Page 4

Chapter 4

Scarlett

T he murmuring of voices was ?ltering through the fog of sleep. There had been no dreams this time. No Lord of Night. No nightmares. No memories. Just blessed, deep sleep.

But now reality was crashing down on her. Everything that had happened was ?ooding in, and she immediately found it hard to draw breath.

She blinked her eyes open, thoughts hazy for a minute as she worked out where she was. The exposed beams of the ceiling. The comfortable bed beneath her. She turned her head to see a tub across the room, snow-covered mountains out the window.

Home.

She was home.

Well, at the chateau in her home, but she was back in the Fire Court. But that was only home if her twin ?ame lived.

Cassius suddenly ?lled her line of vision, a hand reaching out to brush back hair from her face.

“Scarlett,” he breathed, relief clear in his tone and on his face.

“Sorin,” she rasped.

“He lives.”

“Is he awake?”

Cassius shook his head, helping her as she struggled to sit up. “Not yet, but the High Witch has said he grows stronger every day.”

The room spun when she made it to a sitting position. She felt so empty. Her power reserves were nonexistent. She’d poured every bit of them into Sorin to call him back to this side of the Veil, to give him the power to come back to her. But that wasn’t why she felt empty.

She couldn’t feel him. She couldn’t feel his emotions. There were no whispered words down their bond. Her head was silent, and once she might have cherished that, but not now. Now she wanted to hear him teasing her, taunting her. She wanted him to call her “Love,” and she wanted to sit and play the piano for him for hours. She wanted to be annoyed with him so she could call him names, and he could grumble about her “godsdamn tongue.”

She wanted him to wake the fuck up.

Tears welled in her eyes when she ?nally turned to look down at her husband where he lay beside her on the bed. His chest moved up and down in slow, steady breaths. His skin held its normal tanned glow, and dark stubble lined his jaw. She reached over, her hand shaking, as she brushed her ?ngers along it. He didn’t move. Didn’t respond at all to her touch.

Her gaze traveled from his face down to his chest. Someone had removed his tunic, but there was still white scarring where Talwyn’s power had slammed into him. Her ?ngers drifted to those scars directly over his heart. Her trembling ?ngers hovered there, but she couldn’t bring herself to touch them.

“Hazel works on the scarring every day,” Cassius said softly.

She nodded, swallowing down the tears that were burning at the back of her throat.

“You have been asleep for four days.”

Four days? That explained her dizziness. And the pain in her empty stomach. And the full bladder.

Her eyes lingered on Sorin for another few moments before she moved to climb from the bed. When her gaze fell on the rest of her family standing near the hearth, she suddenly remembered the muf?ed voices that she’d heard when she’d been waking.

Cyrus, Eliza, and Rayner were all watching her, a mixture of relief and wariness on their features. There was a moment of tense silence before they were all rushing forward.

Eliza shoved Cyrus to the side to get to her ?rst, gripping her tightly. The tears she had been ?ghting broke free, and a sob escaped her throat. “He was gone, Eliza,” she whispered. “He was gone, and I was still here.”

“I know, Scarlett,” she whispered back. Scarlett felt the general’s tears mixing with her own.

And gods, her tight hold reminded her of Nuri. Another betrayal she would need to come to terms with. But not right now. She couldn’t think about any of that right now.

“Time to share, Eliza dear,” Cyrus said, but there was none of the usual mirth in his tone.

Eliza stepped back, and Scarlett turned. She and Cyrus stared at each other for the longest moment. Icy blue eyes locked onto golden ones.

“I’m sorry,” Scarlett ?nally said, her voice breaking with emotion. “I’m sorry. I didn’t— I wasn’t thinking when I—”

“Shh,” Cyrus hushed, pulling her into him. “No apologies, Darling,” he whispered.

“He was gone. I didn’t know what I was doing. There was so much... nothing.”

She was crying into his chest, tears once again soaking into his tunic. “I know, Scarlett. I know exactly what you were feeling.”

And how was that fair? How was it fair that she was able to save her twin ?ame, but Cyrus had to live without his every damn day? He deserved so much more than that. He didn’t deserve this pain. He didn’t deserve to have to survive this kind of loss, to live with it day in and day out. She’d barely lasted hours without Sorin. This male had done this for over a decade.

