Wicked Darkness Read online

  We reached the palace, Valdis leading me towards the kitchens while she chatted companionably. I didn't hear a word, though, my thoughts replaying snapshots of the past month in glorious high definition: The discovery of the magic world – monsters, gods, and ancient conflicts that all seemed to revolve around the pursuit of power and dominance – the power they craved inside of me.

  The lies my friends had told – the complex web of mistruths and events that kept me in the dark about my part to play. A role that even they didn't know the full extent of. The awakening of my magic, the struggles, and the high as I learned to control it, to use it to save myself and those I cared about. I'd had no handbook explaining the intricacies of the magical world, no guidelines or rules. So I'd had to learn as I went.

  The mistakes I made caused more Moroi and Dhampir's deaths than I knew – even now, the exact numbers eluded me. The Fae deceiver that made me think I loved him and used me to wreak havoc on the vampires for his queen. The torture that same Fae, and his brother, had inflicted on me in their attempts to break my will. I was supposed to be a weapon their queen could wield against her enemies, but when that didn't work, she planned to kill me and take the magic for herself.

  The revelation that gods and goddesses existed but also used mortals as pawns in a cosmic game. That I was made to play a part in the final battle between Ares and Enyo, a vessel containing the last Goddess Incarnate's magic.

  The battle the Moroi, Dhampir, and Lycanthropes fought against the Strigoi – the battle that took a friend's life. Colte had died protecting me, and every day I missed his easy smile, sense of humor, and companionship. The fight between the pretender Fae Queen and me – a conflict I should have killed her in. But I'd let her go, too drunk on the power I had taken from her. The magic that enveloped me, swirling through my body, demanding more.

  Now she was in hiding, trying to regain control of a kingdom that didn't want her, the god she played for using his influence to gather allies to their side. The next time Kamilla showed her face, I would rip it from her body, even if there was a vision out there that told me I wouldn't. Hence, the training sessions with Valdis. The Necromancer was a skilled fighter, her King's second in command. She was fearless in battle and knew the Fae's weaknesses. During her time in captivity with them as a child, she had learned weaknesses and now planned to exploit them.

  She had a habit of sensing when I was close to losing control and pulled me into Mora's training center before I could. Limit the damage and release frustration seemed to be our new motto.

  "Sapphira?"

  "Sorry, what?" I snapped back to the present, finding Valdis staring at me, eyebrows raised.

  We were in the kitchen – a surprisingly modern one that Hadrian had made just for her. She was, after all, one of the only beings in his realm that ate mortal food. But, seriously, you didn't want to know what the others thought was food. Horrifying and disgusting, let me tell you.

  Valdis had arranged a rainbow of vegetables on the island counter, and she stood across from me, a large chef's knife in her hand. "I asked ten times if you wanted meat in this one. Where was your head just now, girl?"

  "Lost in the past." I smiled sadly, running my hand over the cold stone surface of the island.

  "No use in dwelling there," she said, sliding a chopping board and knife towards me. "Unless one of your powers is time travel?"

  I let out a little laugh, shaking my head. "No, but wouldn't that be something?"

  "It would. But, since it isn't, how about you chop those carrots while I start the onions?" Valdis' deft fingers were already in motion, making quick work of the vegetables on her own board. "If you want chicken again, I think there is still some in the fridge. No beef left, though. We finished that off yesterday."

  "Chicken is fine, Valdis," I assured her, getting a start on the carrots. I should have them chopped by the time Valdis had finished all of the other vegetables.

  She'd already moved on to the potatoes, peeling them like a pro. I suppose she'd had experience peeling things – skin from enemies and the zombie-like creatures she made with her magic, for example.

  Valdis made her own leather armor – from the flesh of Fae soldiers she had killed in battle.

  My own armor had been a gift from her, but I'd asked her not to tell me where it had come from. I didn't need to know that the leather protecting my body had once been the skin of a living, breathing person. Possibly someone that I had met or fought against.

