Chapter 18
What remained of two giant serpents marked either side of the entrance to the long lost Beryl City. Their great bodies twisted into the sky, together forming an arch.
Great towers and walls shot into the sky, their stones dark and decaying, crumbling to the pavers along the wide streets. Cobwebs clung to the stone and ash covered the streets. The air was barely breathable, but it didn’t burn her skin. A mask of fabric laced with Mal’s Magic draped across her mouth and nose, allowing her to breathe normally.
Maeve turned on her shoulder. “It feels like something is here.”
“Something is here,” said Mal. “All our kind lost is here. All the abandoned Magic.”
Mal wasn’t wrong, but Maeve felt something else. Something that skirted down the streets alongside them, something awake and aware of their every move.
“No,” she said. “Something. . .dark.”
Castle Morana was covered by dark green mist and shadow on the horizon beyond as they climbed the winding passages and roads in Beryl City, passing by the remains of shops and homes, their windows and doors intricately carved and created. Crystal doorknobs and gilded windows sat dull and dusty.
“Can you imagine what this place once was?” She asked, stopping at a square. A dried up fountain sat at its center.
“I can,” answered Mal. “And I can see it all, born again.”
She watched him step towards what appeared to have once been a hat shop. He looked back at her.
“What sacrifice is made to achieve this goal?” She asked.
Mal’s eyes drifted away from hers. “Sacrificing for our future is a great honor.” His eyes slid back to hers as he turned around. “Do you want to see The Avondell Tower?”
His question wasn’t asked flippantly. It carried weight. The Sinclair home of The Towers was her birthright. Or, it once had been. The house of her ancestors was holy to her.
She nodded, feeling an excited shift in her Magic for the first time since arriving in The Dread Lands.
Maeve moved to pull the fabric down from her nose and mouth. Mal’s hand shot to her face at once.
“I haven’t fully restored the air here,” he said.
Maeve nodded. “I know,” she replied. “But I can feel it’s weak enough for me to breathe here.”
He dropped his hand and allowed her to remove her mask. The Magic supplying her oxygen pulled from her lungs. Mal watched her cautiously as she took a breath on her own.
He smiled softly. “Perhaps it is just you who is stronger here.”
Maeve moved towards the once ivory gate, the path beyond wild and overgrown. She pulled the thorny vines away with her gloved hand, revealing a metal placard with ornate letters.
THE TOWER OF AVONDELL: SINCLAIR
“No,” said Maeve, her fingers lingering over the cold metal. “It is the remains of them that were stronger.”
She dropped her hand and looked down the straight path. She’d wondered since childhood what this home would be like, what Magic it would hold. She dreamed of returning there, filling one of the rooms with her things. How grand it was in her mind.
Now it sat, seven stories tall with shattered glass windows and a broken down door, looking desolate. Thorny vines twisted up the structure, climbing the chipped windowsills and wrapping the oversized gargoyles.
“Can I go inside?” She asked quietly.
“Of course,” he replied behind her.
Maeve twisted two fingers, bringing the iron stakes from the ground and allowing the gate to swing wide.
She stepped onto the paved path with a large inhale as Magic exploded around them in a screech.
There was nothing warm and welcoming about it. The burst of energy blasted straight into her stomach, knocking her into the air. Mal’s dark shield consumed them as he Obscured and placed himself behind her, catching her swiftly in his arms before she hit the ground.
Her eyes squeezed shut as she balled in on herself against him. The Magic swirled at her stomach, dispelling after a few tight breaths.
She groaned into his chest, forcing her eyes to open. She looked back at The Avondell. Everything was just as it had been. The gates slowly closed themselves.
Mal’s eyes were wide as they silently watched.
Maeve’s head turned heavy as she fell back against his chest. Mal looked down at her as her eyes fluttered closed. “Your stamina is low,” he noted. “You haven’t been training like you should.”
“My Magic is not as strong without your presence,” she admitted weakly.
Maeve looked up at him, his chiseled face blurred in and out of shape. Sharp breaths caught in her lungs.
“No,” said Mal, “you have never needed me.”
His lips pressed down on her forehead, cold and healing Magic slipping down her neck and arms. It settled peacefully in her stomach, numbing the pain.
Her eyes fluttered to a close. Astrea's voice faded in and out in the darkness.
“She’s alright.” Astrea’s voice sounded in the darkness. “No traces of Magic remaining.”