“You are the strongest person I know, Cyrus,” she whispered through her tears.

“I’m not, Darling,” he replied. “I simply do what needs to be done.”

“You are,” she whispered again. “Thank you, Cyrus.”

He squeezed her tighter. “You deserve so much more than what the Fates have dealt you.”

“I am grateful for the things they’ve given me, Scarlett. Even if only for a time,” he replied. Then he pulled back to look into her face. “I think the bigger revelation here is that you just admitted to believing in the Fates.”

“Oh my gods,” she muttered, shoving him slightly away from her with a scowl. “I did not.”

“You totally did.”

She rolled her eyes as she reached for Rayner. “Welcome back, your Majesty.”

“Stop calling me that,” she retorted, squeezing him tightly. “And thank you. For bringing him back with us that night.”

Rayner said nothing else. Just tightened his hold for another second before releasing her.

Which was good because she really needed to use the bathing room.

When she emerged from taking care of her needs, Rayner was coming back into the room, a tray of food in his hands. Cassius was seated in a chair by the bed, where she could only assume he had sat while she had slept for four days.

Four wasted days.

She climbed onto the bed, Cassius immediately passing her a glass of water as she settled cross-legged beside Sorin. After draining the glass, she asked, “Callan? Tava?”

“They are at the House of Water with Briar. Drake and Eva too. Briar will be here later tonight,” Cyrus answered, sitting at the end of the bed. Rayner moved closer, standing at the foot of the bed, his arms crossed, while Eliza began pacing on the other side.

Scarlett looked at Cassius. “And you? Are you okay after I... You know.”

“I am ?ne, Seastar,” Cass reassured her. “Cyrus has been giving me blood.”

“But what exactly did you do?” Eliza cut in.

Scarlett had a pear in her hands, turning it over and over. “I don’t exactly know.”

“What does that mean?” she pushed.

Scarlett sighed, setting the pear aside and looking up at her family. “I was desperate, lost to this nothingness that was in my soul, when Shirina did what she did.”

“You woke up with a new Mark,” Cassius said.

Scarlett’s gaze fell to her forearm, to the interlocking circles. “I don’t know what it does or did,” she said, tracing the Mark with her ?ngernail. “Only that he told me when I woke up, Altaria would be here with a vial. I needed to drink it and then give my magic to Sorin. I didn’t care how it worked. Only that it did.”

“The High Witch said there would be a cost for this,” Rayner said, his voice low and grave as always.

She met his swirling gaze. “It is one I would pay a thousand times over.”

“You can’t say that without knowing what it is,” Eliza said.

“Of course I can, and I would. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to keep him on this side of the Veil.” When the room fell silent, she changed the subject. “What’s our next course of action? Callan and Eva are safe. What of Ashtine?”

The Fae looked amongst themselves while Cassius pressed a piece of dried meat into her hand, trying to get her to eat something.

“Ashtine stayed behind with Talwyn,” Rayner said. “Briar tried to argue with her.”

“She sided with Talwyn?” Scarlett asked, unable to hide her shock.

Another betrayal to add to her list.

“Not with her as the queen, but with her as a friend.”

“There is no difference,” Scarlett argued.

“Ashtine believes there is,” Rayner said.

Scarlett couldn’t exactly argue with that. The Wind Princess was odd and somehow wise beyond her years, partly due to the winds speaking secrets to her and partly due to the massive library beneath her Citadel where she spent her childhood. A library that held a mirror gate she would really like to get back to. She had so many questions for this Lord of Night.

“We’ll come back to Ashtine. Azrael? I’m assuming he is with Talwyn as well?” A tense silence settled over the room as she took a bite of the meat. “Someone just say it,” she sighed.

“Luan is hiding out... Here,” Cyrus ?nally supplied.

“Here? As in the Fire Court?”

“Here as in... He’s downstairs.”

“What?” she demanded.

“There’s more.”

“I swear to Saylah, Cyrus, if you tell me that fucking Talwyn is here too—”

“Talwyn is not here,” Cyrus cut her off quickly. “But Luan showed up the night after... everything happened. He told us Talwyn informed him that Alaric and the seraphs were going to invade the Courts.”

