29. Chapter 29
Chapter 29
Lea
T he absolute destruction they stumbled upon was so much worse than Lea could ever have imagined. She felt the wreckage and death in a way she’d never experienced before, every shallow, ragged breath pulling it deeper into her very marrow. The moment the village had come into view, Lea had known that what they’d find inside would be tragic. She’d sensed the lingering pain of the horrific suffering that had occurred here, and somehow, she still hadn't been prepared for it.
Bodies. Men, women, and children. Babies. Spread throughout the village square carelessly and haphazardly, as if they were nothing more than sacks of horse feed.
Lea's darkness grew and grew, her power expanding painfully in her chest, so big Lea worried her ribs would crack from the pressure of it begging for release. It wanted to destroy, craved suffering like a drug, but not like this. It took no joy from the suffering of the innocent.
Find him, the voice said.
Destroy.
Destroy.
Destroy.
The command pounded like a drum in her brain, a vibrating rhythm that repeated again and again and again. The pain became overwhelming and her vision blackened, her flames rising several feet above her head.
Find him, and destroy him. Destroy them all.
A command. An order she had to heed. And yet, she had to control it. Couldn’t let that darkness win. Lea’s ears rang, her throat closing and her breaths growing more shallow. She tried to push her primary magic down, the anger and rage and wrath threatening to eat her alive. It wasn’t helpful. Not when it could cause her to lose herself.
Her friends shouted her name from somewhere through the blackness, but Lea couldn’t see them. They were gone. Out of sight. It was simply her, the bodies, and the black fire around her.
Destroy.
She had to find something, anything, to help her release her magic. Just enough so she didn’t explode and hurt the people she loved. Lea walked toward the circle of the town square. If nothing else, she could burn the bodies. Give them a burial by fire. Emma had said the spirits needed to be at rest. And the blood bath in front of her? There would be no rest until the bodies had been respectfully disposed of.
Disgust crept up her throat, coating her tongue in bile. No one deserved this. This… horror. Her eyes flicked to a man with his intestines hanging out, throat slashed. Nearby lay an arm ripped from a torso, and nearby, teeth scattered across the pavement like dice that had been abandoned mid-game.
Alaric hadn’t just killed these people, he had slaughtered them, magic or not. Infected the village with the Lonely Death, and either tortured them until they were weak enough for him to steal their power, or brutally murdered them just because he could.
Emma’s head suddenly swung to Lea, her mouth opening to shout, but the moment Lea’s feet moved from the cobblestone road to the larger, flat stones of the courtyard, an explosion rocked the Earth. Lea stumbled, her eyes snapping up to search for the cause. Her rage grew even more fierce, black flames and shadows branching out in every direction.
"Alaric!" she hissed, pulling herself upright and swinging her head around until her eyes found the church, a tiny chapel, only large enough to fit maybe twenty people inside, and it was going up in flames. Screams of agony punched through the fog of darkness around her. Cries of "Help me!" and "Please, gods!" made Lea's darkness surge even more.
"My daughter! Help her!" Lea pushed down the wave of nausea in her stomach at hearing a mother screaming for her child’s life. She didn’t know how many people were in the church, but she’d had enough. Enough death. Enough suffering. Gray and Erik ran toward the flaming chapel, but Lea knew there was nothing they could do. Not against this magic. Alaric’s magic.
The magic of thousands of Fae. Stolen and wielded by a madman.
It’d all been a trap, just like the one surrounding the cage inside the castle, the one that had held her mother hostage for decades.
Enough. Enough of the games. The death. Enough of the fighting and losing. Enough suffering. Lea’s flames grew taller, mixing with the fire around the church, making it grow hotter and burn faster.
"No!" she screamed. Or, at least, she thought she did, but Lea wasn't sure.
You must become the darkness, Evangeline’s voice circled in her mind, and Lea’s heart stuttered, pounding furiously out of rhythm. She couldn't become the darkness. It would kill her. But if she didn't, they would all die. Every single person screaming for their life right now inside that church. Every innocent villager—her own people. Sweat broke out on her neck, panic surging up her throat, but she forced it down .
She’d watched helplessly as Gray’s eyes had glazed over with death. Never again would she allow it to claim one of her own. She was their fucking queen.
