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Screwing the cap back on the jar, I set it on the nightstand and crawl beneath the covers. Laying my head on a pillow, I stare into the empty room. So much has changed in such a short period of time. I’m starting to think I’m numb to it all. I pull the blanket closer, tucking it beneath my chin.Who do I choose? How do I choose?I’m not even sure any of them would want me.
“Well, considering you’re clutching that note to your chest like it’s your last piece of bread, I’d say you have your choice.”
My breath hitches as my eyes slide down to the piece of paper curled in my hand along with the bunched fabric of the quilt. Shit. I quickly toss it off the side of the bed, but it’s useless to try and claim plausible deniability. No matter how fast I am, we share a body. She’s going to know. She already did. It doesn’t stop me from doing it anyway out of instinct.
The paper floats in a back and forth motion to the floor.
“Saw that.”
Locking my jaw, I attempt to snuggle back into bed and get comfortable. “You know, I liked it better when you were silent.”
Chapter 14
Loric
Time seems to have stilled as I sit, my gaze fixed on the cards in my hands, yet my mind elsewhere. I’m not sure how long I’ve been staring at my cards. The intricate patterns of numbers and symbols blur before my eyes, their meaning lost to me. If someone were to snatch the cards from my grasp and challenge me to recall two, I'd be at a loss.
Since Vik and Calamity entered the cavern, having left the spring and entered the room she’ll stay in for the night, my attention has been irrevocably drawn to that door, to the space she now occupies. To distract myself, I trace the outline of the card at the top of my hand. It’s a red queen, depicted with two heads. One, humanoid, regal and crowned with jewels, and on the flipside, a dragon, dark as night with gold-tipped scales. Golden eyes.
The Flame Keeper, Queen of Dragons.
May she rest in peace. If it weren’t for her, for her sacrifice, Jesper and I would still be in that dungeon. Hell, we might’ve still been there when Calamity was born. Suffering… being poked and prodded.Skinned.
If it weren’t for the dragon queen surrendering herself, we might still be whittling away at the dead with our fingers, picking their bones clean, so the king could hoist their skeletons up and attach them to his demented bridge.
He crafted it himself, bending bone into railings, twisting them with his druidic magic into long, slender columns. It connects the small, rocky island his castle has been built upon to the mainland. A warning to everyone who sees it, daring them to cross him, threatening to wipe their species from this realm like he did the dragons if they do.
His entire castle is a shrine to his obsession. It’s not just the bridge he crafted from the dragons, but his spires. The walls are infused with bone dust, every shingle on the spire’s roofs crafted from scales. Since dragons are immune to most magics, it made his castle impervious to magical attacks from the outside.
I set the cards down, clenching my jaw as memories I’d give anything to take away resurface. The sound of bone grinding into powder. How he forced dragons to shift, so he could strip the scales from their bodies. The way the dungeons smelled for days, even though they’d returned to their humanoid forms while they healed. The most haunting of them all was the last time my twin sister looked at me, her eyes glossy, her lips trembling as she whispered her goodbye. The king didn’t give her a chance to finish before he killed her in front me, all to manipulate Asmodeus.
I was supposed to be next, but the bastard caved, and in that same instant, my sister’s sacrifice became meaningless.
All it took was for the king to take one step in my direction, my sister’s lifeless body on the dungeon floor, and the man gave in to his grandfather’s demands. Asmodeus agreed to serve the king and wear one of his enchanted gauntlets, the ones that give the king complete and utter control, the same ones his kingdombroke into civil war over, the ones those in the outer realm rebelled against, all under one condition.
The king had to spare me. Somehow, that made it all worse. Losing my sister was enough, knowing her death was for nothing was devastating, but it didn’t come close to sitting in that dungeon for years, watching everyone around me die, being tortured while I sat in solitude untouched. Unharmed, from that point on. A part of me wonders if it’s why Asmodeus chose to become the dungeon master, to ensure the king held up his end of the deal, not that he could do anything about it if he didn’t.
I loved Asmodeus like a brother, having found him a blink away from death in the enchanted forest. I healed him, taught him how to survive in this world, to live. We became family. Even if it wasn’t through blood or marriage, it was by choice, much like how Jesper, Faelor, Mira, and the others are to me now.
His parents shoved him into this realm as punishment for not knowing how to control his power, for killing people he loved with it when it became unruly. My sister and I taught him what his parents couldn’t, all so he could go through life without fear of hurting someone he loved ever again.
Yet he did it anyway, to the both of us in six simple words.I’ll do it..just spare him.
I don’t owe Asmodeus anything. I never claimed he owed me a life debt after I brought him back from the reaper’s clutches, clawed and mangled by the creatures in that dark, enchanted forest. It took us hours to stitch him back together, to make him look somewhat humanoid again. More than that, it took days of combining our magic to cauterize and heal his wounded flesh, to save him despite the fact he’s supposed to be immortal and heal on his own. On that side of the river, there are creatures not even immortals can escape from. He just so happened to meet one.
He should’ve let me die that day, shown me mercy, yet he made me suffer instead. Then has the gall to demand I owe him a favor, after stealing away my sister’s noble death, after everything… claiming he’ll get me out of that dungeon, telling me to just hold on a little longer. It took the queen, the dragon queen, coming to Solaria, handing herself over to the mad tyrant ruling this realm in exchange for the shifter prisoners to be released. Only then did I make it out, and Asmodeus wouldn’t even look at me as I crossed that bridge, walking past him toward freedom, with a lifetime of nightmares to remember our time by.
Yet, he had the know-how to help Calamity escape, entrusting me with her. He knew, regardless of what happened in that dungeon, that I wouldn’t let someone endure what I had. Not for his sake, but for my sister’s memory… fucking bastard.
Now, I’m sitting around a table, playing cards. Here, but not really. Eyes open, but not seeing what’s right in front of me… fighting myself, my inner beast, to desperately keep my gaze off that fucking door.
She’s a Midicious,I remind myself, scrubbing a hand over my face.She’s off-limits.
Even if she understands what it’s like to sit in that dungeon while everyone you know and love disappears, even if I can relate to what she’s endured, to empathize with it enough to do as Asmodeus has asked and get her out of Solaria, it doesn’t make it any easier to swallow the knowledge of who she is. But I will, because it’s what my sister, Elaria, would do. It’ll be the only good thing that’s ever come out of us saving Asmodeus in that woods that day. All the good memories we had together have been tainted by what happened in the dungeon, but saving this girl… Asmodeus would’ve never brought her to me if my sister were still here, had he not bargained for my life. HelpingCalamity will make Elaria’s death worth something–at least in her eyes.
I hadn’t answered his summons with the intention of saving her, but the moment I saw her golden eyes, it was like a sign from the queen. A chance to right the wrong. I couldn’t shake it.
My beast, however, sees things differently. He’s not affected by such endearments as sibling love or what it means to give Elaria an honorable death. His wants and needs are more primitive–survival and strength and power… And more recently, mating and procreation, ensuring our bloodline continues.
