3. CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER THREE
Astaroth
A heady thrum filtered through my being, and I paused in the middle of the garden. I felt it here and there in regular increments when she was in close proximity to the stone, only to have her fade away again and leave me bereft and empty. Mergle prattled on about the newcomer from the other day, bringing up the same issues we had zero answers for, but I tuned him out. My attention was focused on the one person I desperately yearned for and who denied me access.
Calista.
Mergle’s voice broke through my reverie. “Within the same day, their shell withers, and their memories are sorely construed within mere moments.”
The realm was fading at a faster pace, sipping harder on the life source of newcomers the moment they stepped foot in the labyrinth. For a time, I thought my magic was replenishing itself, like I was slowly healing from an almost fatal wound. And maybe it had. But with more and more fae crossing over, there was more sustenance for the realm to feed. Their entrance helped in the overall scheme. Our army grew, and old ones were relieved from feeding the realm for a moment, extending their life and reserving energy for what and when we did not know. But it was coming, and it was coming swiftly, if the influx of newcomers was our basis to judge by. Whomever was responsible for keeping the realm operational must have discovered something was amiss. Or someone.
I was that someone. Calista’s pendant that something.
Pensive, I waited for her to disappear and that delicious hum in my veins to vanish only to reach out through the stone so I could feel her again. But this time, it didn’t. The thrum built to a steady vibration, zinging through to the tips of my extremities and back again in an infinite loop. She was so close, I could taste her. Her frustration and helplessness coated my tongue and filled me. I wanted nothing more than to bring what ailed her to a crushing end. If only she would pick up the stone and make a wish. I could ease her troubles, and she would ease mine.
“Astaroth, are you listening to what I’m saying?”
I held my hand up to shush Mergle. It didn’t matter what he was saying. If we didn’t retrieve Calista and the stone soon, none of this would matter because we wouldn’t exist anymore. The realm would consume itself in its voracious hunger to feed. I needed to return my power so we would be prepared for what awaited us.
The slight beat of her heart told me this may be our only chance. Calista may not come this close again for a while. If I could but nudge her, tempt her to rely on me, then I could pull her over when I was ready. And we were almost ready.
I grabbed Mergle and blipped to my throne room. Torches fired to life around the room upon my entrance. He swayed when he dropped to his feet, and I took a seat on my throne. One of the mirrors lining the walls appeared in front of me, and Calista took shape within it, curled at the foot of her childhood bed.
Mergle rushed to my side. “Calista—” he began excitedly.
With a pinch of my fingers, his lips sealed shut, and he looked at me in shock as he touched his mouth unable to open it. Her head popped up at the sound of Mergle’s voice. I soaked up her beautiful, exhausted face for the first time in years as she looked around. What had she been doing to become so weary?
I reached out to connect with the stone and found it tucked within the wall. I couldn’t tempt her with it hidden away. Forming small portals, I collected the stone from inside the wall and placed it on the floor in front of her, then waited. When she took the bait, the vibrations reached a crescendo that rattled every fiber of my tapestry. Her heart raced, and her emotions spilled over.
I reveled in it.
“She took the necklace,” I breathed, relief and triumph exuded from me.
I retrieved the book hidden beneath my throne and caressed the cover. This held all of Calista’s wishes. I ran a fingertip along the roughened paper. Words appeared in a magical flourish, documenting her wish beneath the last one: the day she removed the necklace, hiding it away and nearly severing my connection to her. I closed the book and returned it to the magic drawer, sealing it away from prying eyes.
A muffled sound drew my attention, and I laughed. I waved my hand in the air, and Mergle’s lips opened. He gasped for breath and grumbled about silence being the death of him. Before he could say anything else, I felt it. A fissure on the peripheral of my magic. Another fae was entering the realm.
I spun a portal and appeared at the entrance to the labyrinth, running over the parched, sandy dirt. Ahead of me, the space ripped open as if a razor-sharp talon tore through the air itself. My magic responded in kind, spurring me to reach it and join it on the other side. A being with golden hair fell through the opening onto their knees. I leapt over them as they hit the ground, launching myself into the undulating blue waves of energy. Like always, it rejected me and repelled me backward. I shot through the air, arms and legs windmilling to right myself, and slammed onto the unforgiving ground. A poof of dirt shot up around my prone form and covered me in the grainy dust. I raised my head in time to see the portal zip closed. The top met the bottom in the middle and spun in a glorious facet of brilliance. With a pop that resonated deep inside me, the pressure changed, and it disappeared.
