Chapter 83 Heart of Hearts #2
One word, said just as a strange rippling motion, soft like feathers traced over her flesh, making the top of her scalp prickle, and the tips of her cold, blistered toes scrunch.
"Stella."
Luella’s whole body shuddered against him. "Stella," she echoed, voice a faint mumble.
From ahead, an Umbra’s sure tone rang out. "We’ve passed through the wards!"
After calling out a firm acknowledgment to the Umbra, the Tenebrae placed his lips back to Luella’s ear.
"Stella is my sister’s offspring, a piece of her.
You say stardust granted you dreams of Enora," he grated, "so that means my sister has been meddling with things that do not concern her. I will have to meddle back."
He released her throat, and she took a greedy gulp of air, not realizing he’d been slightly cutting it off for some time. Her head was light as the horse began to ascend in earnest, rocks slipping and tumbling down a sharp incline. She leaned precariously over, wanting to—
"Do not try to kill yourself. I will not let you die—you will get nothing of it save broken bones and agony. If you wish for pain, you need only ask me."
Her lips were chapped, cracked, and the skin split easily beneath her searching teeth. Iron coated her tongue. She thought of Bastian, and as if the mere thought brought him to her, she saw his form high above, crouched at a mountain peak.
She blinked, and he disappeared.
I’m mad, Luella thought.
"Aren’t we all. Befitting, you should be my bride, then," the Tenebrae said, so close to her ear that she shivered.
Even behind her closed lids, she saw the faintest impression of them. It was always only them: Bastian, Graves, and Az.
Never Tharen or Vale. Why? Was it because she’d found comfort in the touch from her three softer Vincire?
Was it because she envisioned Vale and thought of fire and the pressing need to make him proud?
Was it because she envisioned Tharen and thought of all the ways she could be better, all of her shortcomings?
"Did you—do you see them too?" Luella whispered.
And when the Tenebrae stayed silent, she untangled her slippery grip from the pommel, the thick fabric of her cape rustling as her good hand reached out, trembling. Her finger outstretched, pointing straight at the mountaintops.
But Bastian was long gone. Maybe he had moved to the moon. Her hand rose, pointing at the full, brilliant face shining in the sky. He wasn’t there either.
She began to feel undone, searching. "He was just here. Where did he go?" she asked herself, forgetting about the god behind her.
Luella turned, staring into the Tenebrae’s dark eyes.
"Did you take him away from me? Bring him back. Bring him back—"
He studied her face, and it felt like ice being scraped over her cheeks. "I have not sent you a shadow of your Vincire since your time in the dungeons."
A stuttered exhale left her.
The Tenebrae gave a dreadful laugh. If the weight of his eyes felt like ice, the ripple of his laughter felt like icicles, sharp points frozen into a deadly stillness, stabbed repeatedly into her ears until blood leaked out.
"How does it feel to be aware that your mind is failing you? Who can you trust, if you cannot even trust yourself?"
Luella fell into silence.
She was aware of her sanity slipping from her and could do nothing about it.
She kept seeing them above, whispers of chaos in the mountaintops.
Her cheek rubbed uncomfortably against the white cape draped over the Tenebrae’s shoulders. Each hoofbeat made her back ache, and she just wished she would die already. How hard could it be? How had she not died yet?
Bastian clung to the side of the mountain, red eyes peering at her through the moonlit dark.
A dark shadow was cast on the ground, rippling the longer she stared at it, as if to say, Do not look here. I am not real.
Nothing was real anymore.
The arching spires of the Lunar Temples rose high, and their path leveled out into a flatter expanse, bordered by spikes rising on each side—a foreboding welcome to the temple of the gods. She felt something inside her answer the call of the majestic sense in the air.
She saw shimmering heads on the unlit tops of the spires, ghastly eyes boring into her. Their flesh bubbled and plopped to the stone path like water—but when she focused hard, they disappeared, like a mirage.
The thing inside Luella unfurled, yearning, reaching for something unknown to her.
Her heart thundered in her chest, so loud she felt it in her ears. A steady, heavy thump, thump, thump. The sound of her blood roaring through her veins, her heart cracking against her ribcage.
She was aware of nothing but the sound and the growing call in the pit of her stomach, as if something was curled into a tight little ball behind her navel, trying to rip free from her belly.
