthe and dissipated into reddish vapors. Eranthe blinked and lifted her hands, scrutinizing them with undisguised fascination. “Hmm,” she commented as the last traces of the vapors sank into her skin. “That tickled. Also, you should probably have a heal
thier diet. The blood you’ve been consuming hasn’t helped your mental state at all. Has it?”
The latter two words were punctuated by an alarming change in demeanor. Eranthe glowered at the lamiae and just like that, they collapsed to the ground in a writhing pile of humanoid limbs and serpentine tails. She didn’t have to cast a spell, say an incantation, or even move her hands in a particular pattern. It just happened.
The agonized screeches of my mother and aunts filled the air in a cacophony that made my skin crawl. They clutched their heads and clawed at their faces, trying to shatter the hold of the magic now sliding inside them. “Stop it!” my mother shouted. “Stop it. Don’t! You can’t make me... You can’t make me do this again.”
Eranthe watched her with impassive, cold eyes. “It’s such a shame,” she whispered. “Such madness that you hold deep inside you. You were right, you know. You are protected, but not just by law. It is death magic that keeps you safe and soothes the demon inside you. I wonder what would happen if I removed that protection.
“Who would want you then? Who would shelter you? Ton Daímon? Even they do not like creatures who feast on children. Terra Bestias? Sure, try your luck there. You’ll probably last two days before the shifters tear you apart.
“Or would you prefer for me to end your miserable life here and now, in the same spot you used to harm my loved ones? All I have to do is pull on the final thread, and you would not even bother to attack a child. You’d just attack and consume one another. That would be poetic justice, wouldn’t it?”
The dead sound of Eranthe’s voice scared me just as much as the prospect of my mother’s demise. I hadn’t known Eranthe for too long, but I’d already realized that she wasn’t the kind of person to revel in pain and violence.
A mere hour ago, she had turned the Grand Lich away, claiming she was the avatar of spring and didn’t want a fate of death and suffering. She hadn’t been lying, but the Grand Lich had been honest too.
“This isn’t the power of the seasons,” Adrian murmured, more to himself than to us. “The Grand Lich was right.”
“We already knew that, Adrian,” Cezar snapped at him. He grabbed my arm and pulled me back. “Baltasar, you should keep your distance. You don’t know what that spell will do to you.”
I appreciated the concern, although I didn’t think it was really warranted. Because my father was a vampire, I was free of the lamia curse, of the madness that lived in my mother’s blood. Granted, my bloodlust could get worse than that of a regular vampire and I’d always struggled a little with my dual nature. There had been moments when my separate, two sides had clashed, especially since they had very different abilities and sources. But I’d never shown any signs of wanting to turn children into my snacks, which was the only thing that mattered.
In any case, I wasn’t the one at risk here. My mother’s curse was under control solely because of the death magic the Grand Lich had cast on her. She still felt the insanity, but just when faced with lamia children—her own offspring or those of her sisters. I wasn’t sure how that had been accomplished, but the Grand Lich had always said the magic of death was not just terrifying. It was also peaceful.
Watching the scene taking place in front of me, I felt cold inside. I didn’t want to see what my mother would become if the Grand Lich’s magic was removed. And on some level, I had to wonder if maybe Cezar was right to be cautious. For all I knew, Eranthe could do something similar to me. Her powers might be able to twist my nature. Clearly, drinking water from the Lethe had given her skills we didn’t understand, so anything was possible.
I wanted to step in, to keep my soulmate from tearing my mother’s mind apart, but my whole body seemed frozen. I didn’t know if it was because of panic or something else entirely, but I couldn’t move.
Pandora intervened before the situation could escalate further. “Eranthe, don’t,” she said. “Now is not the time for something like this, especially not here. This place has witnessed enough death. Killing the lamiae might damage the forest further.”
Eranthe didn’t lift her spell on my family, but she did turn toward her sister, arching a brow. “And what do you suggest? Surely you realize we can’t just let them go.”
“Of course we realize that, Eranthe,” Pandora’s companion said, speaking for the first time since our arrival. “But there are other, more discreet methods to solve the problem. If you’ll allow me, I can take care of it.”
Nobody had bothered to introduce him. Perhaps they hadn’t thought his identity was important. I’d more or less guessed that he was an ice elemental of some kind due to the feel of the magic he emanated, but I didn’t know anything more than that.