  I'd watched Valdis working once, and it had been both fascinating and disturbing to see. She took pride in her work, as most people that were good at their job did, although most people weren't using the corpses of creatures to create beings capable of shredding mortals and monsters to bits. Her workshop, or lab – whatever you wanted to call it – was full of body parts, tools, and funky smells. I'd watched her take the body of a recently deceased Fae female, changing organs and skin with a wolf. The process was bloody, gruesome, and time-consuming.

  Raw chunks of meat that had once been part of the wolf had melded together with the Fae to create something new, something vicious – a human-sized wolf that walked on two legs and hands filled with six-inch claws. I'd felt her magic pulsing a semblance of life into the very fiber of the creature, felt the moment her manipulation and will take control, and blood started pumping again. The creature's chest began its rise and fall, the eyes opened, a bloodcurdling snarl building low in its throat, razor-sharp teeth bared. Valdis had put it in a cell with another of her creatures and watched them with morbid fascination and curiosity. Then, the Fae-wolf had torn its cellmate to shreds, rendering it nothing more than chunks of flesh, bone, and blood.

  I had stuck to a purely vegetarian diet for days after that. Thinking about it now, as Valdis prepared a chicken for the pot, had my stomach turning again. I didn't want to offend her by throwing up at the sight of her food for a second time. And this train of thought would do just that.

  "Are you finding anything interesting in Theresa's journal?" I asked, trying to distract myself.

  "I thought that we had been close, but it seems she kept a lot of herself private." Valdis shrugged, eyes still on her work, voice soft. "I didn't know that she struggled within herself… she always seemed so confident and happy."

  Theresa was the Goddess Incarnate – the last reincarnation of her anyway. She'd lived in the City of Darkness with Hadrian and Valdis, had loved the King and Necromancer. But she had been caught up in Ares and Enyo's game and had paid the price with her life. It was her magic that ran through my veins, her suite that I now called my own.

  "That must be hard for you," I replied, continuing to chop the carrots. "I'm sorry, Valdis."

  "What are you sorry for?" She asked, throwing the chicken pieces into the pot with more force than was necessary. "It wasn't you that pretended everything was fine for decades. It wasn't you that left us."

  "No, but I know how it feels to be the one left behind, the one that believed the lies," I said softly, sliding the chopping board across to her. "I'm sorry that you have to feel what that is like."

  Valdis sighed, both hands on the counter, head bowed. "I don't understand it. I really don't. I know that I'm behaving like a child, but it fucking hurts, Sapphira. I thought that we had this amazing life together. Theresa helped me through my shitty past; she let me unload all of my baggage on her and never said a word about how much she struggled with her magic or her place here. Reading that journal shows me just how bad her mental health was." She turned watery eyes my way, regret and despair plain to see all over her face. "She could have said something, if not to me, then to Hadrian. We should have seen her suffering – why didn't we?"

  "That's just it, though, isn't it?" I asked, moving around the kitchen to stand beside her, not touching – but close enough if she needed me to. "A lot of the time, the ones that are suffering the most are the ones that never show it. They put on a smile like they would armor; they're the ones that seem the strongest, the bravest – the most sturdy in this crazy world. But in reality, they're the most broken."

  "You're not helping." Valdis frowned at me.

  "Sorry." I offered a sad smile, a slight shrug. "Maybe Theresa wanted you to have happy memories of her. On the other hand, she probably wanted to keep you from worrying and getting distracted."

  Valdis made a shrug of her own, returning her attention to the stew. "It's done. There isn't anything I can do about it now; we need to focus on the future. Hadrian should be back today." She added. "Hopefully, his meeting with the Fae heirs went well, and they have information on where the hell Kamilla went."

  We fell into silence, Valdis continuing to showcase her cooking prowess as I sat on the counter with my legs tucked underneath me and watched. I couldn't stop the tinge of regret that swirled through me or the worry that danced with it. I should have tried harder to kill the pretender queen when I had the chance. I knew that. But the magic was like a drug – unbelievably addictive and gave off a high like nothing else. I'd been too drunk on the power I had taken from her to anything but crave more.

