Heart of darkness, p.28
Heart of Darkness, page 28
part #8 of Dark Secrets Series
Not by natural means.
“His soul…” My words came out in a soft breath of icy air, as I felt around his chest, desperate to sense it. “His soul is gone.”
“I tried to merge them,” Lily explained, kneeling on David’s other side and taking his stiff, cold hand. His fingers didn’t flex or move, didn’t mold to the shape of her touch. They were frozen forever that way, curled slightly, marking the moment of his death. “But I had to make them human first. The one who bore the soul would awaken, restored, but it went to the wrong twin.”
“Of course it did, Lily!” I yelled, not knowing where to touch David as the anger finally surfaced in me, a raging storm blowing in overhead and making thunder in the sky. “Jason’s the root of the spell. David was the leftovers.”
“I didn't think, I…”
“I can’t believe you’ve done this,” I sobbed, feeling like I had no power, pushing my hair from my eyes as the wind ripped through the clearing and sent the icicles raining down into beds of snow beneath. “There’s no coming back from this. He’s human. He’s dead. I can’t fix this!” I screamed.
“Yes you can,” she insisted, placing her hand on the tree. “Restore his body, split his soul, and move it back into him. And then I will go. I will take him, and I will leave this place, and you will never see me again.”
“Even if I used the fruit, and he did come back as the man you knew, he won’t love you, Lily—”
“He does love me, Ara. He’s not yours to keep. He was designed for me,” she reasoned, like we were arguing over a new toy. “Jason is yours, he—”
“It’s out of the question,” I yelled. “Even if I would agree to that, I can’t bring David back with the fruit. I was warned. Lilith warned me never to let it touch the lips of an impure man, and David is the epitome of impure.”
“In your eyes—”
“In Nature’s eyes,” I barked loudly over the raging storm, my tears blending with the icy rain. “He has tainted blood from the hex, and from the very spell that created him. What I bring back may not be David at all. It won't be human,” I assured her. “With the power of that fruit, it would be immortal without need of blood, and I can’t guarantee he will be anything of the man you or I love.”
Her eyes fixed mine, deep-set and wide with shock, but she just wasn’t willing to understand what any of this meant.
I sunk down on my butt then as I came to terms with what she’d done here, feeling my stomach flip with unwelcome butterflies.
“Lily…” I said softly, forcing myself to admit this. “He’s dead.”
“No.” She shoved me down hard and reached up to the tree, forcefully slicing a piece of fruit from its branches. It screamed out in agony, and I leapt up to stop her, but Elora grabbed me and yanked me back.
“Mom, no!”
“What are you doing?” I shoved her off as Lily took the now-human Jason by the shirt and muttered a spell that split his soul in two again. He retched in agony, clutching his chest as the shock of the unethical method blast him into unconsciousness.
“Stop it!” I yelled, trying to push Elora away without hurting her.
“I don't need your permission,” Lily said, holding the fruit. “I only needed you awake, present, for the fruit to reveal itself.”
“And you need me to split his soul properly, Lily. You don't even know if you have the right piece, or if you just shattered it into a thousand!” I wailed, tears and rain making my entire body heavier. “Even if he’s carrying the pure light, that fruit cannot touch his lips. He’s been tainted by a dark hex; it’s in his bones—”
“Don't fight her, Mom,” Elora cried. “I can’t lose my dad. You need him right now. You don’t even know why yet but trust me… we need him.”
“It won't be your father, Elora,” I reasoned, reaching up to touch her wrist, pleading with her. “That fruit has the power to restore life. Life. Not the living. His entire being is dark, not of the natural world. It can only work to exacerbate everything evil he is and—”
“It’s too late,” Lily said, sinking back on her knees as the magical glow of the fruit’s living light illuminated his lips.
I watched the apple roll across the ground and settle at my feet, rotting from the break in its flesh and slowly dying, blackening outward. I felt raw then, felt the entire natural world cave inward, as the darkness seeped inside the roots of the tree and burned it, twisting its branches and forcing shadows along the clearing as it tried to reject the damning energy now connected to it by this impure man.
All the shock and devastation of the tree cut through me—like being violated in the most heinous, violent way—forcing me down to my knees as the full weight of everything to come, all the consequences of this, rose up around me like shame. I felt like the heart of all the worry in the world, bleeding out, pulsing the shadows of things to come along the veins of the future, knowing that nothing could change it.
David died when she took his soul.