Not a coward.
Not a slave to the gods’ power.
She was a warrior.
No one had fought for her. Not until Gray. Not really. Her parents had lied. Her birth mother had abandoned her. But she’d felt love now. Real, sacrificial love. That was the kind of queen she wanted to be. A loving one. A brave one. One willing to risk it all for the people who depended on her.
Lea closed her eyes and shoved away her terror, reaching inside and allowing the darkness to claim her—to seep into her marrow and wrap around her bones, merging with her own flesh until it was coursing through her bloodstream with every beat of her heart. Her head flew back as she opened herself up to it, calling it home, begging it to fill her—to change her.
A flicker of fire ignited in her chest, and instantly, the inferno consuming the church began to pull back, climbing up Lea’s body and wrapping around her in a blazing tornado of flames. Agony, unlike anything she'd ever experienced before, spread through her veins and arteries. Through her capillaries and into her organs and across her skin. She screamed again, falling to her knees, her voice sounding miles away as she screamed until her voice was raw and her throat bled.
And just as the pain became too much, the moment Lea was certain she was going to die, her agony disappeared into nothing. The pain was gone, as was the inner turmoil she'd been battling since returning from the dead.
Lea shot out a hand, forcing shadows from her fingertips in the direction of the church. Enormous storm clouds of darkness flew forward and shrouded everything in black. Emma shrieked and Gray shouted her name, but she couldn't focus on them. There were lives at stake.
Striding forward through the black smoke, Lea pulled a moonflower seed from her pocket and shoved it into the ground at the base of the steps to the church. She felt the last flicker of fire extinguish within the building, then grabbed her sword, pulled the magic of the sword inside her, and forced a gust of wind to blow the smoke away. The windows to the chapel shattered outward and thick black smoke poured out between the remaining pieces of jagged glass.
Lea pulled her shadows back into herself, sighing in relief as they nestled back behind her breastbone. The brilliant red sun was blindingly bright now that her shadows weren’t blocking it, and she squinted as she stumbled up the stone stairs to the still smoking church. She grabbed the old wrought iron handle of the door, pushing and pulling, but the door remained shut. Lea gritted her teeth, rage bubbling inside her as she lifted a hand to burn the door away, but Gray was at her side in an instant, kicking the door inward, splinters of wood flying through the air from the impact of it hitting the inside wall.
The cries of pain and agony from those inside grew louder. So intense, the sound made Lea dizzy. She wasted no time, jumping off the stairs and kneeling on the ashy ground as she pulled a handful of moonflower seeds from her pocket.
"Bring them out here!" Lea ordered as she shoved her fingers into the dirt and funneled her magic into the soil. The moonflowers responded instantly, threading across the ground and blooming into pristine white flowers within seconds. Her heart thundered as she plucked them, reveling in the way they remained white—almost glowing.
She held her palm out to the side, not bothering to stop picking petals with the other, and Janelle took them from her, distributing them to the men and women being carried through the doors.
Oozing, charred skin faded to red, then pink as wounds healed over, the color returning to the faces of those still unconscious. Lea held her breath as she waited, watching for them to wake up.
"It's the smoke, I think. Their lungs," Emma said, tilting her head to the side and closing her eyes. "They were near death, but I can still feel them. Stronger now. I think they'll wake soon." She placed a hand on Lea’s arm. "You saved them."
Lea didn't have the time to feel relief.
"Who did this to you?" she asked a young woman coughing in the grass next to her. A child clung to her waist, soot coating his cheeks and throat.
"The King. Alaric. His soldiers rounded us up. All of us who didn't fall to the Lonely Death. He locked us inside and just left us there."
Lea's vision dotted with black as her fury grew. "How long were you in there?" she asked.
"Four days, I think." The woman scrunched her forehead as if she couldn't quite remember. "Maybe more?"
"Where did he go?" Gray dropped to Lea’s side, having finished evacuating all the villagers from inside the church. Sweat dripped from his brow, and he rubbed it away with the sleeve of his forearm, smearing black ash across his forehead.