“They cannot all cross the wards at once,” she argued.

“They can if Talwyn allows them passage.”

“And what do they want in the Courts?” Scarlett gritted out from between her teeth, the dried meat forgotten in her hand.

“To overthrow the royalty not willing to side with them.”

“Briar is here,” Rayner cut in. “He is not alone.”

Voices carried up from downstairs, and Scarlett immediately recognized Callan’s. But also...

“Do I hear Auberon Isra downstairs?” she asked, her head tilted. That wasn’t possible though. Nuri had killed him when she’d killed Rosalyn.

“Yeah. We hadn’t gotten to that part yet,” Cyrus said, his hand rubbing the back of his neck. “Apparently Nuri told him to ?ee to the Witch Kingdoms after she killed Rosalyn. Hazel told us if we didn’t get him out, she would kill him, so he’s here too.”

Scarlett opened her mouth, then shut it again. Because she had nothing to say in response. She didn’t want to focus on any of this. She needed her twin ?ame and her king, her partner, to wake up and help her deal with this. She couldn’t do it on her own.

“You’re not alone, Scarlett,” Cyrus said softly, closer than he had been moments ago. “He will wake up, and even then, we are all here with you.” She nodded as Briar came into the room. “You’re awake,” he said, surprise ringing in his voice.

“Why is Callan here?” she asked in answer.

“He and Lady Tava have some very interesting information I think we all need to hear.”

And that was how Scarlett found herself in a room with two Fae princes, a mortal king, two noble mortals, a Night Child, four other Fae, and a half-Witch, half-Avonleyan while her twin ?ame slept beside her.

“Before I summoned Scarlett for aid,” Callan was saying, “Veda told us of their gifts.”

“Veda’s power was like nothing I’d ever felt,” Scarlett said. “She stopped my arm as if she were holding it with her hand, but she was across the room from me. I still overpowered her, but it wasn’t easy by any means.”

“Yes,” Tava agreed. “She pulled me to her with the same magic.”

“But I’ve never seen the other Maraans use this gift. Lord Tyndell can alter reality, and Mikale dream walks like the Lord of Night,” Scarlett mused, trying to ?t all the puzzle pieces together in her head.

“That is because they steal their magic,” Tava said.

“Excuse me?” Cyrus balked. He was leaning on his forearms that were resting on the back of Cassius’s chair.

“Veda told us it’s their rite of passage, so to speak,” Callan said. “They kill a magic-wielder in their world and take their power for their own.”

“So what you’re saying is these seraphs could have literally any type of magic? We have no way of knowing until we see it?” Eliza asked.

“From what Veda said, yes,” Tava answered.

“And this is a one time thing? Or can they kill another and trade out their power? Or collect more than one gift?” Scarlett asked.

“She didn’t say,” Callan replied.

Scarlett fell back against the headboard of the bed. Just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse. How could they possibly prepare for this? They had no idea what magic they would be defending against.

The others were debating among themselves when Scarlett said to no one in particular, “We need to go to Avonleya.”

The entire room went silent.

“You want to go to Avonleya?” Eliza ?nally repeated.

“I don’t think we have much of a choice anymore,” Scarlett answered. “We can’t ?ght them alone. They’ve fought them before. They must know something we don’t.”

“Can’t you ask your dream friend?” Cyrus asked.

“First of all, fuck you. He’s not my dream friend,” Scarlett said, ?ipping him off at calling the Lord of Night that. “Second, I think we ?nish the plan that was set in motion in that throne room, and then yes, we sail west. Just as we were prepared to do if something went wrong. I would say Sorin nearly dying and Talwyn siding with them is something going pretty fucking wrong. This was always the plan. It’s simply time to go through with it.”

“But we’ve learned new information,” Eliza began.

“That changes nothing,” Scarlett said. “It only solidi?es the need to do this.”

