52. Astraea #2
“Just a little bit further, sweet girl. Papa is going to meet us.” My heart drops, and I can feel the conflict in my emotions from the past and those I carry now.
That term of endearment my mother called me was also what Connard always did.
I can detect joy filling my small heart at the thought of seeing my father, but I’ve never felt that way about Connard.
His words were always laced with malice.
Even when I was small. I recall the dread I always felt being in his company.
My mother continues to pull me along the dark corridor, and I take notice that the sconces are actually lit.
However, the shadows that are weaving around their flames are different here.
My mother keeps her hand out in front of her as we scurry through the maze within the castle.
She is casting shadows to help conceal our movement. My mother was Senka-born.
A loud noise comes from behind us, and we both jump. My mother sucks in a sharp breath and begins to up her speed, and my small legs struggle to keep up with her. She looks down at my trouble with frantic eyes but still manages to smile, even though I see the worry never leaves her features.
“Come, Astraea!” She pulls back a tapestry along the wall, and we slip behind it.
Any light that was there is gone in an instant.
The noise from before grows louder. The sound of soldiers marching in unison beats on the other side of the fabric.
She lets a small whimper out, covering her mouth before she shakes her head and starts pulling me again.
We don't make it far before she reaches down and pulls me up by my arms. I quickly wrap my small legs around her body as she begins running with me pressed to her.
My body jostles each time her foot falls to the ground.
Her breaths come out heavier and heavier until we finally breach the darkness and spill out into the cool night air.
The sound of soldiers only intensifies as we make our way down the motte the castle sits on and toward the more open area of the bailey.
Jagged teeth that make up the forest beyond reach out for us in the darkness of night.
Tears threaten to spill as I watch the castle, my home, shrink in the distance.
Two horses wait for us just on the outskirts of the castle grounds.
One of them already has a rider seated in the saddle; a man with a dark cloak.
He grips my mother’s hand as we get close.
A gesture of strength. She turns away, lifting me into the saddle of the other horse before mounting behind me.
Horns sound in the distance at the castle, and as they do, a barrage of noise erupts as an army of men spills into the bailey.
“Hold onto the saddle horn!” She calls down to me before yelling for the horse to go.
“YAH!” Roping her arm around my middle, she holds tightly onto me, helping keep me seated in the saddle.
The horse thrashes my small body. The man on the horse next to us rides just as fast. The trees swallow us into darkness, but it doesn't stop the sound of dogs chasing after us.
The baying hounds are followed by the stomps of even more soldiers on horses too.
After a short ride, the trees open up to a glade, and both horses come sliding to an abrupt stop. The horn of the saddle digs into my stomach, and I grunt with the force of the stop, but it’s my mother’s cry behind me that has me most afraid.
“No! Illias!” She screams over my head, but the man doesn't turn back. Not right away anyway. He’s off his horse and running toward the group of people converging in the center of the glade, their weapons raised and aimed at both him and us.
“Stop where you are and I won't give the order for your death!” A chill snakes around my spine as I recognize the voice as Phaedras. “You know what you are doing! Running with the girl is treason!”
“She is MY daughter!” The man howls. He turns toward us then, a flame flicking at his fingers.
His handsome face illuminated by the unnatural flicker of the dark fire.
He throws the flame out in front of him, opening a vortex of smoke that opens a portal.
A portal that looks eerily familiar. He looks longingly at me and my mother before he bellows the order for my mother to run.
She doesn't wait. She kicks the horse, sending the animal flying toward the portal.
A whistle pierces the air with its screech before the horse is rearing up with a cry of pain. We all go down and hit the ground hard. Above the chaos, I hear an echoing laugh erupt. A laugh I’d know from anywhere. The same laugh from my nightmares. Phaedra’s laugh.
The portal snaps shut, and the cloaked man who opened it drops his chin, resigning to the feeling of pain that is brandished on his face.
He looks down toward my mother and me, lips pursed before his storm cloud eyes meet mine.
He blinks, the center around his pupils almost glowing like a heated ember before he turns his gaze on my mother.
