Chapter 39
None of this is real. None of this is real. None of this is real.
Marlena repeated the words to herself as the gods chattered in the background.
She was beginning to question if Vega’s soulless black eyes and spidering veins were part of the illusion too.
Arlet.
“Get out of my fucking head!” she screamed, spinning in circles as she caught one of the Vegas in the side of her head with a green fireball. “You fucking bitch!”
It hardly faltered, continuing to come at her.
“She’s not in your head,” another of the mirrored said, her voice echoing an unnatural hiss.
“But they are, aren’t they?” Arlet’s voice… Where is she?
Arlet knew about the gods. Marlena had let her inside her head for only a moment, and now she knew what was going on in there.
“A mistake. A mistake.”
“You’re a mistake.”
She didn’t know where the voices were coming from. It was too loud in her head.
“Can’t fight your own battles, Vega? Have to bring your friends into everything you do?” Marlena spat, her voice cracking at the end.
This time it was actually Vega’s voice. “You had to bring the gods to help you because you had no friends. I don’t see a difference.” The real Vega appeared like she had an affinity for invisibility… but Marlena knew better.
This was all Arlet—forcing an image that wasn’t actually there.
If Marlena were still the complimenting type, she’d tell Arlet what a magnificent power she was. But she wasn’t, and she could never be that version of herself again.
She’d given her up for this. For power.
“The difference is it makes me stronger.” Marlena threw a dagger, the blade nicking Vega’s cheek. “You rely on them. Use them as a crutch. You’ve never had it in you to beat me fair and square.”
A gust of her wind swelled from behind, like Jupiter himself watched her back at the same time she took hold of the fire burning in her core. Tendrils of her emerald flames crawled over the ground, turning to steam as the rain from Vega’s storm fell in fat, heavy drops.
“You’re wrong, sister.” The voice came from directly behind Marlena, the staccato rhythm giving away the fake’s identity.
Spinning with her leg, Marlena kicked through the illusion’s calf, but since it was nothing more than a mirage, it dwindled away for a breath and reappeared before the next.
Lightning lit the fake landscape around her. Skulls without eyes stared up from the ground, skin stuck to their hollowed cheeks. The snap of crunching bones under her boots sounded so real. How was Arlet doing this?
The unknown faces slowly started to morph into the dead Marlena wished she couldn’t recognize. Her parents, Lucius… Ivelle.
The sounds of battle from people Marlena could no longer see echoed in the distance, but all she could focus on was the screech of her own voice inside her head. The scream of a girl she’d locked away.
Ivelle might have been the last person Marlena truly cared about.
The distraction lasted only a few seconds, but that was all it took—one moment of hesitation, and Vega got her hand around Marlena’s wrist.
Panic flared—an emotion she hadn’t felt in years. The heat of her flames roared, warming her skin to the touch. It had always been the first to jump to Marlena’s defense.
The emerald glow of her favorite power bubbled, but it never made it to the surface to protect her.
The fluttering in the pit of her stomach quickly changed to a pain Marlena knew wasn’t her sister’s electricity. She was stuck in the middle where nothing but Vega’s power lived, unable to fight her off.
Marlena had been thrown inside the dungeons of her mind and left to rot while whatever power Vega now possessed ripped her apart like a reaper.
It was the same way she’d felt the first time when Vega stole Diana from her.
“What has she become?” one of the gods screeched as Marlena’s body burned like a fire she’d never felt before.
Not even when she’d been given Vulcan’s power during her summoning.
The realization of what Vega was doing slammed into Marlena like a pack of rabid dogs, shredding her to bits.
My fire.
She tried to fight, tried to scream, but nothing happened—nothing worked.
Marlena was powerless.
She’d given up everything she had for this… to be this.
All for the sister she cursed to become her undoing.
Marlena tried with everything she had to pull away, to regain some type of control, but nothing she or the gods did could stop Vega from draining what was left of the god of fire.
When Vega finally let go, silence fell around them.
Marlena’s eyes widened, her sister’s face mirroring her level of shock. Much to Marlena’s dismay, Vega rebounded quickly, and what she did as the cherry on top sent a blinding hot ball of rage through Marlena’s entire body.
It wasn’t the heat of her fire, no. My fire is gone… and it illuminated in Vega’s hands, burning as bright blue as their eyes—as bright blue as Vega’s lightning.
Her sister had stolen yet another piece of what Marlena deserved.
The illusion of death and Vega’s mirrored image faltered, flickering until the battlefield returned.
“Give it back.” The growl from Marlena’s chest surprised her. It wasn’t a voice of just her own—it was a mix of all the ones left inside her head.
She’d summoned twelve.
Ten remained.
“Give me my fire!” Marlena pounced, slicing out with the daggers she had left, jumping between the folds of Tolevarre to get there faster.