“To clarify,” Azrael cut in. He hadn’t looked directly at Scarlett once since they’d all ?led up the stairs to this room when she’d refused to leave Sorin’s side. There had been a slight glimmer of surprise when he’d seen Sorin on the bed, alive and breathing, but nothing else from the Earth Prince. “You want all of us to get on ships and sail for a kingdom locked away? When they took the keys from you? How will we even get past the wards?”

“To clarify,” she said coldly, echoing his words. “They didn’t take the keys from me. It was deliberate that I had them with me that night.”

“Bullshit,” the Earth Prince spat. “Why would you willingly give him the keys?”

Her lip curled back as she studied him. Bronze skin, black hair, tall, and muscled. He ?nally met her gaze, earthy brown eyes locking onto hers. “Because I altered them, and he’s about to learn exactly what kind of weapon he created.”

“Here,” Cyrus said to Cassius, passing him a glass of blood.

“Thanks,” Cass answered, taking it with a nod from the chair where he sat beside the bed.

Scarlett only left the bed to use the bathing room. Otherwise, all meetings and discussions were had here, in this room where she could monitor her twin ?ame.

Hazel came every day. She didn’t say much to anyone. She’d look at Cassius, but he was too preoccupied with everything else to worry about his relationship with his mother right now. Scarlett wasn’t even sure if he still wanted to ?gure that all out. It was his deal to navigate. She was here when he needed to talk things out. And if they went to Avonleya, there was a very good possibility he’d be meeting his father as well. It was a lot for anyone to process.

Then there was the reason Cyrus was giving Cass his blood. She had no way to replenish her magic because her Source had nearly died and hadn’t woken up yet. Her Fae gifts replenished naturally with food and rest, but her Avonleyan gifts needed her Source. Once that Mark was put in place, blood from another Fae wouldn’t work. It was part of the Source bond, the trust required of each party to enter into such a thing.

Which made her only other option Cassius, her Guardian.

When her reserves got low enough, the Guardian bond would do its thing and detect the danger it posed, allowing her to draw from Cassius. Cassius fed from Cyrus, and she would draw from Cass. The problem was Cassius wasn’t Fae. Fueling her power that way wasn’t designed to sustain her like Fae magic would. More than that, Cassius couldn’t take enough from Cyrus to keep up with her never-ending well of power. If Sorin had actually died and crossed into the After fully, she would have been able to take another Source; but like her twin ?ame Mark, the Source Mark had only begun to fade. It had been restored when she had called him back. According to all the information they’d been able to ?nd on Sources, which wasn’t much, once a Source was Marked there was no going back. No second chances. They were an Avonleyan’s only source of truly sustaining magic unless death itself separated them.

To ease the strain on Cyrus and Cassius, they had resorted to only doing this cycle of feeding and drawing twice a day, but it was exhausting for all of them. She was conserving her white ?ames and shadows, but not having constant access to that darkness had her on edge. Well, more than she already was because the last days had been nothing but trying to ?gure out how to prepare for the incoming threat to their Courts. Azrael didn’t know when it was coming, only that Talwyn had said it was. Briar had tried to contact Ashtine, but even that had to be planned and carefully executed. As far as she knew, there hadn’t been any type of response yet.

“I don’t like the idea of only you and Cassius going into the Black Syndicate,” Cyrus said, leaning against the wall beside Cassius and crossing his arms.

Scarlett pushed out a breath. “I know you don’t. None of you do, but it makes the most sense,” she argued. “Cass and I know the ins and outs of the Black Syndicate. We know who to watch out for, and we know how to watch for Nuri. She could easily sneak up on any of you.”

“I wouldn’t say easily ,” Cyrus grumbled.

She smirked slightly. “I would say easily . She did it more than once to Sorin. And didn’t she sneak up on all of you in the tunnels when you came to get me in Baylorin?”

Cyrus scowled. “That was different.”

“How?” Scarlett demanded.

“It just was.”

“I’m going to need a better argument than that to change my mind, Darling.”

“I’ll come up with one.”

“Great. While you work on that, the rest of us will work on ?guring out things that actually matter.”

“You going into the territory of your former master de?nitely matters,” Briar cut in. “I do not like it any more than they do, but I understand your arguments and agree it is likely the best course of action at this point.”

