Thirty-One
T HIRTY - O NE
ESTRELLA
I turned my attention to the obelisk that held Khaos, watching him loose a subtle sigh. His lips tipped up too much to be a smirk, but he suppressed it before it could become a full-blown smile, glancing over his shoulder at the Primordials watching him carefully.
I hated that smile and everything it embodied. I hated the notion that it was a moment of pride for him. Yes, I’d won.
But at what cost? What weight would that vision have on my future, haunting me through my years with my mate?
From where I sat on my podium, I shifted my stare back to Melinoe’s seething face. She bared her teeth, malice churning behind her gaze. I couldn’t even fault her, not when the catlike beast paced below us and waited for a meal.
She tipped her mouth up into a devious grin as I laid back down. She might think that she could break me, but she wouldn’t. I’d been created of flesh and bone, forged in the fires of abuse and tyrants.
Gold glittered above my head, falling down to land on my face and drag me into the deep sleep where Melinoe ruled. She controlled my dreams and nightmares, holding the power in her hands to give me the greatest dreams or the worst memories.
I dragged back a deep breath, my body feeling ragged and torn in the wake of my traumatic experience. Losing Caldris had nearly broken me, and only the knowledge that he still lived in Mab’s clutches kept me going as sleep dragged me under.
I held Khaos in my mind, the gleaming gold of his stare following me from behind closed lids.
I was the daughter of Khaos.
So chaos was what I would embrace.
The cane came down against my mother’s shoulders, sending her flying forward. She fell from the chair, landing on the rough wood of the floor. The smack of her palms against the surface was audible, echoing through the Temple where I’d spent so many days learning to kneel obediently.
My mother’s arms shook as she tried to push herself up to sit, her body jolting with the force of the cane when Lord Byron struck it down across her back once again. His gleaming, malicious blue eyes held mine as he beat my mother, and I strode forward to snap that cane from his hand and shove it into his belly.
I’d been deprived of his death the first time; I wouldn’t lose it this time.
My mother looked up, her tear-filled brown eyes meeting mine in the mirror at the front of the room. The Priestesses used it to force us to see our own flaws, to gaze upon them as our husband would one day.
In it, I saw my mother’s sheer exhaustion.
I hurried forward, smacking into an invisible barrier that kept me from reaching her. I slapped a palm against it, feeling for any breaks in the magic that had no home in this place. Mistfell condemned magic. The Priestesses and Lord Byron condemned it.
“All those you love suffer. All those you love die ,” the High Priestess said, her voice a gentle whisper in my ear. I spun to look for her, finding nothing and no one behind me. My mother and Lord Byron existed just beyond that magical boundary, leaving me to consider if this had been how Caldris felt when he knew I was going to die and the Veil stood in his way of reaching me.
He brought the cane down on the small of her back, leaving her body to jolt as I fought for a way to reach her. My fists banged on the glass between us, pressing as if I could push through. Byron merely smirked at me in the reflection of the mirror, forcing me to meet his gaze.
“You’ll never be enough,” the High Priestess said, forcing my stare to turn to myself.
How many years had I spent staring into my own reflection in this mirror and finding myself lacking? How many years had I looked upon myself and believed the hatred in her words?
I’d never be enough. I’d never be good enough for this realm.
Because I hadn’t belonged here.
The sunlight reflected off the mirror, making my head tip to the side as I tried to hold my own stare. Something danced beneath the surface in my eyes, a glimmer of golden light shimmering behind my irises. Glancing down to the fingers tipped in darkness and the starry sky, I raised them to look at them in front of me.
When I lifted my stare to that mirror once again, my eyes had delved into the dark, starry-eyed stare Caldris had seen that day at Blackwater. The creature that existed within me, allowed to escape and take ownership of my body.
I didn’t know what she was or who she would make me become, only that I’d never felt stronger than those moments when she rode my body and we had to fight to pull me back.
She was not helpless or afraid.
She was enough.
My mother shook her head at me subtly, warning me from doing the very thing I feared. It was in that moment I realized facing my greatest fears hadn’t been losing my loved ones. It hadn’t even been my own death.
It was that creature stalking beneath my skin, waiting to take over and erase my will. My greatest fear was the inevitability of accepting her and what that meant for my future.
Accepting that she always had been, and always would be, the most dangerous part of me.
I sunk into the darkness of that stare, studying the constellations in my own eyes as I tipped my head to the side. My reflection shifted, turning her gaze down to look at my hands even though I hadn’t moved.
My heart caught in my throat, forcing me to swallow as I followed her stare.
Faint golden threads rose up from the floor and came in through the open windows at the sides of the dream. They strained toward me, leaving me to fear what would happen if I embraced them. The last time I’d attempted it, Khaos had needed to intervene because I’d taken too much magic.
But I hadn’t truly embraced the beast then, and she nodded to me in encouragement as if she held all the answers.
To who I had been, who I was now, and who I would one day become.
I stretched out my hands, accepting the first brush of the threads against my skin. It was as if air returned to my lungs, filling me with warmth as they touched the tips of my fingers. Each thread embraced me, winding around my fingers and then my hand. My Fae Marks faded, disappearing beneath the golden light of the threads as they wound their way up my arms. I forced myself to still, holding my own gaze even as panic made my heart stutter in my chest.
There was no fear greater than this—greater than being consumed by power.
The threads of fate covered my shoulders, wrapping around my torso and my legs until I was covered in the golden shimmer. I saw the panic in my own eyes as well as the reassurance of the dark stare looking back at me.
The threads tickled my throat, wrapping around it and twining until they covered my face. They consumed my mouth, the frayed edges sinking between my lips to rest against my tongue as the rest of my face fell to the tomb I’d created.
I struggled to move beneath their weight as they slid over my nose, hardening into a cage as I felt the air rush out of my chest.
There was only the gold glimmer of the threads surrounding me, my body trapped in excruciating pain as they tightened on my skin and broke through the surface. They sank into my body, into the Fae Marks that filled with warmth.
I forced myself to hold still through the agony, letting the power take root in my soul and flood my veins.
I would never again be helpless.
I would never again be afraid.
I would take back what was mine and what Tartarus had stolen from me.
I saw through the threads finally as they sank into me, becoming part of me and allowing me to see Byron posture the cane above his head and ready to drive it down onto my mother once more.
Those hardened threads held me still, giving me no choice but to force through. My fingers flexed at my sides, fighting against the restraints.
No.
I was not just a tempest. I was the storm as something new surged through me.
Byron lowered the cane, swinging it forward sharply with a shout that hinted at the force he put into this one.
I struck out, breaking through the threads and glass barrier between us in one step. I burst free from the threads, a flash of gold lighting the room as my hand connected with the cane and stopped it in midair. Byron’s shocked gaze met mine, his fear coating my tongue. I drank it down, consuming it like a meal. It should have terrified me to feed on such a thing, but the creature side of me purred.
Grasping the cane from midair, I shoved him back and watched as he faded into the shadows at the corner. The sun had fled the room, leaving the brightest light in the room to be the shimmer of gold.
My Fae Marks that had once been white glowed with the color, lighting the darkness like the brightest star to match the gold stars swimming in the depths of my dark eyes.
My mother’s tear-filled eyes faded from view, her form disappearing from the temple as I made my choice.
As I chose to overcome.
Clutching the cane tightly in my hand, I turned my back on my own reflection and stepped through space and time.
I left the nightmare of my own volition.
And landed within my own body, the cane still clutched in my hands as I rose to my feet, my wound in my abdomen healed.