Eternal Surrender Chapter One
It wasn’t so much that I’d woken up inside a coffin that was alarming, it was the fact it was locked shut and I had no idea how long I’d been sealed inside.
I was still wearing Jacob’s coat and hoped to find the opportunity to return it. And then suffocate him with it.
At least the fresh scented velvet lining hinted I was the casket’s first guest, and I knew better than to punch my fist through the walnut lid. With an upward jolt, I broke the locks and peered out, relieved I hadn’t been buried.
There was a wave of regret for not taking my chance to escape when I’d had it. I climbed out into a prison cell, the gate shut and secured with an oversized padlock.
Well-worn rusty shackles lay discarded on the floor, revealing this chamber dated back centuries. More disturbing was its musty odor omitting a peculiar familiarity. The only relief was seeing my shoulder was back in its socket.
I struggled to get my bearings.
And remember.
Remember my name.
Remember who I was and where I came from, because those things mattered once. I had to believe that.
Halfway up the brickwork of the far wall, someone had scribed in scratchy handwriting ‘Find Dominatio.’ And they’d used blood. I backed away from it and peered out through the bars and down a long black corridor.
Jacob stepped out of the darkness, and his iridescent irises locked on me. “How are you feeling?”
My answer was merely to gesture into the cell.
His brow furrowed. “Let me know when you’re ready to talk.”
“I’m ready now.”
He tapped his pockets as though trying to find something, the key perhaps. “Ah.”
I reached into his mind, but if he was thinking, I couldn’t hear it.
“How long have I been in here?” I asked.
“A few hours.”
I peered down the passageway wondering if that was the way out.
“We were concerned for your safety,” he said. “You were thrashing around quite a bit.”
“Well I’m fine now.”
He seemed to notice the bloody words ‘Find Dominatio,’ and his careful face changed as though judging what I’d made of it.
“Hard to miss,” I answered his unspoken question.
My mind reached out beyond these dank walls, and I sensed it was midmorning. I cursed the fact I was trapped in here until nightfall.
Jacob stepped back into focus. “You’re the proverbial Gordian knot, I’m afraid.”
I waited for him to continue, hoping for some clue that might lead me back to remembering.
“You consider me an intricate problem?” I asked. “Care to elaborate?”
“Gordian knot, the phrase based on the legend of king of Phrygia. He tied a knot meant to be incapable of being untied. Alexander the Great swept in dramatically—”
“Arrogantly, and sliced through the knot with his sword, thus establishing him as Sovereign. I know what a Gordian knot is, I just can’t remember—”
“Your name.”
I hated this moment, hated him with his never-ending psychological torture of vagueness.
“Perhaps this will help?” He stepped closer. “Stonehenge, you were there last night.”
“I don’t. . .” Nothing came, no vision, no recollection of anything.
A wave of frustration.
The only thing preventing me from having a go at the lock was that damned daylight. His lips curled sympathetically, and I had a sneaking suspicion he’d read my mind.
“Enlighten me,” I said.
“Now more than ever you’ll need your friends.”
“Any of them here?” It was worth a chance.
“You can trust me.”
I went to question his strange idea of hospitality but knew better.
“Last night everything changed,” said Jacob.
“How?” I resisted the urge to yell fucking tell me.
He dismissed my last question with a wave of his slender arm and his long fingers brushed through the air.
“What was I doing on the beach?” I asked.
“Minutes after it happened, you ran.” He slipped both his hands into the pockets of his cassock. “It’s probably better if you remember naturally.”
“And how long do you think that might take?”
“You must believe me when I say you’re safe here.”
I glanced back at the coffin to make a point.
“With the return of your memory,” said Jacob, “new challenges will arise. I want you to prepare yourself for that.”
I went to ask what he meant but he’d gone, and I was left staring at nothing. I slipped my hands through the bars and fiddled with the silver lock.
Alex, the young man from the beach, appeared out of the shadows and leaned against the cell gate opposite. I let go of the lock.
He was holding a blanket. “You really don’t know who I am, do you?” he said.
“Alexander?”
He sucked in his breath and then realized. “Don’t hurt my brother.”
“I don’t know who he is.”
Alex squeezed his eyes shut and whispered to himself, “Soon.”
I ran my fingers through my matted hair. “I need to take a shower.”
“I think that’s a good idea.” He slid the blanket between the bars and let it go.
It fell at my feet. “I’m not planning on staying.”
“Won’t be for long.”
“Did I mess up?” I asked.
“I did.”
I wrapped my fingers around the bars. “Then why am I the one in here?”
He flinched, uncomfortable with that question.
“Well you’re forgiven.” I glanced at the lock. “Now let me out.”
“Jadeon?” he asked, searching.
“That’s my name?” On his reaction I asked, “That’s not my name?”
“What do you think your name is?”
“What. . . is. . . my. . . name?” I clenched my teeth.
“William,” Alex said flatly.
I hesitated and then said, “You just called me Jadeon?”
“Your father’s name was William too.”
“How do we know each other again?”
“It’ll come back,” he said.
“How long have we known each other?”
He didn’t answer.
“A while I take it,” I pressed.
“Jacob thinks if—”
“I remember naturally?”
He shrugged. “He seems to know how to handle this.”
“This being. . . ?”
“Complicated.”
I wanted to scream. “You were with me last night? When it happened?”
His focus shot back to me.
I feigned remembering and then said, “Stonehenge.”
He leaned in closer.
“We weren’t the only ones there?” I watched his reaction to see if he fell for my ruse. “I messed up. . . it wasn’t your fault.”