  And now the Fae bitch was still out there somewhere, alive and well. We had heard rumors that she was regrouping and amassing her armies – what was left of them.

  The reports were sketchy, details varying from messenger to messenger. No one knew where she planned to make her next stand – or where she was holed up, but a common thread was that Fae were vanishing, Seers were being hunted, and Kamilla's allies were closing the entrances to their realms.

  Something big was coming, and the tension throughout the supernatural world was building. With Ares pulling her strings, I was sure Kamilla would be a thorn in my side for a long time to come. A deadly and vengeful thorn. r />
  I only hoped that I could find and remove her from the picture before the war could escalate and destroy the realms – and the mortal world that I had once called home.

  2

  Sapphira

  "The King requests your presence." A ghostly voice whispered through the air. "He awaits you in the Great Hall."

  Valdis placed her empty bowl on the counter next to mine, a grin lighting up her face. "Finally!"

  I followed behind her quickly; our footsteps liked muffled drum beats as we made our way through the palace corridors. Hadrian's people moved out of the way as we passed, heads bowed in reverence.

  It was still so strange to see monsters and dark creatures at every turn, the sharp teeth and claws, the mottled skins, and hungry eyes. So many beings made for nightmares and fear – and yet, I felt safer here with them than I had ever felt. The respect and awe were new, though. What had happened now, that would make them look at us that way?

  "Valdis," I whispered when we were alone in the corridors again, "do the people here normally look at you like that?"

  "What, like they worship me?" She replied, throwing me a wink and a grin, flipping her long dark hair over her shoulder. "Why wouldn't they?"

  I huffed a laugh, rolling my eyes.

  "It's because you freed their King from Kamilla's geas, Sapphira. They respect me because I'm the second here. They worship you because you freed them all from Fae rule – a fate worse than death, let me tell you."

  Something inside of me preened at her words, reveling in the possibilities they presented. You could have absolute power here, it whispered. This could all be yours. You only need to reach out and take it. I suppressed those thoughts as deeply as I could. I had no intention of ever taking power here, of deposing Hadrian and ruling in his place. I could think of nothing worse.

  But that voice – that urge was something that fought its way to the surface more and more. I knew it didn't belong to me. Instead, that voice had come from another. Someone that I had taken magic from in the past. My bet was that it had been a part of Kamilla's mindset – it was just like her to covet the thrones of others. She'd succeeded with the thrones of the Fae, almost had Hadrian's dominion for herself as well.

  We'd reached the massive wooden doors to the Great Hall, and as we slowed, they swung open, revealing a large crowd of people. My eyes barely registered them, though, my focus on the man sitting on the throne: Hadrian, King of the Dark Realms.

  My breath caught in my throat, eyes searching his face as we approached the bottom of the dais. His once rotten flesh, and the hole in his cheek, had been fixed. A missing eye, and the overall aged appearance of what had been left behind, were all repaired too. The effects of Kamilla's geas burned out by my magic. There was nothing left of her curse; the limitations and magical chains she'd held him with were gone. Now he was purely himself, strong and terrifyingly powerful. I hadn't gotten used to seeing him like this, so whole and young. He wore a navy blue suit, impeccably tailored to fit his broad chest; his swoon-worthy deep brown skin seemed to glow with an inner light, like a beacon guiding me through the dark, stood out against the lighter shades of his clothing. Brown eyes that only hinted at a depth of intelligence their owner possessed held mine in thrall. Perfectly sculpted lips tilted slightly upwards as if fighting to break into a smile.

  "Now that all of my courtiers are here, I can tell you what I have learned." Hadrian began, his deep voice booming across the crowded space. "The pretender queen has been spotted in Scotland. She has gathered the Fae loyal to her, and it seems that she is readying for an attack to retake the Rioghachd na fala."

  Angry murmurs snaked their way through his people, and Valdis tensed beside me. My own heart was beating frantically, hands shaking.

