Gathering Darkness (33 page)

LUCIA

LIMEROS

L
ucia spent every last coin she had on a carriage to bring her to the Limerian palace. Her one true home. On the way, she'd used her earth magic to heal her wound. The pain of it was only a memory now. She could heal herself, but she couldn't heal Alexius.

I tried
, she thought.
I've never tried harder for anything. I'm sorry I failed.

By the time she arrived at the palace, it was nearly dawn.

The pitch-dark granite spires stretched up into the sky—black on black. She walked past the palace, ignoring the warmth it might offer her, and moved along the shadowy pathways winding through the still and silent gardens, so different from the light-filled, lively ones at the Auranian palace.

Both so different, but so stunningly beautiful in their own ways.

She was drawn to the cliffs that looked out upon the Silver Sea, lit now only by moonlight. She stood at the very edge and looked down at the glistening black water crashing against the rocky shore.

She held Alexius's dagger at her side. It was still coated in his blood.

His body had vanished from her arms in a flash of light only moments after his death. If it hadn't, she never would have left the temple; she would have stayed right there by his side for eternity. But there was nothing there for her anymore.

Just before he'd taken his last breath, he told her to come here and to wait.

So she waited.

Suddenly she heard the snow crunch behind her, signaling someone's approach. But Lucia didn't turn around. She just focused on the water, on the horizon far in the distance as the moon sank lower and lower.

“Quite a night.” A woman's voice, calm and melodious.

“Yes, it was.”

“You know who I am, don't you?”

Expecting to see a monster hulking before her, Lucia turned to face the woman who'd destroyed everything. Instead, she saw the same golden beauty she had seen in her frightening vision of the past.

Melenia's eyes were like sapphires with swirls of molten gold. Hypnotic. She wore a gown of platinum and crystal. Her skin glowed and her hair was a cascade of shining gold framed by the ebony darkness behind her.

Her beauty was so vivid—so unreal—it was terrifying.

“I'm sure you're very angry with me,” Melenia said, her gaze moving to the dagger Lucia held. “But any attempts at vengeance will be futile. I'm immortal, even here now that the wall has finally weakened between our worlds. That weapon won't work on me.”

A fog hovered over and around Lucia, one of grief and pain. She could barely see through it, but she had to try. “This isn't meant for you.”

“That's good to hear. But still, I do understand how you feel. I'm sure Alexius told you all sorts of things about me, but you mustn't believe all of them.”

“You wanted him to kill me.”

“I wanted him to bleed you. Your blood is powerful, so powerful that it broke the curse that has trapped me in my prison for so long. I've now left the Sanctuary for the first time in a thousand years, thanks to you.”

Lucia's grip strengthened on the hilt of the dagger. “How wonderful for you.”

Melenia smiled. “I know what it's like to love someone, to miss them so much it feels as if your heart will break.”

“You've felt that, have you?”

“I have. I've felt that for centuries. But I'll soon be reunited with my love.”

“That's why you did all of this, for him. That's why Alexius is dead. That's why hundreds have died to soak your road with their blood. All so you could be reunited with your lost love. With the fire Kindred.”

A glimmer of surprise lit the immortal's beautiful eyes. “Alexius was more transparent than I expected in the end.”

The dying voice of the boy she loved echoed in Lucia's ears.

“The crystals are not the true magic of the Kindred, princess. The magic is what's trapped inside. An elemental spirit is imprisoned within each sphere. This is our secret. This is what we guarded. This is what we protected from the world . . . and what we protected the world from.”

Melenia's gaze hardened, but her smile remained fixed. “One does what one must for true love.”

“The god of fire, the most powerful of the four Kindred, trapped within a sphere of amber,”
Alexius had whispered to her.
“To free him, Melenia would destroy the world.”

Lucia shivered. “No. You're wrong. True love isn't selfish.”

“Your opinion is noted. Now, there is only one thing standing in my way to reunite with the one I love after all this time.”

“Me,” Lucia said.

“I'm afraid so. I knew Alexius couldn't kill you. I saw it in his eyes, no matter how deeply I sank my magic into him. I saw that his love for you was true. Lucky girl. Most never experience a love so deep. Imagine, that boy chose to take his own life before ending yours.”

Grief blinded Lucia for a moment until she mustered the strength to push it away.

“How will you kill me?” Lucia asked, her voice flat again.

“Similar to how I killed Eva. I stole her magic, which also stole her immortality—although, you're already mortal. This should be much easier a task, but no less satisfying. Now,” she said, the hateful smile still fixed on her lips, “let's be done with this.”

Something caught Melenia's eye and she glanced down at the ground to Lucia's left.

“That's your blood,” she said.

“It is,” Lucia agreed.

Melenia looked then to the snowy ground and saw the symbol Lucia had drawn with her own blood. A triangle—the symbol for fire.

Melenia's smile faded and her eyes widened. “What have you done?”

“Alexius told me I could draw this symbol anywhere with my blood to summon him, now that he's been awakened. It's his decision if he wishes to obey.”

Melenia's gaze searched the area frantically until she spotted a figure approaching the cliffs.

“It's you,” she managed, her voice breaking. “It's really you.”

The tall figure wore a cloak. Lucia couldn't see his face, but she knew who he was. The smallest emotion managed to wedge its way into her heart, pushing past her numbing grief.

Fear.

The figure drew back his hood to show dark blond hair and amber eyes. He was as handsome as Alexius was—unnaturally so. All the Watchers were beautiful and eternally young, Alexius had told her.

But this young man wasn't a Watcher.

Melenia seemed uncertain upon realizing he wasn't going to rush to her and take her into his arms.

“Melenia,” he said, reaching them and sweeping a gaze over her. “You succeeded. Congratulations.”

