Darkness Within

by Carli Castle

  He stood, going to the edge of the cliff, the books forgotten on the ground, pages flapping in the wind. What he had just read was nothing new, but the more he read on it, the more it made sense. He wasn’t sure why they couldn’t know for sure. If there had been four goddesses, then why wasn’t there any confirmation either way? It would have been easy to do, the High Priests could easily talk to Esmeralda citizens and confirm or deny everything, but they didn’t, leaving everyone to wonder.

  And then there were the creatures from the previous night. They had not been a product of his imagination. He had killed them, and they had been real. He could almost smell the stench they left behind as they burned. He swallowed the knot that formed on his throat.

  He had to figure out what the creatures were, if they were real men. He had to know if he had actually killed three human beings.

  The sound of the wind was loud in his ears, mixed with the sounds of the ocean below, so much so that he didn’t hear footsteps, or a rustle of clothes, just her voice when she called to him.

  “Lucas.”

  He turned, his heart leaping when he saw her standing there, looking uncertainly at his hands. She was dressed in skin tight pants and a long sleeved shirt. Her hair was pulled back from her face, but it was loose down her back.

  “Elle. Hi.” He felt awkward looking at her. He didn’t want her there. What if he did something to hurt her? He couldn’t control those powers, and they just came when he least expected it. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to see how you’re doing.” She looked nervous, her hands halfway in her pockets. “I heard about what happened to you last night.”

  “I’m fine,” he mumbled as she came closer to him, standing just a foot away from him, looking down at the cliff.

  She looked at him sideways, then looked away. He kept his head down, feeling helpless.

  Clouds were beginning to roll over them, dark and ominous, giving the ocean below a gray hue as it licked at the rocks and sand.

  He looked at the sway of waves, grateful she hadn’t been there the previous night, that she hadn’t been hurt, and that she hadn’t seen the real Lucas. The one that had killed three human beings. He tried hard to stifle the guilt that overtook him and made him want to crawl into bed, and never get out of it.

  Maybe he just needed to stay away from her, it was the only way to keep her safe.

  He cringed. Even in his thoughts he sounded like an arrogant ass.

  “Should I not have come,” she asked. “I’m really sorry, I thought since…”

  “I’m sorry,” he breathed. “I’ve had a lousy morning. Scratch that, I’ve had a lousy week. I don’t mean to be rude.”

  “I know,” she said. Something in the way she looked at him flashed in his memory, but was gone too quickly for him to grasp. “Can I help in any way?”

  “You mean by using your power on me,” he asked and she nodded like it was the most natural thing to ask someone to use empathic powers on them. “Thank you for the offer, but I think I’d rather deal with it.”

  “I wouldn’t just take the feelings all away, Lucas, it’s not how it works.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “No, I would just relieve you from part of it, but you’d have the memory, so it wouldn’t be completely gone,” she explained.

  “Interesting,” he mumbled. “I guess you learn something new every day.”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty wise,” she said. “It’s good to have me around.”

  He looked at her sideways and couldn’t help a smile.

  “Do you want to take a walk down on the beach,” he asked, in spite of his better judgment. He should be sending her on her way, as far from him as he could push her. Instead, he was inviting her on a walk to the beach. Something was wrong with his head.

  “Sure,” she said, after looking up at the sky. “I don’t know if it’s the wisest thing to do, but all right.”

  She slipped off her shoes and he followed suit. The rock was cool under his feet, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. They teleported down to the beach together, their feet immediately sinking into cold, wet sand.

  “I love the ocean,” she said, turning up her face and breathing deeply. The wind whipped her hair around her like a halo. He wanted to wrap it in his hand and pull her to him, much like the previous night.

  Of course, he wasn’t going to do that. That was just idiotic.

  “Do you get to come down here often,” he asked her as a way to stall on what she had come to talk about. He didn’t want to get into it, least of all with her.

  “Not as often as I would like.” She shrugged.

  “Why not?”

  She looked thoughtful for a moment. “I have no idea. I guess between royal duties and some personal things, I don’t have a ton of time. Not that I have as many duties as Harper.”

  “Hey, at least you get to see awesome places on a regular basis.”

  She scoffed. “I wish. My royal duties consist of classes on how to be a lady and become a better wife. It’s awful,” she told him. “It’s like all I’m destined for is being a pretty wife to some prince.”

  He fought down the stab of jealousy that went through him at her words. Elle married to some prince was not something he wanted to picture. Not that he had any right to be the least bit possessive of her. She was a princess, and he was a nobody.

  “But enough about me,” she said. “I want to hear what happened to you last night.”

  He sighed. “I guess it’s fair for you to ask.”

  “Not if you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Like you would let me get away with that.”

  “You’re right, I wouldn’t.”

  As they walked along the beach, he told her of what happened after he dropped her off at home. She was quiet through the whole story, nodding along and stopping him once to ask him to clarify where exactly it had happened. He left out the part where he had murdered three people. He wasn’t ready to see disgust in her face.

  “But how did you get away,” she asked, looking straight into his eyes. There was the question he couldn’t avoid, even if he started to literally run from it.