“What else do you remember?”
I waited for him to weaken, hoping he’d start talking.
He narrowed his gaze. “You don’t remember.”
I reached through the bars and grabbed his throat, squeezing. Alex struggled, gurgling for breath, his fingers fighting to remove mine.
Sashaying toward us was a young woman dressed in blue jeans and a man’s shirt, her raven hair tumbling over her slender shoulders and down her back; bewitching almond-shaped, turquoise eyes holding mine.
She reached for Alex’s head and with a jolt, snapped his neck.
Alex fell from my grip, crumpling into a heap, hissing in an effort to breathe, still alive but paralyzed.
Yet the woman’s expression revealed nothing of the terrible act she’d just committed. The softest, longest eyelashes fluttered ever so slightly, and her rouged lips pouted innocently.
Speechless, I stepped back, wondering if she was about to use the same move on me.
Seeing the unemotional expression of the strikingly attractive vixen, I was now actually relieved there was a locked gate between us.
I felt terrible for Alex. Yes, I had attacked him with frustration but had no intention of doing anything close to that.
She yanked at the silver lock. The gate was open and she was now inside, moving closer. My back met the wall, and she leaned into my chest and nestled there, wrapping her arms around me, my own arms hesitating to embrace her.
“I feel like I’ve been asleep,” she whispered.
I resisted the urge to ease her off and glanced down to see if there was anything familiar about her. By the way she nuzzled into my chest, she clearly knew me.
“Who are you?” It came out wrong.
Her expression of indignity quickly fell away. “Sunaria.”
“And. . . who am I?”
Her eyes danced with sadness. “Orpheus.”
My shoulders dropped a little, relieved that finally someone was answering my questions.
“I know a way out.” Her face lit up and she grabbed my hand, pulling me out of the cell.
We both stepped over Alex’s body and headed off in silence.
Struggling with whether I should trust her or not, I followed her down the longest, darkest corridor, glancing back occasionally to check if we were being followed.
“There’s a tunnel beneath the castle,” she said. “We can wait in there until sunset.”
“How do you know?”
On her face was written a kind of pain, as though remembering something. “It doesn’t feel like two hundred years. . .” Her eyes shone with tears. “Since the Stone Masters tortured me here.”
“Who?”
She rose up on her toes and kissed my cheek, pressing her soft full lips against me as though time had never wedged its way between us.
“That’s what this place is,” she said. “Or was?” She looked confused.
Not wanting to be locked up in that cell again or secured back inside that coffin, I picked up my pace.
We quickly reached a stone wall, and on seeing the dead-end, I turned to head back the way we’d come.
But Sunaria gripped my arm, insisting, motioning toward the brickwork.
Realizing what she was suggesting, my fingers traced the irregularities along each brick, feeling for the one that might give.
“You forgive me?” Her voice was soft, vulnerable even.
“For what?” Something gave beneath my touch and stone scraped along the ground, opening up a gaping tunnel. A burst of cold air.
Peering down the endless blackness, I felt a wave of relief.
“This runs under the sea.” Sunaria moved past me and stepped into the never-ending passageway.
I hesitated. “What should I forgive you for?”
“I didn’t know the ashes were joined,” she admitted.
Her words stormed into my mind, sending my thoughts into a frenzy as though some part of me had understood her meaning, and that same taunting sensation that had gripped me back on the beach overwhelmed me again.
A black violin case, resting on an oak table.
Strange memories, spanning decades.
I doubled over, the twisting, wrenching agony in my gut snatching away my breath. Reaching out for her hand, my vision blurred.
“Orpheus?” Sunaria’s voice seemingly distant.
Snow blanketing London’s rooftops with a perfect powdery white. I was back in Belshazzar’s, my old London mansion, sitting quietly and watching a bloodhound sluggishly pad across the length of a room before settling beside the roaring fireplace.
Crawling along the floor, I tried to make it to Sunaria.
With two clicks, the black violin case sprang open, and I revered the walnut violin within.
Gasping for air.
Lifting out the violin and positioning the black chin-rest naturally into place, my fingertips settled on the lower end of the fingerboard.
I brought up the bow upon the strings, caressing the fine cords and bursting forth a chorus of harmonic colors of sound.
This violin was an extension of me, conveying more than just the secrets of the soul, its memories too. . .
Spellbound, I tried to grasp ahold of each memory.
That same violin. . . caught up in its maelstrom, swallowed whole and entranced completely by the instrument’s curse, an impossible spell to break free from.
I was unraveling.
Sword fighting, the wooden blade slicing through the air, this ten-year-old boy swearing to save this castle with my brother. . .
“Alex!”
Memories were lying, implying I’d lived through two different childhoods, the images gushing in like a torrent, threatening to drown me.
On my knees now, trying to grab the violin hovering just out of reach.
“. . . Orpheus plays the violin.” Sunaria was making no sense.
Even though I didn’t know this woman, I recoiled at showing how vulnerable I was, how confused.
Fighting off the vertigo, I rose, resisting the drag of nothingness snapping at my heels, threatening to lose my grip on time and place, clutching my abdomen and clenching my teeth as the twisting agony threatened to ravage my insides.
Sunaria had my right hand in hers and she was dragging me along the tunnel, but I broke free and staggered back, leaving her standing there.
I didn’t know who to trust or what to believe anymore. But one thing was certain, I wasn’t walking willingly into a place where death was waiting for me.
With both hands on the stone doorway I gave it a shove, securing it closed.
If Sunaria was screaming at me from the other side, I didn’t hear her.
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