But he would rise again as something else.
And there would never be a way now to undo that. Lily hadn’t saved him. She hadn’t saved anything. She’d created something. I felt it coming—the death, the devastation.
Elora stood, her face white with the haunting knowledge she saw now as a new future set itself deep within the bones of the earth, changing what was. I shut my thoughts away when I looked into her Seer’s eye, casting my gaze across the clearing to David as he rolled up to sit, turning his head to find me here in the darkness.
“Ara?” he said, and he sounded just the same, but his eyes were no longer green. He cast the onyx prisms onto Lily, and she cried into her hand, leaning in to kiss his mouth.
Though he seemed taken aback for a moment, he accepted her lips, bringing his hands alongside her face as he kissed her deeply, making my stomach turn.
“What was that for?” he asked, laughing softly as she drew away.
“I love you,” she said. “I’m so sorry. The spell didn't work. It killed you and I had to resurrect Ara so I could access the fruit. It all died when she did.”
“Why?” he asked, looking at me.
“She’s the guardian.”
He nodded, wiping his mouth as he stood up. I lifted my chin, making myself seem taller, as he walked over. “You look worried,” he said, his eyes warming with a smile.
“You kissed Lily.”
“She kissed me.”
I looked at my feet, too brokenhearted to keep looking at his changed eyes. “I don't know what you are now.”
“What I am?” He glanced down at his hands then over at his unconscious brother. When his eyes came back to me, it was with the knowledge of the ages—something only those of the fruit’s wisdom should bear. “I’m immortal. No longer Vampire.”
“Yes,” I muttered unwillingly.
He exhaled, pressing his lips in as he nodded, as though something had to be done that he didn't want to face. “I am different,” he stated. “Things… it feels different. Not so much physically, but… it’s like I can hear my old-self speaking his beliefs to me and…”
“You don't share those anymore,” Elora said, tears streaming her cheeks.
David looked at her, bringing his hand up again to inspect it as the rain stopped and the beads of water drained away from his fingertips. “No. I don’t. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
“It is,” she whispered in a breaking voice, nodding. “I saw it.”
“Don't worry,” he said, moving over to kiss her head, like he was still the same David and she was still his little girl. “I do still love you. You’re my daughter.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She shook her head, too grieved to speak clearly, crying so hard her face was red, nose swollen. “If you saw what I saw—”
“I’m sorry,” he said, not really meaning that. He looked back at me then, and in one swift move, he vanished.
Lily made a wet coughing sound, and Elora screamed, jerking back, as the heart of our once beloved Lily hit the roots of the sobbing, molested tree behind her, splattering the snowy earth with red.
David wiped his hand on his jeans, stepping back to let her fall flat to her face, her dark hair sprawled out like the tendrils of a mythological beast. “Take her soul,” he demanded. “She doesn’t deserve it.”
“This will start a war,” I warned. “Her father will come for her.”
“Not where I’m taking her,” he said, bending to hoist her off the ground.
“And where is that?”
David just winked, walking away. “You have three seconds, or her soul is lost for good.”
Without a thought, I reached out with my Cerulean Energy and the words of an ancient language to extract the warm, tingly light from within her, drawing it inside me. And for the first time in almost twenty years, I suddenly felt complete. Whole.
“Take care of my brother,” David called, while the strange shadows of a world I’d never seen gradually swallowed him. “I will be back.”
“Where are you taking her?”
“To the darkest corner of the underworld,” he said, his voice echoing up the crossway between life and death. “Where no one but me will ever find her.”
Jules
As a low roll of thunder grumbled in the sky just seconds before it cracked sharply with a bright flash of light, Mike shot up out of his sleep, his big bulky body looking sexy there without a shirt, the contours of his pecs lit up by another flash of blue light.
“Daniel’s fine,” I mumbled. “He’s sleeping.”
“It’s not that.” He threw the covers back and got out of bed, walking toward the window. “It’s the energy.”
“What about it?”
“That’s not a storm…” He opened the curtain and peered out, another flash of lightning making his nose and chin white.
“Certainly looks like a storm.”
“It’s a Cerulean Storm, and if… I’d know that energy anywhere. I grew up with it.”
I hopped out of bed and grabbed the baby monitor as Mike pulled the door open, throwing his shirt on as he darted down the corridor in bed shorts, no shoes.
“Mike, where are we going?”
“Ara’s alive,” he said, moving at a half-run. “I can feel it. Something’s happened.”