  He didn’t want to answer. He didn’t want to think about it, how it made him feel. That horrible glee. That satisfaction. That hunger he’d never understood, but never wanted to feel again. It made him feel dirty, ashamed. Even more after that power had taken the lives of three people.

  “I just ran,” he lied, looking away.

  “But that makes no sense,” she said. “How did you burn your hands then?”

  He swallowed. Of course she’d heard of that.

  “They must have had some sort of fire power. I don’t remember all details.” He studied her face, not adding anything else. He felt like a crawly thing that came from under a dark, wet place.

  “Probably the shock,” she mumbled, looking down, frowning. “Are your hands okay?”

  When she took his hands to look at them, his stomach rolled. Her hands were so soft on his as she traced over the pink scarring.

  “It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he muttered, wishing he could turn his hand and hold hers. He didn’t.

  “Good.” She smiled a little and let his hands go. He stuck them into his pockets to stop himself from touching her. “Lucas, I can’t leave without talking about what happened last night.”

  “I thought we just did.”

  “Not about your thing,” she said. “About what happened before that?”

  His heart went into a pitter patter. “Okay,” he simply said, wishing he knew what he could say. Did he encourage this between them, or did he push her away? It was safer to tell her it didn’t matter, that it was just a kiss, that those just happened sometimes. But that would have been a huge lie. Bigger than the lie he’d already told her.

  And there it was. The fact that he’d lied to her about such a big part of him was a huge sign that this could not possibly work between the two of them.

  “Y
ou kissed me,” she stated quietly.

  “I do remember.” He sounded like a moron.

  “Why did you?” She stood back when she asked him that, visibly nervous.

  “Why did I kiss you,” he sighed. Because you’re amazing, interesting, intelligent, and the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life, is what he wanted to tell her before he grabbed her and kissed her again. Instead, he said, “I don’t know.”

  “You…” she stopped, looking confused. “You don’t know?”

  “Well, I walked you home, and we’d had a good time.” He was not coming across nicely at all, and maybe that was what he needed. “And you asked.”

  “I asked?” She crossed her arms over her chest, and he knew he’d truly done it.

  “Uh, yeah?” It came out more as a stupid question. “Maybe it was the moon? I don’t know.”

  “The moon,” she repeated, pursing her lips and lifting her brows. “That’s clear.”

  “Wait, I really…” he started, wanting to take it all back, but she raised her hand to stop him from talking and he did.

  “Don’t worry about it.” She turned away. “Far be it for me to beg you again.”

  “No, Elle.”

  She teleported before he could get another word out.

  He clutched at his hair and growled deep in his throat.

  He brought his hands to his face, wanting to scream into them. Instead, he went home and sat in front of his usual window, his mind circling around that moment over and over again. What a way to put his foot in his mouth, he thought.

  Who said something like that to someone they liked?

  Well, he did. Lucas Ferrin, the lady killer. But even as he berated himself for it, he told himself it was the best thing for her. She was a princess, and he was a worker in the council, employed by her father. Even if he wasn’t a danger to her, there was nothing he could pursue with her. He could actually kill her if she ever got him angry enough, and without even meaning to do so. He couldn’t expose her to it.

  That was not a life she deserved to have.

  Chapter Nine

  Elle sighed for what seemed like the millionth time that morning.

  Waking up early to go about palace business she understood. Waking up early to have a dress fitting that lasted over three hours… that, she didn’t get. And she didn’t welcome it. Not even a little bit.

  It didn’t help she was in a foul mood either.

  The moon, she thought suppressing the urge to kick at something, mainly because if she did, she would probably knock the seamstress out. The moon my butt.

  She was so angry with Lucas. How dare he rock her world with that kiss, and then pin it on the moon? The way he just sort of slid her to him, the way he kissed her, driving all thoughts out of her head. He had turned her brain into a pile of mush, and then claimed it was the moon. That he didn’t know why. Maybe because she asked for it! She could punch the living daylights out of him at that moment. Good thing he wasn’t around.

  Her mother stood beside her, instructing the seamstress, who had pins in her mouth, as well as a pen and scissors in her hands.

  Her stomach was growling with hunger, because her mother wanted her to be the smallest she could be. The whole idea of someone starving themselves to fit a mold was sad and she didn’t want to do it to herself. She loved food too much.

  “I need it tighter at the top,” her mother said, and the seamstress stood, and started looking at the seams of the top of the dress, which was a mass of the green fabric Elle had requested. She still hated it, and it wasn’t her bad mood talking. She hated lace. She hated tulle. She felt like she was drowning in it.

  “Your Highness, it would be difficult tightening it more than it is,” the seamstress, Janet, said.

  “I think it’s tight enough, mother,” Elle said, her voice echoing through the room. Sunlight was coming in through the double doors and the various windows. The room was sparsely furnished, with a big sewing machine by one wall, tables with all sorts of tools whose purpose was unknown to Elle, and the walls lined with sewing materials.

  “I need you to look your smallest,” her mother said softly, her blue eyes narrowing.

  “What should I do, bind down my breasts with gauze, or would you rather I make them morph into my body? I can do that, you know.”