A curse formed on my lips, and I let my head fall back. Twilight skies embraced us from horizon to horizon. Shadows hung everywhere as if they were their own entity. Some of them were. For the millionth time, I wondered what my homeland looked like. Were their skies the brilliant blue of their portals? The Earth had beautiful blue skies like that. Darkness would soon be upon us. We needed to get them to shelter before the shadows and beasts came out to play. They enjoyed fresh blood.
Frantic, his wide, mossy green eyes flicked between me and the others as I stood to my full height. Pure terror radiated from him as he took in all of my seven feet. It brought me a mixture of satisfaction and sorrow. I straightened my clothing, brushed the dust away, and fixed my long, grayish hair back in its tie. I could fix it with a thought, but I wanted to offer him this moment—a kindness that he may not receive once he settles in here. The goblins remained still as I put on my show. The arrival of each new fae was a lesson learned. Some of the lessons were harder than others. This fae was skittish and already looking for a place to hide.
I relaxed my hands at my sides as my gaze traveled around the outer wall of the labyrinth and beyond. “Do not fear. You are safe here within my realm.”
My realm. I almost laughed. I claimed it only because it claimed me. The magic and energy within this place tied with my own when I was babe. Very little occurred here that I didn’t know about or could feel.
“Realm?” he stuttered. He studied the goblins around him before taking in my appearance. I could see him comparing us, weighing what he could see against what he didn’t know. “I thought it was a prison.”
I chuckled. It wasn’t funny though. “Anything can be a prison. Even freedom. It’s all an illusion.” I cocked my head to the side. “Who are you?”
His brow crinkled as he thought about what I said. “Niall.”
The effects of the realm were taking hold. I needed answers whether he was ready to give them or not. “What judgment do you carry, Niall?”
The lines deepened around his eyes. “Lies,” he whispered. His fingers dug into the fabric of his marred tunic; no doubt stained with his blood. “I carry the lies of others.” He began to grow frantic again and scurried to me on hands and knees. Dirt smears covered the fabric as he pulled on my trouser legs. “I didn’t do what they claimed! I would never go against our queen. Please believe me.”
I laid a gloved hand on his head, the golden strands of his hair a bit duller than they were when he arrived. The realm was hungrier, delving on insatiable. It used to take time to suck the magic from newcomers. Mergle was right. It was happening immediately. Like an unraveled string being tugged, the magic and our life sources were losing strength. I focused on the energy and could feel it being syphoned away from us.
He calmed as I said, “I believe you.”
“You’ll… you’ll send me back?”
That wasn’t the first time an exile had asked me that. I squatted down to eye level and gripped his shoulder. “I wish I could. But even I cannot go back.”
Niall jerked from my hold and sat back on his heels. Through gritted teeth he said, “You are as evil as they say you are.”
I jerked back as if he assaulted me. That was the first time any of the exiles knew who I was when they were sent over. A pixie must have made it through a barrier. After years of nothing, we finally have something. “I am evil?”
His chin jutted out, either in bravado or defiance. I would say the former with the shudder he fought to hide. No one was ignorant enough to stand against me once they felt my power hungrily lick against them.
“I am not responsible for you being here. Your queen is.” Niall’s focus slipped off somewhere past me. I gave his cheek a rough pat. The skin turned pink and warmed as I regained his attention. “How does your queen know about me?”
Niall’s eyes flicked again.
I pursed my lips. “What catches his attention, Lark?”
“The lamps, sire.” The wary redcap stared off in the same direction. His bloody axe rested on his shoulder. “They are flickering.”
Still squatted, I turned to the side on the balls of my feet. The lamps reminded me of the lightning bugs in the human realm, and how children bottled them up for fun and then left them to die. Only mine were pixies, and my magic kept them alive. They would live eternally in their solitary glass prisons, forced to endure every pang of hunger and driven mad by their sleeplessness.
Their lights dimmed and brightened at a furious rate. I had never seen this before. I looked at Niall over my shoulder. The resolve in his stare sent a jolt of warning through me.
Did I miss something? Was there something about him that I couldn’t sense? I scrutinized him. “Why are you truly here?” I twisted my wrist and opened my hand palm up in his face. One of the glass orbs appeared within my grip. The light dimmed and the pixie plastered itself against the sphere to get closer to him.
Niall leaned toward it, features etched in a sorrowful grimace as he took in its eternal suffering. Pain radiated from him. “Is this what you want?”
“I beg of you, let it go,” his voice cracked. “I’ll do anything.”
I turned the ball in my hand. The sickly pixie dimmed under my questioning stare and refused to look at me. “What would I gain by doing so?” I looked back at him. “What do you gain?”
His wide eyes met mine. “I–I….”
