Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Tabitha still hadn’t shown her face, and after Aela sent Arche safely away to her asteroid with her other magic, she went in search of more allies. She kept to the outer edge of Avarice, avoiding the denser areas where an Aster may recognize her sooner than a common class star.
She sent Tabitha messages with her selenite, yet the Virgo hadn’t answered her. Something was wrong.
“Well, well, well if this ain’t a pleasant surprise,” drawled a voice from behind her. Aela jerked around to see Kaitos leering at her.
“I’m not letting you get away this time.”
Aela was too slow. Kaitos blew a substance into her face, and she coughed, fear sliding over her bones at the void that greeted her when she reached for her magic.
Kaitos’ grin was maniacal, offsetting the dark, glittering crystals embedded in his pale skin.
He swung at her, and Aela brought her arms up.
Her training with Zosma assumed control of her body as she dipped and evaded Kaitos’ assault.
His face contorted, and Aela gave him everything she had.
She matched his pace, jab for kick, and did not falter.
Kaitos read the question written plainly on her face and smirked.
They broke apart and circled each other.
“Wondering what severed your magic?” he asked.
“What did you do?”
Kaitos’ lips curled. “Nothing you won’t recover from. I was under strict orders to not damage the goods.”
“Is that what you call this?” Aela said, waving a hand between them.
Kaitos winked at her. “Who’s to say I laid a hand on you? There’s no one here.”
Aela glanced around, and Kaitos struck. A crystal torque clamped around her neck, and a second later matching bands snapped around her wrists. Kaitos sighed and ran his hand along her head, his fingers caressing her braid as he brought the end up to his nose.
Her sight turned hazy, and she lifted a trembling hand to her neck. Not just a crystal band… but something else.
No, no, no.
Victory gleamed in Kaitos’ eyes. “Time to meet your mistress, Last One.” He gripped her roughly by the crystal torque around her throat and sneered into her face.
“All this could’ve been avoided had you come peacefully with me. Think of all the fun we could have had in almost a year’s time.”
Aela had just enough consciousness remaining to spit in his face.
A harsh laugh escaped him as he swiped away the spittle, keeping one hand on her throat.
Aela called out to her magic, her Need, anything, but nothing answered her.
As her eyes were closing, the embrace of unconsciousness waiting, a small pair of golden eyes loomed over Kaitos’ shoulder.
They were the last thing she saw before Aela tumbled from the waking plane.
The stale air of the Avarice palace greeted her once again as she awoke, but not in the cells in the bowels of the palace as she expected.
Her previous rooms in the palace grew in clarity as Aela sat up in bed.
Her hands lurched to her neck. She clawed at the thick band encircling her throat.
The vines that had trailed her walls, ceiling, and bookshelves had been snipped back, and the curtains she pulled down from the large open windows had been replaced, drawn tight over the cosmic view.
“No witchy tricks this time,” Kaitos drawled.
His steel-gray hair was perfectly groomed, and the formal black attire he wore had Aela narrowing her eyes.
Kaitos stood from an armchair he had been lounging in, and a thin golden chain dangled from his hand.
Aela’s eyes latched onto the chain that scraped along the polished floor before connecting with the bands at her wrists and throat.
A fated leash.
Kaitos whistled and her eyes darted back to his.
“Good,” he praised. “She can be taught.”
Aela bared her teeth at him. Keeping him in her sight, she slid off the bed; only then did she realize what she was wearing.
A long-sleeved black gown with a wide neckline that left her shoulders bare and cinched at her waist covered her before pooling at her feet.
Shimmering twin swaths of thin fabric fell from her shoulders, and her high-pointed shoes clicked as she stepped farther from the bed.
“Don’t worry, I didn’t dress you. Only felt to make sure you had no more crystals on you,” Kaitos winked. “That armor was damn near impossible to get off though. Where did it come from?”
Aela stiffened at the thought of his hands on her while she had been unconscious. “Let’s get on with this.”
Kaitos pouted, then jerked the chain. Aela stumbled forward. “You’re no fun.”
They passed by attendants clad in white, their eyes downcast as they scurried to complete their tasks. Despite being a captive of their soon-to-be Primary, Aela couldn’t help but pity them. Kaitos led her down the rosy stone corridors until a tug at her collar yanked her from her thoughts.
