“Before?”
Reeve hesitated. “Before,” he repeated, his words careful, like he was testing them, “the Senshi were under a sort of Enslavement Curse to my father, to Aterna’s ruler before him, and the rest.”
“Why did the Inheritor process begin?”
“I don’t have a perfect answer,” said Reeve, “just that thousands of years ago, the people of Aterna placed all their Magic in one ruler, chosen by the gods to protect Aterna Magic. And each Inheritor that is picked is chosen by them as well. A god’s power, handed down by the mercy of even greater gods.”
“And who is yours? When will they come and take you from me?” she asked, suddenly feeling groggy.
Reeve smiled, but Maeve’s heart ached when it didn’t meet his eyes. “No one’s going to take me from you.”
“So you’ll leave me willingly? Because some other god decided your time was up?” she asked, her eyes heavy.
Reeve’s hand cupped her face, his fingers sliding across the nape of her neck and through her hair. “Never willingly. Not again.” His forehead pressed against hers. He sighed. “You need to rest and heal. Now is not the time for this conversation.”
Maeve didn’t argue, not because she didn’t want to, but because her mouth wouldn’t listen to her mind. Her body wouldn’t obey her command to speak. Reeve shifted beside her, placing her head against him. As he pressed a kiss to her hair, sleep found her.
Chapter 45
The Dread Dagger’s infliction on Maeve’s leg healed agonizingly slowly. With nothing but time on her hands, her mind was so unoccupied, all it could do was slowly draw up memories. Memories she’d long forgotten. Some of Antony, some of Reeve, Maxius when he was just a baby, and some of Mal.
She wondered, in the endless time she had, if Reeve had never rejected her, if she had never come to be at Mal’s side, would she have freed Shadow? Would she have unleashed that evil upon Mal?
It was pointless to think such things. Because she couldn’t imagine a life without Maxius. She wouldn’t imagine such a thing. Prophecies and ancient laws of Magic be dammed. She wouldn’t take any more life from her son. She would see that his future was brighter than hers.
After all, wasn’t that the duty of a parent? To plant seeds they may never get to cherish as flowers of their own?
She learned, as she had nothing but time in her mind, that Shadow’s childhood was a barren garden. There were no flowers. No sunlight. If she’d had parents, Shadow herself didn’t remember them.
The earliest memories she had were of steel chains wrapped around her adolescent body. Torture and pain. Torture for answers to questions a little girl named Judyth couldn’t possibly have known.
From the time of her first memories, until she was in her early twenties, Judyth knew nothing but enslavement. She received no warmth, not even from her fellow prisoners of Shadow Magic. She was cursed, they said. Her pale skin, her bright-white lashes, and eyes were a bad omen.
When she arrived at Vaukore, to study and understand her Shadow Magic, the presence of those Dread Magicals around her grew. Maeve had never given much weight to her observations that Judyth soared ahead of her classmates, even those with Dread Magic. Shemastered Shadow Magic in a way that had professors glancing nervously.
The Dread King is expecting you.
They picked her. The strongest.
Judyth became the then Dread King’s favorite weapon. Her submission, beaten into her from birth, held strong as he used her ability to absorb another’s Magic, to possess minds for his own reign.
Until the king’s hold on her faltered, and trust filled the gap where chains once were. A grave mistake on his part. Judyth never forgot Nevian. She made certain that as she took the king’s Dread Magic for herself, her hatred was known.
She’d go on to take the lives and Magic of all the royal Dread line.
Just as she was doing with Mal.
Attacks on Earth began, which meant that Reeve was intervening at all hours of the day and night, when Dreaded Dead slipped through realms, targeting only the Magicals that remained on Earth, the ones who had refused to come to The Dread Lands. He wasn’t just killing Dreaded Dead. He was now taking the lives of her former comrades. Magical Militia, Bellator. Mal’s soldiers.
Blood coated his armor and smeared across one cheek as he stood with a tight set jaw and tense shoulders in her darkened chamber. Maeve hadn’t been sleeping. She never slept when he was gone.
She set aside her notes and writing on Judyth—no—on Shadow, and stood for him.
Adrenaline coursed through him. Maeve could feel it, like it always did after he fought. Like a cat, shifting its weight backwards, ready to pounce. Or the opening of a serpent’s jaws as venom fills its fangs. Like the thick static in the air before thunder.
She walked towards him with hardly any limp in the pre-dawn morning, nearly fully healed. Her robe whispered softly against the floor behind her.
“You alright?” she asked.