“Ah, of course. You gain nothing.” The fear wafting off him made me chuckle. “You are nothing. Not to your queen. And yet you lay your life at my feet and beg me to set it free. To what end?” When he didn’t speak, I roared, “To what end, Niall?”
“Your end… master.”
I rose to my feet. The goblins hissed and laughed at the trembling man cowered before me. I didn’t like what I was about to do, but I would do it all the same.
“I am the master of none.”
The bulb dropped to the ground in front of his resting knees, shattering on impact. A cry tore from his throat as I crushed the pixie beneath my boot.
“FRAAAAAAACK!” I roared. The closest thing to me launched across the room and slammed into the stone wall. Then another, and another. None of it tempered my rage.
I dropped down onto a chair and ran my hands over my head, smoothing back the strands that freed themselves as I fought for control. No answer was an answer. That’s what I grew to believe. Mergle clung to a hope I could neither see nor feel. They all did. They believed the truth would be revealed, and when it did, we needed to be ready. I wasn’t entirely sure what the information Niall gave us meant yet or where it fit in the puzzle. It would’ve been nice for it to reveal itself since it interrupted my reunion with Calista.
Closing my eyes, I unfurled my magic and searched for the stone, releasing a breath of relief when I felt her through it. She still had it. I manifested the mirror I viewed the human realm through and imagined her face. The surface blurred for a moment, and then she appeared. Pink tinged her cheeks as she rushed around a humble space. She swiped her strangely colored hair out of her face and stared at something. Little lines deepened between her brows as she focused.
“Your Highness.”
I signaled Mergle to enter as I watched her and coaxed my anger to cool. He ignored the mess from my tantrum and stopped next to my chair. He didn’t dare speak first for fear of having his lips sealed again.
“I grow tired of this, Mergle.”
“As do the rest of us.”
I steepled my fingers and rested my chin on my thumbs. My nose rubbed against my fingers as I ran through all the facts in my mind. “He is the tenth fae to be exiled this year.”
“Eleven, if you include the one severed in half by the closing portal.”
I raised a brow at the twitch of his dark, leathery lips and humphed. “True.”
He barely clasped his hands behind his barreled middle and angled toward me. “It appears we are one step closer though.”
“How do you suppose they know about me?”
Mergle sighed and tilted his head back. His response was a touch strained. “Yet another question to add to the list.”
Indeed, it was. One of many. While we thought, we watched Calista go about her life without realizing she had voyeurs. It was a rare occasion when I allowed anyone else to view her with me. I never knew what she would be doing… or who she would be doing it with. My teeth ground together. I didn’t miss seeing those occasions when the stone was in her possession.
I’ve lived vicariously through this mirror for years. Humans are confusing, temperamental, and simple creatures, but not so simple they can’t sense magic. Fascinating really. There were times when Calista sensed she wasn’t alone, even when she was. This was one of those times. She spun in a circle and stopped when she faced us. Her breath paused as if looking at me took it away. One day.
Mergle interrupted my thoughts. “You don’t have to stay here,” he said, matter of fact. Everything he said and did was always matter of fact. He never allowed his opinions to betray his loyalty to me. But this….
My gaze flicked toward him. He stood strong and steady for being three foot tall. “Where else would I go?”
He stared at Calista, and my greedy gaze latched onto her. “Go to her.”
The thought had crossed my mind thousands of times. Every time she made a wish—well, used to make one. Every time she cried. My fingers dug into the arms of the chair. Every time she laid with a man. I erased the thought before I destroyed something else. I could go to her, but at a cost. “You would die. All of you.”
And we didn’t know what would happen to me if I tried to leave forever.
“You owe us nothing.”
“Some would say otherwise.” The sideways glare he shot amused me. “And their queen?”
Mergle shrugged. “Frack her.”
I belted out a laugh, but the smile never formed with it. I could never leave this place, not for any extended length of time. My absence took its toll on the others, the realm, and myself when I returned. I couldn’t leave at all now with her holding half my power. I kept the realm’s hunger at bay for the time being. It would chew them up and spit them out if I left to play.
“Will you take her tonight?”
That question spun circles in my brain. If there were no repercussions, I would reach through and drag her over right now, if only to end my own suffering. No, if I could, I would ease her back in. Let her prepare for this and say her goodbyes. That was my original plan. Mergle was right, though. It needed to happen quickly and soon. There wasn’t time to acclimate her, and she would need protection.
His attention went back to the mirror. I traced the contours of her face before traveling down her body. The girl most definitely grew into a woman over the years.
“It is time to collect her debt and return my power reservoir.”
Mergle’s body trembled with blood lust as his hard stare penetrated mine. “Prepare for war.”
I nodded. “There’s one more thing I need to do first.”