Chapter 3 #2
“Ready?” Tristyn asked, looking more nervous than Tessa had ever seen him. He was always cool and collected, snapping at Theon and putting people in their place.
Tessa nodded, once again wishing she’d taken her boots off before they did this. She curled her toes, hating the feeling of the socks.
“He can’t be in the circle with you,” Tristyn said. “You need to listen for his call.”
Tessa glanced at Luka, who stood with his arms crossed. Holding her stare, he said, “I will come for you, Tessa.”
One would think he’d felt her hesitation and uncertainty about that statement, but she knew that wasn’t the case. The bond was broken. It had broken the moment Theon had left this chamber. All three of them were broken, and there was no fixing them anymore.
Luka took a step towards her, lips parting as if he was going to say more, but Cienna started reciting something in an old tongue.
Tristyn joined her, and the moment was lost. Luka’s lips pressed into a thin line, but she couldn’t focus on him.
Not as she felt her power rush to the surface, that thing inside of her screaming with excitement.
Not as she felt power surround her, her magic stretching and yanking to greet it.
She heard Tristyn falter, but Cienna snapped, “We keep going, Tris. We don’t even know if she can leave this world with the enchantment in place. Do not stop.”
Tessa’s head tilted as she watched the siblings, both eyes glowing a soft sage, his with russet undertones, hers with violet. They resumed their incantations, and her eyes fluttered closed as she felt the push and pull and call of what she was.
It swirled around her, and she gasped, her eyes flying open.
Light and dark flared at her fingertips, wound up her arms. Sparks of gold and embers of silver fluttered among it all.
Her feet lifted off the ground, and her hair fanned out around her as if caught in a windstorm.
Maybe she was because rain and snow were falling around her, and gods.
She hadn’t been worried, but this hurt. As if the magic of every world was trying to rip her apart to get at the power she held.
It wanted to take and take and take. It was that same feral craving she always fell into when she let her magic have its way.
They’d warned her. Told her it would take everything from her if she let it, and this—
This is what they’d meant.
Tessa!
Her name echoed in her mind. Maybe Luka had yelled it. Maybe the emotion was strong enough to filter through a splintered and fractured bond.
It didn’t matter.
When she opened her mouth, a scream erupted from her.
The scream of her magic.
The scream of her pain.
The scream of chaos and fury.
A fierce roar mingled with her cries, but she couldn’t focus on anything as power wrapped her up in a whirlwind of Chaos.
She thrashed among it, trying to find a way out, a way to free herself, but the power gripped her tighter.
As if the enchantment had been doing more than just keeping her from portaling and Traveling.
As if the enchantment had somehow caged her power too, and now it was angry.
It was taking what it wanted, and she would be the cost.
She screamed again. Her knees cracked against the stone floor of the Pantheon chamber.
And she fell into Chaos.
It was like watching the mirror as worlds and stars swirled around her, held together by the Chaos it all came from. No order. No structure. No balance.
She couldn’t breathe, but she also didn’t know that she needed to in this space. She didn’t think it was the After. Maybe it was the Beginning.
Maybe it was nothing and everything at once.
She was tossed around, and yet…
Despite the Chaos, she felt calm.
How odd.
She stopped struggling. Stopped flailing and just let herself be.
She watched.
She listened.
She learned everything she could.
And then she was standing in an opulent room. Gold and white, black and silver. Marks she knew and symbols she didn’t glittered on the walls, the floor, the ceiling. In the center of the floor was a vast chasm that seemed to swallow the light yet illuminate the room all at once.
“Thank the… Well, not the gods. Because frankly, fuck them and their failures. The Fates? But that would be awkward, right? Considering—”
“There is not time for this,” a male voice interrupted the female.
Tessa had spun at the voices, and it had taken her several seconds to find the female figure slinking through the shadows.
All in black, she wore a cloak, the hood up, but an ashy-blonde braid was snaking out and down her chest. And by the gods, she had so many weapons strapped to her body, Tessa wasn’t sure how she could even move.
More movement had her attention shifting to the male.
Tall and broad with deeply tanned skin, he had the arched ears of the Fae and Legacy.
His black hair was tied up atop his head, eyes the color of a thunderstorm fixed on her.
