Chapter Fifty-One
Kade
Kade fought sleep as he tossed and turned on his bed role, but Circe’s mind control wrapped its thorny vines around his conscious and dragged him back to the wasteland.
A raven sat atop Tenebris’s scythe. The dark witch was nowhere to be found as the bird pecked at the blade, ting, ting, ting, echoing across Kade’s mind. It pinned Kade in place with one large menacing eye at the center of its head.
It cawed.
Wake up.
Evelyn’s gentle whisper caressed his mind. His insides twisted into knots. They’d not spoken since their training session. Both of them needed distance and a moment to breathe, but the more unsaid words that peppered the air, the more anxious Kade became.
They didn’t have time to not work it out, and Kade wondered if his crippling anxiety led him to the wasteland.
She showed you your greatest fear . . . that’s what she does, Kade.
He let Circe in. As the days grew nearer to Evelyn’s last, and he grappled with a power he feared, his guard had dropped.
His weary mind had no defenses, not when his heart ached for his love and body raged to do something.
All his energy was being dumped into putting one foot in front of the other, but the more he walked through the wasteland, the more real it became.
Doubt strangled Kade’s lungs. Was this a fear or the future?
“That is a fair question, my friend.” Tenebris appeared at his side. He walked in step with him, bare feet and too-long toe nails digging into the ash-covered ground.
“You’re not my friend,” Kade growled.
Moons, he was talking to a hallucination now. Engaging with him. Taking part in Circe’s sick mind games.
Kade should shift, outrun this nightmare in his werewolf form—
His wolf didn’t answer. No howl. No beastly energy. No pacing inside his blood. Icy panic shot through his veins, and Kade reached and reached and reached for his shifting magic, to no avail. He found himself hollow like the expansive wasteland around him.
“How is she reaching my mind from afar?” he growled.
Tenebris hummed. “Once darkness has been let in, it is so easy to invite us back.”
“I didn’t let any of you in,” he hissed.
“What about the time you attacked Todd?” Tenebris asked, hands clasped ahead of him.
Kade stumbled. “I didn’t attack—”
“You were trying to protect Evelyn, but he was in your way, so your instinct took over, and you tried to get rid of him.”
“That isn’t true!” Kade roared.
Tenebris didn’t even flinch from his anger.
“You know what I find interesting, your power arose in a land seeping in dark magic. Ah, you thought it surfaced because you met her.” Tenebris tsked his tongue, disappointment flashing across his face.
“Torren is where the One began, and that day at the docks, darkness filtered on the wind. You smelled their sweetness, and I believe it awakened what has lived in you since you took your first breath.”
How, in the stars above, did a dark witch locked in the Tùir know these details? It’s in your mind, Kade realized. His memories lived here, of course Circe’s hallucination pointed to the facts embedded into him.
“This isn’t real. You aren’t real. Get the fuck out of my mind!” Kade roared to the sky, praying to the Moon God to help him against Circe.
The raven flew towards them, and Tenebris winced. Thunder rumbled, and the hold on Kade’s mind tightened. He buckled to his knees, driving his hands through his hair as pain threatened to split his head open.
Tenebris stood close, looming over him like a demon, not a witch.
“Is it so hard to admit the possibility of which side you belong? You left your precious mountains behind, abandoned your friends, blew up a historic witches’ building, hurt the woman you love.
You’re even working with those touched by the curse—vampyrs. ”
“Not all vampyrs are evil,” Kade breathed, but each wrongdoing Tenebris mentioned had slashed across his skin like a knife’s cut.
“Once darkness has touched another, it blooms, Kade. There is no outrunning evil.” Tenebris threw out his hand and the wasteland rippled from gray to sprawling green. The clouds above faded, the fiery sun sucking them from existence. Spring sweetened the air. Honeysuckle, grass, vanilla, and cedar—
Kade whirled, and atop a hill, two figures stood hand in hand. Their faces and details were blurred and faded like fuzzy lines, like they’d been drawn with oil pastels—one had golden hair long and reaching his shoulders, and the other, obsidian hair braided to the side. Crowns sat atop their heads.
A king and queen will emerge . . .
“See,” Tenebris exclaimed. “Even a bit of truth has been weaved into the lies witches have foretold. There is no escaping the future. You’re meant to rule this land, Kade. Not save it.”
The Drengr Village built itself back up, Nūa too, brick by brick. A new crest tangled from banners, a silver wolf against a black velvet, fangs dripping with blood.
Wake up, Evelyn whispered, and at the beautiful, soul-rousing sound, Kade’s wolf finally surfaced. It howled at the scene around them, baring its canines.