"I don't know. He looked sick. Terrifying. His veins were black, and his eyes…" The woman shivered. "I picture them every time my eyes close. Any time I even blink. He was furious when more of us didn't contract the Lonely Death. He said he needed more. More. More. More. He just kept screaming it."
Lea’s darkness roared, black fire bursting from her skin, but Gray’s shadows trailed up Lea’s back, a silent reminder he was with her.
"What does he want? What did we do to deserve this?" the woman asked.
"Nothing," Lea said, pushing off the ground to stand. "You did nothing . You didn't deserve this. Alaric is nothing but evil." Even now, she could feel the vile fingerprint of the wicked false king.
She looked to the woods—toward that tiny trail of magic reminding her that Alaric had been here and fled.
"Go," Gray said, nodding at her. "See if you can track him. Maybe if we know the direction he fled, we can follow behind. We'll take care of the villagers. They've all taken the cure."
Lea turned, her stomach twisting as she realized why Gray wasn’t insisting he come along. Alaric was long gone. They all knew it. There was no danger. No risk.
"And Lea," Gray said, stopping her with a hand on her arm. He reached out and cupped her cheek. "I'm proud of you. For accepting the darkness. You saved them." He tilted his head to the villagers, all now awake and recovering.
Lea couldn’t speak as she choked back tears. Not because Gray was proud of her. He was always proud of her, whether she deserved it or not. And someday, when the war was over, she would find the words to tell him how much it meant to have his unwavering and unquestionable trust and love and support.
But the emotions churning inside her weren’t because of anyone else. She was simply proud of herself, too. Proud of herself for making the choice she did, for embracing the darkness when it had been the last thing she’d wanted to do. It was her greatest fear. Lea had thought she’d lose herself if she gave in to it. That she’d become as evil and wicked as Alaric. But she’d been so wrong.
She didn't feel evil or wicked. She still felt the need for vengeance—sharp and bitter in the back of her throat. But unlike before, she now felt like she could handle the emotions that had threatened to consume her.
Lea closed her eyes, trusting her shadows to alert her to obstacles as she focused on Alaric’s trail. The glimmer of his magic and essence. Now that she’d embraced her primary magic, her senses seemed sharper, her understanding of Alaric deeper. On the backs of her eyelids, his movements played out like a movie. His magic felt weak at the entrance to the town, then stronger at the church from when he walked away.
She pictured him reciting the spell for the Lonely Death, ensuring that everyone with magic was infected before slaughtering them mercilessly to take it. She could see him walking inside the church, enchanting it to explode when Lea neared it. But to kill the villagers or taunt her, she wasn't sure. The spell igniting the fire in the church hadn’t killed anyone. Hadn’t even managed to kill those within the church. Had it been a miscalculation on Alaric’s part?
Or had he wanted her to know he was one step ahead of them.?That his callous disregard for life had only grown since their last encounter. Was he trying to show her she couldn't defeat him?
The wind blew at Lea's back, pushing her further north. Sweat dripped down her spine as the sun burned her skin. She called clouds into the sky, but within seconds they evaporated, the sun god’s magic too hot and too powerful for her to overcome it. Not even her shadows could find relief from the heat.
Lea walked on, Alaric’s trail becoming more sparse and harder to follow until she reached a stream where it washed away completely, disappearing as if he had never been there to begin with. Lea waded into the stream, the hem of her riding dress pulling at her legs as water filled her boots.
She spread out her shadows, searching for where the trail might pick back up again, but it was simply gone. Her heart sank, her body suddenly heavy. She closed her eyes, begging the goddess of the moon to help her, to give her some sort of clue as to where he may have gone.
But there was only complete silence. Until a branch snapped to her left. Lea startled, drawing her sword and summoning her shadows into her hands.
There was no voice begging her to destroy. Not anymore.
She was destruction, and gods help whoever was trying to sneak up on her from the forest beyond. Lea wasn’t afraid as she coiled her shadows into a dense ball in her hand, ready to explode them outward at the first sign of danger, but she stopped when a familiar voice met her ears.
"Lea?"
The white tips of a horse's ears appeared through the trees, the head and body following as they pushed through the dense brush. And on top of the horse was a witch with horrible, scarred eyes.
"Lea? I know you're there. And I think you need my help."