Page 60 of Dark Souls

Love.

“T he morning?! Are you serious? No way. Demand he come here now!” I shouted.

After spending all night controlling my emotions and allowing the festering anger and hatred to build up inside, I felt like a bomb about to detonate; blowing everyone who dared get in my way to smithereens. And now I knew who was responsible. I couldn’t contain my fury anymore. I didn’t want to.

Mitchell and Parisa Morton. Lia’s fucking parents. I should have known that Lia was raised by the devil. I’d only met Mitchell on a few occasions. Royal events or in passing in the castle corridors after he’d had a meeting with Grandpapi. He was the commander of the Romano Vampire Army. Basically, the next most important position after my grandpapi, who had trusted him enough to give him that position. Grandpapi’s best friend Ren would have been his first choice, but as he was elected a council member it was seen as a conflict of interest, so he settled on Mitchell, a man who had been loyal to him when he had taken over from Lucius.

I had to hand it to him. Mitchell had everyone fooled that he was this polite, respectable, albeit ambitious but fair family man. He’d always presented himself as devoted to our clan and even asked my grandpapi if he could help with some of the funds when he started Academy Pro-Omnibus. And Parisa. I can’t ever remember really meeting her. She’s kept her head down, so to speak. I am sure I have at royal events, but I’d never given that family much notice or much of my time because, well, I hated their fucking daughter with a passion.

“It’s already 4am. It’s only a few hours away. Grandpapi had arranged a breakfast meeting with Mitchell to go over schedules for the newly appointed soldiers. If we want to keep one step ahead of them, we need to maintain an image of being unsuspecting. It will also give you the chance to meet Lia while her father is detained here and find out how much involvement she has in all of this.”

“Luka and Heathen might not have a few hours! For all we know, they could be planning to kill them tonight! And you want me to wait?”

“Yes. Think about it, Ilaria. Why would Grandpapi call Mitchell to the castle at 4am?” Mum argued.

“I don’t know! Make something up! He’s the commander of the Romano Army. Pretend there has been a breach in protocol or an attempted attack on the castle!”

Dad shook his head. “He’d know. If either of those were true, Mitchell would be informed through his alarm watch and the higher-ranked soldiers would report to him.”

I growled, frustration causing my skull to tingle as I leaned my hand against the window ledge in Grandpapi’s office.

“We need to give Leif time to work on Hana’s sigil and try to find a counter spell to free her demon’s soul as well,” Mum added, and I pressed my forehead against the glass. I watched as my breath caused a cloud of condensation against the freezing window. Beneath the raging anger, I knew they were all talking sense. I knew they were thinking rationally and logically, creating a foolproof plan, but they were missing the most important component. Mitchell and Parisa could destroy that sigil at any moment and kill my mate. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a week or a month. Or maybe tonight. And I would never forgive myself if I just sat here, waiting for the sun to rise before I did anything to save them.

“I know it’s hard, Ilaria. I know you want to burn the world down to find him right this very second, but just like when you handled Wesley, you need to be calm and have patience–” my dad started saying, and I spun around, folding my arms over my chest. Did they all have short-term memory loss?

“How many of you waited to save your soulmates when they were in danger?” I snapped, glaring at them all. I stared at Grandpops first, raising my eyebrow. He glanced at Grandma Alina with a sheepish expression. I moved my gaze between Grandpapi and Grandma Maddy next. “Hmm? How many of you just sat back and did nothing while you allowed your soulmate to risk their own life?” Grandma Maddy lowered her gaze to her lap and Grandpapi rubbed the stubble on his chin. I pushed off the window and stepped closer to my parents. “You moved hell on Earth to save each other. Yet, you expect me to do nothing but wait?”

“It’s just a few hours, Ilaria. And then we will have them exactly where we need them. In our custody and clueless to our knowledge.”

A tap on the window behind me caused all my family to glance towards it. I turned and walked over to find a large black raven sitting on the ledge outside with something dangling from its beak. Rain pelted against its black feathers, giving it a shiny purple hue as its beady eyes stared directly at me, commanding me over.

“Is that a raven?” Mum asked, stepping closer, but I held my arm out to stop her.

