Chapter Twelve
The aether. I was not supposed to find the aether. The aether is what connects all life, what gives us magic. The lifeblood of Laconia, the lifeblood of the demon itself. Pure and undiluted, it remained that way since the beginning of time—and that’s why it had to change.
The aether was never meant to be mine. Its power was never meant to be split and shared between three empresses, but that’s precisely what the land needed: dilution. The taint would come slowly, but someday in the distant future, it would be enough to change everything.
I was the beginning of that change. You are the culmination.
I don’t know where the voice comes from, or if I hear all that in my head, like a strange, distant memory that suddenly surfaced in my brain even though it doesn’t belong to me, but I find myself standing in an undercroft. I don’t know which one; they all kind of look the same. Aether surrounds me on either side, thick, viscous liquid that apparently is magic in solid form.
The only reason the first high empress became what she was is the aether. The lifeblood of Laconia, it was pure until she found it, until she took some of its power as her own. If it’s connected to all magic, it’s connected to Invictis, too.
It’s his lifeblood. But what the hell does that mean?
“Aurelia,” a familiar voice speaks my name, so calm and gentle I freeze.
It’s not a voice I heard that much, but in my heart of hearts, I know exactly who it belongs to. I turn away from the aether and see a woman standing on the far side of the platform, wearing the clothes she wore in the visions I saw of her: red robes with a few metal pieces here and there. Her long, brown hair is split evenly, half draping over each shoulder. Her hands are folded over her stomach, a soft smile on her face.
“Mom?” The word escapes me, so soft I can hardly hear it, and yet it echoes in the space between us.
She says nothing else, but her dark eyes meet mine across the space. A single hand lifts as she offers it to me, wordlessly beckoning me to come closer.
So I do.
I go to her, and the moment I reach her, I set my hand in hers. Behind her a stone door opens, a bright white light shining through. She turns and leads me through it, but the moment I cross the threshold she disappears.
I stand in a world of twilight, standing atop water, the horizon caught in a perpetual sunset any which way you look. Above my head the sky is black, like an eclipse is blocking out the sun. But it’s not my surroundings that I’m drawn to, not my surroundings that made that bright light shine through the door—a door that is now gone. I don’t have to look behind me to know it; I just do.
The thing that shined so much blinding light was Invictis. A statue of him. He stands in his ascended form, an impressive eight feet tall, his six wings outstretched behind his back, floating and unattached. His golden, metallic body shimmers with an unnatural glow, as if his form is moving even though it’s not.
His feet, more like armored boots than actual feet, are flat on a small platform above the water I stand on, spread just as his hands are, like he’s welcoming you, taking you in. From inside his golden, faceless head shines a light that makes his whole head appear like a halo.
My breath catches, my lungs condense. It hurts to breathe, looking at him like this. Never has there been a more beautiful ruin, so bright and blinding it’s all you can see. If he’s not a god, I don’t know what he could be.
I step toward him and lift a hand. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I feel… I don’t know. I feel like I need to be closer to him, even though it’s just a statue of him, frozen in time. I climb onto the foot-high platform and slip my hand into his.
The moment my fingertips brush against the metal of his hand, the warmth emanating from Invictis’s inhuman form vanishes, and when I blink, his golden hue rusts and flakes away. Before my very eyes he changes, morphing into something else.
Not bright. Not warm. Not the epitome of light.
The opposite.
I wake with a startled gasp, jerking awake as I feverishly look all around to make sure I’m not hand in hand with some anti-Invictis. We’re no longer in the inner chamber; if I have to guess, I’d say Invictis carried me up all those steps.
Frederick sits nearby, scribbling in a journal. Invictis is beside me, gazing into the campfire with a far-off look. When I wake, however, both men drop what they’re doing to pay attention to me.
“Rey,” Frederick says, shutting his journal and setting it on the grass. “You passed out again. Did you see something?”
I draw my legs in to my chest, not saying anything for a while. Invictis watches me with a tight expression, the blueness in his eyes reflecting the orange fire.
“I did, I think.” I close my eyes. The dream, the vision, whatever you want to call it, is still so vivid in my mind. “I felt something in Pylos, too, but this one was… different. I think it’s a memory from the first high empress, something she left for me.”
“For you?” Frederick repeats. “That’s impossible. How would she know you would come along?”
“Well, not me specifically, but me as in the person who’s going to change everything. She set this in motion, and I’m… I’m what she hoped for.” Saying it aloud sounds wrong, like I’m blowing smoke up my own ass. I glance to Invictis. “Do you remember the first high empress at all?”
He lets out a slow breath as he thinks back. “I… it was a long time ago. I was trapped in those labyrinths for so long. I only remember that she could not defeat me, so she imprisoned me.”
“And what about before that?”
Invictis’s brows crease. “When you live an eternity, you tend to forget some things.”
“It’s happened before. You. You wiped out all the humans living here before Laconia became Laconia.” As I say it, Frederick’s mouth drops open, but Invictis appears unbothered, as if he’s mentally telling himself, Good for me .
I continue, “When she was exiled from her home, she was brought to Laconia. She found an empty city. She also found the aether in the undercroft. By bathing in it, she became the first high empress. She stopped aging, gained magical powers, and as more people found the land, she helped them prosper and they worshiped her.”
Invictis acts bored, plucking at the moss on the ground near him. Frederick, on the other hand, is enrapt.