Denying. Fighting. Rebelling against the notion.
“No,” Kade bit out.
He rose on steady legs and grabbed Tenebris by the throat. “I am not darkness.”
Tenebris tipped his head back and laughed. The clouds flew back across the sky. Grass died under Kade’s boots. Ash blew the image of him and Evelyn away, the pastel colors swirling into black whisps.
“Let us show you a much more frightening future if you don’t accept your place amongst us, Kade Drengr, Son of Darkness.”
Tenebris vanished, and inky shadows slipped through Kade’s fingers. The sudden loss of weight in his grasp had Kade stumbling forward and landing face-first into the dirt—no, not dirt.
Rotting flesh.
Kade had fallen into a pile of dead bodies. He tried to regain his balance, to crawl his way out of the heavy, stiff limbs and putrid stench—
“No!” Kade scrambled back, jolting to his feet.
He wretched into the ash, his heart shattering. Yen’s lifeless eyes stared up at him, resting atop Bétar’s chest. His friend was palish blue. Unmoving, bloodied. Dead. Todd’s strong, tattooed arm reached out beneath Yen and Bétar, fingers still reaching for his bloodied weapon.
Moons, what sort of hel was this?
The ash shifted direction, winds whirling across the wasteland.
“Kade.”
Ahead, the ghosts of his friends stood side by side.
His blue power dotted their injuries. Yen’s bloodied head, Bétar’s gaping chest where his heart should’ve been, and Todd, the wound he’d given him previously reopened and gushing.
His brothers, Eldrick and Lorkan, stood at the end with their stares vacant and empty.
All five of them talked at once. You are the One’s son.
Kade covered his ears, an all-consuming horror taking hold. What if this wasn’t a hallucination? What if it was real? The voices dug their way into his mind, and they bounced off his skull. There was no way to escape them, and he didn’t have the power to wake up.
“Kade,” someone shouted.
“My son,” another hissed.
“Com . . . mander,” a painful choke came from behind.
His eyes sprang open, and he found his team no longer dead, but on the brink of it.
“Yen!” Kade rushed to her, dropping to his knees. Blood trailed down her temple, a gash festering with his blue magic. Kade, without a second thought, pushed the body laying limp over hers.
Bétar groaned, eyelids flickering. “Aye, it’ll be alright soon.”
“No!” A cry cracked out of Kade.
“K-a-de.” Yennifer’s plea came out broken, but it didn’t compare the crack cementing in Kade’s chest. “You did this.” The blood coating her words made the hiss all that much worse, all that much deeper of a cut across Kade’s soul. “It was you who brought the darkness.”
“No—”
His name. In that voice. Full of such anguish. Kade spun wildly. Searching for her.
Searching for Evelyn.
She cried out again and again, each one more desperate than the last. Kade tried to grasp his wits, tried to slow his racing heart, tried and tried to grasp some sense of calm.
He turned back to Yen and stilled, his heart skipping a beat and dropping like a stone to his gut.
She was gone. The mounds of bodies had vanished with her.
“Kade!”
“Evelyn!” Kade roared, rising to his feet and searching, running, sprinting in the direction her voice came from the loudest. But it echoed, bouncing off the walls of this wretched place.
“Kade.” The last plea came out a whisper, and Kade snapped his gaze downward.
Something in Kade fractured. His heart, his chest, his entire being. Kade couldn’t be sure. The pain was blinding, the tear running through him so violent, he lost his knees and collapsed.
The moan he released wasn’t of mortal or of this world.
Evelyn was dying, her entire body scorched and still.
She lay at the center of a concaved indent in the ground, like the aftereffect of a powerful boom.
Smoke rose from the still-hot ground, and her silvery blue eyes never left his.
Orange embers didn’t dot her burns, but blue, tantalizing sparks.
Stars above, he’d done this. She shined with his power. He’d hurt her.
Killed her.
His mate, his love, the one person who mattered most in the world.
“No, no, no.” Kade’s words were frantic, desperate—the mumblings of a broken man.
“I couldn’t stop you.” Tears fell down her beautiful face.
“I’m so sorry, Evelyn. I love you, please—”
She snapped up, like her body was a puppet and her limbs were pulled by strings. She grabbed a fistful of his shirt and dragged him eye level.
“You’re wrong,” she rasped. “We’re all wrong. You’re her son, Kade.”
A thousand hands gripped him from behind.
They belonged all to the same people—Eldrick, Lorkan, Bétar, Yennifer, and Todd.