“Don’t spook it,” I whispered. “Everyone, stay where you are. I know this raven. I think it’s Luka’s pet or something. It helped me once before.”

I walked cautiously towards the window, placing my hand on the handle to lift the latch. It hopped back on its feet as I slowly opened it before it tilted its head at me.

“Hello friend,” I whispered. “What do you have there?”

Holding out the palm of my hand through the window, it lowered its beak and released the item into my hand. It gave a loud cawing and then took off into the sky once more. I watched it disappear, a black silhouette against the grey, stormy skies, before looking down at the treasure the bird had gifted me. I glided my thumb across the velvet material of my choker. The diamond that dangled glinted against the warm lights above me and I smiled.

“What is it?” Grandma Alina asked, coming to stand beside me.

“I need Sienna!” I shouted, clasping my hand around it tightly. “I need Sienna right now. Or Raiden. Where are they?”

“At their house, I guess. What’s going on, Princess? Did you say you think that bird belongs to Luka?” Grandpapi asked, staring out of the window in the direction the Raven had travelled.

“It’s a message. This choker has a camera in it. I’m going to Raiden’s.”

I grabbed Leif’s phone off the desk and before any of them could stop me; I transported myself to Raiden’s sleek, modern house in the mountains of Utah.

The house was dark and silent so I tried upstairs. I zoomed towards their bedroom, but just as I entered, a firm hand wrapped around my throat and tossed me against the wall, knocking the air from my lungs on impact as a growl of warning rocketed from my uncle.

“It’s… me!” I wheezed against his steel grip. He immediately let go of me. My body dropped the few feet it had been dangling by his hand as I tried to catch my breath. Raiden’s silver eyes widened before he crouched down, grabbed my arms and helped me to stand again.

“Ilaria? Jesus fucking Christ. What have I told you about sneaking up on me? I could have killed you!”

His dark curls were tousled from what looked like sleep but seeing as it was only late evening in Utah, I guessed it was from some other activity, and he was only wearing a pair of boxers hanging low around his hips. I glanced past him to see Sienna sitting up in their bed, her amber eyes bright and shimmering as her eyebrows pulled down in a frown when she assessed the situation. From her bare shoulders and the way her arms were wrapped tightly around the bedsheet, keeping it close to her body, she was clearly naked. I stormed past Raiden and up to her bed, throwing the choker in her lap.

“I need the camera feed from that. Can you do it here?”

She picked it up, examining it as Raiden groaned at my lack of an explanation. “I’m making some coffee.”

“Is this…?”

“The choker that was confiscated from me on fight night? Yeah. The same one that recorded Luka slicing my initials into his chest. The raven brought it back to me. It can’t be a coincidence. I need to see the footage.”

“Okay, let me get dressed, and we will go to my office,” she said, climbing out of bed as I turned around to give her some privacy.

A few minutes later, Sienna and I were downstairs in her home office, logging into the SIA’s database. Raiden strolled in with three steaming mugs of coffee and handed me one. I smiled, seeing that he had made mine as black as they come, exactly how I liked it. I took a sip as Sienna typed away rapidly at the computer, sticking her tongue out a little in concentration. A puff of purple smoke next to Raiden caused him to jump back, spilling his coffee on the floor, which was rather amusing as he slammed his hand over his bare chest and closed his eyes.

“Fuck! Dad! Will everyone stop trying to give me a heart attack by appearing in my home unannounced and before I have had any coffee?”

“You should really get an alarm detection for magical transportation into this place.” Grandpapi smirked, enjoying the way Raiden narrowed his eyes at him. “Anyone could break in.”

“I can protect my home and my wife all by myself, thank you very much,” Raiden growled, leaning back against the wall and taking a small sip from what was left in his mug. “I let you live just then because I knew it was you.”

“Okay, son. Whatever you say.” Grandpapi patted his shoulder, suppressing a laugh, and then looked over at me. I rolled my eyes.

“Come to babysit me and make sure I don’t do anything you would all deem as impulsive?”

“Something like that,” he replied with a smile. “And I was curious to know what that raven brought you.”

Sienna pushed away from the computer in her desk chair and pointed at the screen. “Come and take a look.”