I ran faster then, and we pushed out through the front doors and glided across the university courtyard, coming out near the hospital. Immortality did nothing to protect my bare feet from the snowy ground, wet and slippery as the icy-cold rain came down in slanted sheets.
“Where are you going?” I called over the raging wind.
“To her body—if it’s still there.”
Regretting my decision to leave the warmth of my bed, I followed him on aching feet to the forest, slowing my steps when Falcon came running out from the shadows toward us.
“You felt it too?” Falcon said to Mike.
He nodded, and we all ran a little faster. We reached the tree line just as a humble queen in a long white dress appeared, ethereal and stunning in all her immortal, living glory. The trees behind her bent and swayed, weeping and crying as a flash of light made the rain sparkle on the crystal-like snow around them. As much as I wanted to hug Ara in that moment, I also wanted to high-five her for being so damn gorgeous after just waking from the dead.
Mike’s steps slowed and he exhaled as he closed her in his arms. “For fuck’s sake, Ara,” he mumbled into her shoulder. “I never thought I’d see you again.”
She hugged him back, looking at me as I moved in and wrapped my arms around them. “Don’t. You. Ever. Die again,” I demanded.
Ara laughed, leaning out to look at me.
Falcon stepped in then, as the thunder raged on overhead, smacking the grounds with wind and soft spatters of rain, and he took her in his arms, pressing every inch of himself up against her. She was clearly precious to him, and I hadn’t known that until now.
“I found you,” he said, his voice muffled in the noise of the rain. “I found you on the beach.”
She squeezed him tighter, shutting her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” he said, clutching her face and tilting it up to his.
“For what?”
“For this.”
He bent then and kissed her deeply on the lips, angling his head in perfect unison with hers, as though they’d kissed a hundred times before. The hard rain pushed their hair flat to their heads, running in rivulets along their cheeks and into their mouths. When he pulled away, Ara was stunned to silence.
She laughed out a breathy puff of disbelief. “Are you crazy?”
“David can punch me for it if he ever comes back.”
“He’s back,” David said, making us gasp as the shock took the night out from under all of us. He marched over to Falcon and struck him hard, sending him to the ground in a limbless heap.
“David!” Ara grabbed his wrist and pulled him back, while Mike just shook his head, watching on with folded arms and a boyish laugh.
Falcon grunted, wiping his lip as he rolled up. “I deserved that.”
“And don’t forget it.” David leaned down and offered his hand, helping him stand. “Go get my brother. He’s by the tree.”
Falcon’s eyes shot toward the forest. “Is he alive?”
“Barely.”
He took off at a run, and Mike’s gaze glided after him, small with a knowing smile.
“What?” I said, shivering now from the cold. “What was that look for?”
“There’s only one other person on this planet that Falcon loves as much as Ara,” he said, heading over to David and leaving that hanging. He hugged his long-lost friend and shook his head as he stepped back. “I thought we’d lost you.”
“You did,” David said simply. “I was dead. And now my brother is human.”
Mike’s gaze moved to Falcon then, as he came out of the forest, carrying Jason.
“He’s alive,” Falcon called. “But he needs medical attention. Now.”
“Should we use the fruit on him?” Elora asked, following Falcon out of the forest. I didn’t even know she was in there.
“The fruit’s dead,” Ara whispered, a thousand lifetimes of regret staining her words. All heads turned to her, as Falcon and Elora vanished into the sheets of rain.
“What do you mean?” Mike asked.
“Lily used it on David.”
And we all looked at him, realizing what it was we’d sensed in him, the difference, however subtle and subconscious it may be.
“If the fruit touches the lips of an impure being,” she said, and then collapsed. Mike moved to catch her, but… David didn’t even try. I barely knew him, and even I knew that was weird.
“What happened to her?” Mike asked, lifting her, unconscious, off the ground. “Did she get hurt?”
“She’s connected to that tree,” David advised. “I think a part of her shattered when it suffered that way.”
“It’s dead?”
“No. But it will never be the same again,” he said, and walked away, leaving behind nothing but a pit of confusion and despair.
Ara
I woke in my old room—the queen’s chambers. It still smelled like Lily, like lavender and spite. Still held all of her things, and for a moment, as I opened my eyes, I forgot she was dead. Forgot that she’d done unspeakable things to my David, to Jase… and my little boy.
