Chapter 54
54
W ith the rising of the sun and the reality that another day had passed, I snuck out of bed, gathered my leathers and my sword, and crept downstairs to the bathroom. I washed my hair, scrubbed the dirt and grime from every crevice, brushed my teeth, braided my hair, and dressed. I thought I’d get away without his protest, but as I swung the door open, he was there, leaning against the opposite wall, arms folded over his chest.
“Going somewhere, Paesha darling?”
“I have to go to the Vale and meet Alastor. And before you say anything, I need you to know that it kills me, too. If I could find a way to put these worlds together, I would. I don’t want you to have to leave them, Thorne. And I don’t want to have to leave you. But those are the choices right now. Maybe. If we’re lucky. But there’s a little girl that needs me. She needs me far more than you do. And even if I hadn’t made a foolish deal with the Keeper, I would still have to go.”
He stared at me for a long time, eyes shifting between mine, likely studying every shade of green and blue he could find within their depths as he heard the words repeated in his mind.
“Tell me about her,” he said, taking my hand. “Come. Sit with me and tell me about your girl.”
I let Thorne lead me to a small sitting area. He kept my hand clasped in his, his thumb tracing soothing circles on my skin as he waited patiently for me to gather my thoughts and open up about something I’d kept guarded, as if I were protecting her somehow.
“Her name is Quill. She’s not my daughter by blood, but… but I love her as if she were my own flesh and bone.” I closed my eyes for a moment, picturing Quill’s cherubic face, her wild riot of dark curls, the way her eyes sparkled with mischief and intelligence far beyond her tender years. “I worked in a place called Misery’s End for a wretched man called the Maestro. He owned a dark burlesque show and was Requiem’s greatest crime lord. He had the power to bind me to him if he could ever catch me in a bargain. But I was smart. Even when I’d been stabbed and lost my ability to ever have children, he tried. He purchased Quill from a brothel owner to dangle her in front of me like bait. But I didn’t take the deal. I refused him. The Syndicate and I, those are my friends, we rallied around her and raised her, protected her as best we could from him. I ended up bound to him for another reason.” I closed my eyes, trying to remember why. Drawing a steadying breath as if it would come to me, letting the words flow, grasping at each one until they made sense. “I loved another man. And I bargained my freedom to the Maestro to save his life. He died, and I was bound anyway. I’d missed the loophole in the bargain.”
As I spoke the words aloud, Thorne’s grip tightened on my fingers. As if he could anchor me, save me from the sad memories. I opened my eyes to find his tracing every inch of my face.
“I have to go back. I have to complete the bargain with Alastor and I’m running out of time, Thorne. I’m sorry.”
He closed his arms around me, pulling me to his chest. “I know I should have a thousand questions for you, but none feel like they matter right now. If she’s important to you, then she’s important to me, too. The rest can wait until later. We’ll find a way. I promised. But going to Alastor before you have a name is pointless. He won’t let you out of the bargain.”
“I have a name,” I confessed.
He drew back. “You never told me.”
“Believe me, there hasn’t been time.”
“Are you going to tell me who it is?”
“I’m afraid to give it to another person, just in case it breaks the magic or the bargain somehow.”
“Okay. That’s smart. Let me get washed up and changed and we’ll go together.”
“Thorne, he hates you. I really think I need to go by myself.”
“We don’t play with the gods by ourselves, Paesha darling. Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll be ready to go.”
“He waits outside,” Alastor said, brows lowered, his handsome, godly face stern as he glared at Thorne but refused to speak to him.
Thorne adjusted the sleeve of his suit jacket casually. “I won’t touch a thing, Al. Pinky promise.”
Alastor’s tattoos whirled and writhed along his arms and neck. “You want to know what I think you can do with your promises? Or shall I start making some of my own with our lovely Paesha?”
Thorne’s calm stature wavered, that tiny tic in his jaw betraying his ease. For a long, tense moment, he held Alastor’s gaze, a silent battle of wills playing out between them. The air crackled with barely restrained power causing the hair on my neck to stand on end, the ancient god and the puzzling man locked in a stalemate. Finally, with a curt nod, Thorne stepped back.
I turned to Alastor. “Lead the way.”
