More Ways Than One
DAPHNE
We exit beneath the palace so quietly I almost forget that we are on horseback.
“Making our way to the Alley that binds the realms is going to be the hardest part,” Klyesque whispers to me. “Prepare yourself. Use her hair for reins. Shadow steed prefer it to the use of bridles. All that is truly required of you at this point is that you hang onto Trielle's mane like your life depends upon it. We have lost too many precious hours already and we must ride like demons given flesh..”
“Understood,” I reply, doing as she bade me and bracing myself when she bends forward to whisper a command in Delago’s ear
That quickly, we are trotting from beneath the dark of the rock stables and into the cold of the evening’s dying light. Trielle follows Delago’s steps almost as if given the commands herself. They are that in sync.
Even as we drop low to sneak past the armed guard, dipping behind a row of black vined bushes with thorned blades for teeth, and even as these botanical fangs reach and poke toward us as if attempting to leave a map of scars across our skin, the pair of horses do not balk. They remain matched step for step.
And although I am truly grateful for the genius that is this pair of shadow steeds and their natural inclination to remain together, I could use a bit more of a warning than just the flash of color that fires across Trielle’s neck right before she becomes the shadow that is her nature and we blast toward the open gates at breakneck speed, smoke and fury at the heels.
“Not sure this is going to keep us from being spotted!” I comment, winding my fists in Trielle’s mane and shouting into the wind on Klyesque’s right.
“Better at the gates then behind them,” Klyeque calls to me as the pair of us race toward one of the most enchanting violet hued sunsets that could ever be imagined. It’s like a starburst of blue and purple, with moons scattered about in the distance and sparkling with the stars that will serve as our guides.
So entranced am I that I don’t see him at first. I don’t see the wraithlike male that I first spied at dinner that night. The phantom shadow, the man built from spilt ink with marble whites for his eyes - the only thing solid about him. A member of the Elite Council. One of the fae that had been expecting me for a much more nefarious plot than the future that truly awaits me.
By the time that I notice him, just past the gate, precariously seated upon a fallen rock that marks the trail of our new journey, any moment I have to call out my warning is there and gone before I can draw a full breath.
The next thing I feel is a searing cold pain that wraps about my limbs like whips of iced leather, yanking me to a stop and ripping me into the air from Trielle’s back.
Trielle cries out and everything that happens next passes in a blur of unregistered fear.
Up above me, fire flashes bright aiming for something behind me or… someone.
“Halt your attack on my charge!” Klyesque screams from somewhere too far for me to see, her voice dying on the wind as I am catapulted into the dark embrace of the ice cold fae that has captured me.
My sight falters.
I can see nothing.
I can see no one.
It is as if I have been swallowed by that man. As if his shadow form now encases me, drowning me in the unfamiliar syrup that is heavy as tar upon my flesh. I cannot move a stitch. I don’t know where I am, nor have I yet to gain a clear understanding of what has just happened.
Klyesque’s voice sounds as if from miles away and when I try to reach for her, the bonds around my wrists and legs tighten and an invisible hand snakes over the front of my lips, sealing them.
That is when I hear it.
A voice that booms about the sudden dark so loud that I feel my soul cringe. It reverberates inside of me, as if speaking inside of my head. “You’ll not escape the Tithe, girl. We will have you in more ways than one on the night of the longest moon.”
I want to scream something. I want to do something, but I am on the verge of panic as all of my senses seem to have been taken from me.
Something burns hot against my skin, dragging my cloak and wrapping it more tightly around my person as if to protect me and for a moment I am made to relax against this beast of midnight that has me in his clutches.
A hiss of pain between my ears tells me I may not be the only one to feel the heat upon my flesh. “What is this?” the voice asks. “You carry something, mortal. Tell me what it is. Tell me…”
Trying to answer this… creature is useless for I cannot find my voice in that moment and as the deep, deep dark begins to strain about my form, I wonder if I am about to be eaten alive. My breathing has halted, my vision… halted… the only sound left that escapes me is my heartbeat. Growing louder and louder with enough power to shake the quivers of dark beyond my sight, I focus on it. On the boom of my center. One the ache of my lifeforce.
That is what I give power to.
That… and the reminder that I carry Ash’s child. My child.
The heir to three realms… Another whisper…
A light begins to burn in the middle of my chest behind my ribs. I cannot see it, but it’s there just the same. A solid throbbing that carries weight, like an egg waiting to hatch. It punches forward begging to be freed. A trapped magic that seeks permission to be unleashed.
It is almost as if it has an essence of its very own. A soul that has been waiting too long to emerge. To be one with the body around it.
I know that essence and it knows me.
It is the dark energy I once thought belonged to Ash. The strange power that bounced around the dining room back in Hadimere’s palace only weeks ago.
Now I realize that strength, that… magic… it has always been my own.
The dark of the shadow wraith begins to pale and wither. A whisper of a scream trembling my ears and the bonds that I felt wrap around my limbs lose their purchase and his strength begins to peel from my limbs like a pelt from a hare after boiling.
Once again I can see and when I look upon the shadow wraith I see true fear tremble in the marble of his eyes.
He hisses, falling to his knees before me like a beggar, “It cannot be.”
I want to respond to him, I want to shout that he never should have touched me, but I don’t get to.
Because, before I can so much as peep a word, Klyesque appears behind the bastard and yanks him to his feet, the tip of her sword suddenly protruding from his chest and causing him to scream bloody murder as she whispers, smiling, “It is.”