Chapter 14
“You are a disgrace,” my mother spat, staring down at me in disdain. “Your father has allowed your mind to weaken. Indulging your every whim and allowing you to play with that pitiful boy has ruined you.”
She gripped me by the back of my neck, tugging me down, down, down the curved steps toward the dungeon. I hated the dark when she forced me into that tiny space where I could not breathe. The air was thin, and it smelled like urine and blood.
I reached back, screaming and crying as she dug her nails into my skin. “Please, mother! Please!” I begged. “I will be good, I swear it. Please do not make me go back in there.”
I planted my bare feet against the stone, scraping the soles against the rough edges as she pushed me through the doorway. I landed on my hands and knees, feeling the skin tear with the force of the fall.
My mother sneered as she saw the tears streaming down my face. “That,” she said, pointing a long-tipped claw in my face. “That is the weakness I am forced to eradicate because he refused. He filled your head with fanciful delusions of friendship and kindness, but those words should not exist in a D’Arcy’s vocabulary. There is only strength and power.” She stood tall and crossed her arms. “Our ancestors were created by the gods to conquer. Instead, we have been collared and leashed, forced by others to share the control that should rightfully be ours. One day, it will fall on your shoulders to end this”—my mother’s face twisted—“castration. This curse has weakened us enough—you will not be allowed to show one sign of frailty. You must be ready to seize that destiny and fight to return us to our former glory.”
I never understood what she meant when she said these things. She talked so much about our history and the past, but her focus was always on control.
I did not even know what I had done wrong this time.
I had just been in the library with Jasper, talking about the latest book I had read. It was full of magic, telling the story of a daring knight traveling across the kingdom to save the princess from the evil king. I blushed when he kissed her, signaling the end of the book.
Jasper had teased me endlessly as he saw the red in my cheeks, and I had launched myself toward him, knocking him to the ground. We wrestled back and forth, running around the vast, empty room while trading half-hearted swings in jest until my mother stomped in. She had taken one look at us before marching over to me and pulling me from the library. I looked back over my shoulder, seeing a wide-eyed Jasper standing by the bookshelves just before the door closed behind me.
“Give me your clothes,” she said, snapping her fingers and holding her hand out.
“But it is so cold in there, Mother, please?—”
Her hand whipped across my face so hard I knew it would bruise. The featherlight caress of blood began trickling down my lip. She would clear any injury up before Father came home. She always did.
There were times I would lay in bed afterward, staring at my freshly healed skin, wondering if it had all been a nightmare I had dreamt up. But then I remembered the feeling of ice-cold metal against my bare skin and how my throat hurt after screaming for hours to be let out.
It had all been real.
Mothers were supposed to love their children, weren’t they? Jasper’s mother always smiled and laughed. She would make us sweet treats on the weekends I was allowed to visit, watching us as we played under the moonlight in the small grove behind their house. Sometimes, if she was not busy, she would chase us up and down the grassy banks of the stream. She taught us about nature, pointing out the owls perched on their branches high in the sky or the silver-backed lizards that would race across the rocks.
And every time he tried to leave her sight, she would bend down and kiss the top of his head before ruffling his hair and sending him on his way.
The only time my mother smiled was when she pulled me from the deprivation chamber, soiled and shivering. There were no warm hugs, and words of adoration were replaced with barbed insults that twisted my stomach into knots.
What had I done wrong to make her hate me so?
“Do not make me ask again, Rion. Give me your clothes.”
I did as she asked, staring at the floor as I stripped to my undergarments. The horrible screech of rusty hinges filled the air as she opened the door to the chamber and shoved me inside. I could not stop the silent tears from falling as the darkness enveloped me.
Sweat drippeddown my body as I ran through the woods, chasing away the demons plaguing my mind. Those haunted recollections were never laid to rest. Instead, they broke from the ground like poison ivy, twining their insidious vines into every vacant space to spread their vitriol.
I had hardly slept, waking from my nightmare with shaking hands and hollowed breaths. It had been so long since my mother’s face had visited my dreams, bringing with her the unimaginable memories of a young boy whose spirit was being broken.
After breakfast, I spent the remainder of the day scouring my mother’s room with Jasper and Rowena. The space was split in two, connected by an archway with ostentatious black crown molding, separating her sleeping chamber and study. Though I knew it had likely been cleared of any evidence that would reveal her plans or whereabouts, it was one of the few places we had yet to check.
To no surprise, the room was spotless. Not a single paper was out of order, and there were no hidden compartments in the dainty mahogany desk that had been in our family for centuries. And, just for safe measure, Jasper had torn the wood apart with a crowbar with a smile on his face.
My desperation was increasing. Reckless energy pulsed, driving me closer to folly. I was no fool. My mother was cunning; a conniving creature who had spent her life collecting a treasure trove of secrets. But everyone had a weakness. Even a single thread could unweave the most complex tapestry.
We just had to find it.
Jasper and Rowena had allowed me to walk away from my mother’s rooms alone, despite offering to keep me company. Try as I might, I could not avoid their thoughts as I made the trek up the stairs to my tower.
The impression of their concern was cut by an undercurrent of caution. We had talked no more about Calia’s appearance, but they both thought me delusional. They thought the constant exhaustion was finally catching up to me or that the sight was no more than a witch’s trick.
Or perhaps, worst of all, that I was mad—that her loss had sent me over the edge to the devils waiting below.
The knowledge only stung because they were probably right. I had no hope or plan of surviving an eternity without her, causing me to be more audacious in my pursuit than I would have been if I had Calia to come home to.
When I could no longer remain prone in my bed, I took the stairs two by two. I did not stop until I stood beneath the canopy of stars, staring up at a blood-soaked moon. Anger flowed through my veins like wildfire, my memories having lit the fuse of my own destruction.
I always hated the darkness, hated what it represented and the impending destruction it symbolized. Evil loomed within its depths, hidden until it snuck close enough to sink its claws into my mind and bring forth the truths I had never voiced aloud.
I never knew it could be beautiful before Calia. She loved the moon like I loved her.
I had been taught that hate, had I not? Forced to fear the unknown and what waited for me in its unending expanse? My mother had been the one to sew that dread into my soul, ensuring it was a part of my very being. She wanted me to hate the dark the way she did, so that when I assumed my role as her dutiful minion I would not rest until I had vanquished it.
But my mother had never intended for me to meet someone who loved what she had feared.