Chapter Eighteen
The air rushed past Elara, howling as the circus music sped up around her, the crowd gasping as they saw the star of the show tumble through the air.
Elara grunted, a hand flung out as she called her shadows despite every instinct inside her screaming not to.
They flooded through, her dragun summoned, and she didn’t know if it was the dream or something within herself, but the dragun gave a mighty roar as it soared upwards, Elara perched on its back.
Ariete swore, and the circus tent shook.
But she cared not, teeth gritted with determination as she veered the dragun straight towards Ariete.
When she neared him, her hand reaching out to snatch the tether from his neck, Ariete lanced starlight at her, and she hissed as it hit the wing of her dragun.
The dragun howled, shadows fissuring off as it banked.
She fought to control her shadows, her dragun swinging in another arc as she came down once again. This time her fingers brushed the tether, but Ariete spun away too quickly, and she growled in frustration as she soared once more.
She held her dragun for a moment in the air, trying to regain her composure, pushing the faces of her deceased family away.
Do not let Ariete distract you, Eli had warned.
She took a deep breath, zoning in on the tether, then paused.
She pulled the snakestone from her pocket and brought it to her eye.
The tether around Ariete’s neck dulled. Instead, the ringleader’s whip in his hand was glowing bright gold.
‘Bastard,’ she hissed, though she was grinning as she dived and snatched the whip right from his fingers.
Ariete howled in anger as it left his hand, and Elara let out a disbelieving laugh, Enzo’s tether clutched tightly within her palm.
She saw the red door, fixed on it, ignoring Ariete’s cries of despair from below as she guided her dragun towards it. In a tumble, she was off it, shadows dispersing as she yanked at the door, flinging it open, and stopped.
There, on the other side, stood a wolf, its hackles raised, its teeth bared. A deep, terrible growl resounded from its maw as it took a step forwards, its grey eyes slits.
It sprang, and Elara screamed, stumbling back. But she was on a platform, and there was no more ground beneath her as she fell into Ariete’s trancechasm.
The darkness yawned below, already enclosing her, and in one last desperate attempt Elara flung the tether out, where it snagged in a small nook on the side of the pit.
She hung from it, both hands wrapped tightly around Enzo’s tie to life.
She looked down wildly and wished she hadn’t.
Below her was a terrifying and endless night, and, within it, countless red-eyed shadows shifted. Elara knew with absolute certainty that they did not belong in this world.
Ariete’s name was on the tip of her tongue. She could not stay here, could not fall into this pit and remain trapped for an eternity, her soul ripped apart, her body wasting away. She could not do that to Enzo or Merissa, Isra or Leo. She trembled, thinking of them—her new family.
But before her mouth could open to scream Ariete’s name, she heard the slow thud of footsteps on dusted sand, and finally saw, across the edge of the pit, Ariete’s hungry, red stare.
There was no smile on his face, though; not as he looked up to the wolf still prowling the platform.
‘Darling, darling Moon,’ he said quietly, crouching down. ‘Look at the mess you have caused.’
Elara willed herself not to sob. She would not give any more tears to this god. She focused on biting the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. This didn’t feel like a dream any more. The stakes were too high.
‘Did you send the wolf?’ she asked, her arms beginning to shake from holding herself against the precipice.
Ariete shook his head. ‘No,’ he whispered.
‘Is it real?’
He shrugged. ‘I do not know.’
‘And the Tarot reading? The past? Was that real too?’
Ariete nodded. ‘I told you there was much to your story you didn’t know, many secrets that only you and I share.’
‘Lies,’ Elara hissed, gasping as one of her hands slipped on the tether. ‘Enzo, or the Sun, would have known. I would have told him.’
Ariete chuckled. ‘If that’s what you need to tell yourself, then of course, darling. He knew everything.’
He dusted his hands off, making to stand.
‘Wait!’ Elara strangled out.
Ariete paused, turning. She heard one of the creatures below shuffling, heard the wolf snarling above.
‘You’re in quite the predicament, Elara.
Within a few minutes, those arms will tire, and you will fall into a trancechasm from which you’ll never return.
Your precious Sun will waste away in the Dreamlands, descending into the agony and madness that likely already plague him, as you yourself wander my nightmares, unable to live or die.
And if by some miracle you make it out, it seems there’s a friend up there blocking your exit.
’ His eyes flicked once more to the wolf.
‘Now,’ he said, leaning further forwards over the pit, ‘do you want to revisit my bargain?’
Elara let out a frustrated sob, the only one she allowed herself in front of the Star.
She didn’t answer—couldn’t. How could she make a bargain with this Star, the one who had killed her parents, her best friend, and had tried to kill her soulmate?
She could not be bound to him; she knew better.
‘Suit yourself.’ Ariete shrugged. ‘I’m sure whatever lurks below will be very happy with your decision.’
He turned and began to walk away. Elara felt her palms begin to sweat, her grip on the tether loosening. Her hands slipped once more as she cursed, looking back down to the darkness.
‘Oh gods,’ she whimpered.
She couldn’t do it; she wouldn’t.
