Chapter 62 Darkness Overcomes You
Darkness Overcomes You
Lucian
T
he moment I took control of Ilyria, I called for Wendy and Azaire—whatever he has become. They sit before me now, Azaire’s posture mirroring Wendy’s exactly. It’s difficult to see. I’m unsure if an ounce of my best friend is left under the magic.
My voice is low as I look at him, saying, “Hi.”
His arms are pinned to his sides, a curtsey of Wendy’s magic. “Hello,” he says.
I’m unsure if he would attack me were his arms his to control.
“How are you?” I ask.
“An odd question,” Azaire mutters, tilting his head to the side. “I am dead. How can I be anything but that?”
And I did it to him—what he was and what he is. Dead and buried, now deceased and walking.
“I missed you,” I whisper. It’s the only thing I can bring myself to say.
“I’m certain Azaire would have felt the same.”
I glance at Wendy. Subtly, she shakes her head, not wanting to address it.
“You are Azaire.” I reach across the table, ready to grab him, but Wendy stops me with a hand on my wrist.
“You would like that, wouldn’t you?” Azaire hisses.
“Of course I would like that.”
His head snaps toward Wendy. “Would you let go of me?”
Wendy’s eyebrows furrow, her chest rising and falling quickly. “No,” she says.
With a deep breath, Azaire turns to face me again. “Is that why the two of you brought me back? To make me a prisoner?”
“We love you,” Wendy whispers.
Azaire glowers. “Being confined to a dead body does not feel much like love.”
It’s odd; he still has Azaire’s mind—I can hear it in the way he speaks, the philosophical nature beneath his words. Yet it’s as if he lacks Azaire’s emotion and, most importantly, his compassion.
His soul.
I glance at Wendy, tapping my temples. “Can you…”
We must speak without him present.
“Again with the tactics. Am I nothing but a puppet to you?” Azaire whispers, his voice more sterile and ominous than ever before.
Difficult as it is, I look at Azaire. It’s his face, his body, though the way he holds himself has changed. His mouth, usually calm, is twisted in a sneer. His eyes, once soft, have hardened into anger.
“You tried to kill me,” I say.
“Do you wish for an apology?”
I don’t know how to speak to this person. For this isn’t Azaire. I don’t know who is looking at me through his eyes.
“No, Azaire.” I sigh. “I only want my best friend back.”
He straightens his spine. “You are not what you claim to be, Lucian Aibek. You fooled this boy his entire life, but now I see what you are—evil incarnate, shrouded in darkness. Selfishness itself!” Spittle flies from his mouth, landing on my cheekbone.
“Claiming to protect when truly you cannot control. You disgust me—”
Wendy raises her hand, and Azaire loses momentum, falling forward. His head hits the table with a thud.
“What the fuck was that?” I ask, breathless.
“He’s angry,” she says.
“What happened when I was gone?”
Wendy’s lips curl down. “I’m working on it.”
“Tell me,” I say, gripping the edge of the table. “I need to know what to do with him.”
She leans back in her seat. “What to do with him?”
I don’t speak.
“He came back from the dead,” Wendy says. “He’s different. How couldn’t he be? He needs compassion, not punishment.”
“I did not speak of punishment.”
“What are your plans for him?” she asks.
“We have to keep him from hurting himself—”
“Himself or you?” Wendy rises. “I won’t let you lock him away.”
“He isn’t Azaire!” I argue.
Wendy twists, her silver hair flying as she faces me, her voice harsh. “But he can be.”
“How?” I shout, losing my composure. Azaire is gone. That is the only thing clear as day.
“I have the book—Amun’s book, and Fleur’s translation,” Wendy pleads. Her eyes are wide, her arms gesticulating rapidly as she speaks. “We. Will. Find. A. Way.”
I drag a hand over my face, trying and failing to suppress a sigh. I don’t share Wendy’s hope; how could I? The moment Azaire—whom I claimed as a brother—saw me, he tried to choke the life out of me.
My brother is gone.
Wendy continues, “We don’t have to know how yet. Did you really expect our plan to go off without a hitch?”
