Chapter 51 Scarlett
Scarlett sat at a desk, her feet propped on top, ankles crossed. She leaned back, her hands clenching around the ends of the armrests so tightly it hurt. But that was good. It grounded her. Kept her in this place. Kept her focused.
She glanced down, seeing her bare skin. Her bare left hand.
No dark mark against her skin, swirling down around her ?ngers. No diamond and ruby ring on her ?nger.
Her eyes ?icked to the wall where she’d been chained for weeks, searching for anything to take her mind off of him. Of how he’d sank to his knees, then to the ?oor. Of Cassius holding her tightly in that throne room.
Of the utter insanity that had encompassed her. That she could barely keep at bay now.
No. This was not the time to think of that day three weeks ago. So she focused on the spot where she’d sat chained to a wall, forcing herself to breathe in and out.
In and out. In and out.
And she waited.
But not for long.
The door banged open, a hooded ?gure stalking in. He came up short when he saw her sitting there. Slowly, he raised his hands, pulling back his hood. Black eyes bored into hers.
“Death’s Maiden,” Alaric said casually. “It is about time you came home.”
“Is it?” Scarlett asked, her head tilting to the side.
Alaric nonchalantly removed his cloak, draping it over the sofa against the wall where Tarek had often sat, observing her. “You could have at least left a few of them alive on your way in, though.”
Scarlett shrugged. She’d left a trail for him to follow. Every assassin, every Night Child, every seraph she had come upon as she slowly strolled along the streets of the Black Syndicate, onto the grounds of the Fellowship, and through the halls down to his dungeon study had met their death. Some by ?re until they were ash. Some by drowning on dry land. Some by shadows. Some by blades.
All by wrath.
“I am assuming you brought me the ?nal key?” he asked when she didn’t reply.
Scarlett reached into a pocket, pulling out Juliette’s amulet, Reselda’s symbol hanging from the chain of skystone. She spun it around on her ?nger. “This one?”
Alaric only nodded his head once, hands sliding into his pockets. “Has Queen Talwyn learned to shift them yet?”
“She has.”
“Impressive,” Scarlett quipped. “I thought it would take her longer.”
“Three weeks was too long the way it was,” Alaric retorted, a slight bite to his tone.
Scarlett tsked under her breath. “Someone is growing impatient.”
“I made it very clear I was out of patience.”
“And time.”
When Alaric just stared back at her unblinkingly, she dropped her booted feet to the ground. She planted her elbows on his desk, resting her chin on her hand as she asked sweetly, “Is Achaz out of patience too?”
He stilled. “How do you know that name?”
“It seems you left out quite a bit of history when providing my education,” she said, spinning the amulet around her ?nger again.
“You were told what you needed to know to ful?ll your purpose,” he replied coolly.
Scarlett hummed in response.
“I will admit that while I am not surprised to see you here, I am surprised to see you so … collected,” Alaric said cautiously, as if she were an explosive substance that could go off at any moment.
He wasn’t wrong.
The images that used to ?ash through her mind had been replaced. They were no longer Veda stabbing Cassius. Nuri bleeding out. An old of?ce. Plunging a dagger into Juliette’s heart.
It was him ?ghting his way to her.
Him swearing there would be no more goodbyes. A bolt of energy hitting his chest.
Him staggering before dropping to his knees. His golden eyes ?nding hers, slowly dimming. I would still choose to stay in the darkness.
And screaming.
So much screaming.
Her eyes dipped to her bare left hand once more before refocusing on Alaric. He was watching her carefully, taking in all her little tells that he knew so well.
She cleared her throat, placing the amulet on the desk before her. She couldn’t lose it here.
Not now. Not yet. Soon.
“You are really going to do this?” she asked. “You are really going to be no better than your parents and start a war? Over what? What exactly is it you want with Avonleya?”
“My dear child,” Alaric said, a cruel smile tilting up his lips just the slightest amount. “The war never ceased. This war has been raging for centuries. Perhaps longer than this world has even existed. They brought war to this world. Did you forget? We were sent to retrieve what they guard.”
“We? You speak as if you were not born here.” Her eyes widened as the Sorceress’s words replayed in her head. “You weren’t born here. You came through the rips. Was Esmeray even your mother?”
“No,” Alaric answered.
“But Deimas was your father?”
Alaric’s blank stare was answer enough. Yes, he was.
“Were they killed here?”
“Esmeray was.”
“And Deimas?”
“He suffered the consequences of his failure.”
“Consequences you are about to face? That is why you are out of time,” Scarlett clari?ed.
Alaric’s lips pursed slightly. “Sometimes I think it was a mistake to train you as my prodigy.”
She tossed him a saccharine smile. “I suppose you live and learn.”
“I suppose we do.”
He moved forward then, sinking into one of the chairs before his own desk. How many times had Scarlett sat in that very chair? Discussing jobs and targets. Juliette in the other chair. Nuri lurking in the shadows.
Her heart tugged at the thought of Nuri.
Not now , she chided herself, forcing her attention back to Alaric as he reclined in the chair.
“So what now, Death’s Maiden?” Alaric asked, bringing up a leg and crossing his ankle over his knee. He was the portrait of arrogant ease.
Scarlett hummed again in contemplation. “Now I am going to make your life a living hell.”
“Is that so?”
“Mhmm,” she replied. “The beauty of it is that you won’t even know it has happened until it is too late.” She smiled then. A thing of horror and malice. “For the most part anyway.”
