Darkness Within

by Carli Castle

  “Right. I do remember reading something of the sort, but people still say there was no vision because there was always only one Goddess, not four of them.”

  “Well, yes.” She leaned back and sighed. “I mean, a goddess that went dark. It’s absurd.”

  “Yeah,” he muttered. Shadows were born from Human Sorcerers, meaning they were actual human beings. His heart sunk. If what he had killed were those shadows, he had murdered three men. It was a fact that circled around in his head, even when he was sleeping. He was a killer.

  “There have to still be books about it somewhere,” she interrupted his thoughts.

  “I’ve looked everywhere and haven’t found a thing other than the story of the Four Witch Goddesses,” he told her. “It would be almost comical if it wasn’t so frustrating. Once they updated history books, it’s like people decided to leave out a part of history.”

  “It’s a myth, not history.”

  “I know, but it’s something that was considered to be history because Esmeraldans believed it at some point. It changed people in one way or another. It should have never been removed.”

  “I agree,” she said. “I can help you look. My father has to have every book ever written in the palace library, and one of them has to have something on it that hasn’t been changed or removed.”

  “I would really appreciate the help, thank you.” He smiled. She looked exhausted, but she smiled a little. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “I have to be.” She shrugged.

  They had an awkward silence after that. He knew he had to be the one to break it, to talk to her about the kiss, about himself and his crazy powers. He had to tell her the truth, though maybe that wasn’t the moment for it. She was exhausted enough without him adding to her stress. Later, he told himself.

  “Elle.”

  He knew the question was coming even before she asked it.

  “Lucas, why did you really kiss me?”

  He remained silent. Not because he didn’t know what to say, but because he wanted to say it just right. He was conflicted. On the one hand, he wanted to tell her the reasons behind the kiss. He liked her. He liked her a lot, and he wanted it to go forward. But another side of him wanted to say a kiss was just a kiss and that it happened between people that found each other attractive, and that it didn’t have to mean anything. But that was a blatant lie, because he never took that kind of thing lightly, and she deserved better than that.

  “It’s okay if you didn’t mean to,” she said, looking down. “It happens. I just would rather know now and not much later.”

  “I did mean to.” He stood, deciding to throw caution to the wind and give it a shot. What was the worst that could happen?

  Banishment, imprisonment, the removal of all your powers. Putting her in danger. Almost nothing, he thought.

  He pushed that thought aside as he moved toward her. Sometimes you just had to go with instinct. Sometimes you didn’t give doubt a chance to change your mind, and you moved quickly. Like at that moment.

  He pulled her up by the arm, so she was standing in front of him. He was so close he could feel heat coming off her in waves.

  “Lucas,” she whispered, but before she could say anything else, he took her lips with his. They were soft and sweet like a ripe peach. He felt her fingers dig into his shoulders, and she trembled when his hands went to her waist and hung on for dear life there.

  Every time he touched her, tasted her, he wanted more. So much more. He imagined most of the princes that courted her were the kind to be nice, and polite, and gentle. He was no prince, he thought as he scraped her bottom lip with his teeth and ran his hands up and down that glorious body of hers, enjoying her melting against him.

  When he thought he would finally go insane with wanting her, he stepped back. He felt no apprehension for having kissed her again. The rules be damned.

  He took a long look at her face, wishing she’d come to see him in different circumstances.

  Her lips tingled as she looked up at him. His eyes were on her face, as if he was drinking every inch of her skin.

  “Does that explain everything for you?” he asked softly.

  “That does,” she responded, cleared her throat. Everything felt heavy, her arms, her legs, her lids. She could have curled up against him and slept for a week.

  A few minutes later, she did just that, curling against him in his bed, letting the warmth of his body soothe her weary mind. His fingers made patterns on her back, and focusing on them, she fell asleep.

  She dreamt of nothing, and she woke up only when he kissed her awake what seemed like minutes later.

  “It’s five o’clock,” he whispered, then gave her another kiss. “It’s time to take you home.”

  She didn’t want to leave, but she didn’t want to get either of them into any kind of trouble, so she walked beside him out of his house, still wearing his clothes, her own forgotten. It was not raining anymore, but humidity remained in the air. He held her when they teleported to the palace, and she breathed him in one last time before she let her body rise up to the balcony. Once there, she lifted her hand and waved as he teleported home, sad to see him go.

  What was this feeling she was having? Why did he pull at her that way? She didn’t know him that well, if she really thought about it. There were many things she wanted to learn about him. She wanted to spend time talking to him, asking him questions, answering his. Why should that be wrong? He was a good human being, whether he had royal blood running through his veins or not, and all that should have mattered was how they felt about each other.

  She liked him. A lot.

  His kiss in her mind, she climbed into her bed, his scent invading her senses, and she lifted the shirt, exposing her midriff, to bury her nose in it. She fell asleep once again. However, this time her sleep was not peaceful, and her dreams were not of Lucas’s mouth on hers, or his hands roaming over her body.

  Instead, she dreamt of that man, the poor man whose name she still didn’t know. His eyes staring up at her, his blood on her, telling her it was her fault he was dead. Looking at her like he hated her for not saving his life.