With a final, pointed look at Thorne, Alastor spun and strode down the main hall of the Vale, his long strides carrying him past the masked merchants and silent lords mulling about. I hurried to keep pace as he turned just past his office door and led me deeper into his dark world.
The narrow corridor twisted and turned, the air growing colder with each step. Sconces flickered to life as we passed, acutely reminding me of the magical fire that’d saved my life, freed me from a piece of the Keeper’s bargain and maybe singed a part of my soul. I wanted to ask. To know what that power was. How a God of Lost and Broken things could heal poison, but those questions were not burning. Not yet. Perhaps when I had the fourth and final name and I could be done with this god, I would find the courage to ask.
We descended a winding staircase, our footsteps echoing in the heavy silence. The air grew musty and damp. Ancient and forgotten. What secrets lay buried in the bowels of the Vale, hidden away from prying eyes?
At the bottom of the stairs, we came to a door, scarred and pitted with age. Alastor placed his palm against the weathered wood and murmured something under his breath until the tattoos hidden beneath his sleeve crept over his hand and whispered across the door like smoke. It swung inward on protesting hinges.
Alastor stepped aside, motioning for me to enter. “After you.”
I walked into the cavernous room, eyes widening as I took in the wonders laid out like scattered traps luring me forward. The space seemed to stretch on forever, the far walls lost in shadow. Towering shelves lined the room, crammed with a quirky assortment of objects. Ancient tomes bound in cracked leather, jars filled with shimmering liquids, ornate boxes carved with intricate symbols, weapons of every description from crude stone blades to gleaming swords. Shattered mirrors and clocks with no arms.
I moved deeper into the room, each step light and careful, as though I was performing on a sacred stage, though no audience watched, save for the towering god at my back. I couldn’t explain the draw to dance, to move. As if something in this hidden treasure recognized a piece of me that’d been missing since I stepped into Wisteria.
Nearby, a shattered mirror caught my attention, reflecting fragmented glimpses of mismatched eyes, of myself, some younger, some older, some not me at all. They whispered of lives I hadn’t lived, or maybe ones I already had.
The quiet song of a violin filled the air, the melody haunting and sweet. And there, draped over a forgotten throne, was a wedding dress, its lace frayed and stained red. So still yet filled with the ghosts of an unfinished waltz. Everything around me hummed with a quiet energy, aching to be remembered, to be held. And I could feel it all, the push, the pull. I held back, afraid of the danger that would come from touching a god’s treasure.
“Don’t touch anything,” Alastor warned as if he knew my mind. Though I supposed, as a touch of his power coursed through my veins, maybe he knew the unexplainable pull to random items.
“You feel it, Huntress, don’t you? The power of curiosity. The draw to the lost. The mark of my power?”
I nodded. “The first time we met, you said ‘born of two, loved by two, your reincarnated soul descended. Not the body. Not the blood.’ What did you mean? Because a goddess told me your blood runs through my veins. But that’s not true, is it?”
“It is not,” he said, walking forward to collect a shattered hourglass, letting the fragments of bones slip through his fingers and onto the floor. “Your soul carries your power, not your blood.” He glared at me with those dark, dangerous eyes. “Do not learn this lesson the hard way, as your past lives have done. Never trust a god. Not one.”
“But why would she lie?”
“One can never be too sure of a god’s motive. But you’re… unique. A rare soul descendant, not a blood descendant. There is a difference. You’re likely the blood descendant of some bastard who stumbled into a whore house hundreds of years ago in the realm you were born to, but your soul is older. More. The Huntress and the Hunted. Fated and damned.”
“My soul carries my power. Not my blood?”
“As is the case for most of the prophesied, but that’s not why you’re here, is it? You’ve brought me a name. The first of four.”
I nodded.
Alastor stepped closer, his dark eyes glittering with an unnerving intensity. He seemed to loom larger, the shadows in the room deepening, gathering around him like a living cloak. They struck hard and fast, winding around my wrists and ankles, swirling over my neck, lifting me off the ground.
Alastor circled me, his footsteps a slow, deliberate cadence. He leaned in close and whispered in a language I couldn’t understand. The words were liquid and dark, flowing over me like black silk, leaving a prick of bliss in their wake, a sense of comfort mingling with fear. There was power in those syllables, ancient and primal.
