8. Aldrin
“ A re you ready for more poison after last night?” Dante’s eyes flash with amusement as he twirls a long vial between his fingers. My stomach churns at the sight of the shimmering orange liquid. I reach out to grab it and he quickly pulls his hand away. “Not so fast. Do you know what this is?”
I run a hand through my hair. Pain still explodes behind my eyes each time I glimpse an orb glowing with muted starlight. Apparently their magic can create lights without the burning intensity that hurts their low fae.
“Another test to break me, Dante?” I say. “When will you learn I am not a fragile man?”
He stops in the middle of the corridor, tapping the glass vial. “Let me guess: you have survived a lot of battles and trauma, and nothing we throw at you can compare. Am I right?”
“I have lived through my worst fears becoming reality,” I confirm.
“That is the thing about the night terror fungus this potion was extracted from—it makes you relive your darkest moments and confront your greatest fears. It is a delightful weapon that can completely incapacitate an enemy in moments, but a horrendous hallucinogen to work with. You’ll have to ingest enough not only to build up a natural resistance, but to train your mind as well. ”
I shudder, chasing after him as he continues down the corridor. “Is this another trial?”
“You’ll see,” he calls over his shoulder.
We take a spiral staircase up one of the towers and Dante unlocks a door not quite at the top. It opens out to nothing but open sky and a narrow stone parapet that reaches from one side of the Haven of Death to a matching turret at the other end.
We are so high up the mountain that thin clouds hug the structure. The damp cold immediately hits me. I glance over the edge, to a long drop that could kill me.
I turn back to Dante. “So what is the plan here? Drug me with hallucinogens and force me to walk down the parapet, to the door on the other side?”
“Something like that.” Dante laughs. “Maybe a dozen times, though. Get you real used to the poison.”
“Fuuuck.” I let out a low groan. “I am really starting to hate you.”
“Just starting?” Dante’s eyebrows shoot up. “We really need to beat that softness out of you. There is a reason our order is famed across the realm. I will not let you be the weakest link by going easy on you. Remember, Aldrin, you did ask for this.”
I curse internally. I will use this order to my advantage. I will destroy their leader and take the Assassins of Belladonna for myself, and then I’ll come for Titania. She will understand the violent depths of my wrath and regret ever touching my mate.
I steel my nerves, step out onto the narrow bridge, then hold out my hand. “I am ready. A mere parapet will not undo me, night terror fungus or no.”
Dante chuckles. “Remember, Aldrin, nothing you see in the visions is real. Nothing but the sky, the parapet, the drop and the door on the other side. Both doors will be locked, so no Assassin of Belladonna or any other creature will bother you up here.” Without another word, he places the vial in my hand, along with a key on a chain, then locks the door behind him.
I don’t hesitate. While my enemies have Keira in their clutches, I do not have the luxury of time. I place the key around my neck, then drink the bitter toxin, ignoring the chunks within it.
I take a step as the clouds churn violently around me. The first vision that comes to me is one that has graced my nightmares a thousand times, but also one I have conquered before.
Finan appears halfway down the parapet, his eyes deranged, high-pitched laugher pealing out of him while he holds a dagger to Keira’s throat.
The tip of the blade draws a jagged line across her flesh.
Too much blood drips out of the wound. Pure panic has her eyes wide and face colorless, while her feet scramble for purchase on the narrow parapet.
Fear coils through me, charging electricity through my tightly wound muscles.
He isn’t taking care of how he holds that knife and could so easily slit her throat each time she slips and her body jolts.
Rage whips through me like a mad beast, demanding violence, filling me with the need to run across this parapet and wrap my fingers around his throat. To choke the life out of him.
It all feels so real, so vivid, but the towers of the Haven of Death are all around me, and I have already watched Finan die.
With the conviction of that thought, his figure transforms into the taller profile of Titania.
A snarl is spread across her black lips and those ridiculous claws cut into Keira’s throat instead.
I take a step forward at the vicious glint in her eye, holding out a hand as though I can stop her.
She grabs Keira by the shoulders and, with a powerful shove, tosses her over the edge of the parapet.
My heart stops.
I take another rushed step, almost losing my balance in my haste, and peer over the edge. Her figure falls through the mist, wide eyes staring, locking with mine, an arm reaching out toward me. A single silent plea leaves her lips. My name.
I can save her before she breaks upon the stone below. Catch her with a cushion of air. Toss myself off this parapet and wrap my body around hers, so I take the impact of the landing instead.
I almost make the fucking leap. It kills me to lock up my muscles and remain where I am. My entire body shakes, screaming at me to save her. To die for her. As she falls my throat tightens painfully and my heart thumps like a wild beast is trying to burst from my chest.
But this is just a hallucination.
One that feels too fucking real.
Titania laughs. She mocks and curses me. Watching Keira disappear through the mists, allowing her to fall without sacrificing myself for her—it’s the hardest thing I have ever had to do.
It is not real.
The way my heart breaks, my soul shatters, it feels like I just lost my reason for living, for fighting, even though I know she speaks the truth.
I am unharmed. Alive, Keira’s calm voice whispers in my mind. I am waiting for you.
By the gods, Keira, it feels like you just died and I did nothing. I squeeze my eyes tight as the threat of tears burns behind them.
