Riven (14 page)

I inhaled sharply, awakening the stilled cells within. I barely made the step to face Ari and Kayden when my knees buckled beneath me, blotches of dark clustering my sight. My eyes fluttered shut, warm arms catching me before I could hit the ground. Only the shaking, frightened whisper Zeevna said reached my ears before I let the dark take me whole.

“It has begun.”

CHAPTER SIX

EVERYTHING BURNS 

Like a piece of paper tossed into an open flame, I was burning alive.

Fire races along the sides of my bed, engulfing the wood and brass frame of my childhood bedroom. The walls begin to melt, wallpaper curling and blackening at the flames licking up and along the wall. Burning, melting flesh hits my nose, and I double over, gagging. For a second, I believe it’s my skin, but when I stretch out my hands, turning them palms up, nothing but untouched, perfect skin displays before me.

That’s when I look further into the room.

A shadowy figure stands inside, shifting from side to side on my engulfed mattress. She giggles, light and airy, and steps down from the bed, walking through the flames without care. Her long, raven black hair swings in a braid behind her, leaving her large and sharp brown eyes open to the world.

Stopping in front of me, Ebony leans in, hands clasped behind her back. Her lips graze my earlobe, deliberately enjoying the shiver that shudders down my back.

“You will lose everything,” she whispers. “Starting with Jayson.”

Slowly, my eyes opened, fear jolting my chest at the vast darkness that surrounded me. For a moment, I thought I had been locked back in my mind by Ebony, forced to watch her use me and make further advances on Kayden while openly chatting about my doom. Thankfully, once I noticed it was a bed I was lying in, and a sparsely decorated guest room with the lights turned off, I sagged back onto the dampened sheets, breathing a sigh of relief. It was a dream, all of it had been a terrible, mind-numbing dream. There was still time to make things right; time to save Jayson, apologize to Abigail, time to put an end to Lucretia’s reign.

But I was far from out of the woods. I was running out of time, faster than I had thought.

From the first moment I had met Kayden, my clock had begun to unwind. The hands wound every which way they wanted, surging me forward and back, bringing me one step closer to burning to a pile of ash, then yanking me back and breathing life into my tired shape. It was a tug and pull, a constant game of betting that held no real prize at the end, just the potential win of another day to fight the way my life had originally intended to play out.

I sat up, squinting as my eyes adjusted to the dark. The room was small, build like a compact glass dome. Ocean water and different, distinct colored fish swam above, the ocean water tinting the room to a dark blue hue that explained the dark. My bed was tiny like all the furniture in the room, blue-green bed with full sheets and blankets, matched with a glass end-table and handmade seashell lamp, a tiny oval shaped mirror hung on the wall. A drift wood chair took up the remaining, minuscule space. It vaguely reminded me of the compact sleeper pods people used in Japan; tiny, simplistic.

Within seconds, my mind was racing, trying to place every event into a slot on my short memory bank. Things had spiraled out of my control so quickly, it was almost a head rush just to keep up with all of it. What started as a battle between Kayden and I had rapidly involved Ursula and Leo, two people now dead because of me. The sting of tears began to cloud my eyes, each death flashing in my mind. Then came my grandparents, two people who probably never knew what was going on, that their granddaughter was a half-angel wielding fire like her life counted on it. Who knew where Serena or Lilix was, or if Abigail and Jayson were okay.

Jayson. Hot tears ran over my cheeks as I thought of my brother. We’d gone from hardly knowing another to becoming best friends, only for me to leave him with a cryptic call that didn’t promise a safe return home. Even if I did make it through this, whatever was happening to me both inside and out, who was to say he would still be there? Who was to say he’d even want to see me?

I shifted onto my side on the tiny wooden bed, biting on my lower lip to stifle the sobs bubbling in my chest. This was too much, way too much for any adult to go through, let alone a teenager. The life of a Nephilim was hard, cruel and cold. Part of me was almost glad I would die soon; I wasn’t sure I could handle the pain that came with fighting the world and everyone in it.