Maeve felt her move away.
“Thank you, Astrea.” Mal’s voice was quiet. “I’d like you to check her every day.”
“Do you think I’m wrong?” Asked Astrea. There was no arrogance in her voice. No wounded pride.
“I think the Dark Magic my Dread Viper consumed is cunning. And it wouldn’t be the first time she hid it from me.”
“Forgive me,” said Astrea quietly, “I just don’t understand. I thought the blight was purged from The Tower of Avondell, like the rest.”
“As did I,” said Mal. “The darkness that lingers across this land was, and still is, eradicated from The Avondell. This is some other Magic.”
Astrea’s footsteps clicked across the tile. A door clicked shut.
Mal’s cool knuckles brushed down her cheek, sending her back into a deep slumber.
Astrea’s healing hands hovered over Maeve for, what Maeve hoped, was the final time.
“What’s that face for?” Maeve asked Astrea as she helped her up on the healing bed.
Astrea smiled curiously. “Strange Magic,” she remarked. “I have felt it in Mal.”
Astrea’s eyes traced over Maeve’s darkened veins.
“Yes,” said Maeve, tugging her sleeves down her hands in an attempt to conceal the marks.
Astrea pulled her eyes away and began placing glass toppers back on the vials of potions she’d used on Maeve.
“The Magic that runs through you,” she started, “it is twin to Mal’s.”
“Like calls to like,” said Maeve.
“It is more than that,” said Astrea. “It has another twin. One I can’t see, but there is a place for it beside yours and Mal’s.”
Maeve stilled. “Have you told him that?”
Maeve’s eyes shifted to her chest, where she knew the Dread Mark lay beneath her clothes. Astrea held a high honor at Castle Morana as Mal’s healer.
“Of course, I have,” she replied.
Maeve contemplated Astrea’s words for a moment. “A third,” she whispered. “What did Mal say?”
Astrea hesitated. “He seemed. . .unconcerned.”
Maeve nodded. “And he knows you are pregnant?” She asked calmly. “Congratulations, by the way.”
Astrea’s hand stilled on a bottle of dark liquid. “How can you tell?”
“The Magic radiating from you is almost nauseating,” said Maeve with a small smile. “Why hasn’t it been announced?” She asked casually.
Astrea continued working diligently to organize her potions and ignored her.
Maeve’s mouth opened as she realized. “I’m sorry.”
Astrea’s fingers halted and she looked up. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use those words.”
Neither of them smiled as they held one another’s gaze.
“Whose baby are you carrying, Astrea?” Maeve asked quietly.
She handed Maeve a small bottle of pale grey goo. “I think that’s all you need for those wounds. They shouldn’t scar if you keep applying that potion.”
Maeve hopped off the healing table and grabbed her wrist as she turned.
Astrea snatched it away. She didn’t look at Maeve as she began putting various small boxes and jars of ingredients into a chest. “I have not forgotten it was I who married my father’s brother’s son, my cousin, and it was you who married no one.”
The metal clasp on the chest snapped shut. Astrea turned to Maeve, her face resumed its normal mask of harshness. “I can’t expect you to understand my position.”
Maeve pulled her shirt on with a sigh. “I wasn’t judging you,” she said. “Believe it or not, I am on your side.”
“My side–” she began incredulously.
Astrea snapped her mouth tightly shut and closed her eyes. “Apologies. I am still growing accustomed to you as my superior.”
Maeve smiled softly and muttered, “I was always your superior.”
Astrea fought back a glare.
Maeve laughed. “Now, go ahead,” she said. “Go ahead and tell me what our new stations prevent you from freely speaking.”
Astrea did not hesitate. “I am lucky enough my cousin has no desire to touch me. Can you imagine if that was you and Abraxas?”
Maeve grimaced. “It’s no secret the bonds of marriage made for us are not willingly vowed.”
“Does that make it any less horrible that I had to vow them?”
Maeve paused. “No.”
Astrea pushed her hair out of her face with a sigh. “I am grateful you ensured my brother got to be with the one he loves. If only we all had that power. All eyes are on you, Dread Viper,” she said. “If you are immune to the enslavement of Pureblooded Witches, you could at least try to free the rest of us.”
Maeve smiled, but it did not meet her eyes. “I am not of Pureblood.”
“What am I missing?” Maeve asked Abraxas as he poured her a cup of tea.
