Chapter 23
One.
Two.
Seven.
Sixteen.
Twenty-nine.
Maeve stopped counting the days Mal was gone at thirty. She was unable to bring herself to acknowledge that he’d been gone for a month. She’d fallen asleep with warm cheeks after their moonlight garden stroll.
Now she fell asleep knowing the nightmares that awaited her.
The gaunt woman with long white hair and sunken eyes visited her dreams the most. Sometimes she stood at the foot of Maeve’s bed, watching her. In truth, she preferred the ghostly woman to the vivid, and gut wrenching dreams of her father and Antony.
Maeve was certain she’d awake soon and the nightmare would be real.
Sometimes she wished it was.
She shot up with a sharp inhale, palms flat against her clammy cheeks. Her vision focused on the figure at the foot of her bed. Wet, warm tears slipped from the corners of her eyes, one after the other, in a silent cry.
Mal shifted into view before her.
His face was pained. And she was certain he had seen the dream.
It was the same as always. The bathtub and the disoriented look on her father’s face.
She stiffened and clenched her jaw tight, pressing down on the cry barreling up her throat. It was suffocatingly tight in her room. She threw off the covers and nearly bolted from the bed, as if it was to blame. She rushed across the room and forced open the glass doors of her balcony with a sharp wave of her hand.
She didn’t stop until her hands gripped the cold stone ledge and she sucked in the freezing night air. Three more steadying breaths and her grip loosened. The endless haze parted just enough for her to see three moons that sat in perfect alignment, though each in different phases. Something entirely impossible on Earth.
The sky was a dense shade of green, as it had been since she arrived.
She felt Mal at the threshold behind her, his eyes on her.
“Will there ever be pure sunlight here?” She asked quietly.
“Possibly,” he answered gently. “There is in Aterna I am told.”
Maeve didn’t look back at him. “It’s hard to tell time here.”
“Even harder out there,” said Mal.
Maeve bit her tongue, knowing she was being selfish.
“Speak your mind,” he urged.
Maeve shook her head. He didn’t fight her.
Mal appeared at her side, surveying the mountains and the vast lands before them. His hands tucked at his back. “Astrea can make you a potion for the dreams.”
“Is that how you sleep through the night?” She asked, a little too bitterly.
“Not when your thoughts are screaming at me, I don’t,” he replied smoothly.
She looked up at him and spoke genuinely. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
Mal turned fully towards her and inhaled deeply. “I wasn’t asleep, Maeve.”
She resisted the urge to run her fingertips over the faint white scar across his eye and brow. The scar she had given him. “Abraxas says you rarely sleep now.”
A small smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “And here I thought you no longer cared about me.”
“You don’t think that,” she fired back softly.
Mal scanned her face. “No,” he said finally, “your cowardice has not yet completely blinded you.”
Maeve paled and dropped her hands from the bannister. She turned towards him fully. She’d be damned if that scar didn’t make him more exquisite.
“I am not a coward,” she said with a strained calm.
Mal stepped closer. “No?” He questioned. “You refuse to train with me since our first attempt. You do not train with Larliesl despite being the one to bring him here. You don’t read. You don’t care what the Double O is doing. You don’t care to find the one responsible for your father’s death. So tell me, what are you being?”
“Realistic,” she snapped, with little fire in her tired voice.
“You are running,” he corrected. “And I’ve told you before, that is beneath you.”
“Maybe sometimes running is the only way to stay alive,” said Maeve.
Mal’s eyes widened. “Alive? Is that what you wish to feel?”
He was closer now, his scent and his Magic swirling up around her. She didn’t answer.
Mal’s two fingers tucked slowly under her chin, angling her head upwards. His eyes moved back and forth between hers. He nodded subtly.
“I’ll see you in the morning for training. Not a request,” he said and dropped his hand, leaving her on the cold balcony.
The Throne Room of Castle Morana was filled when she arrived early in the morning. Maeve halted in the archway. Her eyes scanned along the large room. The entire ranks of Bellator were present. They lined the walls along tables and stadium-like seating.
Mal stood at the foot of his throne with his hands tucked behind his back.
“Have I misunderstood something?” She asked.
“Your training this morning will be spectated.”
Maeve’s head slid to the side as she eyed him. Mal did not smile. Her back straightened.
“You’re serious?” She asked quietly.
“Perhaps an audience is required to make you feel a spark of something lost.”
Excitement shot up her spine, but it was quickly drowned out by her quickening pulse.
Coward . Mal had called her.
The words burned deep in her stomach. It was the antithesis of her father. Of what he raised her to be. It was the greatest insult that could be thrown at her.
She stepped towards him across the shiny emerald tiles. Magic seeped from her feet as fury built deep in her core.
Mal may have thought she wasn’t paying attention to Larliesl’s trainings, but Magic slipped from her every step, crackling across the castle floor. His eyes traveled down her body, but his calm scowl remained.
She faced him boldly, pushing down every resentful thought that scattered across her mind.
It was his fault.
Mal’s head cocked to one side as his chest rose. Maybe he had heard her.
She was glad of it.
Mal nodded as a wicked look spread across his haunting features. Dark Magic swirled behind him. They stepped towards one another in synchronicity, both drawing their Magic to their sides. Bitterness surged through her two deadly fingers.
