Chapter 45 There’s Always A Past, Hardly A Future
There’s Always A Past,
Hardly A Future
Lucian
L
eiana clutches my collar, holding me close as blood pours from Olwen in an unrelenting stream, pooling beneath his trembling body.
I try to lunge forward to reach him, but Leiana keeps me in place and kicks Olwen.
He rolls to the side, facedown in the crimson puddle, gurgling—drowning in his own blood as Leiana places her boot on his back.
Darkness rumbles in my bones as I grasp the shadows surrounding us. But as they spread across the floor, Leiana takes another handful of my life force. The room shatters down the middle, my vision broken as my head splits. The shadows stop, out of my control.
Then Leiana gasps, something glinting in the corner of my vision, pinned atop her chest pocket. A brooch. It’s gone before I can make it out.
I turn to Desdemona, hoping she saw. She stares at Leiana as two guards flank her sides, reaching for her wrists. Her eyes glow red even beneath the glamour of Piphany. The guards fall before they manage to grasp her.
From across the room, another group of guards points bows at her.
“Des—” I try to shout, though Leiana’s shadows cut me off.
The arrows fly through the room, sinking into her chest. Desdemona gasps, a hollow sound that echoes through the tall ceilings. The guards continue to release arrows, treating her like target practice. It takes everything in me to fight Leiana’s shadows and twist my body to face the line of guards.
Their arrows turn, pointing at me, straight for my heart. I take a deep breath, and Leiana’s grip on my life force weakens as she shouts, “No! Relinquish your bows.”
Hesitantly, the twenty or so bows fall to the guards’ sides.
They stand awkwardly, and now that Leiana has loosened her power, I twist back to Desdemona—who is on her knees.
A cluster of arrows pierces her chest, their points slipping out between her shoulder blades, breaking through her back like thorns.
Then, from her eyes, red smoky tendrils billow, as if pulling the color from her irises. The smoke moves across the room into Leiana, garbled gasps of pain escaping her.
“Leiana!” I shout.
She does not—cannot—answer. Each gulp of air is a struggle, a wheeze.
Desdemona’s eyes roll to the back of her head as red smoke—like the shadow of a person—escapes her body.
Leiana has taken more of my life force than ever before; could she kill Desdemona with it now? As I tug against Leiana’s remaining shadows, they loosen. Some fall to the floor, rushing to the corners of the room.
As I begin to free myself, Leiana cries out, her eyes glowing bright red as her body convulses. She falls forward, hitting the marble with a sickening crack. Finally, the shadows release me.
I run to Desdemona, now motionless on the floor, but I don’t make it in time. A guard steps behind her, pulling her head up by her falsely white hair.
“Don’t you dare!” I shout as he lays her throat bare, dragging a blade across it.
I can scarcely bear the image.
I pick up the shadows Leiana released. They rush through the room like phantom hands, wrapping around the guard.
As Des falls to the floor, the image of Piphany flickers in and out, the glamour dissipating as she dies.
When I reach her, I use my shadows to snap the guard’s spine. With a crack, he falls, and as I drop beside Des, more hands clutch my body, pulling me to my feet. The rest of the guards surround me.
Shadows wrap around their throats, though I don’t kill them. Not yet. I’d prefer to make the people in this room bow.
I still tighten the shadows until one of the guards cries out. A show. I’ve always known how to give one.
“Do tell,” I announce, “is there another who would like to disobey?” I circle the room, arms out in empty anticipation.
Not one even attempts to resist.
“Intelligent lads, the lot of you,” I say, releasing my shadows and settling next to Des once more. I hold the wound at her neck, trying to stop the blood. Not that it will change anything. Des will come back, yet seeing her like this curls my insides.
She is the strongest thing I’ve ever seen. How I ever managed to forget her—no matter how strong the magic—I will never understand. It feels counterintuitive to my very being, for she is burned into my memory, seared into my mind.
On the other side of the room, Leiana lies paralyzed on the floor as I cradle Desdemona’s head in my lap.
“Labyrinth?” Leiana whispers, her voice low and shaking. She can’t make a louder sound. “Where’s my husband?” she asks, her words rising in pitch at the end, like a broken child calling for a parent who was never there.
Like me.
“Lucian,” that weak, broken voice calls. She’s nearly lifeless, yet as I turn to her, she reaches a hand toward me.
My stomach lurches, a pang in my heart. I couldn’t go to her; it would be wrong to give her the satisfaction.
