Field training: Day 50, hour 1
In the moment of reckoning, I thought I would be dramatic. Yelling. Screaming. Shouting as I fought vehemently for myself.
But the world wasn’t made of shades of red. It was all gray.
And I knew what I’d done.
Quiet was the guilt, and heavy was the soul. Or something poetic and dramatic like that.
Horace’s blood caked my arms from knuckle to elbow. I stared silently as Lothaire threw a desk across the room and broke a chair.
“You murdered my nephew!” he bellowed as a chair was thrown through the stained-glass windows. Rainbow shards sprinkled around us like broken raindrops.
“Let him explain!” John yelled as he struggled against the chains Lothaire had wrapped around him.
Lyla had told Lothaire I was covered in blood, lying on the dance floor (should have seen that coming), and then he’d found John trying to get rid of Horace’s body.
It wasn’t hard to put the pieces together.
“Why would you do this?” Malum radiated death, his upper lip curled as he stared down at me with disgust.
I brought the enchanted cigarette to my lips and took a long draw as I donned a mask of indifference.
The slight tremor in my fingertips was my only tell.
Lothaire kicked another chair into the wall, and bricks cracked. The vampyre leader had dragged me by my short hair from the dance, into his classroom.
The kings, John, and the demons had followed.
Orion stared at me with wide eyes like he’d never seen me before. Probably because he hadn’t.
The air cackled with malice as seven men stared at me with distrust.
The cocktail of drugs coursing through my veins kept me standing; it softened the rough edges of my panic.
The room spinning under my feet, my vision hazy, I took another long drag of my cigarette. I rubbed at my eyes tiredly, and sticky copper clung to my lids.
Fuck, I’d just coated my face in Horace’s blood.
Marking myself with the blood of my kill. How grotesque.
Inhale.
Pain lanced across my back, and I shuddered from the sudden jolt of agony.
His long braid flying, Lothaire turned toward me and advanced across the room like a beast stalking its kill. “How could you?”
I shrugged, knowing it would send him over the edge.
That was the problem with being able to analyze situations: I knew there was no scenario where I walked away from this.
Lothaire had vengeance to dole out.
I had hatred for myself.
It was clear where this was going.
“You INSOLENT, SPOILED BRAT!” Lothaire flung me across the room like I was a chair.
How nice it is to fly. The inappropriate thought made my lips twitch with a smile.
The wall shook behind me as my bones cracked and shattered.
I slumped to the floor, tangled in broken chairs and glass, and put the cigarette between my lips. I’d managed to hold on to it. A win.
Broken shards bit my skin as I lay still.
In all the stories of the realms, people always fought to their dying breath. They raged and screamed against one another as they went kicking and screaming into the valley of the sun god.
Suddenly, it all seemed like a massive lie. A conspiracy to keep us flailing like dying spiders in test tubes.
I was tired.
So fucking tired.
It wasn’t that I wanted to die, because I didn’t want anything; instead, it was the complete absence of motivation.
Is it so wrong to just not care?
Everyone in the realms was always fighting for something: realm pride, honor, queens, and the gods.
But there was no greatness in suffering. The drugs just made it easier to accept my truth.
Lothaire stalked forward, grabbed me by the arm, and flung me across the room to the other side.
Nice. Maybe he’d put me through the window next.
Lothaire raged.
John yelled something.
The kings scowled.
Two demons watched warily.
And I just existed, a blip in space, less than a millisecond in the grand scheme of time.
Lothaire stopped throwing me and slammed his knuckles into my stomach.
Doubling over, I barely held the stick between my fingers as I gagged from the unimaginable power in Lothaire’s fist.
On my hands and knees, covered in glass cuts, I bowed before my guilt.
When Lothaire realized I wasn’t going to fight back, he grabbed me by the neck and held me off the ground. My feet dangled.
“YOU WILL EXPLAIN YOURSELF!”
His singular eye flickered.
“He killed Tara. He was killing Sari.” My voice was too quiet in the silent room.
