Chapter 5
Five
She’s kissing him. Her fated. So there should be no reason a boiling shot of jealousy burns through my blood.
Despite what my father and Aslan say, she is entitled to do as she pleases with them. Kiss them, hold them, lust after them, fuck them. . . make love to them.
I curl my hands into fists and a muscle in my temple feathers.
I slide my hands into my uniform pants and keep my eyes glued to them.
She had kissed his hand first and jerked back as if it shocked her.
Callahan immediately behind her with his hands on her shoulders and Varian bending down to ask what happened.
She didn’t answer him before grabbing his face and slamming her lips to his. It was all a fraction of a second. And then something. . . happened.
Varian jerks back and uses his hands to cup her face but somehow, whatever had happened, it’s making it worse. Callahan shoves him off as she teeters.
“Mavyn! Mavyn, look at me!”
Callahan keeps his hands on her shoulders – which is still covered in just her pajama’s. Ms. Elaycia and Esmirra wouldn’t let anyone touch her and all needles that delivered the nutrients and fluids she needed were stuck through her hand. No one saw an ounce of skin.
“What the fuck is happening, Callahan!”
My eyebrows raise because usually Varian doesn’t swear but he looks a little manic at the moment. My father turns his head to give me a questioning look but I only shrug my shoulders. Forcing them to move up and down and keeping my face as still as stone.
“Just don’t touch her,” Callahan growls back. Which only angers Varian and he’s about to grab Callahan but Mavyn’s legs go out and she hits the floor.
Callahan mutters a fuck as he stoops down to pick her back up but her hand snaps up and stops him.
Her body is tensed so ridged she slightly shakes from the force, and her jaw is clenching so hard I expect to hear the crack of a molar.
“Mavyn – “
Something stops him and he tenses for a moment before relaxing and taking a step back. She must have said something through her mind.
We all watch her for a straight two minutes as she barely twitches. Then, something resigns in her face and she sucks in a breath before pushing off the floor. Her body straightening and I notice every curve visible.
Clinically – of course. . . because I do not care about the poison drop.
I don’t care how her round ass slopes to the small of her back and to her tiny waist. I don’t care how her perky little tits are a perfect handful or how her nipples are so hard right now they could cut straight through her shirt.
I don’t care how her long hair swishes against her back, its ends grazing her ass, or how it would look wrapped –
Red eyes catch my gaze and it’s such a sight I can’t help but stare.
I had first seen that color when she had tipped her head back and sung a song with words that no longer existed. The spirits of the Willow of Lore changing their signature blue aura color to bloodred and harmonizing with her.
I thought I had to have imagined it. Or maybe it had been that the blood of the vampyr who’s blood turned her was influencing her eye color because of the spirits and song.
Then the battle happened and when I grabbed Percius and Rovan I had seen. . . I had seen a god. Blue flames licking around her with burning embers and smoke. Shadows making up everything about her with the exception of those eyes.
They burned like a death sun. Sentencing us all to damnation.
They don’t look like that now.
They look like twin drops of blood on freshly powdered snow. A certain beauty in tainting the pure with something that is both a life source and the symbol of death and destruction.
“You’re staring,” she states bluntly.
“You’re still keeping secrets,” I drawl.
Her eyes flash and I hadn’t really meant the words or processed what exactly I was saying, but now I wonder what else she’s hiding.
“And. . . ?”
She straightens her spine which only pushers her breasts further out while raising a brow. She catches me staring at her chest, but she doesn’t hide or shy away. If anything she looks bored. As if me staring at her body doesn’t matter.
“Why did you burn down my rooms?”
She rolls her eyes and shakes her head which makes me want to go over there, wrap my hand around her throat, and show her the only reason her eyes should be rolling back.
“Why did you push me into the sun?”
I answer her immediately because I have a valid response.
“To see if you were a vampire or not.” She smirks at me, I’m sure because we failed to actually prove anything. She is not a vampire. “Now answer my question.”
There’s a long silence where not even my father or uncle says anything as me and the poison drop glare at each other. Her red eyes holding me hostage because there’s something deeper about them. They’re a couple shades darker than mine, but it’s more than that.
It’s her aura. Her magic shines so brightly through her eyes and I wonder if now her fated would be able to see her soul. That could have been the problem all along.
She looks away first and shrugs – trying to downplay whatever this is. Or whatever her reason is.
“Payback for trying to kill me and because you didn’t like my singing.”
I cock my head the slightest as I peer at her. I know she can feel the weight of my gaze, but she doesn’t shift or move in discomfort. She weathers it with her shoulders pulled back and spine straight.
She had said something similar when Varian was truth pulling. The reason she ran out. . . music is mine and he hates me because of it. Thinks I’m too worthless for it.
I hadn’t said anything before because there hadn’t been time. She thinks I hate her because she sang? She couldn’t be more wrong.
“How did you even know the words?”