When it all hit me, it was with such force that I sat bolt upright, moving to launch over the side of the bed. But a hand grabbed my arm.
“Mom.”
“Elora.” I turned to look at her where she sat beside me, the big open sky bright behind her through the balcony door. “How long was I out? Where’s Danny?”
“He’s safe,” she assured me with a simple look in her eye. “It’s midday. You were asleep all morning.”
“I need to see him.”
“He’s okay. Lilith erased it.”
“Erased what?”
“Everything. He doesn’t remember anything after that morning he was taken.”
My heart slowed, eyes coming back in to their normal shape as the fear and worry left them. “Does he know I’ve been gone?”
“He’s been too busy having fun with Uncle Mike and Aunty Jules.”
“Aunty Jules?” I smiled.
“She’s been amazing, Mom.” Her eyelids fluttered a little in emphasis of that. “Danny adores her, and she’s been a rock, getting us all through this.”
I hadn’t expected that, not in my wildest dreams. “Is Jason okay?”
“He hasn’t woken yet. Falcon’s with him.”
My mind rushed along the corridors, searching for Jason, tracing his energy signature, and when I found it in the king’s chambers on the other side of the manor, I put my face into my hands, feeling the deep cracks and aches within his soul. “He’s so broken.”
“Yes.” Elora nodded. “He’s been badly beaten, from what we can tell. What did she do to him?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I was never with them. She took us all separately. I got a note,” I said, recalling it all. “And Jason called me—said he’d gotten a note and he wanted to know if Danny was safe.”
“What happened after that?”
“Danny vanished from in front of my eyes. Lily told me to get on a plane—in the note. And when I left the yard, evaporated so David wouldn’t see me go, everything just…” I stared at nothing. “I came into consciousness again almost thirty hours later, being walked out to the lighthouse by a guard.”
“She must have had a witch working for her—to shut down Uncle Jase’s abilities. Dad’s even.”
I nodded.
Elora tucked her hair behind her ears on both sides, pressing her lips thin. “What happened then, Mom? How did you end up dead on the beach?”
As much as I didn’t want to say it aloud, I knew she needed the truth. So I began my story, and after three sentences, she crawled into my arms and cried while I recalled it all, her slender body shaking with sobs, tightly curled up in the safety of her mother’s embrace. I hadn’t held her like this since she was a child.
“His soul…” My words came out in a soft breath of icy air, as I felt around his chest, desperate to sense it. “His soul is gone.”
“I tried to merge them,” Lily explained, kneeling on David’s other side and taking his stiff, cold hand. His fingers didn’t flex or move, didn’t mold to the shape of her touch. They were frozen forever that way, curled slightly, marking the moment of his death. “But I had to make them human first. The one who bore the soul would awaken, restored, but it went to the wrong twin.”
“Of course it did, Lily!” I yelled, not knowing where to touch David as the anger finally surfaced in me, a raging storm blowing in overhead and making thunder in the sky. “Jason’s the root of the spell. David was the leftovers.”
“I didn't think, I…”
“I can’t believe you’ve done this,” I sobbed, feeling like I had no power, pushing my hair from my eyes as the wind ripped through the clearing and sent the icicles raining down into beds of snow beneath. “There’s no coming back from this. He’s human. He’s dead. I can’t fix this!” I screamed.
“Yes you can,” she insisted, placing her hand on the tree. “Restore his body, split his soul, and move it back into him. And then I will go. I will take him, and I will leave this place, and you will never see me again.”
“Even if I used the fruit, and he did come back as the man you knew, he won’t love you, Lily—”
“He does love me, Ara. He’s not yours to keep. He was designed for me,” she reasoned, like we were arguing over a new toy. “Jason is yours, he—”
“It’s out of the question,” I yelled. “Even if I would agree to that, I can’t bring David back with the fruit. I was warned. Lilith warned me never to let it touch the lips of an impure man, and David is the epitome of impure.”
“In your eyes—”
“In Nature’s eyes,” I barked loudly over the raging storm, my tears blending with the icy rain. “He has tainted blood from the hex, and from the very spell that created him. What I bring back may not be David at all. It won't be human,” I assured her. “With the power of that fruit, it would be immortal without need of blood, and I can’t guarantee he will be anything of the man you or I love.”
Her eyes fixed mine, deep-set and wide with shock, but she just wasn’t willing to understand what any of this meant.
I sunk down on my butt then as I came to terms with what she’d done here, feeling my stomach flip with unwelcome butterflies.
