Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Page Eleven. Please…please understand my fire-touched babe.
I ’ve talked myself in and out of this plan about a hundred times, but I’m still standing here like we discussed yesterday. Still in front of the locked room where Daegan keeps one of the books, and I know he’d rather I’d not be here at all. Ziven is in rare agreement with him on this subject, but the books are in here. The books, the locked-away deities and our chance of fixing everything in a much less bloody way. But still, I hesitate at the door to the locked room.
Daegan spelled it so only he and I can get in there. If I hold anyone’s hand, they can come in with me. Avaluna looks at me with the same hesitation in her eyes as she stands at my side. When I asked her to face the books with me, she didn’t even ask why. I might never know how I got so lucky to have friends who come with me into anything without needing me to explain. “Are you sure we should do this? You told me what happened last time—the tree, the threats…”
“No, I’m not sure any fae alive should go near that book, but she was right.” I stare at the simple wooden door like it might suddenly spring up with a big warning or answer to the million questions I have. “She said I would die, and I did. Emyr brought me back, but I died and that is the point to all of this. She knew. That means she knows the future.” My eyes drift to the box that Luna is holding for me. “That book in there—this is her sister. It’s what she wanted: to free her or for me to bring the books together so she can. This time I’m not walking in clueless, and I have a bargaining chip. The box won’t open unless I will it. Ziven and Daegan have made sure of that with spell work.”
“And what exactly are we asking for?” Avaluna presses.
I take a steadying breath. “I read a book of an ancestor of mine—a life account of one of our ancestors—and he told how two deities got trapped in books. I explained it to Ziven and Daegan in a meeting yesterday.” It’s the only way we got him to agree to let us near the book. We could have fought him for it, but going forward, this peace between all of us—it’s the only way. I meet her gaze, unwavering. “I want the deities to stop the vampyres by undoing the magic that turned them from fae to vampyre in the first place. To turn them all back into fae at the same time and end the war. In exchange, they can be free.”
Avaluna stares at me for a long moment. “We are asking them for a considerable amount of power.”
I nod. “Who better to ask for a miracle than mad deities?”
Her voice drops to a whisper. “I’m not sure we should do this. These are our gods. Two of them are here, and one is in my hands right now, in this box, and it feels wrong.” She touches the box. “Why not use this book to help and not that one in there?”
“That one helped the vampyre king make an army of Silkvir to beat us. So, no, I don’t trust it.” I arch an eyebrow at her, and she nods. “It is likely more nuts than the one in there.”
That one in there has also done awful things. I think about the disease that wiped out so many in the mansion, about how it twisted Daegan’s mind, and finally about the threats made against me—the pain it inflicted last time. I’m not here to plead with some benevolent, kind-hearted gods, because they do not exist in this world. These deities are evil, but even evil has its desires, and we can make a trade for my people. For my future.
“I don’t like this,” Daegan mutters.
“Neither do I,” Calix adds from his place, guarding the other door.
Ziven sets his eyes on me. “I don’t believe the books just happened to end up here. Of all the places in the world, they landed with us? There’s a reason and I trust Story.” It means a lot that he isn’t trying to hide me away, make me not fight, and treat me like a possession rather than an equal at his side.
“You can pull me out,” I tell them. “Both of you can because of our bonds. Calix is here for Luna, if she needs to be pulled out, too. But the book I read said that two heirs from the Twilight Dynasty would stand with the books, and we are two heirs from the Twilight Dynasty—we’re what’s left.”
Calix exhales sharply. “We only have your hair for proof of that.”
“It’s more than that,” I argue. “It’s a connection to the books. It’s my dragon telling me. Maeve knows, and it’s why we were bonded in blood,” I point out.
“Dragons are not wrong about matters of our ancestry and blood,” Ziven finishes the argument. “And I sense your fear. We all feel the same, but if we don’t try, what rulers are we?”
Silence echoes from his point. This is for the fae, for the lessborn and powerborn, for the riders and the trapped from the mansion. It’s for every fae born into a world of vampyres where their blood means more than their souls. It’s wrong, and it ends.
Avaluna takes my hand, and I open the door, looking back at Ziven once. I hope he can read every bit of how much I love him in my eyes before we slip into the cold, stone room. The walls are mossy and damp, and the book is thrown onto the ground in a puddle of water, but it is not wet. It hovers above the water, untouched by the elements. The moment my eyes land on the leather-bound, blood-red book, my feet stop working. I lose control of my body and am pulled straight toward it. This time, I glide across the floor, hands slamming down onto the pages.
“Story!” Luna cries out.
“No! Stay back!” I warn her, barely able to hold off from the power of the book taking control of my very voice.
“You didn’t come alone,” comes that female voice, that ancient, echoing voice I remember from the last time I opened this horrible book of untold power. The power of it reeks in this room, and I can feel it slithering against my skin, against my mind, too.
It lets me reply. She does, but I don’t know if she is female or if that voice is just for me. “I know what you are now, and in that box over there is your sister. Just what you wanted.”