Sitting up again, I stretched and turned on the lamp perched on the end table. A flash of red caught my eyes, and I froze. Lifting my hand out in front of me, I noticed a red band, thin and made of some type of paper, knitted around my wrist. Looking at my other hand, I saw it again. The bands had definitely not been there before, and I wondered if they were a gift of some sort from Zeevna, or Arielle. I laughed, shaking my head. Arielle giving me a gift would be like Kayden leaving me in peace. Never going to happen.

I stood, crossing the short space to stare at the mirror mounted on the wall. Fear tickled at my chest; what if I looked in it and was sucked back into my mind? A nervous laugh passed my lips. Surely I wouldn’t fall to pieces over seeing a mirror. Falling to pieces seeing what I looked like, on the other hand, that was a different matter entirely.

I could feel myself being torn in half, riven by the spiral I had endured these last few hours. Was this really how my life was going to be, a roller-coaster of captures and battles, trying to find allies hidden amongst the enemies waiting for me to fall? In a blink of an eye, I went from being held in a cell, destined to torture, to the hands of a Siren Queen who had unleashed some wild monster inside of me. I only briefly dared wonder what else could, and would, go wrong when I’d find Rinae and Euriel.

Facing the small, oval shaped mirror, the person staring back at me bared little resemblance to the scared, terrified girl I had first been when this all started. My skin clung to my thinned, deeply aged face from lack of food and sunlight. Dark, purplish bruises littered my body, some shades of dark green or sickly yellow as they tried to heal. But my eyes were the biggest shock of all; long had the dark, muddy brown gaze of constant worry and apprehension vanished. Instead, a sharp, strong, willful pair of eyes stared back, assuring me that what I was doing was right. My body may have been failing, but my supply of willpower was barely being tapped into. And in one move, I would change that.

“Your time has come, Lucretia. No more pretending. I will slaughter the poison you’ve pushed into my veins, until every last drop is free. And then I will come back for you, and I will kill you.”

A promise is a promise, after all.

The sound of knuckles rapped at the door, and I let out a little shriek. I paused, holding my breath, when the sound happened again. A sigh sounded from the other side, followed by one more knock.

“Essallie, are you up?” Zeevna called to me from the other end of the door.

My shoulders dropped, and I nearly laughed in hysterics. Zeevna wasn’t a threat. If anything, I owed her one hell of an apology, and a thank you for saving me with that odd bottle of grey water. Opening the door, I squinted automatically as light flooded in, shining over my face, bathing me in a buttercup yellow hue.

“Ummm, hey,” I offered, glancing at the room behind me. “You weren’t planning on coming in, were you?”

She laughed, smiling. “Not at all. I was actually just coming to fetch you. Arielle is asking to see you.”

What little happiness I had built up swirled down the drain of my spoiled mood. Frowning, I moved to close the door. “No thanks. I think I’d rather eat a lionfish raw.”

“Essallie, wait,” Zeevna said hurriedly, shoving a bare, green foot in the room. A large, navy blue birthmark covered half of her foot, like a blob of paint carelessly dropped on her skin at birth. The mark tickled at my brain, dragging a faint memory of another certain someone I knew with green skin and a blue mark. “Please, she wants to help. It’s the least she can do after nearly killing you.”

I carefully weighed my options, pursing my lips. Flinging the door all the way open, I strode out past Zeevna. “I so better get some kind of good karma for doing this.”

She was beside me in the second, the door swinging shut by itself in the growing distance. “Come on,” she said, reaching for my hand. “You’re going to love seeing the palace. Not everyone does, you know.”

Together we walked, Zeevna leading the way through the spiral marble paths turning every which way. Occasionally she’d point out a spot along the way, sharing a moment of her past that made it a memorable location. While it was cute and all, I had a different line of memories I wanted to ask her about.

“Sorry about leaving you in a guest pod alone like that,” she sheepishly confessed, catching my attention. “We weren’t sure what to do once you passed out. Arielle thought it best we keep you in a holding cell, for your own good,” she added in a rush. “But I told her you’d be fine in a normal bed.”