Luella sagged on the horse, making a soft, pleading sound. The wards—they’d passed through the wards.
Was that what this was? Had the presence of the Lunar Temples shattered the last bit of her sanity?
She was kept upright only by the Tenebrae’s arm, banded tightly around her waist, crushing against her wings.
The thumping grew louder. She tried to move her hand to touch her chest, feel the beats of her heart—was it going to thump right out of her body? But she couldn’t move her hand.
In the darkness ahead, the Umbra called a warning, blades zinging and horses huffing as boots began to thump on the path, dismounting from their horses.
That was when Luella realized the noise was not her heart.
The thumping turned to thunder, and the Tenebrae cursed.
The Umbra were on guard, their swords rising as the pointed tips were held out into the darkness that stretched on either side. She felt the Tenebrae stiffen at her back.
They were in a canyon-like place, mountains trapping them on either side, with the path snaking into the distance, where the spires of the temple beckoned. They were trapped, trapped, and no one would be coming to save her from what horrors would come next.
Luella trembled, shoving at the Tenebrae behind her. "Let me go, please—what’s happening? What is this?"
The little light that came from the full moon faded as a large shadow cut beneath its shape.
A worried murmur took root in the company of the Umbra.
The shadow passed, and the moonlight returned, a low glow that made her white cape illuminate the space around her, like a beacon, as her white hair fell in messy curls around her small shoulders.
This wasn’t her heart, nor was it her blood—something was coming. Something that had even servants of a god on edge.
And Luella was too overwhelmed by whatever sang in her marrow, that had started when the Umbra had called out that they’d breached the wards and when the Tenebrae had uttered that one word:
Stella.
The Tenebrae released her waist, and she sagged, but didn’t want to miss whatever it was that was coming to swoop down and eat them all, so she placed her hands on the pommel to keep herself grounded, to keep herself upright and watching.
The Tenebrae made a fist and raised it.
Their company stopped altogether.
The horse shifted, a hesitant hoof tapping on the path as it snorted in fearful curiosity.
The thundering noise above grew so loud that Luella had to cover her ears. Her right hand twisted uncomfortably as she raised it, so she kept it settled on the front of the saddle, covering only one ear with her good hand. The resounding boom in her uncovered ear made her want to weep.
The air was still, and she swallowed, feeling the call surge; her gaze tugged upward, to the right side of the pass, where the white tips of the mountains gleamed.
A shape hid there. She barely saw the arching curve of horns, where they cast shadows on the rock. Her face rose, just as the shadow swept past the moon once more and hid its light entirely.
Darkness.
Then fire.
A burnished, hot scorching trail of fire lit up the night sky, just as a roar cut through the thundering boom of—
This wasn’t real, was it?
She had fallen asleep. She was dreaming.
Luella uncovered her ear and reached for her neck, feeling the space where the dream amulet had once been. She couldn’t tell if she was dreaming; she did not have her amulet any longer.
The horse neighed beneath them, rising on its hind legs just as fire scorched the stone path at their side, flame catching on the stone spikes that protruded from the ground. As the fire dwindled—stone did not burn—a singular flame was left at each spike, flickering hotly.
The Tenebrae shouted as they were both thrown from the horse.
Luella fell in a heap to the ground, her back feeling like it had been caught in the flames as pain raced throughout her body. Her right hand twisted dangerously, fingers spasming. Her head thunked against the stone, and she released a choked, feminine gasp of anguish.
Flames were spewed from above, roaring along the side of the mountains.
Lying on her side, Luella reached out, desperate to touch one, wondering if the flickering red and orange tint of them was imagined.
Her fingertips grazed the stone before it, and she hissed as she jerked her twitching fingers back—hot.
It was real.
That meant—
She rolled to her back, uncaring of the agony from pressing the stone into her wing stump. In the sky, a black shadow with wings flew in a sure circle above them all.
Each wingbeat made the thundering sound echo through the mountains, in her heart, in her ears, in her bones.
She knew its shape. She knew the color of its eyes, even before its large head peered down at her, a glow of slitted green finding her white-cloaked form huddled among stone and fire.
The onyx dragon tipped his head back, and fire spewed from his maw, lighting up the air.
She stared and stared, a choked sob clawing its way up her throat. She tried to sit up, to move and run toward him—
If he were here, surely the others—