  This was it – Kamilla's next move. I had been waiting for it, and yet, I was surprised. Why there – and why now? What did she hope to gain by taking the Rioghnachd na fala?

  "If she succeeds in her goal, our realm would be her next stop." Valdis hissed quietly, eyes blazing with anger. I could almost see her mind racing, visualizing the plans and strategies needed to stop Kamilla. "The Unseelie realm needs to hold." Valdis' quick thinking and ability to process military moves were reasons she was Hadrian's second-in-command, his General.

  "I have been in conference with Prince Cillian and his nobles and have agreed to ally with them to stop the pretender queen's progress. We are to take out her army before they can enter the Unseelie mound. None are to be spared." Hadrian paused, eyes scanning the crowd, a sly smirk lifting the corner of his mouth. "It's time to play, my Nightmares. It's time to remind the realms why they fear us."

  A roar went up through the Great Hall; the crowd's anger was replaced with anticipation and bloodlust. Their King had just given them free rein on the battlefield, with no limitations on the cruelty and horrors they could inflict. And they loved him for it.

  ***

  Hadrian waited on his throne, looking gloriously bored, while the crowd finally filed out. He'd given them their marching orders, so to speak, and told them to ready their people. His plan was simple enough, from what I could gather anyway, and no one objected to their parts in it. The King had told them that the battle would be fierce, but they would have the numbers to overpower whatever Kamilla could throw at them. Hadrian had split them into units, giving them specific places and strategies to employ for the fight, the words foreign to my ears even though he spoke English. How many battles would I have to take part in before I understood military terms? I wondered. They knew the layout of the land they planned to engage the enemy on, knew the Fae that would fight with them had the home-field advantage. But Kamilla and her Fae knew that too.

  Many of her warriors were Unseelie. The Rioghnachd na fala had been their home for centuries. And no one knew yet if any of her allies would be there; the Strigoi numbers were almost decimated the last time we faced her. I wondered what Ares had planned here, if this was a move he made on his chessboard, or if Kamilla had deviated from the script. It reeked of retaliation to me, but what would I know?

  I was supposed to sit this one out – actually, Hadrian had gone as far as to tell me that I wasn't welcome in Scotland during the fight. He had banned me from a whole freaking country. As if I were one of his subjects. Valdis had squeezed my hand, hissing for me to keep my mouth shut as I was about to tell him where he could stick his plan.

  Now, the hall empty of all but the three of us, I took the few steps up the dais, glaring my displeasure at the Soul Eater on the throne, who smiled at me, hands clasped calmly on his lap.

  "Your disapproval is coming off you in waves, Sapphira." He commented, that deep, seductively commanding voice of his resounding to my very bones. "What part of my plan has you angered so?"

  I felt Valdis behind me, a silent pressure at my back. "You know exactly what part I'm angry about!" I snapped at him, arms crossed over my chest. "You can't order me to stay out of this – it's my fight as much as it is yours!"

  "You are not the one that will kill the pretender queen; the Seer's vision told us that." Hadrian reminded me, my anger flowing around him but never quite touching. "Why would I put you in harm's way needlessly?"

  "You don't get to order me around." I hissed. "I am not one of your subjects."

  "No, you are not." He agreed, getting to his feet. "But, you are an important part of the game – and my friend. Is it so wrong of me to want to keep a friend safe? Besides," He added before I could answer, offering his arm for me to descend the dais with him, like a freaking gentleman. "Lyra has asked for you to spend some time learning about her gift. I believe her exact words were, 'she should have learned about the charms by now. I shouldn't need to waste my retirement teaching Sapphira the very basics of them, and yet, here I am! Tell that girl to get her lazy self to the villa immediately.'"

  The bracelet on my wrist grew warm at the same time that my cheeks did. Valdis snorted, and I shot her a half-hearted glare. The old Seer was in the human realm – a distance so far it was almost inconceivable without magic – and yet she could still put me in my place. I sighed, my anger dissipated, annoyance taking its place.