She is strangely quiet. “Open the box.”
“No.” I smile as I realise she was trying and failing to open it. “If you kill me, the box stays locked forever. It is bound to me.”
Silence. Then?—
“Why?” The word is cruel, pointed, furious as it is screamed in my mind.
“Outside, in the cities, vampyres are burning fae every single day. I want to make a deal—one that will stop it. Stop the war that’s coming and, in return, I will open that box, and you can have the book,” I tell the deity. “I know you were once a powerful being from the heavens above, and I want to return you, but we will make a deal for it.”
“I do not make deals with mortals like you,” she snarls.
A burst of red light explodes from the book, like a storm, and I brace myself, but it moves past me. It slams into Luna, throwing her against the wall with a sickening crunch. I scream as I hear bones snap, her body hitting the ground with a thump. Red blood pours from her mouth, her nose and her eyes as her body shakes, and she cries out my name for help. The box crashes to the floor next to her, but it doesn’t move as the red power, like a rain cloud, hovers around the box.
“No!” I try to get to Luna, but I can’t move my feet. “You lost your chance. Fuck you! Die in the fucking pages of that book and?—”
“This is your future,” the voice hisses in my mind as it cuts me off.
Then I’m not in the room anymore. I’m somewhere else and I’m sitting on a throne in a strange castle, with views over a massive city I’ve never seen. Emyr is beside me, a small child perched on his lap on his own throne that towers over mine. The boy has bright red hair, red eyes, silver fangs slipping from his teeth, and a coldness that no child should ever have at a young age. I don’t know how old he is, but there’s no doubt—he is my child and Emyr’s, too. Fear makes my throat clamp up, and I glance down at myself. Thick gold chains bind my wrists, and they have cut into my skin. My hands have burn marks over the place where my dragon marks once were, and instead there are bite mark scars all up my arms. I’m wearing a sheer, flowy red dress, and my stomach is swollen.
Pregnant.
No.
It’s cruel to see this, and I know I can’t get pregnant. My infertility is why I ended up a blood slave in the first place, and even when it’s Emyr’s, even when it’s not something I want, I touch the lump while looking at the little boy. My son. He is so beautiful, and looking at him is seeing my own features in a way I didn’t know was possible. A sinking, dreading feeling pools inside me as I realise Emyr is king now, and that means we lost the war. How did I get here? Why was I fighting in the first place? My eyes lift to the night sky—to the shining moon hanging in the stars.
No.
I remember who I am. I am Story Dehana and I have never given up. Even to a cruel vision like this. The children are not real, and hot tears fall down my cheeks as I turn from the boy and scream at the top of my voice. Everything fades and darkness swallows me whole. Thick arms wrap around me, yanking me backward, and I gasp as a door slams shut with a violent bang. Ziven’s handsome face comes into view slowly as my eyes adjust, and he is cupping my face. “Storm, talk to me!”
I blink rapidly, barely able to register what’s happening. “Luna—she’s injured,” I manage to say. The box is on the floor by my head, and Ziven sits me up, pulling me into his lap, kissing the top of my head as my heart races. Daegan is staring at the box, his back pressed against the door as he shakes. “I’m okay. Get the box, Ziven.” I turn to see Calix carrying Luna out of the room, her limp body in his arms.
“She’s alive,” Daegan tells me, snapping out of it as Ziven picks up the box. “She needs a healer. What happened in there?”
I rush out after Calix and Luna, knowing Ziven is following close behind, and I don’t have it in me to explain it to Daegan right now. We cut straight through town, heading toward Catherine’s mother’s house behind Calix.
Catherine is already there and her mother is already examining Luna when I come into the hut. Her mother doesn’t look up. “Unless you need healing too, my majesty, please step out so I can work. Everyone out.”
“I’m not leaving her,” Calix says firmly, settling into a chair in the corner. “Tell me how she is and if you need anything.”
I want to apologise to him. This was all my fault. “I’ll wait outside.” I barely close the door behind me before I burst into tears, and Ziven is there, pulling me into his arms. He holds me through my tears until I can breathe again, until I can calm down. “We’re on our own. The deities aren’t helping us. In fact, they deserve to rot in their pages forever at the bottom of the sea.”
He tilts my chin up. “You are not at fault. Luna chose to go with you, and she decided to take that risk. When she wakes, she won’t want you blaming yourself.”
I know he is right, but the guilt is still there as we wait hours for Calix to come out and tell me she is awake. “All her ribs are broken; she has internal bleeding, but she will live. Luna wanted me to tell you both to go back home and that she doesn’t blame you, Story.” His gaze hardens on me. “But don’t ask her to go near those books again. She is done. Promise me.”
“I promise,” I whisper, understanding. His eyes soften and he comes over, hugging me under Ziven’s gaze before going back to Luna.
Maeve’s voice drifts into my mind, warm and steady. “Don’t worry. You don’t need any deities when you’ve got a dragon to fight your war. I am with you.” I exhale, feeling the fire deep inside my chest. I can fly again.