AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Are you real?”
Hands behind her back, she stepped closer. “What was it you always said to me?Stre vera’tu? As real as the stars.” Her smile faded. “If only there were stars here.”
Brows lowered, I turned away, recalling the conversation with Adimus. “I did not realize you’d been sent here. I would have never let you remain in this place. I would have come for you.”
“Have you not? I am Farryn. Another life. Astolenlife.”
Her words stabbed my heart, and I shook my head. “I should’ve stayed to protect you. I should have never left you that night.”
“No. I suppose not.” The cold detachment in her voice struck like a slap to my face. I’d have preferred the strike. “I should not have perished on that blood moon. For I was with child.”
The shock I’d felt from before, when Adimus had told me the same thing, still simmered in my bones, reignited by the words spilling from her lips. “A child. In this place.”
“Yes. Your son.” A tear slipped down her cheek as she lowered her gaze. “Of course, I did not know at the time.”
“How? If you died in the drowning? Your body perished.”
“I learned that it was not my physical body which had nourished him, but my soul. As I lay staring up at that magnificent red moon, knowing I would never breathe again, never look upon your handsome face, nor feel your skin against mine, I heard a voice I’d never heard before. A chanting inside my head, so beautiful, it was like a song." Her eyes sparkled with her sad smile, as though she were hearing it right then. "It brought such a sense of calm, and it was that voice which had told me I was with child, and to save him. Save him. So I spoke the chanted words, aloud and in my mind, until I could no longer remember them.” The smile on her face faded for a sorrowful expression which tore at my heart. “I saved him.”
“That you suffered alone is a torment which will haunt me eternally. I will never forgive myself for it.”
With a shine of tears in her eyes, she trailed her gaze over the surroundings, as if searching for distraction. “Did you know this place was once a temple for the ancient gods?” Before I could answer, she kept on, “Since the dawn of our existence, the Met’Lazan have returned here in preparation of being reborn. Over time, the temple crumbled. The gods retreated into another realm. And Infernium was built on the bones of those who perished. The ancient gods had forsaken us. And this place became my hell.” More tears slipped down her pale cheeks. “I was violated. Beaten. Tormented.”
Pain stabbed my heart, and I fell to my knees.
“Every night, I called for you. I prayed that you would somehow hear me in this place.” She slapped a hand over her mouth and sniffled, pausing, as if to hold back crying. “You never came for me,” she said in a shaky voice, her words burning inside my chest like a poisonous vapor I couldn’t exhale. “But fear not, my love. For I am only a manifestation of your torment. As unreachable as the stars. For, the ancients were merciful enough to let me fall into the fade. I had to leave our son in this dreadful place alone, so that Farryn would one day come to be.”
“Forgive me. I beg you, Lustina. I did not know.”
Gaze lowered, she let out a quiet sob and shook her head. “Your son still wanders these corridors alone. And so I ask one favor of you. I ask that you destroy Letifer’s heart. Free him from this place.”
I let out a shaky breath, my head in chaos. “I have vowed to deliver Letifer’s heart intact.”
“So, as you left me here to rot, will you also imprison your son!” The tone of her voice was foreign, and I lifted my gaze in time to see her skin desiccate into the lifeless, mottled tone of the Mortunath. Fangs protruded from beneath her top lip, and her eyes shifted from the familiar stardust to a stark and glowing red. The eyes of the undead. It was no longer Lustina who stood before me, but a Mortunath demon. “I cursed your name every night! I despise you! I despise you!”
She charged toward me.
I jumped to my feet and grabbed her by the throat, keeping her at a distance. My heart splintered with every hateful word that spilled past her lips as I stared back at her, wishing I could scoop her up into my arms. To tell her how sorry I was. To express the pain that speared my heart, knowing I couldn’t save her, but as she was a demon, my words held no meaning to her. Although the true Lustina would have heard them, she was not there. Only the Mortunath which clawed and snapped its teeth at me.
She screamed and screeched like an animal in my grasp.
I jabbed my blade into her skull.
A moment later, she crumbled to black dust, and I collapsed to my knees and pounded both fists into the dirt, as a roar of anguish and anger exploded out of me, bouncing off the cave walls.
60
FARRYN
The three of us pushed through another door, which opened to a courtyard that seemed oddly familiar to me. An enormous stone building, with chipped and broken concrete bricks and domed roof, held a level made of wide arches that was undoubtedly a cloister hallway. My eyes caught on the belltower, though and the exceptionally large bell housed inside of it.
A monastery.
In the center of the courtyard stood a fountain, and my throat flared at the sight of crystal blue water pouring from one of the stone statues. Beautiful white roses decorated the yard of the monastery, and flowered vines climbed over its weathered stone, giving a romantic decayed look.
“Farryn, I don’t feel so good,” Vespyr said beside me, and as she lurched forward, as if to fall, I reached out and grabbed her arm.
Wrapping it around my neck, I helped her cross the courtyard and lowered her alongside the stone wall of the fountain.