Vega tucked, rolling on the sodden ground below.
When she popped up behind Marlena, the fire she’d stolen raged up her arms until it fizzled to nothing but smoke.
“I didn’t even want your fire.” She laughed.
Vega fucking laughed in Marlena’s face. Her fury grew into something unrecognizable.
“I was aiming for your lightning.” Vega snapped both fingers, and the blue flames returned. “Oops.”
Marlena saw red, picturing her sister’s blood coating their realm. She couldn’t lose what she’d fought so hard to have, so hard to keep.
Control.
Power.
“If you put your hands on Vega, she can take more.” The statement inside made Marlena halt, digging her boots into the ground.
Arlet appeared beside Vega, her eyes widening with fear—she looked like the twenty-year-old girl Marlena remembered seeing before she walked out of her parent’s home—the day she had finally had enough of their abuse and fought back.
“Vega.” Arlet’s voice shook like it had then too.
Vega blinked, and the fire was gone. She fixed her gaze on Marlena, and for the first time in all her sister’s lives, Marlena was terrified of who she’d become.
“What are you?” Marlena murmured.
“Death.” Her eyes weren’t solid black anymore, maybe they never had been… but darkness sank down her arms, traveling through her veins until it disappeared at her fingertips.
A shriek had everyone covering their ears as Arlet’s brown dragon dipped to the ground and snagged both Vega and Arlet into her front talons and took off into the sky, disappearing behind the storm clouds slowly dissipating without Vega feeding them.
The field was littered with scorch marks, a mess of trees and limbs from Vega’s tornado, and the dead bodies of shifters.
Delori crashed to the ground, landing on all fours with a roar that shook the trees. The deep red of her scales matched the blood dripping from her teeth. She lowered her head to Marlena, blowing a puff of air through her nose.
Marlena’s hair whipped behind her back. “To Aeris,” she said with a raspy voice, laced with the heaviness of defeat.
Delori’s eyes exposed the hatred the woman inside the beast felt towards Marlena, but her cursed blood wouldn’t allow her to deny the command. She would try to rip Marlena to shreds if her body let her, but Delori and the shifters were at Marlena’s mercy now—hers to control.
She had offered Delori the deal of a lifetime. The curse on Demuto would be lifted and her people freed from its clutches, and all she had to do was fight on Marlena’s side of the war.
Simple.
Except Marlena wouldn’t give Delori, or anyone else for that matter, the chance to betray her again. The youngest Fera never would have remained loyal… Not on her own.
This was Marlena’s insurance, her way of guaranteeing Delori couldn’t break a promise. Blood oaths were only deadly to the ones who broke them. The Fera’s were heroes, always stoic with a need for adoration. Delori would have let herself die if it meant saving the shifters.
A blood curse as simple as the one Marlena had done was only breakable by the creator or the cursed, and something told her Delori had two extremely important reasons she wouldn’t go looking for a way to break it.
Delori’s wings sent a torrent of wind downward.
Twigs and dirt flew, pelting Marlena until she stepped through the in-between and within seconds, she stood outside a door she’d almost been denied access to.
How different would things be if Lucius had sent Marlena away?
Or worse, if he would have told her parents what their eldest daughter, future leader of Amora and Aeris, had proposed…
Marlena didn’t wait to be invited inside like she’d once done, and the guards didn’t try to stop her. In fact, they took one look at Marlena, drenched from head to toe, mud and blood smearing her skin, and they moved at supersonic speed to get out of her way.
Marlena filtered the air through her fingers, sending a burst of wind crashing through the double doors.
The sudden intrusion made Katrin’s eyes almost bulge out of her head.
The blunt raven bob she always wore was styled straight and tight to the edge of her jaw, her sharp jawline nearly identical to her son’s.
She looked dressed for a funeral—colorless and muted.
“Marlena.” She shot up from her chair, gripping the edge of the desk.
Marlena caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror behind Katrin’s desk.
She looked like she had when this all began. When she went from territory to territory, killing anyone who tried to flee or had chosen to take a stance against her. A time when the gods were loud and encouraging, whispering about all the magnificent things she could do.
They were staying quiet, hiding in the corners of Marlena’s mind. Too afraid to come out of the shadows in fear Vega would be waiting when they did.
“Find Meyer. Tell him to assemble the army for full departure.” Marlena braided her wet hair, her fingers working quickly to secure the battleworn strands around her head in a coronet. “It’s time to clear them out of Vates.” She tucked a few loose strands in place.
The war she’d been keeping at bay was here… and it was going to be worse than anything their people had ever seen or studied.
Katrin trembled, stammering through the first few words. “Meyer defected. He’s gone, and so is half the army.”