Chapter 161

Chapter 161
Aeron
The effects of the pits are visible, even on the oldest and strongest of us all - Einar.
Isla staggers back, but I grab her with my free arm and pull her closer. "Everyone needs to visit the pits at least once," I inform her. "So you'll know where you will end up if you break the law."
"This place... feels worse than death," she says, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Because it is," Einar tells her. "Inside there is... nothing. No heaven, no hell, no up, no down, just an endless... void."
Isla is horrified. "Those creatures. The reptile people. They came from the void."
"It's not a true void," I try to reassure her. "It's just a... very deep, endless, hole in the ground."
"That vampires can't escape," Hakon adds. He shudders, and pulls Sara closer. "Will you manage from here?"
I nod. My siblings and their brides all fall back, heading for the treeline in the distance.
Even the world surrounding the pits are empty. A desolate landscape where nothing will grow, not even with the world is watered and fed, nothing wants to live, and for miles around there isn't so much as a rock or a shrub to break up the endless grey.
No one knows how deep the pits go. No one has ever managed to find the bottom. At the end of the vampire's sentence, imposed by a king or higher lord, the pits eject the imprisoned vampire. We don't know who created the pits, when or even really why, we just know they exist and how they work.
Idun spent a lifetime as a statue - aware of time passing, frozen inside her own skin, and even that hell will not come close to what the pits will offer her.
Two more steps and the wailing of the tortured souls trapped inside the earth reach our ears. Isla opens her mouth, to scream, to cry, to speak, I cannot tell, and slams her hands over her ears.
Einar has tears in his eyes. "Don't do this, Aeron. She is your mother. Your maker."
"I have given her too many chances already," I say, hardening my heart on purpose. "She harmed my bride. The one who broke her curse. She tried to eradicate my castle, my vampires, and my kingdom. What else is there to do?" I lower my mother to the hard, cracked earth. "I could kill her. Tell the world she was taken by the blood madness. They won't find that too difficult to believe really, all things considered."
I kneel in front of my mother and look into the only part of her that is not covered in silver. Her eyes. "I mean... what kind of mother tries to murder her own children? Her firstborn son. The one who almost died trying to set her free from a curse?"
Idun muffles something against the ball gag Nicolette placed in her mouth. I will not take it out. There is nothing Idun can say or do that will make me change my mind.
The pit keepers will remove her silver.
The keepers are the worst kind of vampire I've ever come across. They love the pits, the suffering, the screams. The feed off it like we feed off of blood. They require neither sleep nor food, just the misery of the other vampires locked in the place.
Michael once asked one of them if they were the creators of the pits. The vampire, a walking skeleton with skin, gave him a yellow grin and shook his head. His voice sounded like crumpling paper when he said, "No... we found this place and we... loved it here." The creature closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. I saw Michael go a little weak in the knees. He wobbled and reached for me. "Your suffering tastes better than any blood."
I can't remember who we took there that day, but I was endlessly grateful that we could leave.
"Can I go back?" Isla asks. "To the others."
"No," I say, even though it kills me a little inside. "You are my bride. My first bride. You will always be the most important of my brides, and the queen of our kingdom no matter what happens in the future, you need to know and feel what this place is... one day, you will sentence people to time in the pits. You have to know what you're condemning them to."
She nods and clasps her hands together. She gets it. I don't have to spell it out. The one who passes judgement must also swing the sword.
I can see the tears glisten in her eyes. Right now, she's not a goddess or a queen, she's just a terrified newborn vampire who has to face a reality that is terrifying.
She's my bride and her fears are mine to share and carry for her.
I lift Idun back up and throw her over my shoulder again, then turn to my father. "Go wait with your children."
"I should stay," he tries to protest. "She should not be alone-"
"She is not alone," I interrupt. "She is with her oldest and most precious son. Isn't that right mother?" I ask, mocking her just a little... but there's an ache in my chest.
The kind that reminds me that I loved her once, that I was loyal to her upon a time, and she was never a good mother to me. Not the kind I needed. Einar tried, but he could not undo the damage Idun caused, he could not protect us against her, and in the end he could not fight against her anymore. He could just manage the fall-out... and now, he can't even do that anymore.
We walk up to the wide, open, gaping maws in the earth. The pits are truly the pits. There are three. I choose the deepest, darkest abyss.
The pit keeper flies up, squinting against the moonlight that has grown to bright for his eyes. "King?" he asks.
"Yes," I answer him. "I have a prisoner for you."
The pit keeper looks at my mother and inhales. The emaciated vampire, whiter than a bloodless ghost, grins maniacally. "This one tastes good. She'll taste even better without all the silver... which will be the cost of her keep?"
"Yes," I agree. "The silver is yours."
The keeper nods. "Her sentence?"
"A hundred years," I declare.
The corpse rubs his hands together. "That will do nicely."
My father looks like he wants to cry. Isla wants to run and run as far as she can from this place. I blame neither of them.
"I will be back for you mother," I say, swallowing my own feelings. "I hope you learn from this."
I drop her into the pits, relieved to be rid of the silver that burned my skin and the woman that nearly destroyed my heart.