“Thank you,” Scarlett said, exasperated by the fact that they were rehashing this topic yet again. “Let’s focus on how we are going to get these ships out to sea without calling attention to surrounding ?eets.”

They fell into discussion again, and Scarlett found it hard to stay focused. She always did. While her mind tried to pay attention to everything going on around her, her soul only cared about her twin ?ame asleep beside her. It had been a week. Seven entire days since she had given everything she had to bring him back to this side of the Veil. Hazel assured her every day that he would live and that he would wake, but each day that passed had her second guessing it. What if it hadn’t worked at all? What if it simply prolonged the inevitable? What if the Lord of Night was a lying piece of shit who was only using her for his own gain, and he needed her to stay sane, so he tricked her with this insane idea that she could save him?

Gods, she knew that was ridiculous. She knew she was halfway to losing her mind, if she hadn’t already, but these were the thoughts that kept her up at night now. These were the nightmares that didn’t let her sleep. These were things that had hopelessness rising up more and more in her soul with every passing hour.

Maybe she was an idiot for believing that hope was for the dreamers.

Maybe this was hell, just as she’d suspected in the beginning. Maybe this was her own personal Pit of Torment, balanced on the very edge of hope to slowly fade into the nothingness that she felt when she’d watched Sorin fall trying to get to her. Maybe...

Scarlett was rubbing her temples with her ?ngers, trying to get control of her thoughts, when Rayner caught her eye. There was a faint smile on his lips as he jerked his chin in the direction of the bed, and she twisted to ?nd golden eyes ?xed on her.

Golden eyes full of life.

A low groan came from his parted lips, and Scarlett was lurching forward, her mouth landing on his. She kissed him hard, the taste of cloves and honey dancing along her tongue. She felt his ?ngers on her hips, squeezing weakly, and she pulled back before she punched him in the shoulder.

He let out a grunt as she snapped, “You promised no goodbyes, you asshole.”

Then she was climbing into his lap straddling his hips, hands framing his beautiful face as she kissed him again. When she ?nally pulled back again, it was just far enough to look at him. Her ?ngers traced along his brow, his temples, through the long stubble on his jaw. Her eyes fell closed, and she breathed in deep—ashes and cloves and cedar. When she opened them again, tears blurred her vision as she looked directly into the eyes that could see to her very soul.

“You were dead,” she whispered.

“I’m not, my Love,” he rasped back.

“But you were. You were dead. You were gone. You were taken from me. You were—”

His large hand was on her cheek, thumb brushing over her cheekbone as another tear slid free.

Silence settled over them, and Scarlett realized everyone else had left the room, giving them this moment.

“Never again, Sorin Aditya,” she whispered. “Never leave me again. I lived in a world without you in it for a matter of minutes, and I will not survive it again.”

“My Love,” he rasped, trying to lift his head but immediately falling back down to the pillows.

She felt bad about demanding this of him now. She probably shouldn’t have been straddling him when he had just woken up, kissing him, calling him an asshole, but this was them. This made it real. This reassured her she wasn’t going mad, that he was alive and with her and ?ne. He was ?ne.

She bent forward once more, bringing her brow to his. “It’s always been you, Sorin,” she said, her tears dripping onto his face. “From the very beginning. The Fire Prince I hated. The target I couldn’t kill. The general I couldn’t stand. The rescuer from my demons. The savior from drowning. The brightest star in the darkness. Only you. Only ever you. Where you go, I will follow, even if that means crossing the Veil. Never leave me again, Sorin. Never again.”

“Never again,” he whispered, his voice hoarse from disuse.

And she was kissing him again. This kiss was slow and deep and full of promises they would die to keep.

She slid off of him, nestling into his side, her head on his chest. She could hear the steady beat of his heart, and she closed her eyes, reminding herself again this was real. He lived. He breathed. He survived.

His arm was wrapped around her waist, his hand resting on her hip. She felt ?ngers from his other hand drift through her hair. “I love you, Scarlett.”

“All the way through the darkness, Sorin.”

He was asleep again moments later, but the nothingness in her soul had abated. Hearing him speak. Tasting him on her lips. Feeling his arm wrapped around her. It all grounded her.

And for now, that was all she needed.