I shake my head. “A hiccup is not the same as him being evil.”
Wendy moves back, frowning. “He is evil because he does not think highly of you?”
“That isn’t—”
“It’s just that, Lucian. He told me how he died,” Wendy’s voice lowers, “that you coerced him to fight the fatta scorpion.”
I wouldn’t deny it, even if I could. The simple matter is that I cannot. He’s dead because of me. Yet the person we’ve brought back isn’t right. It isn’t him.
“Azaire would never hurt someone,” I whisper, glancing down. “No matter the cause.”
“And how can you claim that? Do you believe you truly knew him?”
“Don’t you dare—”
“I apologize, Your Majesty.” Her voice is flat, a single note. “But I do hope that you can think on my points.” Wendy offers me a short bow and raises a hand; Azaire’s eyes open. He follows her out of the room, as if he doesn’t have a choice.
Though, as they reach the doorway, Azaire stops.
“Do you remember,” he says, still facing the door, “when we were ten, and you swore you’d never let anything touch me?”
My hands go slack at my sides as I take a step toward him. This is it, the glimmer Wendy swears is still there.
“Always—”
He tilts his head slightly. “I remember you saying it. As vivid as the clearest sky.” Slowly, he looks back at me. His eyebrows are low, shadowing his eyes. “But I don’t remember why I ever trusted you.”
?
The crown, once shimmering on Labyrinth’s head, is now anchored to mine.
He sits across the table from me, his gaze glued to my crown.
The only metal he wears is the shackles around his wrists.
They restrain him from using shadow—as they restrained me when I was imprisoned by him.
My suspicions were right; they were made from the Stone of Light, the Lyrian’s Soul Stone.
It can both heighten our powers of shadow and limit them.
Labyrinth had torn the stone from his staff with one goal: to subdue my power. I’ve reversed his intention.
His eyes meet mine. “The Memorium was used, I take it.”
A pointless comment, for he already knows what happened.
“I know the truth,” I say, voice flat. “I only need to hear it from you.”
Labyrinth shakes his head with a sigh. “You know so little.”
“Then tell me the rest.” I watch him, waiting. He makes no move to speak. After nearly my entire life, my taking the throne is what finally shuts him off from me. “I’m the king now,” I say. “Whether you like it or not, everyone’s safety is in my hands. Lilac’s.”
With a sigh, Labyrinth reaches for his jaw. The chains snap his hands back.
“Marrying Desdemona will be a mistake.” He glares at his wrists, touching a finger to the metal shackles. “I see why you think she will help—”
“The truth, Silas.” I use his birth name.
His eyebrows fall, jaw clenching. Yet he answers. “The Arcanes have been in control for centuries. Desdemona is one of them. Where do you believe allegiances lie?” he spits. “In blood or in lust?”
I shake my head, angered at even the mention of what Desdemona may feel towards me. “What we have is more than lust—”
“What you have is prophecy,” he says. “You will destroy one another. It’s why Leiana and I did what we did.”
I laugh, the sound harsh and twisted. “Have you lived in your delusions so long that you truly believe yourself to be Labyrinth?”
He leans back, stricken. I can say whatever I want, yet I still see this man as Labyrinth. I’ve known him longer and more truly than I knew my own father.
“Names are titles,” he says.
My hands clench at my sides. “One you stole from my father.”
At that, Labyrinth quiets. Subtly, he shakes his head, face turning red as he looks away. “I loved my brother.”
“Stop— Stop!” My palm comes flat against the table, my hand stinging as the sound echoes. “For once in your life,” I scream, “stop!”
“Lucian—”
“No part of me believes you. No part of me thinks you loved my father or cared for me. You sat idly by, and it will be beautiful for me to watch you rot.”
The moment I finish, I regret lashing out, mostly because Labyrinth holds the composure I lack. I hate him for that. While he sits in front of me, confessing to his crimes, he’s calm as a corpse. How dare he?
Labyrinth frowns, his eyebrows knitting together.
“I didn’t have a choice in what I did to my brother,” he says, his voice unbroken, his armor unchipped.
