Chapter 10 #2
Kaelen's heart seemed to pause against my back, then restarted with a violent, thudding fury. The temperature in the cavern spiked.
"They hurt you," he said. It wasn't a question.
"It was painful," I admitted, staring at my hands.
"Invasive. Humiliating. Month after month.
They brought in donors, Keepers chosen for their magical potential, or their theoretical, uh, potency, but.
.." I shuddered, remembering the instruments, the potions that made me sick for days, the disappointment in Natalia's eyes when my cycle returned, regular as the tides.
"It didn't work," I said. "I couldn't conceive. My body rejected everything. The healers said my womb was hostile. They said the magic of the Gate... the constant drain of my blood... One Keeper suggested that it had made me barren, but I never saw him again after he made that suggestion."
I let out a shaky breath. "Anyway, after a while they stopped.
They decided that stressing my body with failed pregnancies was a greater risk than having no heir.
They focused on keeping me alive instead.
Preserving the container so they could try again later when they had better options or became more desperate.
" I pulled at the edge of my clothing. "That's why I'm the last."
Kaelen buried his face in my neck. He was shaking. Not with cold this time, but with a murderous heat. I could feel the dragon pulsing under his skin. It wanted to burn the world down for what they had done to me.
"They treated you like livestock," he snarled against my skin. "Like a broodmare."
"I was a Keeper," I said dully. "We give everything. Especially those of the Pandoros line."
"That is not giving," Thane rumbled from the shadows, his voice thick with disgust. "That is theft."
Elias had gone still. He was staring at me, his eyes wide, the pupils dilated so much that his eyes looked almost black.
"Barren," Elias whispered. "The Gate's energy... yes. That makes sense. It consumes the life force needed for creation."
He looked up, meeting my gaze. The fear in his expression was palpable.
"But Aria... the flashes I am seeing? The images of you carrying a child?"
"Echoes of what they wanted," I said, waving a hand tiredly. "Whatever future they tried to force, it failed. It's in the past."
"No," Elias said.
The single word fell like a stone.
He walked around the fire, crouching in front of us. He looked at Kaelen, then at me. His jewel-like gaze bored into my own.
"My sight…I usually only see the currents of what is coming," Elias said, his voice trembling. "The probabilities. The potential."
My heart hammered against my ribs. "But I can't. You heard me. It’s impossible. They tried. I tried." My voice almost cracked on the last, but I kept it together, which made me proud.
"Nothing is impossible," Elias whispered, glancing at the golden markings on my skin, at the dragon fire linking Kaelen and me. "Not anymore. You merged with the Gate and took the Divine into your blood."
He reached out, his hand hovering over my stomach without touching.
"The flashes I see are strong. Insistent.
They aren't drifting possibilities. They are intent.
" Elias looked up, his turquoise eyes terrified.
"Someone is trying to bring this future into being. Someone is manipulating the threads of fate to ensure a new line is forged, or at the very least that this line doesn’t die out. "
"Who?" Kaelen demanded, his arm tightening across my chest like a steel band. "The Council?"
"I don't know," Elias admitted, pulling his hand back as if burned. "But the child in the vision... it doesn't feel human. It feels... heavy. Like a star wrapped in skin."
The food I had eaten turned to lead in my gut. I scrambled away from Kaelen, and this time he let me, which was good because a moment later I was dry heaving, the taste of ash filling my mouth.
A future where I was pregnant. A child that wasn't human.
"Natalia," I whispered, the name surfacing from the depths of my memory like a corpse in a lake.
"Who?" Kaelen asked, rubbing my back as I gagged.
"High Keeper Natalia," I gasped, wiping my mouth. "She was... she was the one who oversaw the procedures. The one who held me down when I screamed."
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to conjure her face. Severe features. Cold hands. Eyes that looked at me like a specimen in a jar.
"Or... no. There was someone else." I murmured, my memory straining to see something that I had forgotten or blocked out. "Keeper Marissa was the healer. The Matron of the Line."
My memory blurred. The drugs they had given me during those months made everything hazy. But I remembered Marissa's voice. The vessel must be prepared. The divine spark requires a divine vessel.
"I haven't seen her in years," I said, a new, creeping horror settling over me. "Not since the procedures stopped. I assumed she died or retired to the lower cloisters, or was even punished for my failure to conceive."
I looked up at Elias.
"What happened to Marissa?" I asked. "Where is she? And do we know if Natalia is actually dead, or did you just take her magic?" I turned to face Kaelen for the last part.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Elias frown, and his gaze drifted back to the fire. "I see a shadow. A woman in white, standing in a room full of glass jars. She is smiling."
I wished I knew for sure which one he was talking about, but they had looked like sisters to begin with, so even having him describe who he was seeing wouldn't be helpful. The sickness in my stomach shifted into a sharp, icy dread. "If she isn't dead... and she was obsessed with the bloodline..."
I looked at Kaelen, at the fierce, protective line of his jaw.
"If the Council thinks I'm lost," I whispered, "if they think I'm corrupted... they will need a replacement."
"But you are the last," Kaelen said.
"Unless they make another one," Elias said softly. "Using what they took from you."
The fire popped, sending a shower of sparks into the dark air.
"They kept samples," I breathed, the realization hitting me with the force of a physical blow. "Blood. Tissue. Eggs. Failures. Everything they could salvage from the procedures."
Elias nodded slowly. "And now... the Gate is open. Divine essence is flooding the world. The one ingredient they were missing to make the alchemy work. If magic comes to this realm in full force, then they will figure out a way to use it to recreate the Pandoros line."
Thane spoke from the shadows, "Or they will focus on capturing you when we reemerge, and they will bring death on us all."
I buried my face in my hands, wishing the darkness would swallow me whole. Somewhere in the dark heart of the Citadel, Keeper Marissa was waiting for the perfect moment to create a monster.