Chapter Forty-Three
ELARA
‘Every part of your body will fight it,’ Clari said gently. ‘I’ve witnessed this kind of ritual only once before, when I was just a little girl. A traitor in Altalune had his magick stripped from him by King Merlin as punishment.’
Elara looked to Enzo, who tried to give her a reassuring smile. But she saw right through it.
They both stood in the water, the same healing pool that Elara had been in earlier that day. Now, the room was darker, candles flickering and the glowing algae that tinted the water casting refractions above.
‘Just you, me and the water,’ Enzo murmured. He turned to Clari. ‘What if her shadows attack me again?’
‘Then keep going,’ Clari said. ‘It will mean it’s working.’
She swam to the corner of the pool, beautiful tail swishing, and came back holding something.
‘I’ve often used these when working with shadowmancers,’ she explained. ‘Though it’s your choice.’
Deep black shadowsbane ropes were coiled in the healer’s hands.
‘We should use the ropes,’ Elara said hoarsely. ‘To bind me. To stop the shadows harming Enzo.’
‘No,’ Enzo refused.
‘Please?’ she said weakly, blinking up at him.
Enzo sighed as he took the ropes from Clari. When he gently wrapped the first binding around Elara’s body, she hissed at the sting.
‘Please, El,’ he whispered, eyes pained.
She shook her head. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Keep going.’
She felt the dampening, burning power of the ropes, the shadows inside her coiling and angry.
‘I’ll help guide the entire ritual,’ Clari said from where she was now sitting in human form upon the crystal dais in the centre of the pool. ‘Do not worry, Elara. At the end of all this, you’ll feel like yourself again.’
Elara nodded, looking once more to Enzo, who was raking a hand through his curls over and over.
‘Time to lie back, Your Majesty,’ Clari said.
Elara took a deep breath in through her nose and out through her mouth as she rocked back in the water once more.
‘El,’ Enzo said softly. ‘No matter what happens, know that I love you. Know that anything I do is to help you, I promise. You have nothing to fear with me—you never have.’
Elara searched his eyes—the earnest gold of them—and anchored herself to them as light, pure white, began to glow from his hands.
‘Where?’ he said to Clari.
‘Her stomach,’ Clari replied. ‘That’s where I saw the well, the source of them.’
He nodded, hovering his hands over Elara as he closed his eyes and enveloped her in his magick.
When Enzo’s Light first touched Elara, her magick rushed to meet him, just as it had the very first time she’d felt it. He was her catalyst, his Light only making her magick come alive. But this time, his power—usually comforting, warm and bright—instead began to sear.
Elara let out a cry, shaking as she pressed her eyes shut, thrashing in the water. Her shadows recoiled, confused—she could feel the magick as though it was a living thing, as though it was hurt.
She sobbed as the magick that had once learned to trust Enzo’s backed away from him, hid.
But Enzo’s Light didn’t stop—it couldn’t, she knew it couldn’t.
As the shadows pressed to the very walls of her, trying to run away from the searching Light, they couldn’t.
They couldn’t escape, with the shadowsbane ropes, couldn’t fight.
She felt it then for the first time: the rotten, withered strands of them.
She’d never seen them before. But with Enzo’s magick in this chamber of pain, she could visualize exactly what her magick had become.
It came again, pervasive and persistent, and this time she screamed out at the pain as she felt it tear through the magick stored in her very centre.
She felt hands—Enzo’s hands—finally on her after so long, as though he was trying to comfort her. But then the shadows—no longer confused, but angry, furious—attacked.
She felt the shadowsbane ropes snap, but couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but watch as her shadows lunged once more at Enzo. This time, curiously, she didn’t black out, held fast in the moment of pain and shock.
‘Don’t let the light go out,’ Clari said.
Elara sobbed as she watched helplessly while her shadows wrapped around Enzo’s neck.
He gritted his teeth, grunting, his blazing gold eyes streaming with tears. The light was so blinding she had to shut her eyes.
‘Kill him,’ a voice hissed in her ear. It was familiar, though she couldn’t place it through the horror.
‘Kill me,’ she screamed back.