“I love you both. Mina, my love. Astraea, my brightest star. We tried.” He says something else as he turns to face the group that surrounds Phaedra, but I can barely hear him.
My mother calls out as magick surges; dark flames and smoke curl from him as his body begins to change in front of us.
Fire melts the flesh of the man away, and his smoke-like magick whirls and clouds out like a sandstorm, rebuilding his body into something monstrous.
And just as suddenly as it started, the transformation is complete.
In this brief moment, I finally put together what it is that he said.
My heart squeezes in realization at those words he muttered.
They were the same ones Kyros said before the transformation took him.
The magick that turned him into the Umbra Vitae.
And just like Kyros, this man's features are sharpened with long claw-like fingers curling from the sleeves of his cloak and horns curved from his head.
“NO!” My mother’s cry breaks through the fear and pain in my heart.
She runs for Phaedra with a scream of rage.
Black shadows lurching from her skin like striking whips of dark lightning.
I'm forced to watch as the man, Illias… reaches out toward Phaedra, one hand dripping blood as she smiles manically. She cuts her own hand and presses it against his before wrapping his wrist in a dark bangle. His eyes jump to hers as he stares in shock. He tries to open his mouth to say something, but no words come. His rounded eyes turn toward my mother in panic, and she continues to close the distance between them. I can’t help but see the parallels between watching my mother’s anguish as she loses my father to my own grief for Kyros.
History—it always repeats itself.
My mother’s magick acts as deadly weapons, leaving nothing but carnage in their wake.
Similar to Kyros’ and Mavros magick, it is lethal in its accuracy.
She takes on guard, after guard, without lifting more than a hand pointed in their direction.
She gets so close, but the creature that my father has now transformed into turns toward her.
“Kill her!” Phaedra demands. My mother’s feet slide to stop as she hears the order. The creature turns to her, limbs shaking. Pain-stricken eyes lock to hers, and she sobs, shaking her head.
“No, Illias. What have you done?” She cries, looking back at me where I stand in the brush, trembling with fear. It's brief; one moment she's looking at me, and the next… Tears begin to flow freely as she screams in anger and pain.
Taking my eyes off my grieving mother, I notice a man standing close behind Phaedra.
His features are familiar as his eyes stare intently into mine.
My mother doesn't back down from the fight, though, her magick casting out in every direction as soldiers surround her.
Shadows engulf the clearing. I can't see anyone or anything; I only hear the terror of my own heartbeat in my ears.
Just as fast as it started, I am ripped from the shadows and thrown onto a horse. The horse that the man rode beside us. My real father? Illias.
We take off toward the treeline, and wind rips at my cloak, pulling the hood back and whipping at my face in our hurry to escape.
The horse's gallop gets us into cover quickly, but it's no use.
A portal opens not far in front of us as we break into the thick underbrush.
Phaedra steps through, and the man, Illias, follows behind her.
His horned head is down-turned, his face riddled in shame and pain.
The horse rears back, and as hard as my mother tries to keep us seated, it's no use; her grip is weakened.
We slip from the saddle, hitting the ground hard.
A sob rips from her. The cry of a mother forced to face the fact that she will lose her daughter soon.
Somehow I know this is one of the last moments I will ever see my mother. Shayd’s words from our conversation in the caves echo through my mind. “Your mother was far stronger than that man could ever even claim to be.” He knew because he was here to witness her fight for me.
The man, now a fully transformed nightmare with sharpened features, hones in on my mother.
He stalks forward towards her in an unnatural manner as though he is fighting his own body.
Phaedra smiles as he rips my mother from the ground at her command.
I cry out too as Phaedra’s bony fingers curl around my wrist in a punishing grip at the same moment.
“Stop fighting me or it will only be worse for you!” She jerks my small arm, shooting pain through it.
Tears blur my vision as I watch the creature in front of me hold my mother to his chest. A trembling hand holds a dark blade to the center of her chest. She cries for me to run, but I can’t. I'm being held by Phaedra.