We huddled around the computer screen as my heart beat out of sync. Sienna clicked play on the black screen and a wobbly image of cave walls appeared before shifting to a brown-haired man. His red eyes blazed with desperate hunger and his gaunt cheeks made him look almost skeletal. He seemed somewhat familiar, but I couldn’t work out how I knew him.

“Um, so what? I just talk?” he said, peering past the camera at whoever held the choker up to record this. The person obviously gave him confirmation, and he exhaled, pushing his dirty hair away from his face. “Okay. Um, Hi!” He gave a little wave. “My name is Hayes Cohen. I’m a–”

My grandpapi shoved himself forward and pressed pause on the video, staring at the man’s face with shock. “Hayes Cohen!”

“You know him?” I asked, glancing between Grandpapi and the computer screen.

“He’s one of our men. A young Romano soldier who lived in the village outside the castle walls. Nice kid. We thought he was dead,” Grandpapi said, standing straight and placing one hand on his hip and the other at the nape of his neck. The shock was rolling off his tense shoulders. “Four years ago, he supposedly was sent on a mission to chase off a rogue wolf that was stalking the border but he never came back. We never found his body. His parents were devastated.”

“Well, that was clearly bullshit. Who told you that?” Raiden asked.

“Mitchell,” I hissed as my fangs snapped down with rage. Grandpapi looked just as pissed. He pressed play again, folding his arms across his chest as his nostrils flared.

Hayes continued to talk. “I’m a Romano soldier, and I was attacked and captured years ago. I’ve been kept down here in a cave to starve ever since. The people responsible are Mitchell and Parisa Morton.” He sighed, his eyes flicking back to whoever was with him before he licked his dry lips and prepared himself for his next words. Whatever they were, they were difficult to say. “I did nothing wrong other than fall in love with their daughter. Lia Morton is my soulmate. But I am not good enough for her.”

“You are,” a gruff voice that lives deep within the safety of my heart said from behind the camera.

“Luka! That was Luka’s voice!” I slammed my hands over my mouth as tears sprang to my eyes at the overwhelming relief hearing his voice caused me.

Hayes smiled bashfully. “I am. I may not be a prince or a member of society’s most influential and powerful elites. But I am a decent man. I like to think I am kind, respectful, loyal, apparently a little funny, and I know I would make a good mate. I know I would have loved her fearlessly and always protected her. I know I would have spent every day trying to make her happy, not with money or power, but with affection and love. I know if I was given the chance, I would have given her a fulfilled life where she would never question how loved she was. But those things aren’t important to her parents. In their eyes, their daughter doesn’t get to decide whether those things are important to her either. They took that choice away from her.” He turned his head away to look up at the ceiling of the cave before he stared back at the camera. “I might die down here. Actually, I will most probably die here. But if, by some miracle, Lia ever sees this, I don’t want her to feel guilty. I don’t want her to blame herself. But I do want her to know the truth. All I want her to know is that I died for love. Because if I had the choice to go back to that day and never speak to her or see the beauty of her smile just so I could live, I’d refuse.”

The camera turned and Luka’s devilishly handsome face appeared. His scarlet eyes flared a captivating dance of fire and darkness and his crimson hair was damp, falling forward into his eyes. I inhaled a sharp, painful breath at the beauty of him.

“I have no idea who will find this or if it will be too late by the time anyone watches it but…” He huffed, turning his head to look at the raven that was sitting next to him on a boulder. “I may have someone looking out for me in this life, after all.” He faced the camera again. “In fact, I know I do. More than one. I’ve always believed I was alone in this. That I could never trust anyone enough to help me, but that changed the moment you entered my life. Ilaria, I can’t tell you where I am or how much longer I have to live because those are things I don’t know. I can’t tell you what I did to deserve to have you as mine. I can’t tell you why it’s taken me this long to say the words that I have known since the moment I saw you. But I can tell you that I love you. You are nothing short of everything to me.”

Tears streamed down my cheeks as I stared into his eyes. He didn’t need his humanity to love me. Our love was stronger than any barrier, any magic or any obstacle.

