Chapter 28
Sleep was a thing of the past. A foreign notion and a dream itself.
Maeve.
Thunder crackled far across The Black Deep, always sounding like his approach. The rumbling of a distant footstep, always angry. Always seeking pain. Always seeking to break her further.
It banged louder and louder. He was coming closer and closer.
Down the hall.
Maeve.
He was already here. He’d made his way across the Black Deep to finally put an end to her. To break the crystalized Magic protecting Maxius and fulfill the prophecy.
Maeve.
Broad, warm hands grabbed her shoulders.
But Mal’s hands were cold and slender. Not like these. He had surely sent another to claim her. To break her like he’d broken Zimsy—
“Maeve!”
She bolted up with a scream. Her breathing was too rapid and too strained to see clearly.
She gripped at her chest, her heart slamming against her bones.
The room spun, shapes and colors twisting in and out of focus.
Electric Magic ran down her arm, collecting at her palm and firing out of her fingers in sporadic bursts of lightning.
“Breathe,” said the voice again.
She couldn’t. Her heartbeat hammered out of time. Energy surged through her. She squeezed her eyes shut just as the loud, high-pitched sound of glass shattering boomed.
Those unfamiliar hands moved to her face, warmth spreading through her shaking body.
“Breathe,” he said again, ignoring her destruction.
She sucked in sharply, the warm air sedating the electric force running through her. Another breath and she opened her eyes.
Reeve kneeled in her bed, his hair down, framing his face.
“Good,” he said lowly. “Keep breathing.”
Maeve nodded in his hands.
“You’re not in danger,” he hummed.
Thunder rolled in the distance, and Maeve’s breathing kicked, accelerating quickly. Blue lightning danced at her fingertips. He gripped her face, forcing her eyes back to his. His stunning firelight eyes.
“No,” he growled this time. A primal command that caused every bit of her to still. “You are not in any danger,” he repeated.
She nodded again, her rigid spine relaxing vertebra by vertebra beneath his attention. Her eyes slid down the Vexkari marking the side of his face and neck. The scarred Magic pulsed with power she’d never felt, but it boasted itself as something ancient. Something unlike Reeve.
Her eyes dipped lower to his shirtless chest, and the Vexkari markings that were carved into his skin there, too.
Healed in solid-black color, like tattoos.
Her eyes trailed lower, to the way his loose-fitting pants hung low on his hips.
The dark room shadowed his muscles and darkened his tan skin.
It was enough of a distraction that her panic faded.
His fingers moved along the back of her head, spreading in and out. Her eyes fluttered shut immediately at the motion. Her head reeled back, instinctively begging for more.
A satisfied and throaty chuckle hummed in the space between them. “Good, kitten.”
He lowered her back onto her pillows and ran his fingers freely across her hair, massaging into her scalp. Reeve’s Magic gracefully resonated across her entire body like a warm blanket. She took one last deep breath, and the smell of earth and smoke drifted her to a silent and dreamless sleep.
Hazy morning sunlight poured into her room. The light-blue-toned stained-glass shot beams of light across the pale floors. She was fully submerged in layers of fluffy sheets. It was completely silent in her mind.
She waited for Mal’s voice to fill her head.
Nothing.
She waited another moment, swallowing hard in anticipation, but Mal’s voice never called to her.
She sat up quickly, remembering the night. Reeve was gone.
But the feeling of his hands on her face lingered, infuriatingly so, like small, warm beads of Magic.
She was certain she remembered glass shattering. The sound had been so deafening, it must have been all the windows that ran the length of her room. But they were back in place, and they hadn’t been that pale-blue color before.
The new windows drenched her room in soft jewel tones of blue, reminiscent of her room at Sinclair Estates. She held up her hand, examining the blue sapphire stone in the ring her father gave her and twisting her wrist to let it refract the morning light.
The lightning she produced, something she’d always assumed was part of her Dread Magic, had been triggered twice now when she was distressed. She looked back up at the new windows. She’d owe Reeve an apology for that.
Light was still fading every day as the darkness across The Black Deep grew. She slid from the bed and stretched, pushing down on how eager she felt to get to breakfast.
Reeve wasn’t there when she arrived in the small hall where they met for meals. She rounded the corner and stopped at the sight of the empty table. No tableware, no drinks or food. Maeve crossed the hall, her footsteps echoing off the crystal walls.
“Hello?” she called out hesitantly.
When no reply came, she ventured farther into the palace, walking in silence.
