Chapter 20

Chapter 20

We were leaning over the Night Flower, admiring its beauty. I felt a kinship with her, one that I hadn’t ever felt before with anyone. Maybe it was because we were both in the same situation and she had been the only one to actually tell me what was happening. She wasn’t trying to hide anything from me or ignore my requests.

“It’s beautiful,” she said with awe.

I smiled and said, “it’s extremely rare. No other flowers in this region bloom under the moonlight.”

“Like you,” she said with whimsy.

If Lenora only knew the truth of my awakening.

Putting her hands on her knees, she pushed herself back up and motioned toward the rest of the flowers. “It is absolutely amazing how you’ve been able to bring this garden back to life like this. In such a short time even! These plants are growing, thriving! They look like you’ve spent years cultivating their growth.”

I had been so caught up in Altyr and his seduction that I hadn’t noticed that. The garden did feel like it was alive and thriving. She wasn’t wrong. The flowers, the bushes, they all seemed to do far better than they should, considering the situation. The soil couldn’t be that great, I hadn’t been able to put any minerals into it like I would have wanted and yet…

A rose bush caught my eye, its flowers still working on closing for the evening. I marched over to it, trying to inspect it further. I had trimmed and pruned it heavily down. It was one of the few bushes I could salvage that had still existed from its original state. Looking at it now, it had fresh growth on it that appeared as if it had been growing for months.

The recent growth was bright green, fresh. I whipped my head toward the lavender Altyr had brought me. I had planted them behind the stone bench so the aroma would comfort any who rested there. With all the wonders, all the excitement that was happening, I wasn’t paying close attention to the plants. They had grown double their size, almost overnight.

“The roses are looking lovely. They’re his house sigil, you know?”

I brought my attention back to Lenora, nodded, and said, “yeah, he mentioned that.”

She smiled wildly. “I’m so excited you’re joining us. It’s going to be so much better to have someone to talk with about the two of them! I can only say so much to my own household. Altyr would kill me if he caught me gossiping with them. With you though, you already know about him! So I can complain about his grumpiness all I want!”

“I guess so… I hope he doesn’t stay grumpy now that we’ve…”

“It’ll get better. Even more so now actually,” she said with a nod.

“What do you mean?”

“Well now that you bonded before the ritual, the bond from the ritual will be stronger.”

My stomach dropped. “Stronger? The bond will be stronger?”

“Oh yes! If you’re bonded together, some call it love, others will use other words to describe it like claiming, but really it’s just a deep affection for one another, the bond you solidify in the ritual will be deeper. You’ll be connected on another level.”

“Are you and Orrin bonded this way?”

Even her eyes were smiling in squints as she nodded and said, “the ritual will compel you to follow your sire for life. If you want that going in, you’ll both be fully dedicated to one another.”

Compelled was an interesting choice of words. Did the magic keep her subservient to him? I wondered if the brief flash of magic Altyr’s eyes had done to me early in our meeting was what she meant. He couldn’t do that to me now though, he even tried after I showed back up as his hollow. Could they do that to hollow normally?

Lenora was swaying back and forth in the garden with a smile on her face. Looking over to her, I said, “Does he make you stay with him?”

Her swaying stopped, “I love him.”

“Yes. But can you leave?”

“Why… would I?”

My look hardened. There was something amiss. Why would anyone willingly, eternally, bind themselves to someone and be used as a traveling meal?

“Does your bond prevent you from ever leaving, ever having your own agency?”

She swallowed hard and licked her lips. “I… I don’t know. I haven’t ever wanted to.”

“Have you ever tried?”

Her eyes shifted about, her posture anxious at my line of questioning. “I… can I?”

Her movements were erratic as she paced back and forth. I triggered something within her, something that had been suppressed. “I love him. I love him? Do I love him? Of course I love him!”

“Lenora.”

“He saved me, he saved me from them. I have a life of luxury with him. He loves me… doesn’t he?” She was pacing around, throwing her arms about as she worked through her thoughts.

“Lenora, stop.”

She twirled around in anger toward me. “We are mates. I am his wife. He isn’t forcing me to be there. He hasn’t compelled me to his side. Why would you suggest that!”

Her stomping was getting dangerously close to the Night Flower. Every footfall made me take sharp, nervous breaths as she neared. Her attention was on me and her thoughts, not her surroundings.

“He didn’t make me love him! Did he?... No. No! He loves me. He would let me leave if I wanted to. Wouldn’t he?”

“Lenora, stop. You’re going to–”

“I can’t leave him. It’s all I have, he’s all I have anymore. Everyone I know and loved is long gone. He is all I have.”

Her stomping crested over the small flower bed I had created for it. Turning on her heel, she went to march away from me, her foot about to fall right atop the Night Flower. She was going to destroy it.

I felt a wave of anger and fear hit me, the power surged through my senses as I shouted, “Stop!”

Her body froze in place, her foot frozen midair. Only her eyes could move as they shook in horror. Her pupils were wide, terrified at what I had done. My jaw dropped as the panicked breaths came like a wave. Scattering and slipping my way to her side, I tried to push her, to pull her away, to move her in any way.