“They’re been told to procreate as quickly as possible, if that what you are referring to.”
“So nothing has changed?”
“Everything has changed,” Abraxas argued back. “We are here, in these lands, reclaiming them.”
“You know this wouldn’t be a problem if everyone would stop arguing over the human-borns’ place here. Then there would be plenty of children being born to repopulate this realm.”
“Do we even know that their children will be born Magical?”
“So what if they aren’t? Is a world with diversity so terrible? Is Zimsy only here because she is my friend?”
“Many of the Sacred do not want such a world,” he said with a sadness in his voice. “You’ve heard them.”
“Well, maybe the rules and culture set forth by the very people who got us into the mess of corrupt government we seek to escape may not be the best foundation on which to lay our new society.”
Abraxas sighed. “I can’t argue with that.”
“You are so bright and brilliant. Do not let them push you into what is best for them. Mal chose you to decide what is best for his Dread Kingdom. Make it so.”
Maeve arrived at her training with Larliesl with little spirit in her fight. The nightmares Castle Morana offered were worse than her own. Larliesl had scarcely begun when Mal appeared in the training court.
“I can take it from here,” said Mal smoothly as he walked towards them.
Larliesl placed his fist over his heart and bowed. He excused himself silently.
“I thought you didn’t have time to train me,” said Maeve.
Mal smiled. She fought the one on her own lips.
“You were weaker out there than I ever saw you at Vaukore. I thought it necessary.”
“I’m sorry,” she said with a dry laugh. “I wasn’t expecting to be attacked by a house you told me was safe.”
“Perhaps if your senses were sharpened you could have been ready on the offensive.”
Maeve didn’t have a reply and so she looked away from him.
She didn’t want to face the gates of Avondell again. She buried the desire to return deep in her mind and pretended like it wasn’t devastatingly embarrassing that her ancestors' home had rejected her, when Mal was able to enter freely.
“I am not of Pureblood,” she blurted out quietly.
Mal sighed and lowered his chin. “That’s not why that happened, Maeve.”
Her gaze lifted.
“Many Bellator, some human born, have crossed those lines of Magic without issue.”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” she said, tossing her hair behind her shoulders. “You came here to train me.”
Mal didn’t press her on the issue. “Did you not continue training on Earth?”
“Only what was required of me in the Bellator, and sometimes not even that.”
“Duels?”
Maeve shrugged.
“Larliesl says you barely try. Perhaps the Dueling Master is going too easy on his former student.”
Maeve smiled placatingly.
“Have you jumped?” He asked matter-of-factly.
“No.”
Mal sucked in a long breath, steadying and readying his Magic. “Let’s begin there. Enter my mind and jump.”
“Where to?” She asked, stalling.
“I don’t care,” he replied. “But maybe try just getting inside first, and staying inside.”
Maeve breathed deeply and accepted her forthcoming failure.
Mal nodded once at her. Maeve’s pulse quickened.
She pressed into his mind, darkness flooding her senses. She pressed further into Mal’s mind and met solid steel walls of power. Her Magic flowed useless against his strength.
She was not the only one more powerful in The Dread Lands.
But that power was not enough. She was too weak to slip into his mind.
Larliesl was right.
Mal’s voice echoed across the darkness.
You’re not even trying.
Maeve sighed and whipped her Magic out. It crackled against his shields.
Better.
She prepared once more to fire on him, but a freezing cold whip slashed across her mind.
Maeve recoiled at once, pulling from his mind. Her fingers shot to her temples. Mal’s expression shifted into confusion.
“What was that?” Maeve asked breathlessly.
“What was what?”
Maeve shook her head, trying to rid herself of the daunting feeling. She closed her eyes, making certain of what she felt.
She looked up at Mal’s face of concern. “You. . .attacked me.”
Mal shook his head. “I did not move to hurt you.”
“Well, something did,” she fired back.
The sharp pain still lingered in her mind, like the tip of a blade pressed against either temple.
“I’m sure it was just your strength failing. I’ve told you-your Magic is weak–”
“Seven months without any real challenge will do that,” she muttered.
Mal looked away from her and clicked his tongue. “Try again,” he commanded, a bit of annoyance seeping into his tone.
Maeve wanted to argue further, but the defeated look on Mal’s face silenced her tongue. She stepped towards him and readied herself for more, praying she wouldn’t feel such haunting darkness from him again.