Chapter 29 #2
Azriel didn’t look away from his wife as he nodded. “You heard your Queen. Mark her title on her neck and do the same to me.”
The first prick of the needle in Ariadne’s neck shocked her system.
The second set it aflame. As the new priestess inked her skin with dhemon runes, beginning behind her ear and trailing the singular word down the left side of her throat, she never once looked away from her husband, who received the same on his right.
Somewhere that sounded far away, the lead priestess, Ilna, continued to read aloud the scripture that infused the ink with celestial power, tying them forever to the Underworld and Keon.
Binding them together forever.
The women worked fast, dipping their needles and puncturing their skin with practiced precision. Each drop of ink enlivened Ariadne—and not in the way she would have expected. Pain, perhaps, or even annoyance at needing to endure so much for the long word she had chosen.
No, it awakened something that Ariadne had never experienced before.
Something beyond the physical realm. Beyond her mortal comprehension.
Her limited vampiric mind. It vitalized a shadow deep in her soul that she had not even acknowledged until then, dragging from it a piece that molded to nothing she recognized in herself, but a fragment she could not have possibly seen or known existed outside her own consciousness.
It fit like a metal link attached to a chain that stretched out from Ariadne’s soul…and attached to Azriel’s.
All at once, the world fell out from beneath Ariadne as she gazed into her husband’s eyes. She hurtled through the universe as though seized by the very core of her existence and tossed amongst the stars. Only once she grasped that new chain did everything steady itself.
Was this what Azriel had felt all this time? As though he were tumbling through a vast emptiness with no tether to ground him?
By the way her husband gaped at her, no doubt feeling the same tug on his soul, she had to guess it to be true.
A clarity unlike anything Ariadne had ever seen shone from Azriel’s eyes at the same moment tears tumbled free from them, cascading down his cheeks in silver rivulets as he gasped for breath.
Azriel released her hand and clutched at his chest as though he could physically feel the new tether there—the stronger chain that now bound him to her…and her to him. Choking back a sob, he froze as the needle punctured his skin again, finalizing the tattoo that trailed runes down his neck.
“Did you…” His words trailed away as he heaved another breath. “Can you feel it?”
With her own tattoo a touch longer and not yet completed, Ariadne did not move as she whispered, “I can feel all of it.”
The priestess stepped back a moment later and placed the hollow needle on a tray meant for sterilizing.
No words were needed as Ariadne and Azriel collided in a fierce tangle of lips and tongues and clash of teeth.
Around them, the dhemons raised their voices in triumph even as the din seemed to be swallowed by the sudden thrum in her ears.
Everyone was raw and new and beautiful, yet when they pulled apart, Ariadne did not see her husband. In fact, everything seemed to have vanished around her. The dull cries from excited dhemons had been but the first hint that something was not quite as it should be.
Between one heartbeat and the next, Ariadne found herself standing, not beneath the Keonis Tree, but in a field of wheat that stretched far into the distance.
Though logically she knew the color should be gold and beige, all she could comprehend was a combination of grays and blacks and white.
A monochromatic landscape that did not make sense.
Not until a dhemon man who resembled Azriel stepped out of nowhere, as though he had slipped between space and time to stand before her. A dhemon man Ariadne recognized, though it took far too long to recall from where.
It was the dhemon who ran past her as she escaped Auhla alongside Madan—not Whelan, but the figure she later learned was Azazel the Crowe, the Dhemon King and her father’s greatest enemy.
Azriel’s father.
Red eyes swept over her, studying every inch, yet despite the strangeness of it all, Ariadne felt nothing but calm. Azazel took a step forward. Ariadne held her ground, staring back in awe at what she witnessed.
The dhemon’s lips moved, yet Ariadne heard nothing.
He reached out a dark blue hand, not to her, but to the empty space beside him.
Slender, pale white fingers wove between his and from them formed the arm, the body, and the face of a woman that Ariadne had only ever seen in paintings, her belly swollen from a second pregnancy.
She wore a white gown worthy of the Society, embroidered with roses of shining gold.
Mariana Caldwell curled herself close to Azazel, clinging to his arm as she smiled at Ariadne before gazing up at the dhemon with the same expression Azriel gave Ariadne. Again, her mouth moved, and no sound made its way through the still air.