“Time to meet your mistress, darlin.”
Oily dread pooled thick in her stomach. She looked at the doors Kaitos had brought them to, and her stomach threatened to empty itself as she gazed upon the Taureon throne room doors. Flashes of her sitting on Tarek’s lap stabbed her mind.
“Come along, Last One, and be nicer to them than you were to me, hmm? No spitting.”
The gaudy doors parted, and Aela was pulled in like a hound. The massive doors yawned open from the widest part of the triangular room, which narrowed to a single focal point beneath the open-to-the-elements ceiling: Tarek’s selenite throne.
Rows and rows of bench-style seating bracketed the lone aisle running from the center and were packed with the upper echelon stars of Taureon society.
Aela idly wondered as Kaitos led her by her golden leash how many of them truly were Taureons.
How many Asters had won their own cycle of The Games and came from other Lines?
How many had drifted from a fallen House seeking shelter and now were bound against their will, collected by Tarek?
Aela felt a chill grip the room. A slithering sensation along her forearm distracted her, and she jerked back on the golden leash.
Gritting her teeth, Aela steeled her body.
Kaitos glared at her over his shoulder, and when he resumed his steady gait, she darted a gaze down to her arms covered by the long black sleeves.
Voices fell quiet. The only sounds were the slight metal-on-metal clink from her collar, chain, shackles, and the clack of her heeled shoes that trailed Kaitos’ confident steps.
The crystal throne was just as she remembered it.
Selenite grew from the stone flooring, thrumming faintly with energetic pulses.
It would be a literal seat of power for whoever claimed it.
Aela dragged her eyes up the crystal throne and locked eyes with Tarek.
The Prime Apparent of House Taurus was in his full splendor.
White fabric encased his powerful frame, complete with golden bull horns fastened on either shoulder.
“Aela,” Tarek greeted warmly. “Welcome home.”
Aela grimaced.
Tarek’s eyes hardened, but his perfectly set smile remained in place.
Does he know?
He had ousted her as an Aquarian the last he saw her, which was only a partial truth.
Kaitos likely knew, which meant Elnath knew who she was.
How would she play this? She had exhibited enough of her power between The Games and the Sagittarius social that Tarek knew what she was capable of.
She had stood up to him. Her true nature was out of the box, and there was no stuffing her back inside the timid fallen star.
All thoughts and rapidly forming plans fizzled out as Tarek’s aunt stepped around the throne and descended the dais steps to stand before her.
Elnath.
The name ricocheted through her being, and the wrath from earlier came back as a torrent. The Regent’s features were cool, collected, though there was a sharpness to her eyes that churned Aela’s gut. Kaitos wrapped his hands around her upper arms, holding her for Elnath’s appraisal.
“We tried it his way,” Elnath said softly standing close to her, for Aela’s ears alone. “Now it’s my turn.”
Crippling pain shot through Aela as her collar and crystal bands sank into her essence, digging their crystalline claws in to bleed her dry. Elnath smiled.
“Enough, Elnath. Let her be,” Tarek commanded from his throne.
“Let her be? Prime Apparent, she made a mockery of your position. She deserves to be punished. After all you did for her, she embarrassed you and went off with another. You are blind and do not see her for what she is. I, for one, cannot let Taurus House be tarnished by the likes of an abomination such as this,” Elnath finished with a hiss.
Gasps and mutters echoed from the Asters. When the pain subsided, Aela lifted her chin.
“An abomination? What do you mean?” Tarek demanded.
“Why her lineage, of course.” Elnath’s hand drifted to her forehead, tracing the small crystal shard she wore. “She’s the product of an unsanctioned union, a cross of Lines.”
Aela froze.
“She’s the last star of Aquarius and Pisces.”
The throne room was enveloped in silence, as if suspended in time. Aela only had eyes for what lay embedded in Elnath’s forehead, and Tarek only had eyes for Aela.
As if pricked by a needle, the silence popped, and the knowledge of Aela’s true identity surged through the thunderous voices in the throne room. The Regent preened under the mayhem, then bowed to Tarek.
Elnath strode back to Aela and brought her deep purple lips to her ear and whispered, “Let the Age of Bedlam reign.”