But it was the brown feathered wings that arched over his shoulders that had Tessa’s eyes narrowing.
He was the same as Dex, Oralia, and Brecken.
The female pulled her hood back while simultaneously pulling a dagger from her hip, spinning the point against her gloved finger. She smiled, the tips of fangs visible, and the smile held a tinge of madness that Tessa recognized as honey-colored eyes connected with hers.
Her head canted to the side in a predatory manner while she said to the male, “I was beginning to think she’d gotten the date and time wrong.”
“You don’t trust my sources?” came yet another female voice that had Tessa spinning again.
“Depends on which one it was,” replied the first female, still spinning her dagger.
The newcomer breezed into the room, carefully closing the door behind her.
Arched ears were just visible through her long dark red hair, and Marks peeked out of the wide collar of her long-sleeved top.
Tessa also suspected the nose piercing wasn’t her only one, and once again, honey-colored eyes settled on her.
“I know it’s calling to you,” she said to Tessa, moving farther into the room, her white sneakers quiet on the gleaming floor.
Tessa remained quiet, watching them all and trying to figure out what was going on in yet another vision she didn’t understand. The Chaos wasn’t driving her mad; these godsdamn glimpses of everything and nothing were going to be what pushed her over the edge.
“How long do we have?” the male asked, planting himself between Tessa and the hole in the center of the room. His feathered wings flared wide, as if creating an additional barrier, and she could tell just by looking at him he was a trained warrior, perhaps even more so than Razik.
“Anala is doing her part. Again,” the dark-haired female said bitterly.
“We can’t help it if she’s his favorite,” the first female said.
But Tessa had stopped listening to them as the thing in her soul yanked her forward. She stumbled a step, the male going rigid as she got closer.
“Em…” the male warned.
“I’ve got it,” the dark-haired female snapped before focusing on Tessa once more. “Listen for his call. Don’t go deeper.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tessa said, trying to peer around the male as the first female slunk to his side, a dagger in each hand now. As if they anticipated a fight was about to happen. Maybe it was because her power wanted… It just wanted.
“Resist it just a little longer,” the female—Em—said. “If you go to it, he’ll find you and the balance will never recover.”
“There is no such thing as balance,” Tessa retorted, taking another step forward.
“There is,” Em insisted. “But if he finds you, he’ll just add you to his collection that keeps him in power. Is that what you want?”
Tessa faltered, unsure of who or what they were talking about.
“That’s what he does,” Em went on, noticing her hesitation. “He finds. He creates. He cages. He will keep you.”
“I am no one’s,” Tessa hissed, her power flickering at her fingertips.
And the floor shuddered.
“Shit,” the male muttered. “He’ll have felt that.”
“I thought you said you had this under control,” the other female snapped, stepping to Em’s side. “That we just needed to keep her distracted for a minute or two.”
“That’s what he said,” Em retorted.
“This is why I don’t trust your godsdamn sources.”
The door being thrown open had them all turning as an ethereally beautiful female strode in. Her red-gold hair hung in loose curls down to her waist, amber eyes honing in on Tessa.
“We are out of time,” the female said, her voice fire and power. She never slowed, coming right up to Tessa. “You must go. Find the one who chose Death. She has your answers.”
Then her hand thrust out, her palm, wrapped in flames, slamming into Tessa’s chest, and she fell into Chaos again.
The stars tumbled. The worlds fell.
And then she was standing before a cell.
She’d been here before, and knew when she turned to the window, she’d be below the sea.
The same female was behind the bars, her fingers in her lanky black hair, tugging at the ends. Bright violet eyes snapped to Tessa, the female lurching forward, careful not to touch the bars.
“Did he send you?” she asked, sounding more than a little mad. “Is he finally coming for me?”
“I…don’t know who you are,” Tessa answered slowly, her head tilting as she watched the female slowly back away, shaking her head.
“But you do, child. But you do. We are one and the same,” the female said. Then she tipped her head back and laughed as she shot forward, wrapping her hands around the bars of her cell.
Power rippled out, slamming into Tessa, and again she fell.
But it was faster this time.
Glimpses of visions as if looking through windows. Her soul being pulled in so many directions she wished it would simply tear apart.