Dozens of those he loved. Lifeless, but moving.
Tinged blue with death. Dragging him farther and farther away as blood spilled from Evelyn’s lips, creating a river of red and heartbreak.
Kade lurched awake with the sight of his dead mate tattooed on the back of his eyelids. Coated in sweat, his pants and blanket clung to him as he shook with the horrors of his mind.
“Hey.” Evelyn sat up, tiredness rimming her eyes, and rested a hand on his cheek. He didn’t know he’d shed tears of his own until Evelyn brushed them from his cheek.
“You’re alright, you’re safe. We’re safe.”
Kade shook his head, heart racing, he thought it might burst from his chest. He couldn’t find the right words, not without admitting the atrocities he’d committed and seen.
She studied him, blue eyes flashing with pain of her own as she took him in. “Talk to me, Kade. Don’t shut me out, not now.”
Kade wavered. How much of the truth did he divulge?
It was only them. Earlier that night, tired and shaken from Circe’s attack, they’d found a tavern with available rooms in the mage village near the Sun Temple. The others had retired to their own rooms, leaving Kade and Evelyn alone.
She waited, sitting in the silence with him, and her unbending silver gaze encouraged him to be honest, creating this sense he could tell her anything, no matter how horrific it was.
“Circe still has control over my mind. She’s shown me a vision, a wasteland that I create with my power and killing everyone I love, including you.”
“Kade . . .” Tears laced her words, and she rested her forehead against his. “What do you need? In this moment, right now. How can I help you?”
“Your heartbeat,” he whispered. “I need to hear it. I need to hear that you’re alive.”
She nodded, urgent understanding bleeding into her sad smile. “Okay.”
Evelyn dragged Kade into her arms, and they fell back onto the bedroll as he lay his ear flush against her sternum.
Thump, thump, thump. The sound calmed his own heart.
Evelyn simply held him, but the rawness of this moment, the vulnerability she gave him had him wrapping his arms around her, not daring to let her go.
He breathed in her vanilla cedar scent, counted her heart rate, evened his breathing to match her pulse.
He was with Evelyn. She was alive.
“I’m alright. You’re alright,” she whispered. “We’re together.”
“This is real?” His words muffled into her tunic. He wasn’t ready to let go, to be away from her, which made the days leading up to their agonizing ordeal all the more frightening.
“Yes, love.” Evelyn combed her fingers through his hair, brushing it back and drawing faint circles over his temple. “Whatever Circe showed you, it isn’t real. This is real. We’re real. ”
“But it felt real, Ev,” he whispered. “I—”
He broke off, biting the words back. The scent of death remained in his nose, the sights of his dead friends. Evelyn’s hold kept him from retching.
“It’s okay to not be okay,” Evelyn whispered.
Kade swallowed, remembering the words he had told her. The truth was, he wasn’t okay, maddened with worry about who and what he was.
“My power is chaos, and it makes me question everything. What if . . . What I’m not the Son of the God? What if this magic is from the Blood Goddess?”
“What if it is?” Evelyn asked, expression unfazed.
Kade blinked, trying to read whatever swam in her eyes. There was nothing. No judgment. No fear. No worry. “But then this power—”
“Belongs to you, not her.” Evelyn shook her head. “Belle said something the other day. Both her and Ingrid have magic. It isn’t light or dark that makes them different, but what they choose to do with their power.”
“That makes it all sound so simple,” he whispered.
Evelyn steadied her gaze and glided her hand over his heart and palmed his chest. “I know your heart, Kade. It is kind. That’s what matters.”
Kade ran his thumb over her pinched brow, smoothing the worry from her features. “How did you get rid of Circe’s mind control?”
Evelyn sighed, staring off into the distance. “I didn’t have nightmares like you, but when I believed in myself, not my flame or title, but me alone, her words vanished from my thoughts.”
Kade considered Evelyn’s words. “But I hate this power, Evelyn. It’s like a poison running through my veins.”
“Then perhaps you’re not ready to master it or fight Circe’s visions until you’ve accepted it.”
Yet, how could Kade accept everything else but this?
He accepted his love for Evelyn to be real, that their bond was good and right.
That his place in this world was as a protector and third born.
If only he could accept the immense power in his veins, but he feared he’d never accept what it was, until he knew the truth.
Evelyn and Kade held each other and spoke of their fears and dreams late into the night. They didn’t fall back asleep. Their time was slipping away like the sands whipped up and carried away in the desert breeze, and Kade cherished Evelyn’s voice, listened to her words and heartbeat and held her.
For tomorrow, they ventured to the Otherworld.