Authors: Marie Hall
Heat crept into his eyes.
The Morrigan stepped over Eve with a tiny sniff.
Cian trembled. His beauty. His dark rose, broken and lifeless. But he wouldn’t give the queen the pleasure of witnessing his pain.
“Cian,” she snapped, and the force of her anger reverberated through the room, slamming against flesh like a physical blow. He shot his gaze to her face. The façade of calm was gone. The Morrigan was in full fury. Eyes a feral shade of red, brows lowered, and mouth set into a razor-thin line. “Now you will finish what I sent you to do in the first place.”
She flicked her wrists, and her mental control over Cian snapped. He launched himself at Eve’s prone body and cradled her to his chest, rocking them back and forth. She was nothing but dead weight in his arms.
The bluish mist of her soul seeped from her pores, ready to be harvested. A pulse of fire shot down his arm. He snatched his hand back seconds before it turned skeletal. “I won’t do it,” he growled, defying her, and flicked his wrist. The gloves once again covered his hands, keeping her safe. He would never hurt Eve again.
“Chaos! There is no need to torture him.” Gold dust showered down from the walls and ceilings with the thunderous boom of Dagda’s voice.
She hissed. “No. He’s made a fool of me. A lesson must be taught, so that all will know never to try it again.”
Then she stalked toward Cian. Her anger snapped into him with cutting force. The fury of her wrath glinted like fire in her red eyes.
“Do it, Cian, or I’ll force you to.” Hot spittle landed on the corner of his eye.
“Kill me if you must. I won’t take her soul to the afterlife.”
Her eyes widened and her arm moved in a blur of speed. She punched her hand through his chest, her fingers wrapping around his heart. She gave a gentle squeeze.
A shriek like the sound of a deranged animal fell from his lips. His body stiffened as the fires of hell filled his every crevice.
The Morrigan leaned in to whisper in his ear, “The defiance ends. One way or another, she will be harvested. And you, my dear Cian, will regret the day you ever thought to defy me.” Each infinitesimal movement sent him into a spasm of vomit-inducing pain.
She narrowed her eyes, tightening her hold by a fraction. He stiffened, holding on to Eve’s body like a lifeline. Sweat poured from his brows and down his neck.
“Frenzy, finish her now.” The Morrigan’s words had a sharp finality to them.
Frenzy walked forward, dropping to his knees before them. Eyes downcast, he reached forward.
“Don’t touch her,” Cian barked.
The queen clenched her fingers together. The pain was immediate, sharp spikes of lancing fire driving through him. His muscles spasmed, allowing Eve to slip from between his grasp.
“I’m sorry, Cian,” Frenzy whispered, his silver gaze full of regret.
Warm blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. He glanced toward Dagda. The king refused to look at him.
The Morrigan threw her head back and laughed. She hissed, gritting her teeth. “He can’t help you now, Cian. No one can.”
Then Cian understood and the last shred of hope died out. They’d sworn a pact. The king was as helpless as he.
Frenzy reached out, skeletal hand twitching and mere inches from Eve’s chest. He closed his eyes and waited for the end to come.
“Take her now, Frenzy!” With those words the queen squeezed Cian’s heart in a viselike grip, and a white nova burst in his brain.
Frenzy shoved his skeletal hand through Eve’s chest.
“NOOOO!” Cian screamed against the physical and mental anguish.
Eve jerked on the floor. A blue mist exploded from her chest, and a spiraling light of white opened before them.
Frenzy glanced at Cian, regret and sorrow expressed on his face. In his gaze.
Hot liquid trailed down the corners of his eyes, running a warm path down his cheek and landing finally on his lips. Without thought, he lapped at the wetness and tasted not the salt of tears but the metallic tang of blood. He was crying crimson.
Eve lay lifeless. The light-blue pallor of true death touched her flesh, and he welcomed the desolate darkness of eternal sleep.
Frenzy walked toward the portal, and the exceptionally small sliver of soul breezed through. Cian frowned, his thoughts disjointed, muddled. Agony speared him, cleaved his heart in two. He needed to think, to understand. Something hadn’t seemed right.
He focused over the ache in his heart, blinked back the bloody tears, and fought to understand. Something wasn’t right. Her soul. It’d been so small.
