Chapter 36 Lore #2
It bothered me. And it shouldn’t.
“Look at me,” I demanded, my voice sounding cold to my own ears.
He lifted his face slowly, his brown eyes meeting mine.
Not with defiance or fear, but with love. And a hint of sadness that tugged at some well of emotion I hadn’t realized I possessed.
“I love you, Lore.”
That name… it was the same one I’d heard someone bellowing in my head.
I wanted to obliterate it.
I felt my throne sending out that dark, seductive, pulsating energy. The temptation I could never resist.
My shadow magic descended in a fury, raging in time with my temper, then vanished a beat later. And so did my wrath.
The male was now sprawled on the floor, face down in a widening pool of crimson, his body still and lifeless.
Horror washed over me as the shock wore off.
I stared at my trembling hand; the dagger was slick with fresh blood.
There was something about the blade that almost felt like it was screaming at me. Some vital information I needed to piece together before it was too late.
I noticed one little shadow, slipping around my wrist and frantically twisting around the hilt. It was nearly frenetic as it wound itself around the hilt over and over in undulating waves. I called it forth and turned it into the nightmare creature it was meant to be.
“Heel.”
The shadow writhed, swelling into a hulking hound made from smoke and nightmares. Claws scraped against stone, and its eyes burned like coals plucked from a fire. Its snarl echoed around the chamber.
My mouth curved.
“Good boy. Go outside and guard the castle. Kill anything that attempts to enter.”
The shadow hound snarled once more, then tore through the throne room, sending my shadow warriors scattering.
The scent of blood drew my attention back to the matter at hand.
Each droplet fell with a soft patter onto the stone floor, merging with the pool spreading from the male’s unmoving form.
That screaming inside me was back, and I almost tossed the blade away.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I… felt. I felt. That shouldn’t be possible.
“Finish the other two.”
Sloth’s voice had a hard edge to it. But he forgot himself.
He did not command me. No one did.
I was the Goddess of Night. I was ruled by no man, woman, or emotion.
I stared from the slain mortal to the two left. The woman was strangely familiar. Tears streamed down her face, her silent sobs wracking her upper body.
The male’s jaw was clenched tightly, but his eyes were locked on me.
“We love you, sunshine. No matter what,” he said, his voice unwavering despite the hopelessness of his situation.
He had to know he was about to die.
And yet he chose love instead of fear. How pathetically mortal.
A sharp ache seared through me, an overwhelming urge to collapse beside them and let my own tears flow, to grieve together.
It was not fit for a god to feel such pain. And yet, I felt it strongly.
But a different resolve hardened within me.
I shifted my grip on the cold hilt of my blade, feeling its weight and purpose. That was the only feeling I needed.
With a quick, brutal motion to silence my own trepidation, I plunged it into his chest, piercing his heart.
When his body hit the floor, something inside me fractured.
It was as though a dam had finally broken, releasing a torrent of memories that surged back with brutal force. I was Lore, but I was the goddess and this was my final test. My last Trial. And I just… failed.
The Liber Noctem.
The Trials.
This was how it intended to break me.
And it was succeeding.
This was terror on a whole different level. This emotion would fuel this court, this realm, this whole universe, with its might.
My hands trembled as I stared at the lifeless forms of my father and my brother, their eyes vacant and unseeing.
I’d done that to them. Not some merciless goddess or dark book. But their daughter, their sister. No matter who I was, what reincarnated deity, I would always be Lore Brimstone at the heart of me.
And I had just committed the worst sin.
My hands were still slick with the evidence of my treachery.
A wave of nausea crashed over me and I wanted to hurl the dagger away from me and then empty the contents of my stomach.
But through the agony raging through me, I managed to steel my nerves, to think. The Trials and tests were fear based. If I was a character in the middle of the epic life-or-death battle, what would I need to focus on? What clue?
The weapon I held felt heavier, drawing my attention back to it.
And I suddenly recalled the odd feeling from before, the desire to really look at it, to piece together a vital clue. Of little Teddy the shadow’s help.
The Liber Noctem wanted me to get rid of the dagger. It was doing its worst to make me toss the blade away.
I’d felt it was important, that I was missing something…
Tears streamed down my face, dripping into my family’s blood.
I wanted to scream, to fall to my knees, I wanted to—
Oh, my gods. I stared at the hilt where little Teddy had been winding around, at the end where it looked like something had been pried off it. Something that was in a familiar shape.
I would know, I’d only been carrying the damned thing around since I first started this twisted journey. It was in the perfect shape of the phoenix tear.
Through the storm of emotions threatening to drown me, pieces of the puzzle finally slipped into place.
I sorted through clues like the detectives in my favorite mystery novels.
There had been little hints all along, breadcrumbs for me to notice or think nothing of.
But now I knew I was on the right trail.
In order to win the Trials once and for all, I needed to take my power from the Book of Nightmares. In my last nightmare it had slipped and given me a bit of truth.
The book had been trying very hard to weave a perfect lie, and there was nothing more convincing than one that held a grain of truth at its core.
I thought about the prince, about his dwindling magic, his insistence it somehow tied in with the book.
And I knew. Without a doubt, he was partly correct.
Sloth’s magic was fueling the book.
And I’d bet anything it had to do with his tattoo.
That was why his power was weakening. The Liber Noctem was draining him. It had to be the reason it had chosen him—the perfect host.
Immortal. Powerful. And someone who’d remain by my side throughout the Trials, so the Book of Nightmares would be with me every step of the way.
I glanced at Nyantha’s blade. At the place where the phoenix tear had been pried away.
For some reason I knew, without a doubt, I needed to stab Prince Sloth to sever the connection. And I suspected the midnight blade I held, the one that was missing the phoenix tear, would help me accomplish that task.
Without his magic, the Liber Noctem would be rendered inert. And then we could really end these Trials. I just needed to not go dark once I had my full power.
And the book had almost won. By killing my family, it had broken something in me. But that wasn’t real. None of this was.
I wiped my tears and subtly fitted the phoenix tear into the end of the hilt. It snapped into place, just as I thought it would.
I sent a silent thank-you to my little shadow pet.
Ignoring the bodies of my slain family members and the weeping dream version of my mother as they all slowly flickered out of existence, I channeled my best impression of a villainess and prayed I knew what I was doing.
Or I would end up really killing the male I loved.