Her body convulsed again, the pain in every part of it burning, burning, her shadows writhing, caught within it.
More Light scorched her, and she wasn’t a young woman any more, and he wasn’t Enzo.
She was a little girl, and the Light inside her belonged to a guard.
The memories flashed beneath her eyelids as she watched shadow after shadow burn, the long tendrils of them withering away, screaming, pleading.
‘Elara, focus on my voice,’ Enzo said. But she hated him. She hated him so much for what he was doing that she kicked out. There was a grunt of pain, and this time stronger hands pinned her down.
‘Get off me,’ she screamed.
‘El, it’s me.’ She heard her soulmate’s voice breaking through the pain again. ‘It’s Enzo. Remember. Remember how much I love you.’ She heard a stifled sob and thrashed again. Her shadows tried to attack blindly—anyone, anything.
‘Why is it me?’ she sobbed. ‘Why is it always me?’
‘Because you are the most powerful of us all,’ a voice whispered back in her mind, one that sounded like hers, but older, wiser. ‘Now, don’t let the light go out.’
The voice repeated Clari’s words like a mantra, over and over, as Elara shook.
‘El,’ the voice pleaded—Enzo’s voice, not the guard’s. ‘Please stay with me. Just stay with me.’
He pressed a hand over her heart as she screamed, as he sobbed, as the scorching continued.
‘I need you to breathe, Elara. I need you to remember where you are,’ Clari said.
Elara gave a shuddering gasp as she opened her mouth to try to take in a lungful of air, but all she felt was Light everywhere. She couldn’t hide from it, couldn’t turn. She kicked out again.
‘It’s not working,’ Enzo murmured from somewhere.
‘The dragun I saw, Elara. The silver dragun. Call upon it. Call upon that moonlight,’ Clari urged.
Elara tried to find it, but the pain was just too great, every muscle on fire, every bone leaden.
‘Elara?! Enzo?!’ came a voice.
‘Who the fuck is that?’ she heard Enzo snap.
There was a flurry in the water as she panted, though the Light didn’t abate.
‘You?!’ Enzo exclaimed.
‘Merissa told me everything. I want to help,’ the voice said breathlessly, and Elara recognized it as Adrian’s.
To her surprise, Enzo didn’t argue. When her eyes opened, the pirate was standing waist deep in the water beside her.
‘Easy, Your Majesty,’ Adrian said. ‘We’ll get this out of you yet.’
‘Come on,’ Clari said. ‘One more time.’
Elara closed her eyes again as the light shone brighter, another bout of pain rushing through her body.
‘Breathe,’ Adrian said, and she tried, but she was choking on the Light. It was everywhere. ‘Breathe, Elara,’ he said again.
She took in the salt of the room, the scent.
She felt aquamarine energy slide down her throat.
And within the chaos, within the blinding Light, and the pain, and the tatters of her shadows, came a drop of water.
It soothed her burnt insides, the wounds that the stems of her shadows grew from.
Another drop came, then another, until she began to hear the quiet pitter-patter of rain.
The Light continued its way through her, and she hissed again, but, after every sear, the rain came.
‘Please, princess,’ Enzo pleaded. ‘Let your moonlight in.’
Don’t let the light go out.
She only cried in response, despite the hands running through her hair and brushing her face. Though she was in the water she felt too warm, and the emptiness where her shadows had once writhed sent such a panic through her that she fought against it.
But then the rain that Adrian had gifted her allowed the minutest amount of room to breathe, to think through the pain.
‘Come to me,’ she whispered hoarsely into the room.
An image came to mind—that of the illustrated Star-feared, her favourite dragun in The Mythas of Celestia. Elara envisioned every detail of her as she tunnelled down, down, into the root of her magick. ‘Grant me Light,’ she prayed. ‘Do not let it go out.’
When she opened her eyes, she was at the bottom of the well that she had peered into in her dreams. It was empty and barren and damp.
‘Rid me of this curse,’ she begged.
Outside of her body, she felt Enzo hold her once more, cradling her to his chest, and at his touch she watched as something prowled out of the shadows—just as Clari had described, a silver dragun. The source of her moonlight. Though, this time, no ropes held it back.