The mists swirl violently as my subconscious churns up the next nightmare. I focus on my feet, putting one ahead of the other in a minute of reprieve.
Then the screams start.
They are the wails of hundreds of people in the agony of torture. Of beasts in unimaginable pain. It sends bile up my throat and icy claws raking down my spine. I don’t look. I can’t. That sound intensifies until the screeching bounces around inside my head and there is no escape.
“You did this to us,” one voice wails. “Aldrin, the king who turned his back on his people. YOU DID THIS TO US!”
“Your failures have doomed us all!” another screams.
“I trusted you. I followed you and fought for you, and now all my people are dead.”
That last gravelly voice drags my gaze up. I cannot help it. Not when it belongs to Kai.
The towers and stacked roofs of the Haven of Death have disappeared, and there is only smoke and thick sheets of ash swirling all around me.
Below are the black voids that fuel my deepest fears.
Those great rifts in space that contain no matter or light within them, only absolute nothingness, where the realm is being deconstructed.
Creatures are hunched over and dying everywhere: high fae, tree nymphs, spriggan and kelpies.
I want to fall to my knees and weep at the devastation.
Surely, there is no coming back from this.
I am too late to save my people from our destruction. The magic has fled our realm completely, and I cannot bring it back. Cannot grow something from nothing.
“You have been idle for far too long and the corruption has taken us all,” Kai rasps, the only fae still standing.“You are no king of mine.”
He is in his half-equine, half-humanoid form. Ash floats away in great streams from his cheeks, bare shoulders and torso, and the pelt of his four-legged body. The skin peels away and the red of his muscle is revealed beneath, then the white bone of his skeleton.
“No king of mine!” he screams as his body is flayed.
Tears stream down my face. I find Drake and Klara in the crowd, both weeping over the body of Rainier. Most of his flesh has already dissolved.
Drake turns to me. “You were supposed to stop the corruption! My son— my son is dead because of you!”
Pain radiates from my chest, so intense I clutch it with a hand and almost double over. I find more loved ones dying: Cyprien, Hawthorne, Silvan, Lilly and Zinnia. I run my hands through my hair, tearing at it, then glimpse my fingers. They are completely black, the flesh mangled and rotten.
When I glance up, Keira is on the parapet ahead of me.
She is whole and as healthy and beautiful as the last time I saw her.
The curls of her red hair glow with the embers of her fire magic and her eyes are bright.
I take a few rushed steps to meet her, but as my hand strokes her cheek, her entire body dissipates completely into a cloud of ash, and then she is gone.
I try to catch it, to force it back together, but the particles escape through my hands.
This is an illusion. An illusion, I screech at myself again and again, but I no longer believe it. Not when what my senses show me feels so real.
It is then that I notice the yelling bouncing around in my head, hardly discernible over the pained cries of my people.
It’s not real, Aldrin! Keep moving. I am here.
I am alive. Rainier is safe. I can see him.
The corruption is still a distant threat, Keira’s voice rings in my head.
I already know this, deep down. Ignore the hallucination.
Put one careful foot in front of the other and walk to the door at the end of the parapet. Please.
A hallucination. A night terror from toxic fungus.
That is all this is. I have not forgotten.
I ignore the pain of those before me, no matter how it goes against my every instinct, and make it to that door. My sweat-soaked fingers drop the key multiple times, and I thank the gods for the chain around my neck keeping it within my grasp.
The door opens to a cool, shadowy room. Inside, Dante is sprawled out on a leather armchair, reading a worn book. The low table before him holds a jug of water, two cups and a vial of shimmering liquid.
I slam the door shut and crumple against it, panting while sweat stings my eyes. The screams chase me in here anyway and the shadows of the ceiling swirl as my brain prepares another torment for me.
“Please tell me you don’t have another fucking poison for me,” I growl.
Dante carefully marks the page of his book and places it down, then takes the vial in his hand. “This? No, it’s the antidote. There is no way to build a physical resistance to night terror fungus, so we need to experience it and train our minds to see the illusion instead.”
He tosses the antidote to me and I fumble to catch it, the glass slipping out of my hands multiple times before I get a proper grasp on it. I tear out the cork with my bare teeth and down the contents in a single gulp. Slowly, far too slowly, the wails recede, then disappear.
I collapse into the other armchair. My entire body feels so damned heavy and helpless, but I slowly turn my head to my guide. “How many more times do I need to do that?”
He taps a finger against his temple. “You surprised me with how quickly you passed this trial. Perhaps another half-dozen times? Maybe fewer?”
I throw my head back against the cushion, all my energy fleeing me. “By the Soul Ripper and all its destruction. I’m going to die here, falling from that fucking parapet, I just know it.”
“You don’t like the parapet, hey? I wonder what you will think of the other scenarios we will toss you into while high on night terror fungus.”
“You’re a fucking sadist,” I say without bothering to open my eyes.
“Hey, I don’t make the rules. We come from a brutal court, where only the strongest and smartest survive. A fae who cannot pass these trials is a fae who will get us all killed on a mission.”
I have a witty retort to that; I just can’t get it past my lips. Right before I black out and fall into the deepest sleep, I hear Dante pick up that book again and turn the pages.