I glance at the guards, now under my control. “Bring her to me,” I say.
A group of them lower their heads and approach Leiana. The scuffing of their boots fills my ears, the only sound in the hallway.
They lift Leiana’s body, but they don’t support her neck. It droops heavily over their arms like a small child’s.
I keep a hand on Desdemona, in case this is a trick, as they lower Leiana’s body beside me.
She looks up at me, tears slipping from her eyes.
My stomach twists. I swallow, trying to steady it—I don’t understand.
I’ve wanted nothing more than this for ages.
Her death, her softness. My chest caves in.
I’m not ready to see her go—for Lilac to lose her mother.
I’m not ready to lose the woman who raised me, even if what she raised me with was fear.
She lifts a hand, and I wield a blade on instinct, heart pounding. All Leiana does is reach for me. Her weak hand settles atop mine, and I lower the blade. Then, I push the dark hair from her face the way she once did for me. The gesture feels wrong in my hand, disjointed, yet I do it anyway.
“Oh,” she breathes. “You look so like him. Every bit the Aibek.”
She could still fight; I know she has it in her. Shadows linger about the room, ready for her to use to pull herself upright or command those present. Yet she does not. Perhaps I’ve overestimated her power.
Leiana whispers, “I’m sorry. I thought…” Those words sound wrong on her tongue.
We don’t say that—least of all her. “I thought if I could contain your power, I could stop—” She chokes on blood, her grip on my collar loosening.
As she moves, the broach at her chest glistens red again. “I thought I could save us…”
I shake my head, not knowing what to say—how to feel or respond.
“You have to kill her,” she begs. “You’re the only one who can.”
I look across the room at Desdemona—the dark halo of blood pooling around her. Her lifeless body is draped across the floor, her neck slit. It’s the most horrific sight I’ve ever seen.
It’s what the universe wants me to do to her, what Icarthus shaped me for, what my hands were made to do: kill the one person I was never meant to love.
“Lucian.” Leiana’s voice is tired, dying. She meets my gaze, her eyelids dropping. “I’m sorry.”
Leiana’s hands fall, her chest rattling. The brooch there clinks—small and red—as guards approach all around us.
“Stand down!” I bellow. The guards heed my command.
I remove the brooch from Leiana’s gown, a red so deep it’s nearly black.
Yet I feel its power sinking into my hand.
This is the Soul Ruby, half the size of my palm.
Once red, now burnt to black, but still infinitely powerful.
My heart lurches, my lungs give out, and I know the way to breathe again—go to the dungeon and find Cynthia.
As I rise, walking in that direction, I know there’s something else I need, something more important than Cynthia and the Soul Stone.
What could be more important than that?
Desdemona.
The bones in my legs snap as I walk to her. They remold with each step, only to break again, the fissures deepening each time. The other direction, they tell me, and the pain ends.
But I cradle Desdemona in my arms.
The guards don’t stop us, nor do they move out of our way. They stare at their deceased queen and her murderers—one dead, one walking—and do nothing.
They’re smart to fear me. Smarter to fear the dead girl in my arms. I should fear her.
Instead, I carry her.
?
Now that Leiana is dead, I take Desdemona to revive in my room. Labyrinth may come for us, but I’m not shortsighted enough to be without an escape plan. There’s a vent hidden beneath a painting that will lead to the kitchen if we crawl far enough. From there, we can scale the building if need be.
Carefully, I rest Desdemona on my bed, my heart racing, urging me to find Cynthia now. To give her the Soul Ruby.
But I can’t leave Desdemona.
I pull each arrow from her chest and throw the bloody things to the floor. There’s no breath in her torso, no life in her lungs. Yet her neck, gruesomely cut open, is still bright red—the wound fresh.
With a damp cloth, I wipe the blood away, thinking of her eyes as I do.
I think of the way I feel when she beholds me.
Leiana believed I had to kill her, yet I can barely look at Desdemona like this without breaking.
Everyone seems to believe she was born evil. They can’t look at the girl without their prejudice blinding them. They’re unable to truly see her.
She’s strong, relentless. Relentlessly on my mind.
The way her eyes constantly search mine, as if expecting the man who betrayed her, makes me feel like I’m only half a human, with the rest of me something she’s preparing to fight against. I should hate the way she sees through me, the way she expects the worst, yet I stay, stunned.
Undone by the fact that she still looks—that she cares enough to search at all.
Everything I’ve done since the moment we met again has been wrong. Everything before was worse.