Chapter Forty-Two
Aelia
The old dungeons beneath the Shadow Fortress still stank of blood and rot, centuries of Fae cast into the darkness to be tortured and left to die.
I squeezed my eyes closed, forcing back the grisly images threatening to surface.
Was this where Tenebris had trained Reign?
Where he’d forced his son to do unspeakable things?
I drew in a breath, compelling my legs forward in spite of the urge to run in the opposite direction.
Despite the flickering lanterns lining the corridor, the relentless darkness clung to the stones.
My boots echoed with every step as Kaelith led me deeper, past rusted chains and broken cages until we reached a circular chamber carved into black rock.
At its center lay a stone slab etched with ancient runes that pulsed faintly in a language I couldn’t understand.
My stomach twisted at what lay atop the stone.
“You brought me to a tomb?” I asked, voice tight.
Kaelith turned slowly. “You’re here to master death, princess. Where else should we begin?”
I swallowed the bile clawing up my throat. Lying on the slab was a corpse. A young male; another Shadow Fae from the look of him. His skin was pale with the chill of death, his body marked with shallow gashes. My pulse quickened.
“Who was he?”
“A deserter,” Kaelith replied coldly. “Or so the Shadow general said. Does it matter?”
“It does to me.”
Kae stalked toward me, his eyes glowing faintly in the dimness. “This is the difference between us, Light Fae. You cling to morality, to mercy. But death has no such luxury. If you want to control it, you must become what you fear.”
“I don’t want to become a monster,” I whispered.
He circled me slowly. “You already are. You carry light and shadow in equal measure, and now the zar curls in your veins like a starving beast. You cannot silence it forever.”
“I’m not trying to silence it,” I snapped. “I just… I want to control it. I don’t want to be controlled.”
Kaelith stopped in front of me, gaze sharp. “Then stop resisting.”
He raised a hand, and the room dimmed. No, not dimmed. The darkness itself deepened, thickened, until it felt like I was breathing smoke. The zar within me stirred, drawn to the power pulsing from him.
“Reach into it,” Kaelith instructed. “Summon it through your blood, through your veins. Let it rise.”
I closed my eyes and obeyed.
It came fast. The zar. Pushing past my rais and nox, it was a rush of cold power, slicing through my chest like a blade of ice. It burned and numbed all at once, dragging my soul into a current I couldn’t quite escape. My hands trembled as the darkness poured into my limbs.
“Now, command it,” he whispered. “Will the dead to rise.”
I gritted my teeth and lifted my hand toward the corpse.
A tendril of black mist slid from my palm, wrapping around the male’s wrist. The mark on my chest, Reign’s mark, throbbed. The cuorem pushed back, instinctively rejecting the zar’s pull.
“No,” I gasped. “It’s too much.”
“Let it consume you!” Kaelith barked. “Only then will you master it. You cannot control the darkness while fearing what it will make of you.”
The corpse twitched.
A violent shudder ran down my spine.
“I can feel him,” I whispered. “His soul is fading, but it’s still tethered by a thread.”
“Then bring it back. Bring him back to life.”
Like last time in Elisa’s chamber, I felt him.
For an instant, I felt the pull from the Veil as my hands hovered over his chest. Come back.
Exsurge anima. I repeated the foreign words forming unbidden in my mind, over and over.
A grisly mantra on my trembling lips. My ribs tightened, a whirlwind of energies surging to life in my core.
Warmth, then icy cold. I could feel his soul slipping right through my fingertips.
“I can’t do it,” I hissed. “It’s too late.”
“Drain it then,” Kaelith urged. “Take his soul. Death answers only to those who command it without hesitation.”
My hand trembled. The mist thickened. The power wanted me to take it.
But… I couldn’t do it. Gods, necromancy was bad enough, but soul-draining? I dropped my hand, breath ragged. The mist dissipated, and the corpse stilled.
Kaelith hissed in frustration and turned away. “You’re holding back. Still chained by your Light.”
“I’m still me,” I snapped, voice hoarse. “Regardless of my power. And I won’t lose that, not even to win this gods’ damned war. Then, it’s only Helroth who wins.”
Kae said nothing for a long moment. Then, softer, he whispered, “There will come a time when you must choose, Aelia. Between your soul and survival. Between who you are, and who Aetheria needs you to become.”
My jaw clenched.
I didn’t want to become a reaper. A goddess of death. But I was already halfway there, wasn’t I?
Kaelith’s expression was stone, unmoved by my trembling hands or thundering heart.
“You failed,” he added coolly, “but you came close. Try again.”