Elara Bellereve, came that same ancient intonation in her head.
‘Who are you?’ Elara breathed.
The dragun cocked its head. Why, I am you. I am what you were, and what you are, and what you will be.
‘And who am I?’ she whispered.
You are a goddess. The bringer of Light to darkness.
You are a human. The acceptor of shadows.
You are a soulmate, the perfect counterpart to the Sun.
You, Elara Bellereve, are infinite. Your mistake is thinking you are only one person.
That you can be tied to one thing. Don’t you know that possibilities lie within a person, myriad beings that make up who you are?
Who die and are replaced in different phases of your life?
You are out with lanterns looking for yourself, but, Elara, you are right here.
Enzo’s Light began to shine, finding its way into the well. And so is the one who will always guide you back to yourself when you feel too lost to find the way alone. The dragun looked up at the sun. Made a keening sound.
You can love your shadows, but you cannot let them drown out your Light, it finished.
The Light touched the mythas, and its wings spread as it soared towards it, careening desperately towards the sun, and Elara was catapulted out of the well.
She physically felt herself rise, to gasps around her. She saw it beneath her eyes: silver light flooding her body.
The magick was so other, so ancient, as she felt the full force of it awaken within her bones.
It was the true essence of who she was, the true power.
Every answer that she had been searching for.
It felt so strange to her then, how she had thought her magick so tied to her shadows.
For with them burned away, with nowhere to hide, she saw her true nature.
It smelled of night-jasmine. It tasted of spilt stardust, sweet and smoky.
It felt like the secrets of the night, the light to guide those lost home, the gentle, ever-powerful presence of the moon, sure in all its phases. It was gentle, yet fierce.
Elara sucked in a deep breath, and she felt it course in and out of her like a heartbeat. Was she floating? Gods, she was. Her eyes flicked open, and whatever was in them made everyone below step back.
Do not fear death, when it lives within your skin, sweet Moon, a voice whispered in her ear.
Elara shuddered, trying to pull away from the brush against her ear, not knowing where the voice came from.
The silver light gave her one final sweep, cauterizing the wounds, leeching the poison from them. She continued to float, higher and higher, as though with every passing moment she was shedding a weight—one she hadn’t known she’d been bearing.
When her body sank back into the water, Enzo began to hum.
She followed the threads of it as she breathed raggedly, eyes still closed, still blinded by Light.
It was their lullaby, and she wept as she held on to it, reminding herself that it was Enzo before her and that he wasn’t trying to cause her pain.
There was one final burst of it—both his magick and her moonlight—moving from her head to her toes, sweeping, killing any darkness, even the tiny wisps trying to hide, trying to remain small.
His magick caught it all, and she let out a final, agonizing scream as she said goodbye to a part of her that had been with her since birth, that had never left her even when everything else had.
Their combined Light finally, finally let go, dimming. She saw one final image before she was taken out of the place she’d been dragged to, the centre of her magick. A lone forget-me-not.
She slowly opened her eyes, the pool coming back, the salt grounding her, sweeping through her. She saw Adrian’s concerned face first, blue hair hanging over his eyes as he gently removed his hands from her chest. She saw Clari with a grim set to her face and, finally, Enzo.
He wasn’t looking at her, his head drooping as he stared at the water.
She said nothing, reaching out a trembling hand to lift his chin. The eyes that looked back at her were unrecognizable, flat. No gold danced in them, no life. They searched hers.
‘I’m okay,’ she whispered.
‘Do you promise?’ he asked hoarsely.
She nodded, and he crushed her to him, whispering thanks into her hair as Adrian and Clari murmured in relief.
She wished she could relish the feel of him—finally, after so long—but she was soon taken out of his arms by Merissa and Leo, who had rushed into the room, both gripping her tightly.
Adrian stood on the outskirts, the water around him swirling agitatedly.
‘Thank you,’ Elara croaked, turning to him. ‘I felt what you did in there. Thank you.’
He nodded, abashed, as Leo ruffled her hair.
She saw Enzo stand but was soon pulled into yet another blubbering embrace by Merissa. And when she’d finally extricated herself from the group, Enzo had left the pool.