“From the beginning, the Arcanes have held dominion. They created our caste system, appointed the rulers of the worlds, governed the politics. The only reason the crown on your head accepted your power is because they allowed it. You haven’t found victory.
You are still playing within their rules. ”
He disgusts me, sitting around spouting about his lack of freedom when all he’s ever done is taken mine.
“Are you claiming you killed your brother because of them?”
He lifts his chin in a slow nod. “Indeed, I am. Your parents intended to turn the Weapon against the Arcanes. That was when he summoned Leiana and me—” He pauses at the intensity of my stare. “Ramona and me.
“They did not know we meant to follow my brother’s path—to power the Weapon ourselves. But they were watching. We had to let them believe the power we sought was for his honor.
“It was to destroy him that we sought to control you. Ramona took your life force—which you can never deplete, because of the Soul Ruby—as a strategy. She stored it to fuel the Weapon, then later, to end Desdemona.”
It could very well be the ramblings of a man who knows he has nowhere left to turn.
He knows of my hatred for the Arcanes and is offering me a silver platter, telling me that everything terrible in my life has been orchestrated by them.
I can’t take it at face value, and yet my lips, once gray after Azaire stole my life force, have regained color.
They’ve regenerated, just as he said. My life force can never deplete. The Soul Ruby has connected me to Desdemona.
How much does he know?
I clear my throat. “Why is Desdemona part of this?”
“She was always meant to power the Weapon. We meant to do so before Amun could reach her.”
I shake my head, pondering his density—or rather, how dense he thinks I am.
“Amun’s dead,” I state. “He killed himself after Eira.”
“This is what he would have you believe,” Labyrinth says, his voice growing more intense. “It’s why he took a new name—Mial.”
Doubt curls in my gut. Or perhaps it’s not doubt, but understanding. Mial—Desdemona’s father. How much loyalty could she hold for a man she only just met?
How much does she hold for me?
“That’s why I shouldn’t marry her?” I ask.
“They created Desdemona the same way they created you. In you, the power of the Soul Ruby bound to a Lyrian body brought about the destiny of creation. In her, it did the opposite. Darkness runs in her veins, Lucian. It’s her nature to end all that she touches.”
Beyond my volition, I shake my head. I don’t care what she is or what her fate means. Darkness could never draw me away from her.
“If you give her the most powerful throne, she will wreak havoc,” Labyrinth warns.
My voice cracks, too eager. “I love her.”
“It’s the prophecy,” he says. “It’s balance, bringing two opposites together.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I can explain why I love her. It isn’t a subconscious pull or balance. You don’t see it because you don’t know her. There may be darkness in her veins, but not in her soul. She shuns it. She wants to be good. What’s more powerful, more pure, than that?”
Labyrinth shakes his head. “She never will be—”
“Don’t. I won’t believe that her nature is predetermined.”
“It’s hard to understand—”
“I don’t believe that mine is. We aren’t pawns.”
“My son,” he sighs. I bite my tongue; I must know what he has to say. “That’s all anyone is.”
He’s wrong.
Raising my head, I wield the cold in my bones like steel. I stare at Labyrinth—once a father, now a foe—with nothing but disdain. Using his real name, I whisper, “Silas Aibek, I hereby sentence you to a lifetime in the dungeon… for the murder of Labyrinth Aibek.”
The backup dungeons will have to do while we repair the ones Cynthia stole.
Labyrinth pulls against the shackles, bound to the seat. I expect him to deny my decree. Instead, he says, “Son—”
“It’s done.” There’s a hint of mourning in my voice. There shouldn’t be. “Guards!” I shout.
The door swings open, and four guards step inside, their footsteps echoing as they walk toward Labyrinth.
“Lucian!” he shouts as the guards grab his forearms, jerking him upright. He doesn’t fight them; instead, he continues looking at me.
“You’ll need me,” he says. “To understand the truth. Wars will come—uprisings, coups—but all of them will move at the Arcanes’ command. When all else is lost, Lucian, remember that.”
The door slams shut once they drag him out, leaving me in the silence.