Chapter 83 Heart of Hearts
HEART OF HEARTS
LUELLA
Luella jolted awake with a pitiful cough, leaning over the saddle. Her midsection was sore, and her neck ached as she turned her head slowly. But at least her back was not flush against the Tenebrae’s chest.
Hooves thumped over a path of packed dirt. The jolting was not as harsh on her body, or perhaps she was just growing used to the pain.
She didn’t move, watching rocks begin to surface in the dirt the further they traveled.
One had the strange shape of a face she knew—her fingers twitched, wanting to reach out and pluck the rock and keep it in her pocket, if only to never part from him again.
But the horse was too swift. Before she could lean to the right and let her fingers slip from the pommel, reaching for the rock holding the shape of Az’s face, hands curled in the back of her cape.
She was forced to sit upright. It was dark, and mountains began to rise around them, arching high in the distance. The moon was resplendent, its wise face staring down at her suffering.
"Trying to jump ship?" The Tenebrae spoke lowly behind her, tone mordant.
Luella was delirious. "We’re not on a ship."
She felt his laugh at her back.
"What a show this will be—you’re playing your part so well, it is almost as though you have read my mind and know that I want to make him suffer at the mere sight of you."
What?
"They will come for you. They always do."
"Who?" Her voice was barely a sound, but she already knew.
"My half-brother. He will come for you. Why do you think I have made such a spectacle of this—our union? It is to entice him to me. To make him crawl from his dragon den and face me like a male. I desperately wish to see my half-brother again." His voice turned soft.
Luella knew if she dared to look into his eyes, she’d see green.
"You want them to come, don’t you? I’m bait." Her chin trembled. "But w-why?"
"The Fates are inexorable in their perverse humor," he began. "So long as the conditions of a prophecy are met, it will come true. The meaning is… up to interpretation."
She heard the slick smile in his voice.
"Power over all, purest wings, of a winter’s snowfall. There will be one reigning king, and four aligned hearts, with the blooming rose."
"Where did you—how?"
"Where do you think I got it from? I stole it. I’m good at that—stealing. I stole you, I stole the crown of Luna, and I stole the piece of the prophecy from the Compendium of Fates, centuries ago, knowing what was written within could help me have you."
She remembered when she’d first found the Compendium in the library of Serpentis. The torn page at the bottom, ripped haphazardly. She thought it had been Vale and the others who’d stolen it, and they had—they’d taken a piece from within, but more than that had been ripped from the book, it seemed.
"It was you," she breathed.
"It was me. I stole it."
"You didn’t take it all. Why?"
"I was in a hurry." His voice sharpened.
"It was right after I’d been"—a flicker of vulnerability trembled through the word—"after I had taken my vessel.
I was on borrowed time, Vale knew me—knew my vessel—and he sensed something was wrong.
The damned book… It contains multitudes, yet only imparts its knowledge to those whom it deems worthy.
I tore out the only part I could see, in my youthful ignorance.
My vessel had not yet come fully to heel at my command.
I took only what I could and left the rest."
The prophecy was scattered into three parts.
What the Tenebrae had stolen, what her Vincire had taken, and what Luella had found within it.
But how did the Tenebrae have the same piece they did—the piece she’d discovered about her wings aboard the ship?
It was almost like… the Compendium was playing with her, with them all.
Giving them all parts of a whole, enough to keep them in a near-constant state of confusion, stumbling in circles.
Perhaps that was how it was fulfilled. With them all tiptoeing carefully around what they’d been given, trying to prevent what was already inevitable.
It was all futile.
They couldn’t win against the Fates.
"It may sound straightforward, but it does not have to be. There are so many ways to make it happen. My favorite method is simple. I will make my half-brother my prisoner, hide him so far beneath the earth that all the kingdoms will forget the dragon King’s existence.
Then, I will rip out the hearts of your remaining four Vincire and pin them in a line beside your wing, where it decorates my throne room. "
Luella shook her head. "No, no—you can’t." She wanted to go, to flee, to not be a pawn in his game. "I won’t be your bait."
"Oh, but you are." He leaned close, breath cold. "Before dawn, we will arrive at the Lunar Temples, and they will be there. I would bet my life on it, and the life of a god is the most weighty currency."