“And when Laconia became Laconia, with people spread out into other cities and villages, you came and started to wipe them out,” I say, shooting a glare Invictis’s way. “She knew she couldn’t defeat you, not permanently. She knew something had to give. She tore you apart and locked you away, in three pieces, and then she did the same to herself. One high empress became three, one for each of the labyrinths. She did so hoping one day something would change.”
I move my gaze to my knees as I hug them closer to my chest. “She knew the aether was connected to Invictis, the lifeblood of the land, of magic itself. For it to change, she would become the first drop to taint it. She was never supposed to find the aether. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that… but it did, and then one day Invictis was set free and the three empresses tried to trap him again—only this time there wasn’t three pieces, there was four.”
Frederick’s mouth thins, like he’s remembering what I told him before.
“The fourth piece, a tiny piece—but enough to make a difference—went inside the belly of the pregnant empress, Krotas.” I pause, feeling a pang of sorrow in my heart. “My mom. That piece went inside me. It’s why I can do what I can do, why I can ignore the madness that made the other empresses lose their minds.”
I chuckle even though nothing is funny. “I’m the change the first high empress wanted, but I couldn’t kill Invictis either. All I could do was bind him to me.”
Frederick moves to sit beside me, earning himself a hard glare from Invictis. “Perhaps that’s enough for now,” he whispers. “No other empress could’ve bound him as you did. They went mad with a single piece of him. You can control him in a way no other empress ever could. It may feel as though things are strained now, but I, myself, believe you did what you were always meant to do. You saved us all, whether you believe it or not.”
Invictis seethes at hearing that. “Yes, yes, how miraculous it is for you to make me your personal prisoner, Rey. It’s what your predecessor always wanted.” His tone is snide and snippy, and his accent makes it sound worse.
Worse and sexy at the same time.
Frederick sighs as he studies me harder. “It is remarkable. That piece must have melded with you in a way that, instead of him controlling you, the opposite took place. That part of him became a part of you.”
“It makes it even more pathetic that my magic is gone,” I mutter with a frown.
“Your magic will return. I know it. Binding Invictis to you must have taken extraordinary amounts of it. You could simply need time, that’s all. Don’t lose faith just yet.” He grabs one of my hands off my knees and squeezes it in support. The action instantly rustles Invictis’s feathers, and the asshole glares at Frederick like he’s never glared before.
“You don’t… hate me because a part of him is inside me?” I don’t know why I care so much. I just do.
His answer comes swiftly: “Of course not. Who could ever hate you?”
Invictis mutters to the fire, “I could. I could be wiping this land clean of all mortal-kind if it weren’t for Rey.” When he realizes he said it aloud, he glances at Frederick and me, and then at the way Frederick still is holding onto my hand. “What? Did I say something wrong? Forgive me. Perhaps I should leave and give you two some privacy—” He looks at me after that, his expression saying it all.
This time, it’s Frederick who interrupts the semi-awkward silence by saying, “Why do I have the feeling that, if she makes you leave, you’ll find some way to return regardless? You’re a murderer, yes, but right now you’re nothing more irritating than a thorn in our sides.”
A muscle in Invictis’s face twitches. “What do you mean by that, mortal?”
“It means that, regardless of how much you say you hate Rey, it’s a lie. You look down on us, but you have the same emotions we do.” Frederick releases my hand and stands—and Invictis stands with him. He steps around me and whispers, “You would be glad to have her all to yourself, wouldn’t you?”
I roll my eyes at their testosterone pissing contest. How did the conversation get here? God, these two. I want to smack them both upside the head to get some sense knocked into them. Alas, all I do is get to my feet in case I have to butt in and interrupt whatever they got going on.
“As would you,” Invictis hisses.
“At least she’d be safe with me. If you could, you’d kill her!”
“If I truly wanted her dead, she’d be dead a long time ago. I could have crushed her the moment she set me free in Acadia and countless times after that.”
Okay, at that I feel like I have to interject, “Um, maybe we should just move on?” But both men ignore me, too engrossed with trying to one-up the other.
“Oh, so you want acclamation for not killing her? Let me be the first to tell you: not killing someone is the literal bare minimum you can do for them. It’s not something to be proud of.” Frederick shakes his head once in disgust, his mouth tugging into a slight frown. “You would gladly kill me if it meant you got her all to yourself.”
“You forget: I don’t have to lift a finger. Time will do it for me. Eventually, you will age and wither and rot, and while that happens Rey and I will be eternal, together, side by side—”
Frederick takes a single step toward Invictis, like he wants to get in a fist-fight or something, but I dart between them and lift my hands, setting my left on Frederick and my right on Invictis.
“Boys, please,” I start, glancing between them. “As much as it’s kind of hot to watch you two fight over me, at this point, it’s getting stupid. I want us to get along while we’re roaming the countryside together, so let’s fucking get along, mmkay?”
I can tell neither one wants to back down, which surprises me. Honestly, before this trip with the two of them, I never pictured Frederick as the kind of guy who would get into a jealous fight over me. He doesn’t seem like the type, but I guess my past experience with guys doesn’t lend to guys like Frederick and Invictis.
But since I’m standing between them, they simmer down.
Just as well. We still have one more labyrinth to reach, and the last thing we all need is to make the final leg of this journey as awkward as possible.