Chapter 59 Childhood Memories
Childhood Memories
Asterious
“If you come to regret this, Asterious, don’t blame me.
” Sinevia crooned. “The truth has been hidden from you for so long. But Father did always love hiding things.” She stepped near the prince, whispering unknown words into his ear with a chilling softness in her voice.
A void of black shrouded Asterious’ vision, leaving nothing before him but empty, unending darkness.
“Asterious!” Caramyn’s voice cut through the smog in his mind like chiming bells in a dream. Blinded, he called for her.
“She’s gone, Brother. You are alone. Entirely alone. To finally face the truth. Your truth.”
Asterious shifted and wavered, struggling to find his footing in a world that did not bend to reason or laws of nature.
The space around him softened, dissolving into a vision woven from the mist of his deepest memories.
Shapes stirred within it, glowing faintly like embers in the dark, their outlines slowly gathering form until figures long buried in the past stood before him once more, in the great throne room of Blackwynd Court.
He was brought before the King, his wounds fully healed, but now a weight in his young heart and a terrifying feeling that was gnawing its way outward.
“He survived your trial,” his mother said proudly. “Now make him your heir.”
Daemar sat back in his throne, his eyes wide with astonishment for a brief second or two, and then unreadable. “How can this be, Elysia? Unless something unholy has been involved. Something...magic.” The King stood to his feet.
Elysia laid a hand on Asterious’ shoulder. “Regardless of how, he is still your son.”
A long silence darkened the air before Daemar finally spoke. “I will not claim a son who is tainted with magic. Prove to me that he healed of his own capability, and I will consider it.”
“No,” Asterious spoke, his legs trembling as he balled up his fingers into fists. “You won’t. You won’t do it, just as you won’t stop lying to my mother, and giving her hope just to take it away. You will never accept me.”
“Asterious, don’t say anything. Be quiet, my love.” Elysia leaned down to whisper her nervous warnings into his ear. But it was too late. The King’s guards were moving already poised to seize them.
Daemar snapped his fingers. “Arrest them both. For treason by use of magic for unlawful purposes.”
The guards closed in, Elysia locking her arms around her son protectively as she screamed at the King for mercy. “You cannot prove anything! Do not harm my son!”
Daemar watched from his throne, unmoved, as a guard ripped Asterious from his mother’s grip.
He fought them, kicking and punching, but when a guard struck his mother across the face with the edge of his knuckles, something greater than rage took hold of him.
A bloodthirst, a fury like nothing else he’d ever felt.
And then he was tearing open a guard with his claws, pulling out his innards with fangs, the acrid tang of blood in his mouth.
The guards weren’t strong enough to stop him, no matter how many of them swarmed and stabbed him.
And the more they tried, the stronger he grew, feeding the darkness hungering within him as he ripped apart each one.
He destroyed guard after guard as the King was ushered away out of the room.
His mother’s screams filled the air, horrified as she ran to him, clinging to the purest, wildest hope that she could stop him.
She called his name, pleading through a voice shattered by tears and terror.
“Asterious!” She gripped the fur on his shoulder from behind, begging, crying.
“I’m sorry, my son! This is my fault! Asterious, please, you must stop! ”
But in his unleashing, he whirled around and swiped her with his great claws, flinging her into a column that killed her instantly.
She lay there, bleeding from where her head had met the column’s edge, and the scent of her blood filled his nostrils among the rest. More guards came, and he killed them, too.
Until he finally collapsed from exhaustion—from the toll the Blackheart’s transformation had taken on his body—only to awaken wounded, with no memory of what happened except the dried blood beneath his fingernails, chained to the dungeon floor where he would spend the next fifteen years.
Something gave way and collapsed within Asterious. A suffocating emptiness in his chest that swallowed him whole, drawing breath from his lungs and dragging him under. He felt cold, and afraid, and weak. Nothing could have prepared him to see what he’d just been shown.
He wanted so fiercely to believe it was a lie—an illusion sent to rip open his deepest wounds—but he knew deep down that it was the truth he’d been avoiding all along.
His greatest fear had been made real and undeniable from this point forward, seared into his mind forever.
He would forever carry the pain, the shame, the guilt, and the grief of the horrifying truth that he had killed his own mother.
“He...he told me he’d imprisoned her somewhere far away…” Asterious’ croaked out each word, through tears that ached as they fell.
“And he had no intention of ever telling you the truth, just as he had no intention of ever making you his heir.” Sinevia’s words were sharp, but she stopped, and a glimpse of that little girl that used to visit him in the cell broke through for a breath or two.
“I saw them take you out of that room. That was the first time I learned you existed.” She added, almost gently, almost like she cared.
He expected her to laugh at him, to meet his pain with sneers and taunts.
But she only watched the tears he shed roll gently down the curve of his cheek.
And something in her eyes shifted, like she longed to say something.
Something softened, unfocused, as though she gazed at him through a memory instead of the broken man that stood before her.
For a mere moment, her lips parted, words clearly there on the edge of being spoken.
He looked at her, hoping, praying she would say something that would give him any semblance of hope his sister was still there.
But she only tightened her jaw and looked away. And that quiet, intentional restraint cut more deeply than any cruel words she could’ve said.
He would forever carry the pain, the shame, the guilt, and the grief of the truth that he had killed his own mother.
It would never soften, never loosen its hold on his heart.
It would walk beside him in every choice he made, a hollow ache he could neither outrun nor forget.
But he would not let it control him another day.
And then, just as he expected to look away to see Caramyn standing beside him in the glade, he was no longer at the Veil’s glade, or even in the Woods. He was nowhere, and yet somewhere all at once—a void of nothingness, then back in the cell where his father imprisoned him all those years.
The revelation settled deep into his bones—he was still trapped in Sinevia’s visions, locked within his own buried memories. And he could not find the way out.