Lothaire’s expression was murderous. “So what? He was a recruit. He was your fellow soldier, and they were worthless. Yet you KILLED HIM?” His warm spit sprayed across my face. “It was not your punishment to dole out.”
Judge, jury, and executioner. Just like your mother.
“I know.”
Lothaire’s hand tightened around my spine like he was debating cracking it. “Yet you still did it? You murdered him.”
“I did.”
His single eye narrowed, and suddenly he dropped me to the ground.
Backing away, he looked over at John. “You did this together. This was a plan to exterminate him. This was premeditated.”
“No, that’s not it!” I yelled desperately.
Lothaire shook his head like he’d come to a decision. “You’re not powerful enough on your own to do this. And I know John has resented Horace’s attitude from the beginning.”
I staggered toward him with my hands raised. “No, that’s not it. You need to liste—”
Lothaire cut me off. “I missed the signs. You both will be exterminated.”
“What are you talking about?” I snarled, a small scream of anger ringing through my mind. “Listen to me, John was not in on it! He just stumbled into the room after I did it!”
Lothaire looked at the two of us. “You will all be sent into the Black Ocean. For eternity.” Power expanded around him, and his fangs descended.
John hunched defeatedly like he was resigned to his fate.
Why were men so fucking irrational?
He can’t understand your motivation, so he made the only analytical leap he can make.
The shaking in my fingers became an avalanche as I pushed the stick between my lips and inhaled.
“No,” I said as tremors rocked through me.
Glittering black expanded around John.
Violence was in the air.
“NO!” I screamed as I picked up a broken leg of the chair and slammed it to the ground to get his attention.
Lothaire slowly turned around.
“It was all me! I can prove why I did it!”
His singular eye rolled, jagged scar pulling tighter as he scowled at me with disbelief.
“What reason could you possibly have? What power could a fae possess to defeat my nephew? Don’t lie to me.”
There was only one thing to do.
I reached down to my finger and pulled off the invisible ring that was enchanted to disguise me as a boy.
Dropped it to the floor.
Tingles prickled like they always did when I transformed.
In the thousands of broken glass shards, electric-blue hair hung down to my waist, eyelashes lengthened, and features softened. The illusion of broad shoulders narrowed to a lithe feminine figure.
My clothes hung loose off my frame.
Cigarette hanging from my pouty lips, I rolled my eyes at the shocked faces in the room.
I imitated Scorpius and sneered at Lothaire, “I killed him because he kills women.”
My voice was lyrical and light.
It was horrible.
Lothaire took a step backward like I’d punched him in the chest. His mouth dropped open.
“Who the fuck are you?” Malum’s eyes were wide, and he staggered back like he’d been struck.
Orion’s mouth was open in an O, and he fell to his knees.
When Scorpius whispered in his ear, Malum spat, “Aran is a fucking girl. He’s been a girl in disguise this entire time.”
Unseeing milky-white eyes widened, and Scorpius turned around and punched the wall. Over and over. He slammed his knuckles into the bricks.
Flames spread around Malum.
At that moment, the door burst open, and the half warriors rushed into the room. “You called for us, Lothaire?” Demetre asked.
Their entrance was proof that life could always get worse.
“Welcome to the party,” I drawled sarcastically.
Before I could flinch, Shane had thrown himself across the room and slammed me against the wall with his forearm against my throat.
Orion yelled, “Don’t touch her!”
Chaos erupted.
Malum moved quicker than I could blink, and his flaming hand wrapped around Shane’s throat.
Demetre pressed a sword into his side. Scorpius held a shard of glass against his thigh.
Noah was reaching for Scorpius, but Orion had his arm around him.
The kings and half warriors were a tangled web behind me and Shane.
Even though John was chained, he stared at me with his nostrils flared. The darkness glittered and expanded around him.
Lothaire and the demons stood speechless beside him.