It was not a shield that either of them produced. They fired Magic with intent to hurt upon one another. The thick sparks of light crashed into one another, shooting into walls of ethereal Magic.
Mal’s broke through hers quickly, knocking her back. She Obscured before her back slammed into the ground, righting herself on one knee.
A heavy breath slipped from her lips. One spell and he’d nearly exhausted her.
She stood and straightened her spine. Her eyes on his like a magnet.
He fired again, and this time she threw up a shield and swiftly dodged the blinding burst of Magic. He fired again and again. Each time pushing her further back in the hall. Each shield was weaker than the last, and each time she dodged and struck back at him, she was a second too late.
Sweat dripped down her back. He was ahead of her every step of the way. Their minds were far from fused.
Her arms fell to her sides in exhaustion as his pursuit did not halt.
Icy and breathtaking Magic struck her. Her vision blurred as she stumbled to the floor.
She wondered if she was just weaker. Was it the Dread Artifacts he wore? Or was she never a match for him at all?
“Why did you run?” He asked, circling her as she stared up at the ceiling, gripping her wounds. She squeezed her eyes shut and laughed, the sound hollow as it echoed across the hall.
She pushed off the floor and glared up at him.
“I didn’t have a choice.”
Mal shook his head. His expression was nothing short of terrifying.
“You stopped choosing me,” he pressed towards her. “But you never stopped being mine. You will always be mine. Buried six feet deep or soaring through the sky you belong to me, Maeve Sinclair. And I have allowed you to think otherwise for far too long. Now, get up and gather your strength or I will pierce your skin further until you understand that you will never, ever, run from me again.”
Maeve pushed to her feet and ignored the tension in the room.
“Do not yield to your emotions,” said Mal, another curse cracked through her weak shield. “Do not bend to me.”
Dark swirls of Magic, twisting like vines, spiraled towards her. She pressed her feet into the ground and braced herself, shielding her face with her arms.
“Do not bend to any of them.” His command rang out over the shattering of her shield.
His Magic was indeed paramount. It was stronger than the Dark Peaks and deeper than the Black Deep. He was nothing like her school companion.
Shaking heavily, dark tendrils sliced through her before she could even try to retaliate.
She doubled over with a scream. Her head shot up as he fired towards her again. She Obscured, placing herself at his backside.
Mal swirled towards her, and gathered more Magic at his fingertips.
“Anger is more useful than despair.” He fired on her, filling the room with bright green light.
All that barreled across her mind was anger. At him. At Reeve. At Abraxas. At herself. So foolish. She’d been so na?ve and foolish.
She blocked successfully, but her counterspell fell weak against his shield. He fired on her again, Magic slamming through her in a wave of slicing ice.
Each fire of his Magic came quicker than the next. He wasn’t giving her a moment to even breathe. She wished he’d suffocate her fully. Drown her in his possession.
But he was gone so often. And this place was dark and shadowed.
Frustration swelled inside her as she narrowly escaped another powerful blow.
“Wrath is far more powerful,” he said louder, taunting her, growing her resentment and pushing her hatred.
The Magic she fired back at him was weak. Pathetic.
That of a coward.
His Magic pushed her backwards, then forwards, leaving her no room to find an offensive position. Her breathing was fast. Her heartbeat shook through her.
“And rage,” said Mal. “… rage is more devastating.”
The room darkened as fury swelled inside her.
What did he know of rage?
They took him from her. They took her life, her future, and the one person she knew who’d love her without stipulation or gain. She’d be damned if they made her a coward. She’d be fucking dammed if that anger denied her Mal and her rightful place, slaughtering at his side in the name of her father.
He was hers. The Prince was hers.
His voice bellowed across the Throne Room, “Don’t you want to devastate them?!”
A scream exploded from her throat before she realized she’d even inhaled. Electricity spiraled down her arm, sparking at her fingertips. Hot. It was so hot. But she was alive at last.
Mal was on her in a blink. His hand gripped her wrist tightly, redirecting the bright green lightning blast towards the ceiling. Maeve’s legs gave way, and she fell to her knees, bringing Mal with her. With a sharp inhale, her Magic too collapsed, and Mal released her wrist. Her palms slammed into the cold emerald marble floor as she heaved a sob.
Her scream echoed across the hall as she cried with a broken voice, “Why did it have to be him?”
Mal remained kneeling before her. He studied her for a moment. His face was distraught. “I am sorry, Little Viper,” his voice hummed. “I am more sorry than you’ll ever know.”
She fell forward into his chest and buried herself in the crook of his neck. His arms snaked around her back as she released nearly a year's worth of repressed remorse. Her tears flowed, hot and free and loudly against him. She didn’t care that they weren’t alone. She didn’t care that the hall was filled with piercing eyes. Her Bellator. His court and their new world.
He brushed the back of her head and rocked her slightly, hushing her cries.
“I promise you are safe,” he whispered. “I promise I am here. I am yours. Please, let me be.”
His hands moved to her face, and he gently forced her gaze up at him. She shuddered and tried to sedate her sobs.
Mal placed his forehead on hers. “Let me help you, please.” His eyes begged. “Say you’ll let me help you avenge the death of the closest thing I had to a parent. Say you want me to slaughter them all. Say the word and my Magic is yours to command. Just tell me who to kill first and they won’t live to see the sun rise.”
Maeve wiped her nose with the back of her hand and spoke with conviction. “Orator Moon."