Alaric smiled, his hands resting on his bent knee. “You really think you can beat me, Scarlett? I made you what you are. I created you.”
“You did,” she agreed, standing then and moving to his alcohol cart. She poured herself a knuckle’s length of liquor, swirling it around the glass. “And I want you to remember that when you are standing among the ashes of everything I’ve burned to the ground. You taught me everything I know. You taught me what weaknesses to expose. You taught me how to ?nd cracks and make them chasms.” She knocked back the entire glass of alcohol. “I am already inside, Alaric,” she purred.
“Because I allowed you in,” he replied coolly, his smile slipping a little.
“Then I suppose you have allowed everything that is about to happen.”
The two stared at each other. Master and student.
Maraan and Avonleyan. Torturer and tortured.
“You have seen what I can do, Scarlett,” he ?nally said, his voice low and lethal. “Do not think I will hesitate for one second to make you suffer. To take everything from you until you remember that I own you .”
She let her glass plunk onto the alcohol cart before she began strolling for the door. “You have already taken everything from me, Alaric. There is nothing left for you to own. But you?” She paused in the doorway, looking back over her shoulder. She took in his stiffened posture. The way his eyes had narrowed slightly on her. “It appears you have everything to lose.”
“Do not step one foot out that door, Scarlett Monrhoe,” he hissed, rising smoothly to his feet.
“Aditya,” she sneered. “My name is Queen Scarlett Aditya. And I take orders from no one.”
She pulled the door shut behind her as she walked through the dungeon halls of the Fellowship for the ?nal time. She dragged her ?ngers along the cool stone walls while ?ipping the dagger she’d taken from his study.
A nightstone dagger.
As she approached the stairs leading up to his private wing, the guards at the bottom lurched into action.
But she had already struck, their blood freezing instantly in their veins. She knew Alaric was letting her walk away. She knew his arrogance would keep him from chasing after her, forcing her to stay. He thought he would eventually win this game.
He was wrong.
He had taught her much of what she knew. He had created Death’s Maiden.
But he had not created a Lady of Darkness.
With a smile lifting the corners of her mouth, she turned down the hall to his private quarters. Rooms she had only entered one other time. With a twitch of her ?ngers, white ?ames blasted the doors open. It was the only room she hadn’t been to yet, having wandered all the other halls before she’d made her way to the dungeon study to wait for him.
She’d kept herself hidden from his wards until then. The Sorceress’s book had all sorts of interesting Marks hidden within its pages. The cost? Being hidden to her Guardian as well within the wards. Cassius was waiting for her outside the Fellowship grounds. She’d refused to let anyone else come with her. No one else knew the streets of the Black Syndicate as well as they did. No one else would know what to watch for.
Who to watch for.
Scarlett walked past Alaric’s giant four-poster bed, dragging the nightstone dagger along the mattress, before sending another blast of ?ames at the balcony doors.
She was leaning against the railing when Alaric ?nally tracked her down.
“You claim you want to leave, yet you keep waiting for me,” he said smugly, his hands in pockets once more as he leaned against the doorjamb.
“I just really want to see your face when you realize just how far underneath your skin I am,” she answered, her shadows beginning to converge behind her, twisting and writhing.
His mask of casual indifference faltered at her words. “What are you talking about?”
“It is rather poetic, isn’t it?” she replied, climbing up onto the balcony railing, balancing precariously. “I wished for death that day, you know. That day. The days after. Even now at times. Feeling him ripped away from me. Just feeling …”
Him ?ghting his way to her. Him swearing there would be no more goodbyes. A bolt of energy—
Alaric lurched forward, his voice cutting through her downward spiral. “Get down from there, Scarlett. Now.”
“I would start checking all those cracks,” she replied. Flinging her arms out to the side, she free fell backwards.
“No!”
She heard Alaric’s cry of panic as she hit the back of her shadow dragon. She sat up, turning to look down at Alaric’s enraged face as her dragon ?apped its wings, keeping her airborne.
Then she let out all that fury and grief and brokenness and power she’d been storing up for three entire weeks.
She yanked on the invisible thread within her soul that she had slowly unspooled across the entirety of the Fellowship as she’d walked the halls.
And she smiled darkly as white ?ames erupted everywhere, and Alaric’s face went slack with shock.
It took him a few seconds to recover before wings ripped from his back, black and feathered. He shot to the sky with a roar of rage, but the orange ?ames that spewed from her shadow dragon’s mouth had him staying back several feet.
She’d been banking on his ability to snuff out life with his ?st being useless against her. From the fact that he hadn’t even tried to use it, she appeared to be correct.
“You will pay for this!” he bellowed, his beloved Fellowship burning around him. “Enjoy your freedom , Scarlett Monrhoe. This is the last time I will let you walk away from me.”
“You created this nightmare, Alaric,” she replied, loud enough for him to hear. “You won’t wake up from it until I allow it, and then it will only be for me to kill you myself.”
Before he could say another word, her dragon was ?apping up. She ?ew in a tight circle, swooping low enough for her to grab Cassius’s outstretched arm when they glided past where he was hidden on a rooftop.
“You burned it down,” Cassius said, looking back over his shoulder at the building that had been their home for so many years. She hadn’t told anyone of that part of her plan. It was nearly ashes now, her white ?ames consuming it within minutes.
“That was just the beginning. Soon the entire world will be on ?re,” Scarlett replied, the dragon climbing higher into the sky.
Towards the stars that chose the darkness and the ashes in the voids between them.