Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
SILVANUS
Iwas suddenly surrounded by white rose petals as Paris’s beautiful voice slid into my head, restoring another part of my memory.
I saw myself in Clarence Palace after Aidan’s cursing in the tower. I commanded my vampires to leave me alone. Vaughn and Layla tried to console me, but I roared at them to obey their king.
Their new king.
Grief’s talons ripped into me, my head a storm of sorrow. I remembered every thunderous crash, every gale-like blast of devastation.
“Lucius…”
I slumped against the throne with my brother’s bone dust still upon it.
“Please don’t leave me,” I begged him, some of my pleading reserved for Aidan.
In that moment, I still wanted to believe I’d wake from a nightmare to find my golden love beside me. To run down into this throne room to see Lucius going about his kingly business.
Life as it should be, not this horror.
But I knew better.
Sniffling, Past Me got to his feet, wiping at the streaks of bloody tears on his cheeks, smearing them across his face.
A name arrived on my tongue.
“Camilla,” Present Me whispered at the same time.
Realization hit me with diamond fists. Camilla. My sister. The name sank back into me as if it had always been there.
“By Selene,” I muttered, a new slice of remembrance joining the tapestry of my mind.
As the mortals of Quintrealm said ‘By Aidan’ and such like, so did we use the name of the First One in the same manner.
Selene, the first vampire, the one to…to…I couldn’t find the story of her or our creation. But I knew her, feeling the threads of moonlight that tethered me to her.
Moonlight…
Sadness scorched my brain, joined by a pining for home, for my sister.
“Where are you?” I muttered at the same time as Past Me.
Was she dead? I couldn’t recall anything other than her kindness. Often there to run through the forests with me, my confidant, my everything. A better sibling than Lucius.
She’d been furious over my obsession with Aidan and had been determined to find what he’d apparently taken from me.
“I don’t believe you!” my voice boomed off to the side, carrying me back into the past before Lucius’s death.
Camilla and I in the forest, my fury crackling.
“You’ll see, brother,” she returned. “You’ll see.”
That version of me hated her for trying to separate me from Aidan.
She loathed him from the moment he’d arrived in Selene Haven.
She knew he was bad news. She saw right through him, never welcoming him warmly like the rest of us, and made it known how much she disapproved of my relationship with him.
But where had she gone? What happened between this moment in the forest and the murder of our brother?
She must be dead, one of the many holes in the Heart of All that would never be filled.
Hold on. Couldn’t I see? Couldn’t I feel the loss of every vampire in there, their names eternal echoes, memorials to touch upon whenever I wanted? Like my dear Layla, so close to the surface from her recent death, along with all the others.
Closing my eyes, the scarlet glow of the Heart of All engulfed me, welcoming me in a warm hug tinged with sorrow, granting me the freedom to see and feel and search.
“Camilla Clarence,” I whispered, the red light rippling with the sound of my voice.
No response, no recollection. A good sign, filling me with a surge of relief. But I didn’t settle for it as confirmation, not with everything being so messy.
“I have a gift for you,” Aidan’s voice rolled through the throne room.
Past Me looked up, back in the throne room again. “Aidan?”
I didn’t remember this, my brain throbbing with confusion.
“A parting gift for my love.” Aidan’s laughter bounced off the walls, a burning sensation skimming across my skin.
I watched myself get to my feet, then became one with him to replay the memory, scratching at my arms. “Are you here?”
The answer hit me in a collision of memory and terror, sending me into a tailspin.
A ball of golden light shot past me, a spell left behind to activate in this moment.
Aidan’s gift tore through the permanent night skies of Selene Haven, lighting them up with burning, golden sunlight. Beams of sunshine spilled into the throne room, one landing on me. My hands ignited, twin flames consuming my skin.
Screaming, I jumped back into the shade, sunlight skewering the throne room, pouring through the arched windows and chasing away most of the shadows.
