5. Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Z ylah woke in Raif’s arms again, her heart racing just as furiously as it had been before. She fought out of his grasp, tumbling into the dirt and scrambling backwards on her hands. “Don’t you fucking touch me.”

“My mother and Ranon are coming; I need to get you back to your room before they arrive.”

“So you can watch them torture me?” Zylah pushed to her feet, arms wrapped around herself. Whatever pain had coursed through her before was gone, though she had no idea how much time had passed. They were in another passageway, identical to all the others she’d seen, and Zylah had no sense of where they were or how far they’d come.

A pained expression flickered across Raif’s face for a moment. “I can’t match their power,” was all he said, his eyes darting down to where her hand pressed against her arm. “I made them wait so I could come here first and warn you, but this has wasted time we don’t have.”

This . Like he’d expected her to try and escape and wasn’t bothered by it in the slightest. Because he knew she wouldn’t be able to. He still stared at her arm, and Zylah followed his gaze, noting the blood smeared across her palm from where she’d tumbled from his hold.

Raif bit down on his lip, one of his sharp teeth exposed, tongue darting out to run across it. “Despite what you must think,” he said, empty eyes searching hers, and he took a step into her space. “I still—”

“Don’t.” She shoved at his chest, nausea and rage and disgust and fear spiralling through her. “You don’t get to say that to me. Ever.”

A soothing feeling fluttered in her chest, there and gone before she could hold onto it. Her lips parted, and Raif took a step closer again, mistaking it for an invitation. Zylah’s hand cracked across his face so quickly she hadn’t even thought it through. Hadn’t thought about the consequences of striking a vampire when she had no magic, no weapon, no way of escaping him. His eyes widened for a second, a hand rubbing his jaw, thumb smearing the blood left behind from her open wound. He brought it to his mouth and sucked, and Zylah had to turn away from him, the sight turning her stomach.

“Well, you’re certainly getting stronger,” he told her, a wry smile tugging at his mouth. Then he took a step back. And another. “It’s this way. We’re almost there.”

Zylah ripped what remained of one of her sleeves from her sweater, wrapping it around her hand. Raif could have shredded it apart in seconds if he chose to, but it gave her a sense of security to know she had a layer between her open wound and those razor-sharp fangs.

She tried to take in every turn of the maze, called and called on her magic for a weapon, but it was no use. A dull headache at the base of her skull was all that answered. The wards rippled over her as they made it back into the final passageway, and before Zylah could register what was happening, Raif shoved her aside with a snarl.

“That is no way to greet your grandfather,” an unfamiliar voice said.

Zylah slipped past Raif, taking in the sight of Aurelia and a male with hollow cheeks and dark shadows under his grey eyes, a mop of silver hair parted to one side. Ranon.

Raif said nothing, but Ranon’s gaze moved to Zylah, his expression darkening. “You look just like her.”

“That doesn’t mean I am her.” Pallia. Zylah was fairly certain Ranon didn’t have a good side to appeal to, that her words would fall on deaf ears, but she was tired of being compared to her long-dead grandmother.

The ancient Fae ignored her. “This place is as dire as I remember.” He took in Zylah’s sorry excuse for a room, turning in a slow circle. “I used to watch you and your sister play here as children,” he told Raif.

Zylah didn’t ask how he could watch them from his tomb; didn’t think she wanted to know the answer to how a disturbing old Fae could see the world when he should have been very, very dead.

She pushed against her magic again: to evanesce, to summon a weapon, anything, but still there was nothing, no feeling where it should have been, just an absence of everything she had once been.

“Chairs?” Ranon asked, and though Zylah presumed the question was directed at his daughter, he didn’t so much as glance in Aurelia’s direction, his attention fixed on the way Raif stood between them all.

Aurelia waved a hand, four wooden chairs appearing in the small space, and took a seat beside her father, like they were all sitting down to tea. Zylah didn’t move. Neither did Raif.