“What did you do,” Orrin’s voice bellowed, and he was next to us in an instant.

“I–I don’t–” The words fell out of my mouth. “I told her to stop.”

Putting his hands around her shoulders, he tried to push her away, but she was immobile. I watched as his arms flexed, but she didn’t budge. His head whipped back to me. “Dispel this at once.”

“I don’t know what it is!”

“At once!”

“I–” Tears welled at the edges of my vision. “I just asked her to stop. I just asked her to stop. I just–”

“Enough,” he commanded, his voice booming across the garden. “You will use your will to make her move again. Do it.”

“My… will?” I gritted my teeth as the water started falling down my cheeks. What did he mean? Did I will her to stop so something made it happen? What power did I have and how did he know what to do? Shaking my tears away I nodded, trusting he was right.

I tried to push my… will out toward them. It wasn’t anything complicated; it wasn’t a want for something dramatic to happen. All I wanted in that moment, all I needed to happen was for her to move. Move, Lenora, move.

At the edges of my mind, a darkness sprang to life. The darkness. She had said it had a power, a power I must have tapped into. I tried to mentally grab onto it, tried to wrap the tendrils of my will around it to use it as she said the vampires did.

“Move,” I whispered and nothing happened.

Orrin turned back to me, a look of fear on his face. I swallowed hard, trying to push that power out again. Closing my eyes, I focused on it, focused on the darkness that was ever present.

With a shaky breath I said, “move. Please, Lenora, move.”

With a sharp inhalation, she gasped and Orrin caught her before she fell. Wrapping his arms around her, he held her as she sobbed in fear. His eyes cut to me as he said, “there’s something wrong with you. You are not a hollow.”

It was like a punch to my gut. This whole time they were acting like I was a welcomed part of them, that I finally had a place to belong. I didn’t mean to cause her to freeze. Nothing about this was under my control.

A small spark of light floated away from the flower that was now between us. The wisps of light fading away into the air between us. Both of them looked down at the flower and back up at me. I watched as both their eyes went wide in shock. Orrin did it again, he looked to the faintly glowing flower, to me, then to Lenora. I watched his face transform in realization.

“The flower…”

My mouth moved to explain, but no words came out.

Looking to the sky, the sliver of the moon was high above us. They both looked back to the flower and the small glow of light, the embers that it had briefly given off, they faded away once more. The two of them shared a knowing look, saying more with their eyes than I could even get out.

“I don — it was—“ I couldn’t form a full sentence of explanation.

“It was the flower that raised you, not the moon,” he answered. “You knew this. It’s why you had him bring it back here.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” I tried to plead. “I should have died. You saw me. I should have died.”

“But you didn’t. You lived. What is this thing,” he asked as he leaned down to examine it.

I moved in to stop him, afraid he may destroy it. “I don’t know!”

“How did it revive you? How did it give you sentience?” His questions were no longer to me, but merely his vocalization of his thoughts.

A dry sob escaped my lips as I repeated, “I don’t know!”

Lenora took in a deep, but jittery breath as she tried to calm herself. “I believe her.”

My eyes snapped back to her. I had just forced her into a frozen state and she was still defending me? They had every reason to end my life now for lying to them, for using my will on her and here she was defending me. The kindness of the woman knew no bounds. She truly was a person of light.

Orrin ran his fingers along the petals of the Night Flower. “As do I.”

I let out a deep breath of relief from hearing them say it. Maybe my new companionship, my kinship with them wasn’t lost. The thoughts rolled across me; the panic easing away but only slightly. I swallowed hard as I watched Orrin examine the flower.

“It blooms at night,” Lenora stated flatly as she placed her hand on his shoulder. “It must absorb the moon’s light.”

“In concentrated forms, it must leak that… light.” His attention went back to me as I was wringing my hands together. “It replaced the light he stole, didn’t it?”

Lenora’s shoulders eased, and her breathing slowed back to a normal pace. She looked at me with kind eyes and said, “she doesn’t know anything about that, honey. She was just a girl in the right place at the wrong time.”

The heavy beat of my heart eased at her words. I knew nothing about the light, the darkness, or vampires before that night. I only knew about plants. All the plants but this one, at least not the power this one held.

Orrin’s head whipped to Lenora. “He doesn’t know.”

My eyes widened. “No! No. We are not telling him.”

“We’re telling him.”

“We can’t,” I pleaded to them.

Lenora shook her head in frustration. “Why can’t we tell him? This is ridiculous. A good relationship is built out of communication. You don’t hide things from one another, especially not something like this!”

“If he knows, then he’ll be burdened with knowing I’m different. He’ll know I’m not a normal hollow.”

Orrin had his hands on his hips. “We already know you’re different.”

“But it might affect him at the ritual, it might affect his choice. It could cause even more issues with the others,” I tried to reason my way out of telling him. “He only just accepted me. You said he’s been alone for decades. He hates the light, hates mortals who control it. He’ll hate me!”

“That’s ridiculous, he’s not that unreasonable. He needs to know,” Orrin said as he turned away from me, ready to go find Altyr.

“No! No, please!”

“You foolish girl,” he said as he marched away from me.

