CHAPTER 21 #3
Both blades have similar hilts, carved from ancient bones, still pristinely white and almost humming, engraved with magnificent details.
Magnificent battle scenes wrap around them like sacred scripture—heroes and villains clashing against one another—the everlasting Manichean conflict, upon which all realms burn and die, depicted in painstaking beauty.
The bigger blade portrays a black, scaly serpent coiling around itself to eat its own tail—the Ouroboros, a symbol of eternity, the boundlessness of the cosmos.
Creation and destruction, forever intertwined.
The blade fits Killian so perfectly, as if the mighty Gods above and below have forged it themselves for him.
The other, a crescent moon wrapped in shadows, an emblem of love, hope, and change. Together, they chant not just of bloodshed, but of sacrifice, the precarious balance between love and loss, good and evil, light and shadow.
“These are the only things that I have left of her. Her only legacy, a family heirloom passed down generation after generation. Hidden from the Faes. Kadirah,” he points to the smaller, curved blade, “and Alnashar. Power and Victory. She used to tell me a bedtime story that I faintly remember, about Akaori and her lover, Aeon. How these blades pertained to them, how they fought with them in the last battle where they took their last breath. I never really understood if it was just a pretty, sad fairytale, or if it held an ounce of truth.”
“Her lover?” I question. “Akaori was a female? The Fae always portray Akaori as a male, the first of your kind—a powerful male vampire that wielded crimson shadows, just like your own.”
A chuckle filled with disdain fills the space between us.
“Does it still surprise you? The duplicitous nature of your kind? Or maybe they just didn’t care enough to get their facts straight, and we can’t be bothered to correct them. Not anymore.”
I nod, not knowing what else to say. The more I discover, the more my heart bleeds with ancestral shame. He glides the curved blade towards me.
“I want you to have Kadirah. It aided me in many battles, spilling countless enemy blood. But its delicate grace, and precise cunning, never felt like they were meant for me. Something I can’t explain tells me it was meant for you.”
My eyes widen in shock, and I shake my head vigorously, my hair swaying with the movement.
“No. I can’t accept it. It’s your last family vestige.”
“And now it’s yours.” He says matter-of-factly. His eyes roam my face, his shadows drawing circles on the back of my hand. “I believe it was never really mine. I was just meant to find its true wielder. You, little umbra.”
I take the blade in my hand, the cold hilt fitting my palm like a glove. An ancient thrum flows from the dagger to my bones, as if the weapon is buzzing in satisfaction, finally returning home. I gasp, masking it with a cough, and put the blade back on the tabletop.
“If that were true, Killian, you should safeguard it for my sister, not for me.” I push it back towards him, and he sighs, resheating the daggers.
“Why did Drusilla turn you?” I ask, trying to guide the conversation back to safer ground.
“Drovillan was attacked by Purists, the vampires of old faiths, many times while I grew up. Drusilla hid me every time to keep me safe and unharmed. But the older I got, the more I wanted to fight alongside them. I didn’t care I was a mere mortal; I believed in their dream, and I was willing to give my life for it.
They trained me, and I held my own in battle several times.
Until one cursed, ferocious attack when I was about twenty-nine human years old.
The Purists drove a sword through my chest, and I was dying.
Drusilla turned me on the spot, crying tears of blood, and begging forgiveness to my mother’s spirit for failing her promise. ”
I curl my warm fingers against his own in a soothing gesture. I know I shouldn’t, but at this point, I can’t deny my need to be there for him.
“When I awoke, the world was entirely different, sharper, more vivid. I could see in heartbreaking detail how we were losing the fight. That’s when my shadows exploded from me for the first time.
Tendrils upon tendrils of crimson smoke, hissing in rage, covered the town in darkness, and slew every single one of the Purists.
” His gaze is far away, as if he is reliving those long-past moments.
“Word spread about my powers like wildfire. All the Pacifists in Wrahta banded together to ask in unison for a ruler chosen by the fates. Me. The Purists either ran away to terrorize the Fae lands, capitulated in our favor, or were killed in the first few decades after my turning. They crowned me King, and Wrahta flourished. Villages became towns, towns became cities, Drovillan our capital. The Faes were not happy about my new rule, and I went to Ryawarath to broker a deal with King Silvestrus. But back then, I practiced little self-restraint. Both with murdering foes, and with females. I met Queen Ayana, and well, the rest you already know,” he says solemnly.
“And Drusilla?” I ask, fearing the response. I would have met her by now if she were still around.
“Died in battle in the first few months of the war. She spent her immortality crafting this dream of peace, of prosperity and harmony, and right when it was finally within her reach, my dumbass decisions snuffed it all from under her.” His eyes are glassy, rimmed with watery red.
I squeeze his hand further, fighting the impossible urge to climb in his lap and just hug him.
“I might not have been the one to drive that sword through her neck, cutting the damn thing off jaggedly, but I never lied to myself. Make no mistake, I am the reason my maker is dead.”
I wince, the air thick with centuries-old regrets, bygone wounds still putrefying after so long.
But that’s the thing about pain, isn’t it?
It never really leaves us; we just get better at hiding it.
We craft better masks, hide behind sturdier walls.
But the agony remains, chipping away at our inner selves.
No! The only real cure for this kind of pain is Death’s sweet, numbing embrace.
And for an immortal King, such relief may never come.
“Anyway, enough with my sob stories, little umbra. I didn’t bring you here so that we could get depressed together,” he says with a forced smile on his gorgeous face, then signals a server to bring us another round of drinks.
We spent the remainder of the night, until almost the crack of dawn, cracking jokes, sharing happier stories, and doing our best to dispel the sour, lingering taste of his past. I masterfully dodged any inquiries about my childhood or adolescent years, delving straight into exuberant tales about the Twinkling Meadow, Celestia, how I learned the art of aerial dancing, and even snippets of my friendship with Sariah.
He hung onto every word with a level of devotion that I had never experienced before, not from any of my past lovers, and certainly not from my family.
His shadows grew bolder as the night progressed, caressing my leather-covered legs, encircling my waist in a hesitant embrace, playing with my locks of hair as kittens play with balls of yarn.
By the time we were walking back, hand in hand, through a sleeping city—so quiet and tranquil, you could never imagine how full of life, and sin, it had been just hours prior—I felt the unmistakable fissure in my shields.
Just before we reach the entryway to the tunnels, leading back towards the castle, Killian stops short in the middle of the empty street, tugging gently on our joined hands.
“Aimee,” he whispers gingerly, hope shining brightly in his onyx pupils.
“Killian,” I murmur back, the sound more like a plea than anything else.
He tucks me into his towering frame, shadows circling us like gentle vines.
He lowers his face slowly towards mine, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that he’s about to kiss me.
I am ready to surrender to his will—his undeniable charm—if only just for this mere moment, and close my eyes, welcoming his sensuous lips on mine.
But before that ghost of a kiss can deepen, violence unleashes all around us, and I’m brutally yanked from his side and tossed through the air towards the stone facade of a nearby building.
My head smacks loudly against the hard bricks, and my body slumps down to the ground. Hissing and yelling ensue, and I fight to keep my eyelids open against the threatening darkness that’s eating me whole.
Gods, I must be really concussed, because I see double. Two of Killian are fighting several onpyr creatures. I struggle, and fail to keep my consciousness afloat, as the nothingness finally stakes a claim on my senses.