“It seems your blood did not restore me as it should have, Zylah,” Ranon began without preamble. He inspected his fingernails, a novelty, Zylah supposed, after so many years in his tomb. He wore a dark grey overcoat, two rows of silver buttons making him seem broader than Zylah suspected he was after centuries of withering away. “Sit,” he told her, and with a wave of his hands Zylah found her legs moving of their own accord towards the chair before her.

It didn’t matter whether her blood had restored him or not, it had freed him. That was enough. The images of what he’d done had been burned into her mind from the book Nye had shown her back at the Aquaris Court, and though she wasn’t certain what to believe, there was no doubting his ill intentions. His actions; the spiteful way he’d trapped Arioch in his maze.

“Your monsters. The vanquicite… your puppets,” she said with a pointed look at Raif before turning her attention back to Ranon. “Isn’t it enough?”

A broad smile split the ancient Fae’s face, but there was nothing but menace in it, and Zylah willed her heart to remain steady, her breaths even.

“It’s not a matter of greed, though I can see why you reached that conclusion.” He rested a hand over Aurelia’s, looking at her with a softness Zylah wouldn’t have thought a monster capable of. “But to answer your question: No, it’s not enough. Not yet.”

“Not yet?” Zylah seethed, though her head pounded relentlessly. “Look at your grandson. Is that not enough?” What Zylah felt for Raif went beyond hatred, but she still could not wrap her head around what had been done to him.

Ranon’s head tilted to one side, assessing her. “It can be undone with my blood,” he said simply, as if turning Raif into a monster was of no consequence to him. What a risk Aurelia had taken, altering her son so wholly before successfully releasing her father. None of them seemed troubled by it, least of all Raif.

“What was the mine for? What could someone with your abilities need with that much vanquicite?” Zylah asked, though she wasn’t certain she wanted to know the answer. All of this was very, very wrong.

Aurelia hadn’t stopped staring at her; Zylah couldn’t say she was surprised. If it even matched half of what she felt towards Aurelia for Holt, the Fae was nothing but white-hot anger and the desire for retribution. Wrath and the visceral need for reckoning colliding.

“You’re new to this. So I’ll enlighten you,” Ranon said slowly with the same tone he might use with a child, which, Zylah supposed, given the centuries he had on her, she was. “All Fae possess a certain amount of magic. Whether it manifests into an ability or not, it’s in our blood.” He turned his hand over, as if he might see the magic settled there.

Zylah sucked in a breath as realisation slammed into her. The cells. Holt had mentioned there were vanquicite cells in Virian. If that were true and Ranon had been using them to trap Fae, to harness their power… Aurelia must have known this would happen, that her father would be weak upon his release from his tomb; prepared for this eventuality all along. “You’re making cells to hold them. How many?”

Ranon seemed to study her. If he was surprised at how much she knew, he didn’t let it show. “As many as it takes.”

“But they’re your people. The people you came here to save. Why would you do that?”

“I never came here to save our people. That was the others’ intent.” His stare was empty for a moment, lost in whatever memory had enraptured him. “I came here to save myself. To start over. To begin anew.”

“That’s why you created the monsters.” To create a world in their vision, as Nye had put it.

“You are as much a monster to them as they to you, Zylah.”

She had so many questions. About how much Ranon had witnessed. About Aurelia’s supposed death. Questions about herself, too, that only Ranon might know the answer to. Like what had happened to her parents… the vanquicite she’d grown up with inside her. Something told Zylah he knew everything, would hold everything over her to get what he wanted.

“Enough of this,” the ancient Fae snapped, as if he could sense the questions on the tip of her tongue. “Call Pallia here.”

“I can’t. Do you truly think I’d still be here if I had a way to ask for help? If I could simply snap my fingers and tell her I’m ready to leave?”

Ranon laughed. “Call her here, Zylah.”

She had to have been dreaming when she’d almost died, believing her grandmother had come to her aid. Because what kind of heartless creature would leave their grandchild alone with three monsters, with no way to escape? Zylah gritted her teeth. “I told you. I can’t.”