“It is done,” Frenzy whispered and The Morrigan nodded, pulling her hand out of his chest with a loud suctioning pop.
Another angry explosion of fire filled his limbs. He looked down to see a gaping hole in his chest, his muscles strained and screamed. He gasped for breath. His lungs rattled with the effort and he coughed. A wet, spastic sound ripped through him. Each breath was torture. His body trembled, and his eyes began to roll to the back of his head.
“Badb. Nemain. Bring me the canes.”
“Eve,” he breathed.
The Morrigan stood tall over him, no longer gloating, her face expressionless and cold. Distant.
The birds dropped the one-inch rods at the queen’s feet. When she stooped to pick them up, they gradually grew in size and thickness until they were as round as sturdy sapling and as long as a half-sized python.
There was no warning. No, get ready here it comes. A whistle and then black fire exploded across his back. He hissed, jerking automatically. One hit followed another. Then another. Gore splattered across the room.
And the queen never paused in the beating. One atop another, atop another. Faint, dizzy, he winced. Sheer agony, the likes of which he’d never felt before or thought to be possible, ate him alive. Like scalding oil caressing his back, stripping first the flesh, then the muscle.
White spots danced behind his eyes. He accepted the pain, welcomed the relief of the physical over the emotional. This wasn’t enough to kill him. The Morrigan was toying with him. Drawing out the agony of the kill.
“I hate…you,” he wheezed.
A spark of rage lit her eyes, and a wild scream escaped her blood-spattered lips. Drops of spit landed on his cheek with each huff she took, forcing the rod down harder and harder, ripping him to the bone.
The Morrigan lifted her hand, a deadly calm on her face, and he knew this next strike would send him into darkness.
The macabre scene slowed down. Every detail of the room, of The Morrigan, Dagda, and Frenzy was sharp and clearly defined, like his brain was shutting down. A coping mechanism, filtering every infinitesimal element into one sharp picture. Frenzy looking away. Dagda glaring and staring off at one corner of the room.
He watched her arms come down, so close he felt the whisper of air scant seconds before the metal would strike his back, when suddenly, the world around them rocked with incredible power, and a ripping gale threw The Morrigan and Frenzy aside. Foundations shifted and rocks crumbled. A fine mist of dust rained down around them.
“Enough!”
Cian groaned as the sharp bits of rock bit into his lacerated flesh. A blinding white light ripped through the room. The crawling flash of ivory seeped into his body, filling him with a healing warmth. Not nearly enough to close the jagged wounds, but just enough to get him to his feet and to Eve. Enough to hug her. To touch her.
He rocked with her and wept, burying his face in her neck, just wanting to hold her close to his shattered, bleeding heart.
“Your debt has been paid, Morrigan. Balance restored.”
That’s when the voice finally penetrated the fog of grief. Shocked, he glanced up to see Lise towering over the queen, her hunched-over body looking pathetically weak compared to The Morrigan’s.
But there was no mistaking the infinite power crackling and radiating from the chosen one. An endless expanse of pulsating energy that singed the fine hairs on the back of his neck. A living entity hanging in the air. Lise was the very wellspring of magick itself.
“No,” The Morrigan shrieked. “The deal was struck. I won. He is mine.”
“You dare!” Lise lifted a hand, an eerie white glow covering her body. She became encased in iridescent flame so bright his eyes watered. He grimaced, only able to look upon her transformation through narrowed eyes.
There was an explosion, and Lise’s body vanished, in its place a sphere of white-hot brilliance. “Have you forgotten us so soon? The works we entrusted you with?” The voice was Lise’s, but deeper somehow, richer. The sphere glowed brighter with each question becoming as the burning sun. Blinding.
“You’ve lost your truth.”
The Morrigan was staring at the ball of light, clenching her jaw, and trembling, fury evident in the lines of her back. Fear scrawling a path across her face. The red of her eyes slowly turning back to blue. “I never forgot who I was.”
The sphere shot toward the queen, stopping inches from her. Tendrils of white flame shot out in all directions. The Morrigan flinched.
“You’ve grown self-righteous, believing yourself entitled to it all. Remember, oh queen…” Lise’s words were trimmed in velvet. Forged in fury. “We have the power to give and to take away. I’ve stood back and allowed you freedom to choose, much to the peril of humanity. That is your right but not in this.”
The Morrigan said nothing.