“If it isn’t the treacherous fucking cunt I’ve been searching for,” Shane spat as he glared down at me. His eyes widened as he took in my clothes, then he looked around the room.
His green eyes sparked as he put it together.
Aran was Arabella.
“Aw, I thought we were friends?” I pouted dramatically and arched my brow just like Mother always had.
Shane shook with rage, but a smile pulled up the corner of his lips. “Oh, Princess, your days are over.”
I smiled back. “Actually, it’s Queen. Shouldn’t you be bowing?”
He snarled and pressed me harder into the wall. “I’ll bow to your funeral pyre after I consume your heart and burn your carcass in the streets.”
“Oooh, erotic.” I licked my lips while my insides churned at my certain fate. At least the pain would be over.
“ENOUGH!” Lothaire bellowed. “Everyone step the fuck away from one another right now or I will flatten this entire academy.”
From the sparks shooting off Lothaire, I believed him.
Slowly, the kings and half warriors stepped back from one another.
Shane didn’t release me as his forearm pressed me harder into the wall. I focused on the pretty colors refracted by the broken stained glass instead of the growing urge to cough and choke.
I refused to show him weakness.
“We will bring her to the fae realm and complete the mission,” Shane said with a smile.
Abruptly, the three half warriors fell to the floor.
I was released.
Lothaire’s arm was outstretched toward them. “No, you will not.”
The fucker had snapped his fingers, and they’d fallen unconscious. How could he do that?
“What?” I stared up at the vampyre who had ordered the half warriors to find the princess so she could be dealt with.
Why would he stop them?
“That was never the plan,” Lothaire said slowly as he stepped forward.
What the fuck was going on?
The vampyre stared down at me sadly and said nothing. Time stretched between us. Memories of him talking with Jinx without me flashed through my mind.
What had they been talking about?
Now he was staring at me with a soft expression like he…cared?
In the space between us, the silent pieces fell together.
Lothaire had knelt to my mother in the sands and looked at her sadly.
For years, I’d watched him stalk beside her through the castle halls. Sometimes I’d imagine he was looking after me with something close to longing on his face.
He was loyal to her.
But he’d bowed to me after I’d murdered her. Stared at me with a strange expression on his face.
Lothaire had frowned when the half warriors and I had insulted Arabella.
It was the way he’d arched his brow like I did.
How I’d thought I recognized something in his face. Something familiar.
How a vampyre’s bite was supposed to hurt, but it hadn’t when he bit me in the manor.
The fact that vampyres could procreate with fae; it was just taboo.
Now Lothaire spoke slowly, “I promised your mother I’d leave your rearing to her.”
No.
I pressed myself against the wall, like if I pushed backward hard enough, I’d lose my corporeal form and escape his proximity.
“But the High Court wants you on the throne, so I needed to find you. The half warriors were always just pawns to bring you to me.”
Glass crunched under my cut feet as I scooted sideways across the wall, toward the door.
Lothaire walked with me.
“I would never allow them to take you. I just needed them to bring you to me,” Lothaire said softly, his expression darkening. “But now they are a threat to you. They want to hurt you.”
Death was written in the tension vibrating through his body. “I know they were the reason she beat you.”
What is going on? Mother had always beaten me, but she’d never let the bruises show until that fateful day in the gladiator sands.
Lothaire snapped his fingers. “They signed their death warrants that day.”
Sparks shot from his hand.
Demetre’s, Shane’s, and Noah’s necks snapped to the side.
“It was always a matter of time,” he said dismissively.
Holy sun god.
They were dead.
I inched along the wall, desperate to escape. “But on the sands, you didn’t kill me. You didn’t kill Sadie with a snap.”
Even as I spoke the words, I knew the answer.
I shuddered.
Lothaire rolled his eye like I was being dramatic. “Thousands of years old and I couldn’t kill some untrained beasts. Please. I knew they mattered to you.”
“B-B-But you fought?”
“I put on a show.”
“You let me kill my mother? But you were her consort. H-H-Her lover.”
“I did, and I was.”