Without warning, Aurelia was out of her chair, hand striking Zylah’s face so quickly the force knocked her back a step. Raif darted between them, shouting something Zylah couldn’t hear over the ringing in her ears, a hand on his mother’s arm. But Zylah could do nothing but choke out a sob. She could barely breathe at all.

Acani berries. A hint of acani berries in Aurelia’s strike. Zylah doubled over, a hand clutched to her stomach as her thoughts spiralled over themselves. Every little flutter of warmth she’d felt, every little instance of hope. What if it wasn’t Ranon’s blood diminishing her magic? What if… It was foolish to let herself be so optimistic. To let herself believe the impossible, but she had to.

Raif and Aurelia’s argument had heated, the words coming back into focus as understanding struck Zylah so sharply she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Where is my mate?” she breathed.

Raif and Aurelia didn’t stop arguing.

“Where is my mate?” she asked louder this time.

Still, the arguing continued.

“ Where. Is. He? ” Zylah demanded.

Raif paused and his eyes met Zylah’s. “Gone,” he said quickly. Too quickly.

“Where is he, Raif?” She needed an answer. A body. Anything. Holt was out there, somewhere, he had to be. She needed to believe it.

Raif turned away, and it was enough for Zylah to close her fingers around his wrist, her own safety be damned. “You didn’t kill him,” she whispered, understanding washing over her. But what would they need Holt for? To simply imprison him? No, Holt was powerful. His unique abilities were unrivalled. Her eyes searched Raif’s empty ones, looking for something, anything. “You’re using him.” She was desperately grasping at pieces of information, trying to scramble them together. “His magic. You need him.”

Her head was spinning, eyes darting between the three of them, waiting, hoping, praying to whoever would hear her that Holt was still alive and she wasn’t just losing her mind.

“He’s gone, Zylah,” Raif said again, firmer this time.

Zylah didn’t believe him. Wouldn’t let the little spark of hope be snuffed out, no matter how small it was, no matter how exhausted she felt. She released Raif’s wrist and folded her arms across her chest to hold herself together. “Pallia isn’t coming,” she told Ranon with as much bite to her words as she could manage.

“Liar!” Aurelia struck her again and this time Raif forced his mother back, sending her chair flying, Ranon surging to his feet as the three of them argued. Zylah didn’t care. More of Holt’s scent washed over her with Aurelia’s movement. Which meant Holt was alive. He had to be. It was the only thought Zylah could cling to.

“Your days here are limited,” Aurelia told her, glancing at Zylah’s pitiful room. “Raif is here because I promised he’d have time with his plaything.” The Fae let the words settle as Zylah wiped a thumb across her lip, split where Aurelia had struck her. “But my son always tired of his toys. He will tire of you soon.”

“Enough,” Raif snapped. “Leave. Both of you.”

Ranon had been silent, but Aurelia looked at her son like she was seeing him for the first time, a dark smile and a flash of white teeth turning her expression into something sinister as she turned back to Zylah. “When he’s done with you, your remaining days will be spent in this maze in nothing but torment. I promise you that.”

Her fingers brushed Zylah’s cheek at the same moment Raif reached for her, but Ranon held him back. Aurelia’s magic washed over Zylah, every limb paralysed, the magic delving deeper within her chest until she felt it squeeze at her lungs, at her heart, and for a second, everything stilled. The Fae released her hold almost a heartbeat too late, that wicked grin spread across her face and leaving Zylah gasping for air, her heart like a trapped bird in her ribcage.

“You have until the blood moon,” Ranon said, though Zylah didn’t know if it was to her or Raif. Aurelia and Ranon were already gone, leaving Zylah to clutch at her chest as she fought to steady her breathing, to calm her racing heart. Raif reached for her, but she recoiled from his touch, her back hitting the wall as she slid to the dirt.

They wanted to keep her there. To break her. But Zylah knew a thing or two about breaking. About letting herself splinter into pieces before she could be forged anew. Aurelia’s threats meant nothing to Zylah; Ranon’s demands were futile. Raif’s false declarations were nothing but poison, a way to keep her distracted. Because they were lying, all of them. They had to be.

Holt was alive.