“Damn, yours was better than mine,” Hayes groaned in the background, causing an amused expression to appear on Luka’s face. It wasn’t quite a smile but close enough. My heart hurt. He glanced at the camera again.

“Don’t let me die with this fool, love. I want to die an ancient man with you in my arms.” Luka spun the camera around the cave and then up to the ceiling where the moon and stars above peeked through the opening high above. “Find us. I know you can figure it out, Snow. You always find a way.”

I gasped, slamming my hand over my mouth as the camera moved erratically while the raven flew out of the cave with my choker in its beak. My grandpapi leaned forward, studying the cliffs and green stretches of land below as the raven flew against the winds.

“He called me Snow,” I whispered, unable to believe I actually heard that name from his lips.

“And that’s important because?” Raiden asked, with obvious confusion on his face.

“Only Heathen calls me Snow. It’s what he’s always called me. But Luka could never have known that.”

“Maybe it’s a coincidence.” Raiden shrugged, but I shook my head, my mind racing as I started pacing the floor and trying to digest everything in that video. Lia had a soulmate. One that her parents had captured to keep them apart. Did she know? And Luka… my heart swelled at his confession of love. But to call me Snow? That couldn’t be a coincidence. Maybe… just maybe… subconsciously, Heathen was pushing through? The spell was weakening. What caused another fracture? Was it because he finally admitted out loud that he loved me? The first one was after I fully bonded with Luka. I could see his memories. The second, after I mated with Heathen, Luka could speak about his past. A confession of love and Heathen is pushing through?

“Did this camera have a tracking device?” my grandpapi was asking Sienna as my attention returned to the room, my epiphany at the forefront of my mind.

“Yes, but only for the choker’s current location.” She pointed down at it lying on the desk. “But it looks like the camera feed recorded the entire journey the raven took from the cave to the castle. So we can map it out.”

My grandpapi nodded, twisting his wrist and causing a huge map to appear on the table. “Fast forward the footage to the castle and we will track its journey backwards. We can also work out roughly how far away it is by how long it took the raven to reach us. Anyone know what speed a raven can fly?”

Raiden pulled out his phone, searching the internet. “Twenty to thirty mph, but some can reach up to fifty in sustained flight.”

“Sienna? Can you send that footage to Leif’s phone? I don’t need it all, just the first bit with Hayes,” I said, shoving Leif’s phone under her nose.

“Sure. What are you planning?” She started to cut and copy some of the video before sending it.

“Lia deserves to know who her parents really are. And I think I know how to break the spell,” I replied, feeling a strange calmness settling over me. “What was one thing, despite their darkness, that was Celeste and Cora’s weakness?”

They all stared at me with vacant expressions on their faces.

“Pure love,” I answered for them.

“I’m not following.” Raiden frowned. Grandpapi lifted his hand to his chin, the way he always did when he was deep in thought. “Are we talking about the same dark witches here?”

“Cora loved her sister. More than life. She cherished family above all else. But what did Celeste cherish?”

“Lucius,” Grandpapi answered.

“Her soulmate. Her one true love.” I stepped forward, taking back Leif’s phone and ringing Ronnie. As it rang, I continued to elaborate, “Every spell has a clause, if you will. Right?”

“Yes. Most spells created have a catch, a way of being broken or reversed by the victim or by the person who created it. But that is why it is so difficult to do because it is often hidden within the spell itself, unknown to anyone else that uses it or its victims.”

“Ilaria?” Ronnie answered. “Everything alright? Have you found him?”

“Not yet, but we are getting closer. Can you put Leif on, please?”

“Sure.” The phone was passed to my brother.

“Yo.”

I rolled my eyes. “Leif, have you ever created a spell from scratch? Like Celeste and Cora did?”

“Yeah… why?”

“Am I right in thinking that for the spell to work, especially if it is extremely powerful, there always has to be a way to break it with a stipulation? Some hidden clause within the spell itself?”

“Yes, that’s what I am trying to do. I’m trying to detect beneath the layers of magic to find the clause that Celeste would have used to allow the spell to be broken.”

“I think I know what it is.”

There was a silence at the other end of the phone as well as all around me as I held my next breath.

“Well… don’t leave us in fucking suspense here, sis,” Leif groaned.

“Love.”