Apparently, I’d underestimated his power, as well as the extent of the trust Eranthe placed in him. After a brief moment of hesitation, she nodded and stepped aside, giving the man room to work. My mother and aunts stopped writhing in pain, but the respite they’d received didn’t last for too long. The stranger blew a gust of air in their direction and a frigid wind started blowing, colder than the crypts of the Grand Lich.
For the most part, the undead were impervious to cold temperatures. Lamiae weren’t actually undead. They were demons with a distant connection to vampires, and they had been allowed to live in The Voievodat with special permission from the emperor. Their half-serpentine natures made them vulnerable to the cold. I didn’t feel much discomfort, especially since Eranthe’s blessing still protected me from temperature changes. My mother and aunts were not so lucky.
Then again, maybe they were. I watched the icy wind flow over them, slowly putting them to sleep, and realized this enchantment had been far more merciful than what had been going on before. They weren’t in any pain now, which filled me with a relief I couldn’t hide.
Eranthe glanced at me, and when our eyes met, I found her gaze icier than the wind her mysterious friend had summoned. Snowflakes had settled in her hair and frost crystals had gathered on the petals of the crimson roses in her crown. “Feeling sorry for murderers, Baltasar? How sweet of you.”
I swallowed around the sudden knot in my throat. “If you won’t apologize for what you need to do, I won’t apologize for caring about my family.”
Yes, they were killers, but I’d already known that and it didn’t change the way I felt about them. I still cared about my mother, just like I had cared about her even if she’d tried to murder me when I was a baby.
Eranthe obviously didn’t like that very much. She didn’t bother to reply. Instead, she turned away from me and looked at her sister. “I’m going to find Veggie and the remaining unicorns. Take the captives to The Palace of Eternal Blooms.”
“All right, Eranthe,” Pandora replied. Despite her apparent agreement, she immediately tried to make Eranthe change her mind and added, “Jack should be able to handle that. I’ll stay with—”
“No,” Eranthe cut her off. “I want to be alone. Leave.” She swept her cold gaze over me and my friends. “You three as well. I don’t want to see you.”
“But Eranthe, we can’t just abandon you,” Adrian started to protest. “Allow us to stay, please. We won’t hinder your work. We can help. You know that. I’m good at such magic.”
It was true. Adrian’s necromantic powers would probably allow Eranthe to heal the forest faster, if that was what she had in mind.
Eranthe didn’t seem to care about this. “The only thing you are good at is destruction!” she shouted at him. “Your mere existence hinders and offends me! You are nothing to me. Go! Get out of my sight.”
The unexpected hostility in her words made me recoil. Having my heart torn out of my chest would’ve hurt less.
This was so much worse than I had expected. This development had obviously changed her mind about her desire to be our soulmate. The kindness she had shown us before was now nowhere to be seen. And she was not wrong to treat us this way, after everything we’d done.
This was our fault. If we hadn’t come, if we hadn’t burdened her with
our misguided affections, she wouldn’t be in this situation, in the first place.
Fufluns had told us this himself. Our arrival had given him the opening he’d needed to attack Eranthe. If she hadn’t offered me her blood, she wouldn’t have been weakened. She might have been able to fight him off and she wouldn’t have been dragged off to Hades.
She would’ve never drunk the water from the river. She would’ve never lost so many beings she loved in this war. She would’ve never turned into something she wasn’t supposed to be.
The Grand Lich’s prophecy was beside the point. The future might or might not be written. But the past and the present still spoke to me, and they showed a clear conclusion.
Our soulmate hated us, and she was not wrong to do so.
“Yes, of course,” I replied. “We’ll go, Your Majesty. We apologize for our presumptuousness and behavior. We won’t bother you again.”
Trying very hard not to shake and fall apart, I made my way to my mother’s side. I picked her up in my arms, realizing all too well that my actions would make Eranthe angrier, but unable to do anything to prevent it.
It was unnecessary for me to carry her. Pandora flicked her fingers, and my aunts’ unconscious forms started to float, carried by a pleasant breeze that smelled like ripe fruit. Maybe I should’ve allowed her to handle my mother as well. I didn’t. Instead, I walked up to Pandora, feeling like I was weighed down by something far heavier than my mother’s body.
I dared to steal one last look at Eranthe. She wasn’t looking at us at all. Instead, she was staring at the bloody lake, clenching and unclenching her fists, obviously still angry.
Pandora jerked her head, gesturing for us to follow her. I could do nothing but comply.
We left Eranthe standing alone in the clearing and headed back the way we’d come. Strangely, the shadows that had fallen over the forest seemed even deeper now. I wondered why. We’d removed the source of the corruption. The magic of the woods should’ve already started to heal.