Finally, her smile returned and she reached for him, but her hand dropped to her side before she touched him. “A thousand years I've waited, my love. I've done everything I could to make this night possible.”

“And I'm grateful. Very grateful.” He held his hand out to her. She closed the distance between them and pressed her lips to his. It didn't take long before she drew back with a confused expression.

“You didn't return my kiss.”

“No, I didn't.”

She appeared to compose herself, putting her sheen of perfection back into place, as if the rejection of someone she'd waited a thousand years to kiss didn't bother her in the slightest.

Lucia watched, fascinated. An ancient, powerful, beautiful woman—as close to a goddess as Lucia had ever seen—rejected by her lover was a rather awkward sight, to say the least.

Had Melenia really believed everything would turn out exactly as she wanted?

The young man turned his gaze to Lucia. She drew in a quick breath at the intensity of his amber-colored eyes. “I can also thank you for this.”

“Don't thank me.”

“But I must. I'm free because of you. The power of a sorceress, but in the body of a mortal girl . . . how extraordinary.” He swept his gaze over her. “You and I, we have much in common.”

“No, we don't.”

“But we do. We both want to embrace who we are, we both want to stop being used by others and discarded at their will. We both desperately want control over our destinies, and revenge over our enemies.”

She didn't reply, so startled she was that she agreed with everything he'd said.

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “there are still obstacles in my path to absolute freedom and limits to my current power.”

“I've taken care of most of those obstacles,” Melenia said. “Of the elders, only Timotheus still lives.”

“And you, of course. That makes two elders with the power to imprison me again. That strikes me as two too many.”

Confusion crossed Melenia's face, followed by a flash of pain, as if he'd deeply hurt her feelings by saying this.

This really wasn't going according to Melenia's plan at all. Were it another night and another life lost, Lucia might have taken pleasure in that.

“I love you,” Melenia said, crossly. As if such words mattered to someone like him. “I've killed for you. And I've done it all to free you so we could be together again.”

“And I thanked you,” the young man said. He appeared to be no more than twenty, but Lucia knew there was no number for his real age.

He was eternal.

“When she's gone, we'll talk. We'll talk about all of this.” Melenia spun to face Lucia, an ugly expression crossing her face, and her fist burst into flames.

So she would use fire magic to kill Lucia.

That seemed appropriate.

Lucia looked at her own hand and held it out. She summoned Melenia's fire into her palm.

Melenia gasped as Lucia stole her magic. “What?”

Alexius has stressed this lesson and, at the time, she'd wondered why. From nearly the moment he arrived, she never understood why he'd been so adamant about tutoring her until she was exhausted and frustrated.

Now she knew that it was all so she could do this.

Melenia held out her hand to form a spear of ice, but Lucia looked at it and melted it with a single thought.

“Stop that,” Melenia hissed.

Then Lucia stepped forward, clutched Melenia by her throat, and looked deep into her sapphire eyes.

“Listen to me very carefully,”
Alexius had said in the moments before he vanished from her arms forever.
“Melenia will come for you. She will try to kill you because you are the only one with enough magic to destroy her. She steals other Watchers' magic to make herself more powerful. You can do the same. When her magic is drained, she'll be temporarily mortal.”

Melenia summoned her magic once more, and again Lucia stole it with a thought. Fear entered the elder's eyes as Lucia focused with all her strength and, using what she'd learned from Alexius, drained as much magic—earth, air, water, fire—as she could from this beautiful but evil creature.

Lucia's hands glowed with golden power. The cold wind and stinging snow no longer bothered her. Warmth flowed through her veins and her entire body sang with Melenia's
elementia
.

When she'd taken all she could, Melenia began to tremble.

“Spare me,” she whispered, her gaze fixed on the young man who hadn't made a single move to save her. “My love, please, spare me . . .”

“Kill her,” he said, nodding at Lucia.

Lucia thrust her dagger into the Watcher's heart, then pulled it out.

Lucia had lied. The dagger was for Melenia, after all.

Melenia looked down at the wound welling with blood as if hypnotized with disbelief. She reached out for the young man with a trembling hand.

He stepped out of her reach.

“But I love you,” she whispered.

“And I hate you.”

She stared at him with horror. “Why would you hate me when I did everything for you?”

“You helped to keep me enslaved, Melenia. I'm no one's slave. I never was. And I never shall be again.”

As he cast a fearsome, furious look upon her, she took a shaky step back from him before she stumbled and fell off the side of the cliff. Mere seconds before she hit the water, her body vanished in a flash of bright light, illuminating the unforgiving landscape all around them for a long, blazing moment.

Lucia dropped the dagger, her gaze fixed on the black water at the bottom of the cliff.

It felt momentous to witness the death of an ancient and powerful Watcher. This wasn't her first kill—her first had been the malicious Sabina. She'd been wracked with guilt over that moment of uncontrollable fury.

Her emotions tonight were much more controlled. Melenia deserved death and Lucia allowed herself to feel just a small edge of satisfaction that she'd been the one to kill her.

After a moment, she looked up at the fire god she'd summoned here with her blood.

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked, surprised that the thought of it didn't fill her with fear anymore.

“No,” he replied simply. “I need your help.”

“My help?” The thought was ludicrous. “Why would someone like you need
my
help?”

“Because you can do that.” He nodded toward the water below. “You have the power to destroy those that want to control me. And I never, ever want to be controlled or imprisoned again.”

She fell silent, her heart pounding.

“My sisters and brother are also out in this land, lost now. They're not as strong as me. They can't as easily take mortal form. They're at the mercy of whoever found them. We must locate them and keep them safe.”

This could be her destiny—to be here at the break of dawn with the blood of two Watchers on her hands. Melenia and Alexius. One she hated. One she loved.

There was no one in the world she trusted anymore; no one who didn't want to use her for her magic and cast her aside once they were done.