Her face is a mask of nothing, but Callahan and Varian beside and behind her look at her with questions. Callahan pondering while Varian narrows his eyes – like they’re both waiting for her to answer as well.
She shrugs again. “Technically all vampires know the song and some can process the words.”
My and Callahan’s fathers don’t move as they watch her. Curious and puzzled and suspicious.
Slowly, I respond, “You are not a vampire.”
She looks away from me and crosses her arms. Though one hand subconsciously begins itching over her heart. Over the fucking claiming bitemark that devil – Jerusil’s twin – gave her. It boils my blood and I can feel it rushing through my veins with rage.
Locking her hands at her side, she turns towards the councilmen and a raised brow. “Where’s Professor D’etre?”
We all rear back in surprise and twin growls rumble from Varian and Callahan. Neither of them look happy that their fated is asking for another male.
Aslan tilts his head to the side and asks curiously, “You want to know where Castiel is?”
“Yes. He knows about the sun death realm.” Both my father and Aslan jerk back. Mavyn purses her lips together. “And clearly you do too.”
My father clears his throat. “And how is it you know about that?”
I have never heard of the sun death realm before she said that’s where she was when we were all in her dorm room. When she had apparently disappeared into ashes somehow and reappeared like nothing happened. Where both Callahan and Varian learned they were fated to her.
She traces her fingers up and down her arm subconsciously and gets a faraway look in her eyes. “Because I’ve been there.”
I have never seen my father ever surprised or stumped. Not by events that have happened, not by things I have done, not by any challenge or puzzle or game he’s done. He can be hot-tempered, but he is always aware and calculating. He is always thinking at least a dozen steps ahead.
Except now.
“How?” He asks it on a breath in complete astonishment. That seems to be the repeating emotion around her.
“I am cursed by Lyalthil Kyros, the Sun Devil of Miy and blessed of Ruu. Killed by a fated death blow through a blood art magic in his sleep along with his fated.” Mavyn curls her nails into her palms and glares into a blank space.
Her devils flood the room with their suffocating magic and I nearly do the same before catching myself.
“I had killed her first. Made sure he was awake and watching as I did it. After they were dead was when the nightmares started. The first time I was pulled into the sun death realm was the one year anniversary of their death. It’s the only place he can still touch me. ”
Questions roar in my head about what this realm is and what it means. How can someone already dead still touch the living? How can he still hold power if his soul should be gone?
My father asks with a shaky breath. “Lyalthil Kyros’s soul still remains in a realm?” Mavyn slides eyes full of disgust and distain and rage towards my father. Red, damning eyes.
Something within her shifts and her scent overlaps Callahan and Varian’s both. Her aura building around her like a cloak simply drifting around the form of her body.
“Yes,” she growls with a rage and hatred I’ve never seen from her before.
“A remnant of his soul still is with the living – no matter that it’s a nightmare realm for us.
Despite it being called the sun death realm, Ruu the God of Sun holds power there.
Since the sun devil was blessed by the god he was able to cling onto a part of the living.
So when his strength is raised he pulls me through. ”
So the devil is still torturing her. Even all these years later – and we still don’t even know how long she was with him. She was adopted as a toddler but when exactly was that and how long before she killed them?
I bring us back to focus by asking, “What does the sun death realm have to do with you knowing the spirit’s song?”
She flashes irritated blooddrop eyes at me.
“I am trying,” she grits, “to be more open.” Making a face at me like I should be grateful for her giving us a bit of information.
But we had already known she had been in the sun death realm, so I don’t know how it’s helpful.
She rolls her eyes at me. “I’ve been to one realm before, do you think I haven’t been to others? ”
I understand Varian’s frustration with her now.
“It is true that all vampires hear the song and some know the words, but I. . .” Something in her eyes flashes and her expression drops.
Like a memory replaying within her mind.
“I don’t remember my. . . family, but I remember so much after.
I remember warmth and cedar before rain and thunder.
Then there was citrus and pine before death rolled.
I remember those hikers finding me and bringing me to the police, and the house where I was kept for those first three years.
I remember first seeing those icy blue eyes and what he said to me even though I was only three. ”
Another flash through her eyes and it makes her lashes flutter. There’s a pang in my chest. She had been three. She was three when that devil caged her, six when he cursed her, and ten when he claimed her.
Seven years.
Seven years she was beat and scarred and tortured.
“He taught me about other realms,” she murmurs, still half lost in her head.
“About the sun death realm and others. Ones that were between the past and afterlife. Where the dead still lingered even though they no longer existed now. Those words, the songs, Sanivin the first vampire sang them to me.”
Another presence enters the room that does not have a physical body. An entity drifting by, consuming the space but somehow not dominating Mavyn’s magic and aura. It’s listening, has been listening as she said she’s met the first vampire created.
My father had met her once, when he was a young child and it was right at the end of her immortal life. He said Mavyn felt like her on the battlefield. Sanivin. . . the godskiller.