With a flare of her robe edged with crystals, Elnath marched up the aisle and out the golden doors. Aela didn’t even notice that a group of sentinels replaced Kaitos—who had unclasped her leash before following Elnath. Her eyes dimmed as she stared at the space where Elnath had stood.
Tarek ignored the rising cacophony and stepped down the dais to stand before her. Aela looked through him as he lifted her chin.
“It seems we need to get reacquainted, precious.”
The spectacle abruptly ended, and Aela was headed for a holding cell deep beneath the palace proper. Tarek led her personally, which felt more ominous that he was doing his own work for once. She didn’t struggle against him, only bided her time.
“You have much to answer for, Aela. That little stunt you pulled in Theora… Not to mention you nearly dismantled the way things are done.” He shook his head. “Until you are under control—this is where you will be held. You will not be treated as an Aster or my bonded until you accept it.”
“Well, you’ll be waiting for eternity because I will never accept you,” Aela said, her tone bored and disinterested.
“On the contrary, I won’t have to wait long. Thanks to my aunt,” Tarek nodded at the torque around her neck and the matching crystal bands on her wrists.
“It will be a quick Ascension for me.” He took a deep inhale, puffing out his already broad chest. “I’m about to become the most powerful Primary Star in the realm. But first, there’s some place we need to go.”
Aela frowned at Tarek’s back as he left her cell. It wasn’t a coliseum cell, judging by the absence of sand, yet the crystalline metal rings that hung from one of the walls were concerning.
One of Tala’s rooms then.
Would her almost-friend be the one to break her?
An undetermined span of time passed while Aela sat against the cool stone wall of her cell in the dark.
How long had it been since she had been detained in Avarice?
A week? It had to have been at least several days, but her generous host had withheld meals at first, then the rations she had received were delivered at irregular intervals.
What was more worrisome was how her thoughts struggled to form the longer she was confined and how sleep eluded her.
In the beginning of her detention, Aela had scoured every inch of her cell she could reach, though she was chained to a wall.
She had memorized the smooth collar at her neck and bands around her wrists.
There was no notch to pry open. Whatever crystal it was, it made her mind hazy.
Her thoughts were sluggish and drifted like sand through her fingers.
Each time her hands had lifted to the collar, apathy swelled within her.
Eventually, Aela had stopped actively looking for a means of escape and sat still against the wall of her cell, where she remained unmoving.
The refuge of her dreamscape never welcomed her.
She was thoroughly trapped.
Her selenite had been the first thing confiscated when Kaitos found her. She had nothing else. Exhaustion tugged at her limbs and eyelids, yet sleep never came. At some point, attendants bustled in and changed her clothes into simpler garments, a statement of her fall in position.
She rather liked them.
She was scrubbed and primped within an inch of her life, but Aela was numb to it all. Despite the bands and collar that dampened her magic, her mind remained mostly her own out of sheer frustration at how her normally restless thoughts were sifting through her grasp.
The only reprieve her circumstances offered her was that, like in her dreams, she held an acute awareness.
As if her mind hovered out of her body while it experienced something other than her consciousness.
Aela distanced her own awareness within herself, testing how her body reacted to different thoughts.
If her overactive mind had taught her anything over the years, it was that she controlled it.
Fear and other intense emotions could influence her thoughts and magic, but ultimately, they came from within herself.
Her imprisonment would be no different. Even though she longed for the freedom found in her dreamscape, she was careful not to form ideas of escape.
Intention was everything when handling crystals and nature always provided a workaround.
Tala finally came.
The Adjacent waltzed into Aela’s holding cell as if it were her private residence. Aela supposed Tala spent a great deal of time in rooms such as these, subjecting celestials she felt were a threat to her brother and House to her unique ministrations—so she would feel at ease here.
Aela tracked Tala’s every move. A ball of starlight hovered above Tala’s hand, the only light Aela had seen in a while, as the Adjacent rummaged around for something on the sterile table set on the opposite wall from where Aela was chained.
Finding her quarry, Tala pinned her russet gaze on Aela.
A thin glass tube filled with swirling gray liquid and a needle at the end dangled from her fingers.
Tala’s pristine white ensemble creaked as she bent down and gently inserted the needle into Aela’s neck. Everything went blissfully black.