AllFreeNovel
Share Us
With eyes clenched shut, I shook his voice away. I wanted to run, run far away from the hold he had on me. It wasn’t fair that he could just appear any time and invade my thoughts. And all these years—had he been in my head the whole time? It made me sick that I couldn’t escape it.
I’ll always know. I’ll always follow you. And when you fail once again to do what you failed to do before, I’ll be chasing you, ready to remind you. No one has ever kept me out.
I fought like hell to get him out, closing my eyes to help me blockade my mind. But as he spoke into my thoughts, something he said made me finally believe him. He was right. I could never keep him out. No one ever had. So what happened if I stopped trying? What would happen if I just let him in? What if I played his game right back? What the hell did I have to lose?
Go right ahead, mate. Make yourself fucking comfortable. As I spoke back, I could almost feel the hesitation and utter surprise in Bastian’s awkward response.
You’re going to just open yourself up to me like that? How very bold of you.
Might as well surrender. It seems the only logical option, wouldn’t you agree?
When there was no answer from Bastian, I knew that I had him. I was now in his head, as he was in mine, and if he insisted we share a highway between our thoughts, I was going to find out what his were. I was done running.
When I opened my eyes, I saw Bastian, looming with a clenched jaw and anger flashing in his gaze. Serena stood in the center of the collector’s lair, facing a grim version of Bastian that I’d never before seen until now. He was taller than humanly possible, and black writhing shadows sprouted from all around him. He controlled some blackened water that burned to the touch, and he sent waves of it forward to wash us all back, separating us all from the one he wanted.
Serena screamed. I grunted with frustration, trying to break through the wall of black water he’d entrapped us in. Though it looked cold, it boiled like molten lava to the touch. Burn marks ate their way through my clothing and onto my arms from trying to break through the barrier. I screamed alongside a desperate Russell, who rammed the wall alongside me as Bastian dragged Serena away in his inky, shadowy clutches.
As Bastian swept her away and dragged her back toward the chamber with the stone altar, I stopped fighting the unbreakable water wall. I couldn’t catch him. And I certainly couldn’t stop him like this. Desperate and out of solutions, I looked inward again, reaching into my mind for an answer—or rather, reaching into his.
Why don’t you just kill her right here? Why the need to keep dragging her back? Are you not strong enough? If I could figure out his secret—why he seemed to need her in that chamber so badly to kill her—maybe it would lead to an idea.
He fought me hard, closing off his thoughts as best he could without losing me entirely. I could feel it. His pride wouldn’t let him give up the hold he had on me. Even if it meant I had access to him, however fleeting.
His thoughts flashed before me as I fought the mental battle to stay in his head and see what I could. I could only manage to see broken, fragmented, and fuzzy blurs of thoughts, but they were something. As he carried Serena, he was thinking about how he’d kill her. With a dagger he planned to stab through her…no, he planned to cut off her tail..to give…to give it back…to the gods?
What was given here must also be taken.
He had to kill her on the altar. He couldn’t do it otherwise. Some kind of magical god rule, I’m sure. But wait…
On the throne of Atargatis must be her blood…To kill her once and for good.
Throne. Throne.
I reached for Bastian’s memories. I knew I wasn’t strong enough to be choosy. But I think the fact that we were now sharing a mind-link made him panic. I saw flashes, glimpses of what could have been bits of Bastian’s life. I saw faces of the poor unfortunate souls he tricked into his deals. I saw pirate captains and kings. I saw glittering horizons and stormy seas. I saw love and loss, hate and war. And there I caught a glimpse—not even a second—of my life through his eyes. He watched us with envy. Serena and I, and the life we built millennia past.
She was mortal, but still just as beautiful. An ordinary girl with ordinary dreams. In a village built from stones and mud, at the earliest dawning of civilization. And there I was with her, in a life I didn’t remember—a man clearly used to hard work and toil, rugged and dirt-covered, greeting her with a kiss as I entered our humble house. All this Bastian had watched, longing to be in my place.
And then I saw what he did to her. What he did to us.
He drove a dagger into my chest while I slept, and left the bloody knife in her hands. When she woke next to my body, holding the blade, she thought she’d lost her mind, and ran to the cliff by her village where she threw herself to the sea.
Centuries later he found her again, no longer a woman, but a goddess, a sea queen, rivaling his own power with her curse-turned-blessing. And he lured her to him, promising a power even she didn’t hold—bringing me back in exchange for her crown. In a ritual under the full moon’s light, he took her crown, sentencing her to a mortal rebirth, forever searching for the man she traded her power to bring back.
I shook away the visions of Bastian’s memories. My legs threatened to buckle as I processed what I’d seen and learned in a matter of moments. What had passed as a lifetime in my mind was only a few seconds here in the real world. I’d hung on to every image. And I remembered the stone altar where Bastian ripped the Crown from Serena’s head in exchange for restoring my life. It wasn’t an altar. It was a throne. And thrones were used for coronations. We had to crown Serena on her throne. And I had to die to do it.
49
To Crown A Queen
Bellamy
If you crown her, you break my deal with her, and I take back what I’m owed—your life.
Bastian spoke to me even now, and I could sense the wicked smile on his disgusting face from his words alone. My blood turned to ice. I didn’t mind dying. I’d already done it once. But losing a lifetime with Serena again…
No. I owed her this. I failed her before. Not again. I wouldn’t do this for anyone but her. For her I’d rip out my own barely beating heart. And if I was the cost of her power, so be it. At least my death would be worth something this time.
I turned to my friends, all trapped here with me. “Help me get out of here. I know what to do to get Serena’s power back. But I have to be the one to do it. Do you understand?”