"Why didn’t we—" Luella hiccuped, feeling something in her lungs catch beneath the weight of what she’d learned, combined with growing delirium. Her head tipped back, thunking against his chest. "Why didn’t we take a shadow to the Lunar Temples? Are you weak?"
"I am not weak," he hissed. "I will answer because you asked so nicely.
I am choosing to ignore your barb, however, because you know in your heart of hearts that I am far from weak.
There are ancient wards placed around the Lunar Temples, situated at the base of the Lunaria Mountains, which keep me from portaling there.
It is not weakness, but reverence to the temple built in my honor. "
Luella hummed, thoughts tripping, breath ragged. "Just your honor? Or was it built with the honor of your—your sister in mind as well?"
She thought she heard a whisper in the distance, so she looked and saw Az reaching for her. She blinked, and the image changed to Graves. She narrowed her eyes and shook her head roughly to dispel the haunting visions of her Vincire.
He placed his lips at her ear, stroking down the exposed column of her throat and pressing deeper when he touched the collar.
"What is it with you and this obsession with my sister? Don’t tell me you’re besotted with her, because I can assure you, she does not extend the same care to her worshipers.
Who do you think it was that took away the gift of the Vincire that you now have?
You, of all the beings in the land—a simple heirus who was so easily taken prisoner. "
She’d known that already. Hadn’t she? Or at least had some idea that Vincire—ancient and revered—had been a gift rescinded by the gods. She’d assumed the Tenebrae, though. Not… the Lux.
"Why?"
"Why does a god do anything? I answered your question, now I have one of my own." He said it with reluctance, as if loath to ever ask anything from anyone.
The horse trotted over a gnarled tree root that clawed its way up from the rocky ground. She shifted back against his chest, feeling his thighs bracketing hers, and her body rebelled at the mere touch.
With one hand on the reins and the other on her throat, he asked, "How do you know about her?"
She thought she knew whom he spoke of, but she was desperate for him to say it, to breathe the name into life. To rattle him like she was rattled.
"I don’t know who you mean." Luella’s tone was coy.
He waited. And waited. Her lids fluttered in exhaustion. For all the time that passed without him speaking, she thought he had conceded, that she had won.
The horses ascended a wide path, mottled with dirt and rock.
The trees lining the edges grew scarcer, flower fields long gone, replaced by a nip to the whispery air as the mountains loomed before them.
She watched the snow far in the distance, gracing their pointed tops, and she wondered what it would feel like to throw herself off of such a height, but with both wings. How exhilarating must it feel…
"Enora."
Luella stiffened, her chin dipping back to her chest, trapping the Tenebrae’s frigid fingers there, where he still held her vulnerable neck. The other Umbra upon their horses were far away, some in the back, some in front, dotting the path with their glinting silver armor.
The moon was still high, still watching, and she was so, so cold all of a sudden.
Was this it?
Was her body finally succumbing to every injury, every horror, inflicted upon her? She wondered what death must be like. She hoped it was as peaceful as her time with the stardust, warm and soft and playful nothingness for eternity.
"Stardust?" Luella heard his silken tenor question.
Her head fell to the side, cheek against the thick fabric of his white cape. His shadowed eyes peered down at her, in all her incoherence. She realized she’d been babbling aloud.
"Yes, you said all of that out loud," he asserted lowly. "What stardust?"
She realized what he’d said—before. Enora. He’d relented. Luella had won.
"You won nothing. What stardust do you speak of?"
She wouldn’t tell him. Whispers tickled against her ears, growing louder. Far above, nestled between two mountain peaks, she saw the distant shape of spires, reaching high, white stone that cut through the jagged grey of the rocks.
The Lunar Temples. They were close.
And her freedom was slipping between her fingers like sand, like snow, like air, like the moonlight.
Though she was resolved not to tell him, her thoughts were all out of order.
As if vowing not to speak of something, made her think of it.
Her thoughts drifted to the warm stardust. She wished she had tears left, for she might cry one or two at the mere memory of its playful protectiveness.
Singing against her skin. Gifting her a vision of her Vincire in their youth, dreams of Enora and Caliban, so she might be equipped with some sort of knowledge to get under his skin.
She heard him gasp, felt his chest expand from how close she was pressed against him.
"That is not stardust you speak of."