  She was startled awake when he went to grab her by the neck, guilt smothering her, tears streaming down her face.

  Chapter Ten

  That following weekend was a good one, considering all the things that had happened during the week. He spent most of his time with Elle, who had been given time off from the healing house to recover from her trauma. She was still distraught about the death of her patient, but she was starting to feel a little better, and he was glad he could contribute to that, if only a little bit.

  They read books on the goddesses, made notes, talked, kissed. It was a different experience for him, since he tended to want to be alone most of the time. Having her there was nice.

  He’d found out so many things about her, like how deeply she loved healing. He’d known she loved it since finding out she was his father’s healing assistant, but he had not realized just how much. It was nice listening to her talk about it, the way her eyes would sparkle, and how she often spoke in words he could scarcely pronounce, let alone know the meaning of. It reminded him of his dad a lot.

  He’d also figured out that even when she was a little sad, it wasn’t too hard to get a smile out of her. He loved that about her, and hoped to be the person to always make her smile.

  He almost laughed out loud when he remembered their attempt at cooking. He had undercooked the pasta, and she’d burned the sauce. They hadn’t eaten much of the crunchy mess, and had a good laugh as they cleaned. His house still stunk of overcooked garlic and onions.

  The only damper to an otherwise perfect weekend was the fact that he still hadn’t told her the truth about his powers. He’d wanted to, many times, but he hadn’t found the right moment. Or maybe he had and he was just a coward. He just didn’t know how to begin telling her about it.

  As he sat on his usual chair in the council room on M
onday morning, waiting for the rest of the members to get there, he thumbed through one of the books she’d brought him from the palace. Caleb was still not there either, and Lucas enjoyed the silence as he read through it.

  He read for a while, mostly commentary from the author about his doubts on the existence of the four goddesses and what he called a load of poppycock. He even read through part of the meeting, raising his eyes to greet the members as they entered the room, and going right back to it. He was so submerged into the book that he lost track of the conversation, and only looked back up when his name was mentioned.

  “I’m sorry, but the mere notion that these creatures are roaming Esmeralda, without anyone but Mr. Ferrin seeing them, is asinine,” Aali was saying. He was trying to sound calm, but Lucas could see the old man was furious. How he hadn’t had a heart attack already, Lucas would never know. The man was always upset about something. Lucas didn’t even think he’d ever seen Aali smile.

  “Excuse me, Aali, but are you saying I’m lying,” Lucas asked him, and all eyes turned to him. He almost blushed. Maybe he should have been paying attention instead of reading.

  “All I’m saying is that it’s very strange how no one but you has seen these creatures,” Aali retorted.

  “Not just me, Jamie Smith as well,” Lucas said. “She was interviewed by Caleb and Jaleil.”

  “That is true,” Jaleil said.

  “And yet, she is nowhere to be found for a more thorough account.” Aali smirked and Lucas bristled at the implication.

  “What are you implying,” Lucas asked the old man, resisting the urge to yell.

  “I’m not implying anything, I am merely pointing out what has happened.”

  “How is it so hard to believe what I said I saw?” Lucas looked around the room, trying hard to keep his voice under control. “Those creatures were real, I saw them. They were there, and you found someone dead, surely you realized someone must have done that.”

  “Yes, and next you’ll tell us how you saw The Darkness herself,” Aali scoffed.

  “No, I won’t, because that is not the truth.”

  “I don’t see how it’s farfetched to believe what Lucas told us,” Daniel said, leaning forward and placing his elbows on the table. “It makes sense, and you denying it is not going to change the fact that innocents are being murdered and we still don’t have anything to tell the people of Esmeralda and the human sorcerers. The count is up to four now.”

  “That’s because we can’t go out and tell our people there are Shadows roaming Esmeralda. Do you have any idea what that would cause?” Prince Noren inquired. “We would be the laughingstock of all the magical lands.”

  Lucas wished he had continued reading instead of listening to these people looking at him like he was just a kid crying wolf. He got it, it was hard to grasp, but he wasn’t lying and he didn’t know what to do to make them believe him. He took deep breaths, counting back from ten. When that didn’t work, he went up to one hundred, and when that didn’t work, he went up to a thousand.

  As Aali and Prince Noren continued to argue with everyone about the unlikeliness of it all, Lucas resisted the urge to jump over the table and squeeze their necks.

  “Like Daniel said,” Ash said for the first time, “there is no use being in denial about it.”

  “It’s not denial, it is fact!” Aali slammed his fist onto the table. His nose was wrinkled in its usual fashion, like he’d smelled something fowl. “The Darkness and Shadows roaming the night, killing people for their powers, is just a bunch of spooky stories made up a long time ago by a mother desperate to have some control over her wayward children. There has never been any evidence of these goddesses and those creatures she was supposed to have predicted.”

  Lucas breathed in deeply again.

  Nine hundred and fifty, nine hundred and forty nine…

  “Are we supposed to just ignore the deaths that just happened?” Caleb asked his counselor, clearly incensed. “Two men just died in the healing house with wounds that could not be healed, nor could they be explained. Their spirits have not come forward to point toward their attackers. Should we ignore that too?”