“W-W-Why?”
“You know why.”
“But I’m not a vampyre.”
“Vampyre traits don’t pass to half-breeds.”
“You can’t be.” I inched closer to the door and turned to run through it, but he moved impossibly fast and blocked my path.
“Arabella, I am your father.” Lothaire smiled down at me sadly.
I couldn’t breathe. “You beat me.”
Suddenly, Lothaire trembled like he was falling apart. His eye widened like he realized just who he was pleading with.
Aran. The person he’d beaten and thrown objects at.
The child he’d tortured.
Lothaire stumbled, then slammed his head into the wall as hard as he could. He left a gaping hole.
Well, now I knew where I got my anger and hitting my head from.
“I DIDN’T KNOW!” he screamed to no one in particular. “I didn’t know,” he whispered.
“But you still did it,” I said coldly.
“I did.” Tears streamed out of his singular eye, and he slumped against the wall. A devastated shell of a man.
His face was sorrowful as he said, “I can’t change the past. I can only move forward with you.”
“No, we won’t be doing anything together.”
“We will.”
“I won’t.”
“You have no choice.” His voice was a broken crack. “I have to make that right.”
I shook my head. “Just leave me alone.”
“I can’t. Thousands are searching for you throughout the realms. Unless you want to be taken to the fae realm and slaughtered for your throne, you have to listen to me.”
“I’d rather die.”
“I can’t allow it, not after what I’ve—” He trailed off.
“What, don’t feel so big and mighty anymore now that you’re not throwing a boulder at your child? Weird.”
“Please.” Lothaire’s voice cracked, like he was only a man and not a monster.
I scoffed at his ignorance. “So what’s your plan? Kidnap me? Newsflash, there’s nowhere in the realm I can hide.”
Lothaire’s jaw jumped, and he bunched his hands into fists. “There is no place you can hide, but there are people you can hide behind.”
I took a shaky step back and brought my cigarette to my lips.
Before I could inhale, a harsh hand slapped the stick to the ground. “My child will not smoke.”
It was a testament to how unwell I was that this was the statement that finally filled me with rage.
He thought he could just tell me what to do after he was going to kill me?
Oh fuck.
My voice was barely a whisper. “Were you really related to Horace?”
Lothaire’s face pinched with grief. “Yes, you foolish child. He was your cousin.”
“I still would have done it,” I gasped out as I struggled to swallow the bile down my throat.
Would you have? I hoped so.
“We will deal with that later. Right now, we need to hide you so you can’t be found until you are ready to take your throne.” He spoke softly like he was talking to a wild animal.
“Fucking never,” I spat.
“Language!” Lothaire scolded as he fluctuated between distraught and rageful.
Slightly relatable.
Lothaire continued like the world wasn’t falling to shambles around me. “In the black market realm, there are enchanted tattoos that bind people together. They cannot physically be parted, and they cannot die unless the other is killed. It is a dark enchantment that is more powerful than the fae succession magic.”
I took another step away as the implications tasted like ash on my tongue. “No.”
“Even eating your heart won’t kill you, if the other tattooed person is alive. You can’t be forcibly removed even with an RJE.”
“No.” I became hyperaware of the kings standing in the room. The men who were watching what was unfolding with sick fascination.
Lothaire kept speaking, like he’d spent hours thinking about this. Planning for this.
“Family members can’t bind with each other. But that is why I’ve chosen three of the strongest men in all the realms for this task. Trained them for it. They agreed to serve the High Court and have accepted the mark.”
John had said the kings had a secret task that bonded them together.
My eyes flashed down to Malum’s waist, where I knew his shirt covered the tattoo on his hip bone.
The one the kings all shared.
A snake in an infinity symbol, eating its tail.
Suddenly, I remembered where I’d seen it. An ancient book in the fae libraries about masters and slaves.
So caught up in the horrible revelations, I didn’t notice the men walking closer to Lothaire.
He grabbed my wrist, and we realm jumped.