“Does no one live here?” she muttered, realizing that besides her chambers, the hall where Maxius lay, and eating her meals with Reeve, she hadn’t explored the palace at all. It was the size of a small city itself.
“Many once roamed these halls and called them home.”
Her shoulders jumped as she turned back quickly.
Eryx stood with his arms folded across his chest. He was dressed casually, and his long blonde hair was pulled back in a sleek ponytail behind his pointed ears.
“Why’s it so empty now?” she asked.
Eryx’s eyes narrowed.
“This was once the home of the Senshi.”
Maeve’s throat tightened.
“And now that they are no longer here, there is no longer a large staff of cooks, cleaners, maintenance, and so on. Not only did you successfully manage to run Aterna dry of its army, you also unemployed hundreds.”
Maeve sighed, remembering the last time she and Eryx fought. Now, in a rematch, she’d be at quite the disadvantage.
“Reeve wouldn’t let hundreds go without their pay,” she argued back.
Eryx shook his head, but didn’t deny she was right. “I’m just waiting for the moment this act of yours falters.”
She hated that those words burned. She hated even more that they were warranted. “Thinking so lowly of me?”
“It comes easy with a record like yours.”
Another justified blow.
If her Magic had once been fresh air in her lungs, she was choking. Anger, resentment, grief, and so many other things she didn’t want to name rolled through her with nowhere to go. No way to expel them.
“Where’s Reeve?” she asked, keeping her voice calm.
A new voice answered. “In his quarters.”
Maeve and Eryx looked to the side. Melione, or Mely as Reeve introduced her, stood leaning against a large arch.
“You’re late,” snapped Eryx.
And Maeve could see why. Mely’s skin was flushed with a sickly green color. The skin beneath her eyes was dark. She stood clutching herself as though she might topple over any moment.
She smiled, as best she could, at Maeve. “I’m alright,” she said. “I have an. . .affliction that makes times of war quite difficult when it's nearly on our doorstep.”
Maeve nodded. She remembered her.
“You can sense death,” said Maeve, more of a statement than anything else.
Eryx snorted. “If by sense it, you mean vomit and whine,” he remarked, and then walked past Mely.
Mely took a steadying breath and prepared to follow him.
“Reeve’s in the northern wing, past the sculpture garden,” said Mely.
“The sculpture garden?”
Mely turned back towards her. “Oh, you haven’t been? You must go, truly. Quite lovely.” Her voice was light and kind, despite the way she looked like she’d pass out at any second. “Follow the carvings in the crystal walls.” She pointed up.
Maeve looked up as Eryx’s annoyed call for Mely carried down the hall. Sure enough, beautiful carvings of directions sat high on the crystal walls. Maeve looked back at Mely.
“Thank you,” she said.
Mely nodded, already chasing after Eryx. “Gods, you’re in a foul mood!” hissed Mely as they disappeared.
Maeve followed the arrows, pointing up a long staircase, and passed the sculpture garden, just as Mely said.
It extended farther than she had imagined, wrapping out of sight.
Maeve continued for far too long down the open-air halls until she reached another large carving, high on the walls: NORTHERN WING.
Another wrapping staircase, and she felt him. The thread of Magic that connected them thrummed in warm delight as she approached the partially opened door at the end of the corridor.
Maeve rapped her knuckles against the smooth white door.
A sound of approval came from the other side. She pushed open the door. Despite its monumental and solid stone build, it slid gracefully across the floor with little force.
Reeve sat in a large chair by an empty fireplace with letters sprawled across a table before him. In his hand was a single roll of parchment. Maeve remained planted in the doorway. Reeve looked up.
“What’s wrong?” he asked with a partial shrug.
Maeve’s brows pulled together. She gestured behind herself as she said. “We are meant to eat breakfast together.”
Reeve laughed. “Maeve,” he said, amusement in his tone. “It’s after noon.”
Her head whipped to the open windows of his study. It didn’t look like midday.
“But,” she began, cutting her own thought short as she realized her mistake. Less and less sunlight meant the days themselves were changing.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” she asked, looking back at him.
Reeve leaned back in the chair, pure satisfaction radiating from him. “Because you were sleeping so soundly. I couldn’t bring myself to.”
Sleeping soundly with his help.
He tossed the parchment onto the table. “You’ve kept me up for weeks now, and I couldn’t take it any longer.”
Maeve chewed her lip, ignoring the reference to their bond. “Always so gracious.”