The ball that was Lise turned and floated toward Cian. “My son.”
He frowned, clutching Eve tighter to him.
“Such terrible sadness…”
A shaft of light reached out and engulfed him. He flinched, expecting…who knew what, only that touch had caused him much pain recently. Instead the sting of his wounds vanished. Gentle heat traveled through his limbs, banishing the monster inside, forcing it to return back to the shadowed depths. His heart sealed up with a small pop, the flesh of his chest knit together. Soothing heat, like the gentle waters of a natural spring, brushed against his back, healing him. The scent of a dewy spring day filled the antechamber.
He looked down at his bloody shirt. The gaping hole was gone.
Cian expected Lise to heal Eve. Bring her back from the dead. Something! Surely that couldn’t be beyond her powers. She was one of the chosen. He’d seen her abilities firsthand.
“Please,” he croaked, touching his witch’s face. The plea ripped from his heart.
“She loved you.” Lise’s voice was everywhere and nowhere. In his mind, in the air, rippling through the room. And yet she hadn’t uttered a word.
He closed his eyes and a shaky breath fell from his lips.
“Look inside yourself. Find the truth, and you’ll find your Eve.”
He frowned, turning to look down at the woman in his arms. The dark priestess of his fantasies and desires. The only thing that had ever meant anything to him.
The room was silent, nothing stirred. No one spoke. It was as if they weren’t there at all.
Tracing the smoothness of her jaw with his finger, he searched, looking for whatever it was that Lise said he’d find. Memories flooded him.
Eve throwing him a baggie of blood, believing him to be a vamp. Her strength of character. That beautiful crooked smile of hers.
Something was happening. Something inside him, spreading throughout him. A coolness he’d never felt before. A strange entity coming to life.
More memories. That night at the tattoo parlor. The exotic woodpecker on her back. How she’d kissed his skull without disgust but with joy. The thought still wracked him with grief, and the rapid flutter of what felt like wings beat inside his chest.
His nostrils flared and he glanced at Lise. “What the hell is wrong with me?”
The ball glowed slightly brighter. He likened it to a gentle smile. “That is her. She is inside you.”
“What?”
From the corner of his eye, he noticed all three figures lean slightly closer.
“When you made love, she shared her soul with you. The love was true. She is your mate. And only you can bring her back.”
He blinked. Then blinked again. “H-How?” He felt tongue-tied, incapable of thought, or speech, for that matter. How was this possible?
“Did you notice a light that night? Dark and light?”
Mute, he nodded.
“You were sharing souls. Her light went into you, Cian. All you have to do…is reach inside yourself and pull her out.”
He lifted his hand, staring at the rune-inscribed glove he’d always worn. His gaze flicked to Lise. “Won’t my grabbing on to her soul kill it?”
“She shared her soul with you. That means your immortality, is now hers as well.”
If there was even a chance…He tore off the glove and took a deep breath before he speared his hand through his chest. Ice and a raging inferno spread through his body, and he sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. Sweat poured from his brows and he reached inside, grabbing quickly on to the fluttering wings. and yanked it out.
The second his hand left his chest, the pain fled. Like the haunting memory of a fading dream. Within his palm rested the soul. It was not the typical blue of mortals but the bright golden wash of the immortals. It glittered, pulsed, and seemed to dance on his hand. The soul recognized him. Somehow he knew it, and a warm glow flowed down his spine.
“Lay her down, Cian. Place the soul upon her body and step back.”
He looked to Lise. No way in hell was he letting her go. Not now. Not when he was so close.
“You did your part. Now it is my turn. Trust me.”
It took every ounce of self-restraint he had to do as she bid. With great care he laid Eve’s head upon the floor, briefly touching a curl before dropping the golden ball onto her chest. He clenched his jaw and slowly, agonizingly, stepped away.
The brilliant iridescence that was Lise floated down over Eve’s body and then, like a gust of wind, flew into her. Magick, strong and potent, erupted inside the room. Fingers of wind riffled through his hair.
Eve was wrapped in ivory. White light shot from her pores, the tips of her fingers, until she glowed as Lise did and he could no longer see her through the brightness.
The white exploded and all went still, silent as the grave. He closed his eyes, turning aside until the flash died down. A quick inhalation of breath had his heart stuttering, and he snapped his eyes open.