“Lily…” I said softly, forcing myself to admit this. “He’s dead.”
“No.” She shoved me down hard and reached up to the tree, forcefully slicing a piece of fruit from its branches. It screamed out in agony, and I leapt up to stop her, but Elora grabbed me and yanked me back.
“Mom, no!”
“What are you doing?” I shoved her off as Lily took the now-human Jason by the shirt and muttered a spell that split his soul in two again. He retched in agony, clutching his chest as the shock of the unethical method blast him into unconsciousness.
“Stop it!” I yelled, trying to push Elora away without hurting her.
“I don't need your permission,” Lily said, holding the fruit. “I only needed you awake, present, for the fruit to reveal itself.”
“And you need me to split his soul properly, Lily. You don't even know if you have the right piece, or if you just shattered it into a thousand!” I wailed, tears and rain making my entire body heavier. “Even if he’s carrying the pure light, that fruit cannot touch his lips. He’s been tainted by a dark hex; it’s in his bones—”
“Don't fight her, Mom,” Elora cried. “I can’t lose my dad. You need him right now. You don’t even know why yet but trust me… we need him.”
“It won't be your father, Elora,” I reasoned, reaching up to touch her wrist, pleading with her. “That fruit has the power to restore life. Life. Not the living. His entire being is dark, not of the natural world. It can only work to exacerbate everything evil he is and—”
“It’s too late,” Lily said, sinking back on her knees as the magical glow of the fruit’s living light illuminated his lips.
I watched the apple roll across the ground and settle at my feet, rotting from the break in its flesh and slowly dying, blackening outward. I felt raw then, felt the entire natural world cave inward, as the darkness seeped inside the roots of the tree and burned it, twisting its branches and forcing shadows along the clearing as it tried to reject the damning energy now connected to it by this impure man.
All the shock and devastation of the tree cut through me—like being violated in the most heinous, violent way—forcing me down to my knees as the full weight of everything to come, all the consequences of this, rose up around me like shame. I felt like the heart of all the worry in the world, bleeding out, pulsing the shadows of things to come along the veins of the future, knowing that nothing could change it.
David died when she took his soul.
But he would rise again as something else.
And there would never be a way now to undo that. Lily hadn’t saved him. She hadn’t saved anything. She’d created something. I felt it coming—the death, the devastation.
Elora stood, her face white with the haunting knowledge she saw now as a new future set itself deep within the bones of the earth, changing what was. I shut my thoughts away when I looked into her Seer’s eye, casting my gaze across the clearing to David as he rolled up to sit, turning his head to find me here in the darkness.
“Ara?” he said, and he sounded just the same, but his eyes were no longer green. He cast the onyx prisms onto Lily, and she cried into her hand, leaning in to kiss his mouth.
Though he seemed taken aback for a moment, he accepted her lips, bringing his hands alongside her face as he kissed her deeply, making my stomach turn.
“What was that for?” he asked, laughing softly as she drew away.
“I love you,” she said. “I’m so sorry. The spell didn't work. It killed you and I had to resurrect Ara so I could access the fruit. It all died when she did.”
“Why?” he asked, looking at me.
“She’s the guardian.”
He nodded, wiping his mouth as he stood up. I lifted my chin, making myself seem taller, as he walked over. “You look worried,” he said, his eyes warming with a smile.
“You kissed Lily.”
“She kissed me.”
I looked at my feet, too brokenhearted to keep looking at his changed eyes. “I don't know what you are now.”
“What I am?” He glanced down at his hands then over at his unconscious brother. When his eyes came back to me, it was with the knowledge of the ages—something only those of the fruit’s wisdom should bear. “I’m immortal. No longer Vampire.”
“Yes,” I muttered unwillingly.
He exhaled, pressing his lips in as he nodded, as though something had to be done that he didn't want to face. “I am different,” he stated. “Things… it feels different. Not so much physically, but… it’s like I can hear my old-self speaking his beliefs to me and…”
“You don't share those anymore,” Elora said, tears streaming her cheeks.
David looked at her, bringing his hand up again to inspect it as the rain stopped and the beads of water drained away from his fingertips. “No. I don’t. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
“It is,” she whispered in a breaking voice, nodding. “I saw it.”
“Don't worry,” he said, moving over to kiss her head, like he was still the same David and she was still his little girl. “I do still love you. You’re my daughter.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She shook her head, too grieved to speak clearly, crying so hard her face was red, nose swollen. “If you saw what I saw—”
“I’m sorry,” he said, not really meaning that. He looked back at me then, and in one swift move, he vanished.