“I can’t—”
“Yes, you can,” he growled, closing the space between us. “You’re afraid of what you’ll see in yourself if you cross that line. But war doesn’t care about your fear, princess. It only demands results.”
My teeth ground together. I wanted to scream at him, to tell him he didn’t understand, but gods help me, I knew he did. He knew my grandfather better than anyone else.
I stepped toward the slab.
The Shadow Fae’s body lay still, a cruel echo of life. I reached out, slower this time, letting the zar slither down my arm like black fire. My light recoiled. My shadow pulsed. But this time, I didn’t resist the addictive energy, I embraced it.
The room went cold. My fingertips hovered just inches from his heart.
“Speak the words I taught you,” Kaelith whispered. “You know them.”
My lips parted. “Exsurge anima. Redde mihi veritatem.” Rise soul. Return to the land of the living.
The air thickened. Light and shadow collided beneath my breastbone, mixing with the night, rais, nox and zar entwined in a tornado of unrelenting power. My fingers clamped around the icy slab in an effort to ground myself in the oncoming tempest.
I could feel him again. His soul flitted just beyond my grasp.
Balen. His name formed on my lips.
The corpse arched off the slab with a choked gasp, eyes snapping open, milky and wide. A hoarse rattle escaped his mouth, a fragment of breath stolen from the veil between life and death.
His eyes locked on mine. Panic punched through my chest. His mouth moved, soundless. Then I felt it again.
His soul.
Only, now, it flooded through me. Too fast. Too much.
My knees buckled, but I couldn’t pull away. My hands were locked onto the slab, light and shadow screaming inside me, and beneath it all, the inexorable pull of the zar.
A void opened. Hungry.
“Aelia!” Kaelith’s voice was distant. “Let go!”
But I couldn’t. I didn’t want to.
I felt powerful. Infinite.
A scream tore from my throat, not of pain, but absolute ecstasy.
Then, a sharp crack echoed across the chamber, and the stone slab shattered beneath the force of the onslaught.
I felt shadows wrap around me like silken chains. Familiar shadows.
“Enough,” came the voice, cracking like a whip through the storm. Reign.
The cuorem pulsed, tearing through the haze of bleeding power and jerking me back from the grisly line I danced along.
My head whipped toward the doorway. My mate stood there, eyes ablaze, shadows flaring like wings of vengeance behind him. His jaw clenched, his stance brimming with fury as he took in the sight of me, eyes wild, breath ragged, and hands still burning with zar.
“Reign…” I croaked, but my voice wasn’t my own. It was something other, laced with that all-consuming zar.
He crossed the room in seconds, grabbing my wrists and yanking me back from the crumbling slab. Light exploded in my chest, the mate bond fully roaring to life at his touch. His shadows poured into me, cutting through the darkness clinging to my soul. I gasped and collapsed into him.
The corpse fell limp behind us.
I trembled against his chest, clutching him as if he were the only thing tethering me to myself. And maybe he was…
“You’re back,” I whispered, tears streaking down my cheeks.
His arms tightened around me. “Just in time.” He held me until the tremors stopped, until the last ounce of energy bled from my veins.
Then, with a quick kiss to my forehead, he released me. And launched himself at Kaelith.
“You bastard,” he roared, slamming the Night Fae against the stone wall with enough force to crack it.
Kaelith didn’t fight back. He just smirked, only adding to my mate’s fury, until he rasped out, “She asked for it.”
Disbelief surged across Reign’s expression for just a moment, and a hint of guilt pierced my chest. I should have told him. His gaze darted to mine before refocusing on my Demon trainer.
“It doesn’t matter,” he growled. “You pushed her past her limit.”
“She needed to be pushed.”
Reign’s fist slammed into his jaw.
“Reign, stop!” I shouted. “He’s telling the truth.”
Kaelith coughed, bloodied but grinning. “She was magnificent. You should’ve seen it.”
“Don’t talk about her like she’s some experiment.” Reign’s voice vibrated with lethal rage, shadows rising like a tempest.
“I wasn’t experimenting,” Kaelith sneered. “I was preparing your mate to survive.”
Reign’s hand tightened around his throat. “If you push her again without my permission, I’ll cut out your heart and feed it to Solanthus.”
Kaelith’s grin only widened. “You won’t need to. Because next time, she’ll do it herself.”
Reign finally let go, letting Kae drop to the floor.
I watched them from where I knelt, still too weak to move, the last of the zar retreating from my fingertips. I didn’t recognize the look on Kaelith’s face as he pushed to stand. It was equal parts pride and warning as he watched me.
And I didn’t know what scared me more. That I’d succeeded. Or that, for a moment… I’d liked it.