  “The others have appeared without their hearts, is that what happened this time as well?” Prince Noren asked.

  “No, it looks like the killing was interrupted before the killer was able to remove the hearts,” Caleb said. Princess Harper made a face at his bluntness.

  “Then this could have very well been someone else trying to copy the manner in which the others were killed,” Prince Noren said. It made sense, but Lucas knew it wasn’t someone different. He couldn’t explain how he knew it, he just did.

  “If it could not be proved to have been these Shadows, then how do we know they were,” Aali asked, becoming more and more tense. “This boy starts talking of Shadows and we’re just going to sit back and blindly believe his stories. That’s why those stories were removed from history books, because they have no basis in truth.”

  “Lucas has no reason to lie, Aali,” Ash said, his voice shaking slightly.

  “Shadows don’t exist,” Aali growled.

  “Look, I don’t know if what I saw were those Shadows, but they were like nothing I have ever seen,” Lucas said, looking straight at Aali. In a stroke of inspiration, he opened the book he had been reading. “I found a couple of interesting passages in this book I would like to read.”

  “I believe in Lucas,” Ash said, his voice steady now. Lucas was grateful to him for his faith, though he felt a little guilty for it. They didn’t know the full extent of what had happened the night he saw the three figures. He hated calling them shadows, because he still had no idea if they were.

  “I always thought you were one of the more sensible people around here, but I guess I was wrong,” Aali muttered.

  “Because I am is why I trust Lucas,” Ash explained, his voice rising slightly. “People talk about the goddesses and Darkness like they’re nothing more than a running joke and, I am one of those that’s inclined to believe it’s real.”

  “You’re telling me you believe that story of Four Goddesses,” Aali scoffed. “A Goddess that went dark and was banished to earth with no body. Now she possesses people and makes them into these dark creatures that can only come out at night. That makes a whole lot of sense.”

  “You’re impossible.” Ash stood, unable to sit any longer. “Not talking about a problem doesn’t make it go away.”

  “I know what I saw,” Lucas input. “And I’m not ashamed to say I don’t even understand what they are, but maybe this book can shed light. It’s the only one that has more detailed information about all of it.”

  “Alright, let’s hear it,” Olon said in his deep baritone. He had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout the whole argument.

  “Keep in mind this book was written by a skeptic of the story, though he still wanted to add the entire story for those seeking information to form their own opinions,” Lucas explained before he began to read. “It says: The legend tells the story of four witch goddesses. Demetria had the powers of earth and fertility; Naiad had the powers of water and premonition; Era had the power of air and telekinesis; Udyia had the powers of fire. With fire, as it is the most volatile of the four elements, came a desire to spread, to grow. One night, when Udyia and Era began the creation of a storm, Udyia was overcome by her desire for more power, and killed her sister, taking her power for herself.”

  A pin drop could be heard through the entire council building as Lucas continued to read. Even Aali and Noren looked like they were paying attention.

  “Udyia went for Naiad next, and the goddess of water put up her fight, but Udyia defeated her with the help of her newfound power. With three powers now, Udyia went after Demetria, but the mother of earth and fertility was strong, and even though Udyia had the upper hand, Demetria succeeded in weakening her long enough to have her bound and brought before the Grand Council. Udyia was stripped of the powers, and they were given to De
metria for safekeeping until another three goddesses could be appointed to them.

  “The High Priests and Elders wanted to banish Udyia to earth without powers, but Demetria saw the future in the water. Udyia would become something of darkness, an entity without a body, and without a conscience. Filled with rage at losing what she felt was hers by birthright, Udyia would possess the bodies of those open to the same kind of hunger for power, to the same anger she felt. They would do her bidding, and would lose their own free will. From possessed humans, creatures of shadows would be born. Knife-like claws would be their weapons, and to become full Shadows, they would have to murder thirteen innocents. Once a human sorcerer became a Shadow, there would be no going back. They would roam the night in search for the power of others, to feed their master, The Darkness. They would be killed with fire, the same element their master once possessed.”

  Lucas swallowed the lump on his throat. He had seen knife-like claws raising over his head, ready to strike him. It all made so much sense. However, the knowledge didn’t come with relief, it came with anxiety. Even when he now knew he hadn’t murdered innocent humans. Once they became Shadows, they weren’t human anymore, but things of darkness, killing machines.

  “That means the creatures you saw were human sorcerers,” Daniel said.

  “They could have been,” Lucas said. “It says on here that once their claws are knife-like, it means they have killed thirteen souls to become full shadows. Once they’re in that state, there’s no going back for them. No cure.”

  “Then, they absorb power, which Udyia takes into herself, becoming more and more powerful,” Ash added.

  Lucas couldn’t control the shudder that went through him at the thought of anyone killing thirteen innocent people. It made him physically sick.

  “That is all a nice enough story, isn’t it?” Aali sneered. “I will not sit here and listen to this kind of nonsense.”

  “You being skeptical about it doesn’t make it any less true,” Lucas barked, sick and tired of trying to convince Aali, as if he were trying to explain something to a child. He had far too much on his plate already to have to deal with him too.