I was in absolute agony, the fire threatening to spread across my body, I ran for my life as skin melted from bone, speeding through the beams fast enough to feel their sting but not ignite.
The Heart of All wailed in horror, the deaths of so many vampires not under shelter striking me in quick succession. Multiple ends breaking me down into a million pieces of sorrow, the survivors depending on me to figure this out before they followed.
As the flames reached the tops of my wrists, I crashed into the kitchens. Staff clung to the shadows, sobbing, bone dust piles smoking on the marble floor.
There were no thralls around.
Where did they go?
I wasn’t sure, that part of my memory was still broken.
I put the flames out in an overflowing sink, nothing left there but charred bone. Mercifully, it ached with healing. Even the touch of sunlight wouldn’t deter my vampiric restoration.
My people begged me for help, for answers, as more deaths reached me. The responsibility bore down on me, threatening to pulverize me into oblivion.
I am king.
I am responsible for all of them.
“What are we to do?” A woman’s voice sloshed in my head, propelling me through time.
Flash, flash, flash. Memories returning, vampires gathering in the caves and tunnels beneath Selene Haven. Structures carved from vampiric engineering, emergency shelters and escape routes we gathered in.
But the humans were right behind us, galvanized into action by the sunlight and hunting us with stakes and explosives, creating apertures for the killing light to spill into, leaving us no choice but to run.
Were the thralls with them?
We ran, we burrowed where we had to, thirsty for blood, desperate for a miracle.
I led my people through the dark until we found a doorway. A strange, shimmering rectangle fringed by glacial blue ice.
Beside it, coiled up, was Medusa. I grabbed her, draping her around my neck. I was beginning to forget her shifter nature and her power as Aidan’s rot seeped into my mind. Rewiring my brain piece by piece, making me see her as a python only.
In desperation, the hum of sunlight constantly at our backs, I made the decision to pass through the door into caverns of ice swarming with monsters.
Frostbrood. We’d discovered a new species and a new world.
The frostbrood attacked, and we fought our way through their tunnels and caverns. Many of us were injured, but none dead, for nothing here could kill us, only break our bones and spill our blood.
Miraculously, we smashed our way to freedom, finding a place of rock and dirt beyond a dead end of ice. We broke out into a new world at nighttime, the air choked with smoke, yet fresh enough to be a relief.
The Hinterlands of Quintrealm. A place of violent storms, of earthquakes, of falling ash and deadly ravines.
I still didn’t know the story of why this place was in such a state, nor did the natives of this realm to this day.
Our freedom came with many prices. Like the freed frostbrood spreading across the world, and the attacks against us when we passed into the Human Domain—with whom the Hinterlands shared their northwestern border.
We were the invaders, not welcome, and so the war began.
More blood.
More death.
And a complete unraveling of my past, thanks to Aidan.
I became a new Silvanus, the one with no memory, sharing the amnesia with my vampires. We fought for our lives, creating a stronghold in this realm with too many holes in our pasts.
Until this very moment.
I collapsed to my knees in the mental Carving Glade, petals falling around me with tears of blood streaming down my face.
My realm was cursed by sunlight. Did it still burn?
I must go back…
My sister may still be alive.
So many dead.
My brother…
My misplaced love…
The sting of agonizing lament drove its own stakeblade into me. Again and again and again. Good. I wanted it to, to find the right spot to end this pain. To give me what I deserved.
Because of me, I’d inflicted so much suffering on two worlds. I was the master of death, the king of misery.
Whatever I touched, whatever I did, all ended in suffering.
So much suffering.
I looked up, seeing Paris and Caer over by the bushes as they always were. Keeping me at a distance, as they should.
I’ve ruined the elf’s life.
I’ve—
Everything changed, taking me to an alleyway in Oreflame City.
Paris was there. Shining, beautiful Paris.
Out there in the domain of fur and long winters.
I saw him, sensed him.
There you are!
I wasn’t sure how, but thank Selene for this gift.
I’m coming, my spark.
I’m coming.