Lily made a wet coughing sound, and Elora screamed, jerking back, as the heart of our once beloved Lily hit the roots of the sobbing, molested tree behind her, splattering the snowy earth with red.
David wiped his hand on his jeans, stepping back to let her fall flat to her face, her dark hair sprawled out like the tendrils of a mythological beast. “Take her soul,” he demanded. “She doesn’t deserve it.”
“This will start a war,” I warned. “Her father will come for her.”
“Not where I’m taking her,” he said, bending to hoist her off the ground.
“And where is that?”
David just winked, walking away. “You have three seconds, or her soul is lost for good.”
Without a thought, I reached out with my Cerulean Energy and the words of an ancient language to extract the warm, tingly light from within her, drawing it inside me. And for the first time in almost twenty years, I suddenly felt complete. Whole.
“Take care of my brother,” David called, while the strange shadows of a world I’d never seen gradually swallowed him. “I will be back.”
“Where are you taking her?”
“To the darkest corner of the underworld,” he said, his voice echoing up the crossway between life and death. “Where no one but me will ever find her.”
Jules
As a low roll of thunder grumbled in the sky just seconds before it cracked sharply with a bright flash of light, Mike shot up out of his sleep, his big bulky body looking sexy there without a shirt, the contours of his pecs lit up by another flash of blue light.
“Daniel’s fine,” I mumbled. “He’s sleeping.”
“It’s not that.” He threw the covers back and got out of bed, walking toward the window. “It’s the energy.”
“What about it?”
“That’s not a storm…” He opened the curtain and peered out, another flash of lightning making his nose and chin white.
“Certainly looks like a storm.”
“It’s a Cerulean Storm, and if… I’d know that energy anywhere. I grew up with it.”
I hopped out of bed and grabbed the baby monitor as Mike pulled the door open, throwing his shirt on as he darted down the corridor in bed shorts, no shoes.
“Mike, where are we going?”
“Ara’s alive,” he said, moving at a half-run. “I can feel it. Something’s happened.”
I ran faster then, and we pushed out through the front doors and glided across the university courtyard, coming out near the hospital. Immortality did nothing to protect my bare feet from the snowy ground, wet and slippery as the icy-cold rain came down in slanted sheets.
“Where are you going?” I called over the raging wind.
“To her body—if it’s still there.”
Regretting my decision to leave the warmth of my bed, I followed him on aching feet to the forest, slowing my steps when Falcon came running out from the shadows toward us.
“You felt it too?” Falcon said to Mike.
He nodded, and we all ran a little faster. We reached the tree line just as a humble queen in a long white dress appeared, ethereal and stunning in all her immortal, living glory. The trees behind her bent and swayed, weeping and crying as a flash of light made the rain sparkle on the crystal-like snow around them. As much as I wanted to hug Ara in that moment, I also wanted to high-five her for being so damn gorgeous after just waking from the dead.
Mike’s steps slowed and he exhaled as he closed her in his arms. “For fuck’s sake, Ara,” he mumbled into her shoulder. “I never thought I’d see you again.”
She hugged him back, looking at me as I moved in and wrapped my arms around them. “Don’t. You. Ever. Die again,” I demanded.
Ara laughed, leaning out to look at me.
Falcon stepped in then, as the thunder raged on overhead, smacking the grounds with wind and soft spatters of rain, and he took her in his arms, pressing every inch of himself up against her. She was clearly precious to him, and I hadn’t known that until now.
“I found you,” he said, his voice muffled in the noise of the rain. “I found you on the beach.”
She squeezed him tighter, shutting her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” he said, clutching her face and tilting it up to his.
“For what?”
“For this.”
He bent then and kissed her deeply on the lips, angling his head in perfect unison with hers, as though they’d kissed a hundred times before. The hard rain pushed their hair flat to their heads, running in rivulets along their cheeks and into their mouths. When he pulled away, Ara was stunned to silence.
She laughed out a breathy puff of disbelief. “Are you crazy?”
“David can punch me for it if he ever comes back.”
“He’s back,” David said, making us gasp as the shock took the night out from under all of us. He marched over to Falcon and struck him hard, sending him to the ground in a limbless heap.
“David!” Ara grabbed his wrist and pulled him back, while Mike just shook his head, watching on with folded arms and a boyish laugh.