“Where am I?” Ariadne asked, then snapped her mouth shut when her own voice failed to create an impact.
A flicker of movement had her pivoting toward the motion just to find herself face-to-face with Alek Nightingale.
Except it was not the Alek she knew from her childhood, nor the Lord Governor who had kept Emillie safe.
Though his face was the same, it held the same blue hue as every other dhemon, his black horns curving back behind his rounded ears.
His ruby gaze lit like a fire as he grinned down at her before a figure formed beside him, just as Mariana had with Azazel, in the same white and gold rose dress.
This time, it was a Caersan woman Ariadne could hardly recall.
Her face was familiar not from having met, but from an article in the papers describing the death of a Season’s Golden Rose.
Thick brown curls were braided back from her face, her pretty blue eyes shimmering with wonder as she looked at Ariadne before clutching at Alek’s shirt.
What was the name Emillie had said he uttered in his last moments?
Vi.
Viana Threshir.
“Gods,” Ariadne breathed, though the word never made sound.
Close behind Alek, another woman appeared.
This one had the same hooded eyes as him, her shining black hair pulled into a tight bun at the nape of her neck.
Again, Ariadne had seen her only once before: in a portrait lining the foyer of the Nightingale Estate in Waer Province.
Like the others, she wore a white gown with roses of gold.
A blue hand rested on her shoulder, prompting her to turn her attention up to the dhemon who appeared there—a man Ariadne had never seen, but he gazed down at the Caersan with such devotion, their love was obvious.
One by one, a dhemon appeared alongside a past Golden Rose.
While the white and gold remained, each Caersan’s dress changed to reflect their Season’s style.
High waists traded for tight corsets and wide skirts.
Yet each leaned into their respective dhemon—men and women alike—as though they were the very foundation to their existence in whatever realm in which Ariadne had found herself.
Turning, she took them all in as the understanding grew: Keon had never abandoned Myridia.
He had tried time and time again to end the war and bring peace to the Valley.
When the high priestesses of Laeton’s temple claimed that each of them had been chosen by Keon himself, Ariadne had a difficult time believing it to be anything but a madwoman’s false claim.
After all, what god would choose her to be the symbol of the Season?
As it turned out…Keon had done so every single year. Each and every Golden Rose was, in fact, chosen by the god. They merely never found peace with their dhemon companion. At least not until death, it seemed.
Then a dhemon woman swept into view before Ariadne, an infant in a plain dress with tiny specks for horns balanced carefully on her hip.
The woman swept her gaze over Ariadne slowly, her eyes snagging on the lone scar of Keon’s symbol.
A sadness crept across her face, and she took a step closer to press her fingertips to where Ehrun had pressed the branding iron against the skin.
Ariadne’s heart ached as she felt the woman’s longing for her husband, still alive and yet so broken.
“Rhana.” Once again, no sound came from Ariadne’s lips, and yet the woman smiled sadly at her. Ariadne looked at the baby—so small and fragile and precious. How could anyone have been so cruel? Her own father… Gods, she could not think on it. “Thavii.”
A blue hand formed like mist on Rhana’s shoulder, creeping up a scarred arm with rolled sleeves to bloom out across a chest up to a face that took the ache in Ariadne’s heart and broke it into a thousand pieces.
Three long scars stretched down Kall’s tattooed face, twisting his upper lip even as his mouth stretched into a wide smile.
His red eyes shone with silver, and he reached past his brother’s wife to cup Ariadne’s face.
For that long moment, she felt the weight of his touch, the warmth of his skin, and the pure elation at all she had accomplished to reach this point.
Behind him, the stunning pale green scales of Bindhe shifted, bringing her closer to them both.
“Kall, I’m so sorry,” Ariadne croaked as tears slipped free of her burning eyes. “I miss you so much. I wish I had told you before just how much you mean to me… I love you.”
Warmth akin to a hug spread out from Kall’s palm. His eyes glistened, and this time when he opened his mouth to speak, his voice—the voice she had begun to forget—was the only one she could hear: “Sabharni, ydhom.”