I nodded, staring around us. Nothing had changed; no funeral procession of Siren to mourn the ones Ari and Kayden had slaughtered defending all three of us, no sheets of black hanging outside of the crystal and gold houses. Even the weather, perfect and untouched in sunny shades and light blue ocean overhead, remained unchanged. It seemed odd, surreal.

“The main dome doesn’t change,” she said, startling me. I wondered if she could read my mind. “That’s why we crafted those little chambers you woke up in. Sleep in dark, wake up to light, makes scheduling things much easier than working with the sun. It is a neat little trick, though. Some centuries old enchantress did it for us, long before humans documented anything. Back when it was mainly all the supernaturals ruling the planet, existing out in the open.”

“Does it bother you?” I asked, scratching at the bands on my wrists. “Having to hide from a lesser race, letting them govern your life?”

She shrugged, her multiple strands of beads rustling with the movement. “It used to, honestly. After a while you want to know more about their world, and how they perceive you, but then you actually do and you see they’re so wrapped in their small worlds they hardly notice you’re there.” For a moment, she looked like she was on the verge of tears. “I’m just glad I’m not the idiot who told them about our home.”

“One of your own sold you out?”

“You could say that.” Zeevna licked her lips, scrunching her face. “Before we placed a barrier over the portal, that little pool on the island where we first met, other supernaturals came and went as they pleased. Vampires, Fae, Goblin,” she shuddered at the last one, muttering something I couldn’t hear. “Basically, one of them came by for the first time, and fell in love. When Arielle wouldn’t let him stay, he disguised himself as a human, went to the press and claimed he knew of an underwater paradise, talking about our vast riches of gold and jewels. Atlantis, he called it. Apparently, humans eat that kind of story up, because years later, mortals still go diving in their waters trying to find us.”

I snorted. Definitely sounded like a human thing; nothing screamed cliché like a get-rich quick through discovery diving plan. My mind urged me on, turning to the questions that I really itched to have answered. “So, you’re- are you- technically are you immortal, or are you really immortal?”

Zeevna studied her nails, wiggling her fingers on her free hand as we took another turn, passing a cluster of family homes as we went. “Not technically. I will die, just not as fast as you.” Dropping her hand, she spared me a quick glance. “The average lifespan of a Siren is about eight-hundred years, give or take a century.”

Give or take? Did that mean if a war broke out, or if someone like Kayden dropped in to commit massive bloodshed? I shook my head, shuddering. “How long have you known Kayden?”

Zeevna came to a sudden stop, and I bounced off the back of her shoulder as she turned, dropping my hand. Panic and timidness blew off her in waves, obvious as she stared a little too intently at her fingernails again. Mumbling, she asked, “What does it matter?”

I tried to play cool, shrugging one shoulder. “I don’t know, just thought I’d ask. It’s not too often I comes across someone who knew him before I did.”

Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath before cutting to the chase. “Do you want to know about him, or about what he did?”

“Both.”

Zeevna flinched as if I had smacked her. Her voice quivered as she began. “Kayden came to us in the middle of the night, covered in blood and ash. His beloved, Juliet, had committed suicide earlier that day. Rumor has it she waited for peak hours to do it, and in doing so exposed herself to mortals. She would have died either way, by sun or eternal punishment.”

Visions of ragged, dirty townsfolk painted in my head, turning to the perfect immortal hiding in the shadows. A beautiful blonde stepping out into the light, tilting her face towards the sun with her eyes closed, mouth open and fangs bared as she screamed in her final encounter with the sun. And Kayden, standing there where she had been in the shadows, unable to move and save her without exposing himself, knowing he could never die like she could. In a single moment, she was free, and he lost to wander the world alone, loveless.

The Siren continued on. “Arielle, my Mother, knew him from their past. She said he helped her with something, and owed him a favor worthy of a dozen of her lives. We let him stay in the very guest pod you’re using now, giving him space and time to mourn what he had lost. Two nights after he arrived, he snapped, slaughtered over half of our women and several children, and left with their gills. To this day, he hasn’t said why to anyone but Arielle, and she refuses to tell me.”