Chapter Two
Lailah
Nuriela swam closer to me and reached out, brushing her fingers against my arms. Our legs bumped beneath us as we treaded water. “What are you thinking?”
Her silver eyes pulsed with light, and my power surged in return, the golden light shining for her. “I’m thinking about…how glad I am that my mother ended the arrangement.”
Nuri scowled. “As if you could ever marry that daemon. He’s vile.” Her skin pulsed with silver light, and the seas rocked around us as her anger grew. “I can’t believe your father set that shit up.”
I sighed. “I can.”
Things with my father were complicated. Less now, since he died.
I didn’t really get to know him, because his life was snuffed out when I was only a handful of years old.
Every girl wants to know her father, and I was desperate to remember mine.
But my mother never spoke of him. She was forced to marry him in an arrangement with another important family.
While the Valdis family was the most powerful, the Uthras were nearly as strong.
My father, Adriel Uthra, was the eldest son and supposedly one of the most talented lumens in our history.
His mastery of the elements was known throughout our people.
It was said he could even steal power from daemons. How, I wasn’t sure.
When I told Nuri about him and how I wanted to know more, she immediately snuck into the Angea Library.
It housed every bit of lumen history and a few things on the daemons, witches, and other creatures, too.
Knowledge was power, my mother always said, but in the wrong hands, it was the end of all things. She was sort of dramatic sometimes.
Within the dusty scrolls of the most powerful families, we found everything about my father’s campaigns in battle.
His unyielding will led the lumens to victory over the daemons thousands of years ago.
He was a conquering hero, and when the Uthras came to the palace to pledge their loyalty to the Valdis royal family, Adriel saw my mother and claimed her for his wife.
They were together for hundreds of years before I was finally born. I never had the courage to ask her how or why she didn’t have more children in all those years. But when she met Seraphina’s father and my sister came screaming into this world soon after, my suspicions grew.
Adriel Uthra was not a good male. One night, Nuri and I concocted a truth serum and dosed a few of the generals in the lumen army who knew him best. They told us of my father’s strength, but also his cruelty. We fled the tavern, my emotions spiraling at all I had heard.
A few years before my powers were awakened, the general of the daemon army arrived at the palace gates.
His name was Gremory, and the gossips of the palace claimed he was quite handsome for a daemon.
He flirted with every single lumen as he made his way through the palace, or so I heard.
Mother forbade me to be in the throne room when he arrived.
He presented her with a contract, signed in blood by my father, promising me to the eldest son of Corson Ormaenus.
His name was Belial. Nuri and I of course looked up all tellings of this stupid prince and found what I expected—he was just as terrible as my father.
When my powers were awakened and The Sight did not come as it had for my mother, the relief I felt was infinite.
I was just another lumen, royal yes, but Belial wanted a powerful tool to wield, not just a wife.
Or so I hoped. The daemons were persistent, and Gremory returned each week to remind my mother of the contract.
Each week, she begged off with one excuse or another, until there was nothing left to do but refuse.
And she did.
Gremory did not return after she finally rejected the proposal.
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it couldn’t be good.
We found that out soon enough when Seraphina’s father was murdered a few years ago.
He was a force of nature, and without him and his powerful clan of daemons, my mother was vulnerable.
We were vulnerable. The last women of the Valdis line.
A male heir hadn’t been produced in centuries.
Since Belfegor’s death, my mother grew more and more withdrawn. She closed the palace to all lumens except those she trusted completely. Her only happiness, besides Sara and I, came from the human, Joseph, and my youngest sister, who was half-human.
I couldn’t understand how my mother could fall in love with a human, especially when she’d had a daemon like Belfegor.
It was also strange to me how he could allow her to be with Joseph too.
My mother’s love life was seriously a mystery.
And not one I cared for the details of. She didn’t say much about it, other than when Seraphina asked if our mother still “loved her papa” after Michaela was born and we realized Joseph was her father, not Belfegor.
Belfegor had responded first. He scooped Seraphina up in his arms, and she giggled, snatching his beard in her hands. “Your mother’s heart has room for us all, little princess. Joseph is a good male. He will care for you, even when I cannot.”
Belfegor’s response was odd, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. Reflecting on it now, perhaps Sara’s father knew he wouldn’t be around long enough to see his daughter grow up.
After his death, my mother took my sisters to stay with Joseph more and more.
She forced me to tag along on a few trips to their world.
Michaela’s father wasn’t so terrible, but he was sort of dull and completely powerless.
Mother said staying with the humans was a good thing, that we could hide from those who would harm us in our world by staying there.
But I hated that place. Stella Terra was my home, and I would never agree to leave this world of magical creatures.
I didn’t care how dangerous it was to stay.
All these heavy thoughts were ruining the good mood this day started with.
Floating in the clear blue water, my body felt weighed down by burdens I didn’t want.
I shook my head in frustration. My wings ached to come out as anger clouded my thoughts, and I leapt into the air.
Nuri followed me, her pale-blue wings snapping out as she chased me through the clouds.
I pushed my own wings to go faster, darting through the sky and letting out a scream of frustration.
Nuri suddenly collided with me in the air, wrapping her body around my own. My skin heated at the connection.
“What’s wrong?” Nuri gripped my face, forcing me to look at her. “The air is thick with your sadness. What are you keeping from me?”
I closed my eyes, unable to keep this secret any longer. “My mother says we are leaving. We’re going to Earth. Permanently. She’s taking Kaela and Sara there tonight. And by the end of the week, we’ll be gone.”
Nuriela’s face fell, a helpless look in her beautiful eyes. “Then I’ll come with you.”
My body shook with hopeless anger. “I’ve already begged. She refuses. She said it’s not safe for anyone to be with us right now.”
“I don’t fucking care!” Nuri snarled, her nails digging into my face, and I relished the pain. “We are meant to be together, Lailah. Forever. Nothing is going to keep us apart.”
Nuri’s fierce gaze pierced my soul, and I knew she spoke the truth.
“Let’s run away. Right now. We’ll go to the mountains. Or cross the sea and create an island of our own to call home. I don’t care about being a princess or my mother or any of it. I just want you.”
She smiled at me, and my gaze fell to her perfect mouth once more. My skin flushed as I registered the heat building throughout my body, barely clothed and pressed to hers as our wings flapped in the breeze, keeping us aloft in the sky.
Nuri was my everything. The most beautiful being I had ever known, inside and out. All I needed was her. In this life and all the others. Only her.
“Let’s do it.” Nuri leaned in and pressed her lips to mine.
Power zipped through my body the moment it happened, and I almost moaned at the heady feeling of it.
I kissed her back, threading my fingers in her hair.
Her soft lips parted slightly, and I mimicked the action, tasting the sea on her breath.
It didn’t last long and our movements were a little rocky, but it was our first kiss.
And I would cherish the memory of it forever.