“No! Stop!” A wave of energy pushed itself to him. He froze in place.

I made a vampire freeze in place.

He stood as still as a statue. Marching over to face him, I furrowed my eyebrows and said, “you will not talk about this. Not until after the ritual. Then we can discuss all the magic we want. We will not ruin things for him, not like this.”

His eyes peered into me, a flash of magic crossed them as I could tell he was trying to compel me himself. Nothing happened. Lenora was shaking next to us, scared at the power I was showing.

“Orrin, you are a great guy, a good friend, you know we can’t do this to him. He needs to go into this thinking it is normal and we did not force him into it. This is my eternity we’re talking about.”

Lenora let out an angry huff and said, “and you’re starting that eternity on a lie!”

“Silence,” I said with my arm outstretched to her. Without thinking, a wisp of darkness floated from my fingertips, from the misting on my hands. Her mouth opened, but no words came out.

“I don’t know what is happening, but you two will not tell him, you will keep quiet until we get through this.”

Pushing on my mind, pushing on my will, I let them go. Orrin whirled around to me, glaring. Lenora’s voice was back as she was asking him if he was okay.

“How dare you do this!” He was rightly mad, but I couldn’t let him tell Altyr, not yet. I needed time. “He needs to know you–”

I smirked as the words fell out of his mouth. I didn’t know how and I didn’t know why, but it worked. My will worked on him.

“That you have–”

Lenora’s eyes widened as he slammed his fist down through the air.

“I don’t know how you’ve done this, but this is the wrong choice, Sylvia.”

I straightened my back and said, “it’s the only choice I’ve been able to make on my own. We’ll talk about it, just not yet. I need more time.”

“More time doesn’t change anything, it’ll just change you!”

I leaned down to the flower, now fully in bloom. “I need more time to learn about this flower, how it did what it did. The power that it has is obviously remarkable. I can’t let everyone discover it before I do.”

A loud creak of stone and wood echoed across the garden. Our heads turned to the large doors that led out toward the ward. Altyr was pulling a cart inside with a bunch of new fabrics and bedding. We all stared at him awkwardly.

“Uh, did I interrupt something?”

Orrin’s eyes cut to me as he said, “we were just talking about Sylvia’s flower here and how it –”

His voice cut out as he tried to say whatever it was he was trying to get out. He wrinkled his nose in frustration and said, “and how it blooms at night.”

Altyr’s eyebrow raised and gave us all suspicious looks. “Okay well, while it is fascinating, can I get some help with this bedding? We unfortunately will have several hollow here who will want beds.”

Orrin grabbed Lenora’s hand and pulled her away from me while agreeing that they’d help move the beddings. “You know vampires sleep in them too, right?”

“Yeah, but they don’t need to sleep, they choose to. The damn hollow expect it,” he said as Orrin and Lenora got an arm full of beddings. “Mortals, always expecting us to bend over backward for their whims.”

“Careful,” Lenora said as her eyes darted back toward me. “Your mortal might not take too kindly to those words.”

He laughed and said, “Luckily for me she’s not able to make me shut up.”

The two of them gave him an awkward laugh before cutting their eyes back to me. I could probably make him do a lot more than just shutting up. The full scope of my power was unfathomable. We just started to scratch the surface.

The weight of the power enticed me but the act of using it exhausted me. Feigning hunger, I took my leave from them and went to the kitchens to find something to eat. They accepted my exit and finally left me alone.

Shutting the door behind me, I slid down against it and let out a nervous breath I was holding. What was I doing? Why didn’t I want to tell Altyr, what was I afraid of? So far all he had done was show me kindness. Kindness that was behind barbed insults, but still more kindness than I was used to.

The wood was hard against my back, reminding me of what I could be dealing with. They could have thrown me in a dungeon with only the cold, hard ground to sleep on. Instead, I was granted a free rein of the castle and I convinced the Lord of it to join me in bed. Why don’t I want him to know?

I let out a large sigh as the fatigue sunk in. I wanted to just sleep the evening away, but I knew I couldn’t manage that. Maybe some food in me would help me figure out what the hell I was going to do. Pulling myself back up, I went about scouring the cabinets for something to eat.

As I reached up, I noticed the black swirls on my skin were further up my hand, wrapping themselves around my wrists. The darkness Lenora told me about, the one that would consume me if I didn’t stop it. That same darkness was what I was tapping into that allowed me to control Orrin, to freeze Lenora. Was it really that bad if I could do so much with it?

I rolled my hand around, looking at the back of it to see how dark the swirls were getting. What if I didn’t go through the ritual? What if, I used the darkness to control the vampires, the hollows, and anything else this allowed me to. The power to do so was enticing. For once, I had an advantage over those in my life that were more powerful.

The image of a hollow with their grotesque arms and elongated fangs crossed my mind. Their guttural growls echoing in my head. If I didn’t stop the darkness, stop it from taking me over, it would doom me to join their soured fates. Rolling my hands back over and looking at my palms, I traced a swirl of darkness from the tips of my fingers, around my hand, and followed it to end at my wrist. What if I didn’t end up like that, what if this power, the Night Flower’s power, prevented that?

What if I let the darkness win?