  “Oh, why do you have to be so crude, Eleanore?” Mom grimaced.

  “I asked a perfectly valid question,” Elle shot back. “You want it tighter? It can’t go any tighter or the seams will rip off.” Her mother spoke like Elle was huge, which she wasn’t. She was curved where she needed to be, and she was really active and tried to keep fit, but mother didn’t understand that there was much more to her than how she looked. Mother would have to deal with that, because she wasn’t going to change.

  “Your father wants you to look your best, my dear,” her mother said in an overly sweet voice. Sometimes Elle wondered if her mother brought her father into conversations to get Elle to submit to what she wanted. It sure seemed like it sometimes, and so far, Elle had never won an argument.

  “I won’t look my best if my dress rips mid-party.” Elle suppressed a yelp as the seamstress pinched her with one of her pins.

  Janet mumbled a series of apologies, but Elle waved her hand and mouthed it was fine while her mother wasn’t looking.

  “Maybe you want to take this up with your father, he’s the one giving me instructions. I am just following his orders,” Mom said.

  Elle didn’t even want to respond. What kind of marriage was that one? Her father demanded, her mother did. Was she serious?

  She wouldn’t respond at all, she decided. She would just stand there and take it. Maybe they would be done soon and she could go to the kitchen and get something to eat.

  The thought of one of Magdalene’s hot sandwiches made her mouth fill with saliva. She could almost smell it if she closed her eyes and thought about it hard enough.

  “Bring it in as much as you can up top,” Mother said to Janet.

  “Yes, Highness,” Janet responded. Elle swore she heard the woman sigh softly and they shared a look, before Janet shrugged one shoulder and continued to measure and pin.

  About an hour, and several pin pricks later, Elle stepped out of the dress and into her normal clothes, which today was a pair of dark jeans, a button down shirt the color of autumn leaves, and a pair of brown boots that went to the middle of her calves.

  She walked toward the kitchen, excited by the images of delicious food that flashed through her mind. She fully intended to find anything and everything she could eat, take it up to her room, and finally get some of it into her stomach. There were several servants in the kitchen. Some of them looked as young as Elle. There were pots and pans on the stove, spoons stirring things on their own, and knives chopping things over wooden cutting boards.

  The smells and sounds were heavenly. If only she could cook, she would be complete, but she really didn’t know what to do. If her life depended on cooking, she wouldn’t live for very long.

  The women and men in the kitchen, including Stanislaus, stopped what they were doing to bow to her. She fought the heat creeping up her face.

  “Oh please, don’t do that,” she said, waving her hands at them. “My mother is nowhere around here, you can treat me like a human being.”

  “And bowing to you means not treating you like a human being, Miss Elle,” asked Magdalene, the main cook, as she came out of a walk-in refrigerator, holding several things in her arms.

  She was really short, about four inches shorter than Elle. She had darker skin, brown eyes, brown hair that she always kept held back at the nape of her neck, and a curvy figure.

  Elle had no idea how old the woman was. Each time she’d asked, Magdalene just replied with ‘that’s for me to know and for you not to worry about’.

  “You know how I feel about people bowing to me,” Elle said.

  Stanislaus was still standing next to his chair, his back straight as
an iron rod, the bowl of soup he’d been eating getting cold. The old man was so stiff all the time, Elle thought as she leaned her hip against a counter.

  “Stanislaus, sit down and finish your soup,” she commanded, holding back a laugh when the old man blushed deeply and sat back down.

  “How may we serve you, Princess Eleanore,” one of the younger helpers asked her, her pretty face flushed from the heat of the kitchen.

  “Elle,” Magdalene and Elle said at the same time.

  “Princess Elle,” the young girl said and Elle decided not to fight her. She was too hungry to care.

  “I’m starving right now, so I will take anything you can give me.”

  “Here, Shelly.” Magdalene placed the things in her arms on the counter. “Have these chopped, washed and seasoned.”

  “Yes, Miss Magdalene,” Shelly said and went right to work.

  “I will make you one of those sandwiches you like so much, Miss Elle,” Magdalene said, waving her hands, and things starting to shoot out of the pantry, refrigerator, cupboards, and drawers. They talked about unimportant things as Magdalene put together the sandwich.

  “Oh bless you, Magdalene,” Elle said when she bit into the heavenly warm bread with its fillings, standing at the counter. It was so big she had a hard time biting into it. “This is the nectar of the gods.”

  “That would be ambrosia, Miss Elle.”

  “Ambrosia?” Elle blinked at her.

  Magdalene barked out a laugh.

  “It’s Greek mythology, Miss Elle. Nothing you would be interested in,” Magdalene explained.

  “I’m interested in a lot of things,” Elle protested, taking another huge bite of her sandwich as Magdalene placed a glass of lemonade in front of her.

  “Learning about mythology requires reading,” Magdalene said, tasting one of the dishes cooking on the massive stove and then stirring it with a wooden spoon.

  “Ah yes, that will do it.” Elle finished off the last of the sandwich. Her mother would have been appalled at the speed in which she ate, but Magdalene’s food was too good to be delicate. “Reading is not my forte.”