“Give the name to my Remnants,” Alastor commanded, his voice a low rumble that resonated through my chest. “Speak it aloud and let them taste it on your tongue.”
I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly dry. The Remnants pulsed eagerly, their inky tendrils curling around my jaw, tracing the seam of my lips as if in anticipation. For only a second, I tasted the tang of betrayal.
“Harlow Bramwell.”
The Remnants pulsed. Then sank into the sensitive flesh on my neck just behind my ear, jolting through my veins. Then they were gone as fast as they’d come. I dropped to the hard floor in a heap, blinking, willing the room to come into focus.
“Will you…” I swallowed. “Will you fix her?”
Alastor tsked, walking close enough his boots filled my vision. “No.”
A sudden burst of golden light filled the room, blinding me, searing my retinas and forcing my eyes shut. It grew brighter and brighter until I felt it seeping into my skin, my bones, my very soul.
With a gasp, I was yanked out of the dark chamber and into a vision so vivid, so visceral, it stole the breath from my lungs. Gone were the towering shelves of lost treasures, the watchful god, and the weight of ancient power. In their place was a world of blinding white snow, crimson blood and bitter cold.
Snowflakes nestled on half-open lids as I lay in the arms of a man I loved, staring into his bewitching, distraught face as he rocked me back and forth. Thorne. Beautiful, broken Thorne. The frigid air seared my lungs and heat leached from my body, replaced by a bone-deep chill that left me shivering violently. My arms were too heavy, as if the world was pulling me down and every breath was a battle against it, each one weaker than the last. Thorne’s warmth was the only thing left in a world turned cold. My vision blurred with pain and tears.
“Please. Please, Winter, don’t go.”
My heart twisted. I didn’t want this. His memory. But I couldn’t pull myself out of the vision no matter how hard I fought against the violation. What kind of sick and twisted game was Alastor playing at? Because I was her. His beloved. And he was fighting a losing battle.
The world was already slipping away.
He pressed his hand harder against my side, trying to stanch the flow of blood, but it poured through his fingers. His face twisted with grief, with terror, and his voice… so low, so broken, was barely more than a whisper. “Please,” he begged, his lips brushing against my forehead as his tears fell, warm and wet against my skin. “Please don’t leave me. Not like this.”
His words were thick with despair, and my heart twisted painfully in my chest. I wanted to stay. I wanted to promise him I wouldn’t leave, to reach up and wipe the tears from his beautiful face, to tell him everything would be okay, but I couldn’t move. My body, her body, was a weight I could no longer control. The cold had claimed me. All I could do was look up at him as my vision blurred and his face grew dim.
“Please, please…” Thorne’s voice broke, shattering like fragile glass. His fingers trembled as he held me, as if the sheer force of his will could keep my soul tethered here, keep me alive a little longer. “Don’t you fucking die. That’s not how this was supposed to go. We need more time.”
His forehead pressed against mine. And the way he shook? Like the world was crumbling around him. He kissed my hair, my cheeks, my forehead. Each touch was frantic. His tears fell faster now, splashing hot onto my skin. I was so cold, I barely felt them anymore.
“I’ll fix this,” he sobbed. “I’ll fix you. Just… stay with me. Please, just stay.”
I wanted to stay. Gods, I wanted to stay with him, but I couldn’t. My breaths were slowing, the rise and fall of my chest growing fainter, and I could feel the moment he realized it. His body tensed, his grip tightening like he could pull me back from the edge, but we both knew.
“Thorne,” I tried to whisper, but it was nothing more than a breath, lost in the wind.
“No, no, no,” he chanted.
I felt his heart breaking, heard it in every tremor of his voice, every gasping breath he took as he rocked me gently in his arms. The warmth faded from his touch, the sound of his voice grew dimmer, and the light slipped from the world.
I wanted to tell him she loved him, that even though I wasn’t truly her, I felt every piece of his agony and her unyielding devotion. I felt it in every tear that had soaked into my skin, in every word he whispered like a prayer.
But it was too late. I was already gone, and the last thing I saw was the look on his face, twisted with pain, shattered by grief. The last thing I heard was his roaring scream, promising revenge.