Think, Elara, think. She tried desperately to call on her shadows again, but they had disappeared before the wolf, whether through fear or something else, she didn’t know.
Her grip slackened further as Ariete’s footsteps grew quieter.
‘Forgive me, Enzo, for what I’m about to do,’ she whispered, closing her eyes. As her hold on the rope gave up altogether, Elara shrieked, ‘Ariete, I call on your favour!’
She screamed as the darkness lunged beneath her, before a hand clasped around hers, the cool, buzzing force of it gripping her too tightly.
Ariete’s smile was all teeth as he held her, still dangling from the precipice, in one hand.
‘Let me leave with Enzo’s tether, and I will pay you,’ she sobbed, heart still thundering at the thought of the abyss that had nearly claimed her. Her arm felt wrenched out of its socket as Ariete maintained his grip.
‘Your blood for his tether,’ Ariete murmured, pulling her an inch higher.
‘No,’ Elara spat. ‘Not that, anything but that.’
Ariete tutted. ‘I don’t barter. Enjoy your everlasting torment.’
He let his grip slip a moment, and Elara screamed. ‘Fine, fine! My blood for his tether.’
Ariete chuckled softly as he pulled her up again. She winced at the motion, limp and useless as she remained suspended.
‘Are you sure you want to make this deal with me, sweet Moon?’ he crooned. ‘To feel us bound and tethered, to know that I can ask you for one favour in return—anything, at any moment, and you would have to do as I willed?’
Elara felt bile rise in her throat. She couldn’t agree to that.
But she knew that if she struck a bargain with Ariete, a favour, then, by the Stars’ code, he would have to stay true to his word.
She waited another second…but she had already sealed her fate. It was worth it. To be tied to Ariete—it was worth it to have her love living and breathing again.
Ariete’s free hand flicked, and a card was produced—one from the Tarot deck she had been shown earlier.
It was the Fool card. Yet instead of the usual jester, it depicted Elara, one foot in thin air as she tried not to tumble from a cliff, her black hair streaming behind her.
It looked disturbingly like when she had first created her shadow lion with Enzo.
She noticed a rearing ram in the corner of the picture.
‘A favour for a favour,’ Ariete murmured, twisting the card.
‘Blood for blood.’ He hitched her up another inch. ‘This is going to hurt.’
And with a small smile, Ariete’s eyes fluttered closed as Elara felt the skin of her palm wrapped in his split open. She gritted her teeth, a deep pain burning under her skin as blood dripped between their clasped hands.
Ariete muttered words in a guttural language that Elara did not recognize, and a sound of pain tore from her as her blood flowed to him. She felt an invisible rope wrap around them, squeezing and squeezing as his charm invaded her, angry and writhing, and then, as fast as it had entered, it left.
With one more wrench, he lifted her from the cliff until she staggered on to the newly formed sandy floor of the circus tent, scrambling away from the pit.
She wrenched her grip from Ariete, looking in panic at her palm and the red slash across it.
Ariete retrieved Enzo’s tether from the edge of the pit and tossed it to her, then sighed, sated. ‘Moonlight tastes so sweet,’ he said, more to himself than her.
Elara grasped the tether to her chest and stood. ‘The exit,’ she hissed.
Ariete laughed as he pointed to the flaps of the circus tent, now rising of their own accord.
But the favour was beginning to sink in, Ariete’s magick squeezing around her heart.
She could feel him in her head, in her bones, and retched; empty heaves made her sink to her knees.
‘Don’t be so dramatic,’ the Star drawled. ‘It will pass in a moment.’
He produced a pocket watch, one that had ram horns protruding from it. ‘I’d hurry if I were you. By my watch, I’d say Enzo has less than a day before his soul is lost completely to the Dreamlands.’
Elara picked herself up, looping the tether around her neck, feeling Enzo through it—warm and light.
‘Don’t tell a soul about this. And don’t tell anyone about the bargain we struck when I was…the Moon. If what I saw was true.’
Ariete snorted. ‘I’ve kept the secret safe for centuries. I doubt this lifetime will change that.’
He began strolling out of the circus tent. Elara followed, her body still vibrating and screaming at the wrongness of the bargain now living in her veins.
They passed the carousel, the horses skeletal and terrifying as they spun.
Ariete chuckled as though he could read the fear on her face. ‘I’m not the only villain in this story, you know, Elara.’ He paused. ‘You’d better run, little mouse.’ He winked. ‘I’ll count to three.’
Elara didn’t take a second to consider it, to even reply, as she set off at a sprint through the circus grounds, snakestone wedged to her eye.
She heard Ariete’s lilting voice count, ‘One,’ as she ran, careening down the path that the snakestone set before her. The music continued to shriek, and she shook her head, the tether around her neck the only comforting presence.
‘Two,’ she heard him rumble as he stalked after her, red coat-tails flying in the wind.
She ran, praying to the wind to carry her, for her dreams to catch her, her own tether to guide her. She passed the gates, leaping through the arch. A chasm opened, the end of the dream, a vast nothingness below her. She yanked her own tether to her with bared teeth.
‘Three,’ she heard Ariete yell behind her as she tumbled, screaming, into the darkness.