“Love?” he repeated, nearly scoffing at the word.

“Specifically, the love of a soulmate. I think that the spell that Celeste placed on Luka and Hana’s demons would only be broken if they found their soulmates and experienced true love.”

Another few beats of silence before Leif answered, “That’s a very optimistic and romantic notion, but it was Celeste and Cora who created this spell.”

“Exactly! Cora could see the future of anyone she touched apart from family. Luka said that she and Celeste studied him and Hana for a month before they went away to create the spell. What if Cora couldn’t see Luka’s future because he was always destined to be mated to me? To be a part of this family. She would have known on some level. Maybe that is why she refused to come back and perform the spell. Maybe that was the rift between the sisters because Cora refused. And… what if, on some level beneath her darkness, Celeste actually believed her? So, when she created the spell, she ensured the spell would only be broken if they found their soulmates?”

“But that isn’t how dark magic works, I’m afraid. I hate to be the one to rain on your parade, but dark magic requires a sacrifice. Always. Finding their soulmate wouldn’t be a sacrifice.”

I rubbed my forehead as I thought frantically. “A willing sacrifice,” I muttered under my breath. My eyes snapped up and found Grandpapi’s. “A willing sacrifice of true love. That’s it!”

“What?”

“My soul. I sacrifice my soul and give it to Heathen.”

“There is no sure way of knowing that, though, Ilaria,” Grandpapi argued, deep concern appearing on his face as he stepped towards me.

“Yeah, Grandpapi’s right. Until I can unpick the spell, that is just a guess, Ilaria. One that you cannot bet your life on. Say you give your soul to Heathen, and it doesn’t work. You’ll die if they kill him.”

“I know. But it is my choice to make.”

Leif groaned and Grandpapi turned his back on me, walking a few paces away as he ran his hand through his hair. Raiden and Sienna were staring between us with equal amounts of worry and interest as to how this would pan out.

“I’ll give my soul to Hana,” Ronnie’s deep voice interrupted in the background through the phone.

“What?” Hana gasped.

“That’s if you want me to?” he offered, almost timidly. I smiled at the change in such a cocksure man. Hana already had him wrapped around her little finger.

“I… I do. Of course, but it’s a huge thing to do, and we barely know each other.”

“I know enough,” Ronnie responded. “I know that I want to spend every day as long as you’ll have me right by your side. I know how I feel about you.”

“I really am going to need a sick bucket if I have to spend any more time with these two. You should see the way they are gazing longingly into each other’s eyes right now.” Leif clicked his fingers. “Hey! Soppy bollocks. Yes, you. Slight problem with that heroic offer. Hana is not in control of her shifts. We don’t have the original spell to use with the sigil to force her to shift into her demon. Therefore, you cannot mate and drink with her demon, nor give your soul to her.”

Ah, fuck. Leif was right. The reality suddenly sunk in that Hana could never shift into her demon again unless we got our hands on the original spell created by the Anderson sisters.

“Keep trying to unpick that spell, Leif, and confirm that I’m right about the souls. If I texted Lia right now, would she be suspicious of you?”

“At 5am? Nah, she’d think I was drunk and asking for a booty call. Very in my nature.”

“I’ve never been so thankful to have a fuckboy as my brother.” I hung up the phone and started typing what would seem like a drunken booty call text to Lia, asking her to meet me (me being Leif) in an abandoned car park in Soho.

“Ilaria, what are you doing? We talked about this. We have a plan to confront Mitchell in the morning.” Grandpapi frowned.

“No. You have a plan. I have a different plan. One that doesn’t involve sitting around and doing fuck all.”

He placed his hand on my arm as I peered up from the phone. His brown and blue eyes bored into mine, pinning me in place with the natural authority he always had. As a child, it was enough to always make me submit. But I wasn’t his little princess anymore.

“Don’t even try to stop me from saving him, Papi.”

His hand slid down my arm, towards my hand, where he gripped it tightly and rubbed the enchanted skull ring with his thumb. His eyes glowed purple with his magic.

“I wouldn’t dream of it. Just checking that the enchantment is still in place.”

I dived at his chest, hugging him tightly before I disappeared from between his arms.