Falcon grunted, wiping his lip as he rolled up. “I deserved that.”
“And don’t forget it.” David leaned down and offered his hand, helping him stand. “Go get my brother. He’s by the tree.”
Falcon’s eyes shot toward the forest. “Is he alive?”
“Barely.”
He took off at a run, and Mike’s gaze glided after him, small with a knowing smile.
“What?” I said, shivering now from the cold. “What was that look for?”
“There’s only one other person on this planet that Falcon loves as much as Ara,” he said, heading over to David and leaving that hanging. He hugged his long-lost friend and shook his head as he stepped back. “I thought we’d lost you.”
“You did,” David said simply. “I was dead. And now my brother is human.”
Mike’s gaze moved to Falcon then, as he came out of the forest, carrying Jason.
“He’s alive,” Falcon called. “But he needs medical attention. Now.”
“Should we use the fruit on him?” Elora asked, following Falcon out of the forest. I didn’t even know she was in there.
“The fruit’s dead,” Ara whispered, a thousand lifetimes of regret staining her words. All heads turned to her, as Falcon and Elora vanished into the sheets of rain.
“What do you mean?” Mike asked.
“Lily used it on David.”
And we all looked at him, realizing what it was we’d sensed in him, the difference, however subtle and subconscious it may be.
“If the fruit touches the lips of an impure being,” she said, and then collapsed. Mike moved to catch her, but… David didn’t even try. I barely knew him, and even I knew that was weird.
“What happened to her?” Mike asked, lifting her, unconscious, off the ground. “Did she get hurt?”
“She’s connected to that tree,” David advised. “I think a part of her shattered when it suffered that way.”
“It’s dead?”
“No. But it will never be the same again,” he said, and walked away, leaving behind nothing but a pit of confusion and despair.
Ara
I woke in my old room—the queen’s chambers. It still smelled like Lily, like lavender and spite. Still held all of her things, and for a moment, as I opened my eyes, I forgot she was dead. Forgot that she’d done unspeakable things to my David, to Jase… and my little boy.
When it all hit me, it was with such force that I sat bolt upright, moving to launch over the side of the bed. But a hand grabbed my arm.
“Mom.”
“Elora.” I turned to look at her where she sat beside me, the big open sky bright behind her through the balcony door. “How long was I out? Where’s Danny?”
“He’s safe,” she assured me with a simple look in her eye. “It’s midday. You were asleep all morning.”
“I need to see him.”
“He’s okay. Lilith erased it.”
“Erased what?”
“Everything. He doesn’t remember anything after that morning he was taken.”
My heart slowed, eyes coming back in to their normal shape as the fear and worry left them. “Does he know I’ve been gone?”
“He’s been too busy having fun with Uncle Mike and Aunty Jules.”
“Aunty Jules?” I smiled.
“She’s been amazing, Mom.” Her eyelids fluttered a little in emphasis of that. “Danny adores her, and she’s been a rock, getting us all through this.”
I hadn’t expected that, not in my wildest dreams. “Is Jason okay?”
“He hasn’t woken yet. Falcon’s with him.”
My mind rushed along the corridors, searching for Jason, tracing his energy signature, and when I found it in the king’s chambers on the other side of the manor, I put my face into my hands, feeling the deep cracks and aches within his soul. “He’s so broken.”
“Yes.” Elora nodded. “He’s been badly beaten, from what we can tell. What did she do to him?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I was never with them. She took us all separately. I got a note,” I said, recalling it all. “And Jason called me—said he’d gotten a note and he wanted to know if Danny was safe.”
“What happened after that?”
“Danny vanished from in front of my eyes. Lily told me to get on a plane—in the note. And when I left the yard, evaporated so David wouldn’t see me go, everything just…” I stared at nothing. “I came into consciousness again almost thirty hours later, being walked out to the lighthouse by a guard.”
“She must have had a witch working for her—to shut down Uncle Jase’s abilities. Dad’s even.”
I nodded.
Elora tucked her hair behind her ears on both sides, pressing her lips thin. “What happened then, Mom? How did you end up dead on the beach?”
As much as I didn’t want to say it aloud, I knew she needed the truth. So I began my story, and after three sentences, she crawled into my arms and cried while I recalled it all, her slender body shaking with sobs, tightly curled up in the safety of her mother’s embrace. I hadn’t held her like this since she was a child.
