8. Hope

8

HOPE

L ight has returned to the world, as I flare with Ascendant’s Music in the underground hall. As Quinn and Lucca sear with me, everything around me blazes white. I feel it as the Gold Eyes’ influence is burned away, now that we’ve all mastered our own inner voids. We’ve faced our deepest hatred and found forgiveness for the darkness that plagued us; as we all rush and flow with the brightest Music I’ve ever felt, I feel it reach through to that otherworld .

Shaping something new around us, for the very first time.

It’s incredible, leaving me high and breathless even as the Music ceases singing between us. Because for the very first time, Quinn, Lucca, and I have manifested the Music free of the Gold Eyes’ taint; as I search deep within now, I feel nothing where his terrible emptiness used to plague us.

It was only doing so, thanks to something empty-hearted in each of us that allowed his resonance to persist. Once we removed that darkness, by flooding it with Light, his bonds to us were broken.

Never able to come back.

“We’re free!” Quinn’s laugh is incredible, as he seizes both Lucca and me and kisses us in an almost frenzied delight .

“Fucker’s gone! Good riddance,” Lucca says, as he grins and laughs like a bright maniac now, squeezing us both in his formidable embrace. “I never thought I could feel so fucking light…!”

“We had to vanquish our deepest hatred inside each of us.” I gaze into both their beloved faces, feeling giddy that we made it. With our bonds to each other restored, I can feel echoes of what Quinn and Lucca went through, though it all feels like distant memories now that this brightness shines within us.

“What was it for you?” I ask Quinn now, as clearly, he and Lucca have had a chance to discuss this before I woke.

“Myself,” Quinn says as he stares me down, then lifts my hands, kissing them. “I had thought it might be Emiliana DiClario, but what I hated most about everything I had done for her was that I did it. I hated myself deeply… with a passionate fire that could not be quenched.”

“And you?” I ask Lucca, as I gaze into his so very blue eyes.

“My father,” Lucca’s smile is wry, but kinder than I’ve ever seen it when mentioning his father. “It wasn’t much of a surprise for me. What was surprising was that there was so much hate inside me. Quinn was right; behind my brightest light lived a deep darkness. I had to forgive to find my true Light again—and I did.”

“We all did,” Quinn says, serious now. “But what was your deepest hatred, Ariana? You had us worried that you were never coming out. What was it that kept you in there so long?”

“The Gold Eyes. Staphylogenes himself.” My truth-reading power sings inside me, and I know I have to tell them everything. “I hated him because he took my life from me. He took away everything I could have had… and changed it, right from the day I was born. I hated him because my life was never my own. Even though my adopted parents gave me the best chance they could, hiding my magic from the creature all those years, it really just postponed the inevitable of when he would find me again and use me for hi s own agenda.”

“You forgave the Gold Eyes?” Lucca’s eyebrows lift as surprise takes him. “How in the gods’ names did you do that?”

“I don’t know. I just sort of… did. It felt right. True, for me,” I say. Even though I still feel angry at the Gold Eyes, I realize that void-like inner place isn’t still devouring me. It was in my heart, but it was also inside my very soul.

Which feels clean and clear, now that I’m no longer wrathful at it.

“Felt right?” Lucca lifts an eyebrow at me.

“I just realized I was love, not hatred,” I say now, as my truth-power sings inside me. “I have always been love in the universe, and always will be—being with the both of you showed me that. I will do everything for my love, including forgiving myself of my hatred and letting that hatred go. Because I’m worth it, and the both of you are, too.”

For a long moment, Lucca and Quinn both just gape at me, amazed. And then they’re raking me in, holding me close and kissing me hard on the chaise.

When a smooth voice clears its throat—and I remember we have an audience.

We break from our kissing, looking around to find only two people still in the underground rotunda with us—Gideon stands in his casual clothing nearby, plus one other who is masked. Our ceremony over, the rest of the Dark Fae Sages have melted away into the morning—though I still feel an intense interest from their combined magic lingering in this space, as if they’re vastly curious about Quinn, Lucca, and me now.

It’s as if they don’t know what to make of us, as their power still whispers and murmurs around the space. But they’ve gone their way now that their task is finished, leaving only Gideon still with us.

Along with a strange, fully masked woman standing nearby.

That woman is regal and tall, so incredibly tall she reminds me of the Wanderer, as I take her in. Upon her Carnevale mask are rainbows, glittering as bright as the sun in the Fae-lit darkness of the rotunda. Her robe is of the purest white, glittering with rainbows also, though the surrounding hall is mostly dark. We’re deep underground in this Rotunda of the Sages, yet she shines like a diamond in the dawn, as if she feels the sun rising far above.

She stands there looking at us, then removes her mask—and I recognize her. She’s the Vampire Revenant we returned before the King of the Summer Fae, in his very own throne hall.

Iris.

“Congratulations. You’ve found me.” She smiles as she takes in our trio.

As we realize now who she is, Quinn, Lucca, and I slide off the chaise and stand—ungracefully, as we’re all still shaky from the power of everything we just experienced. We’re still dressed in our casual clothing; I feel shabby now as Iris blazes before us inside the dark rotunda.

A goddess upon this earth.

“Come.” She gestures to the stairs. “Walk with me. I shall tell you everything you need to know about my most esteemed and downfallen husband. Then you shall decide whether or not you will take him on.”

As she turns, heading up the stairs of the rotunda and back through the underground passages, Gideon gestures for us to follow her. Our eyebrows all rise as shock flows through our trio to realize whom we’re dealing with; then Quinn takes the lead and we all go, intent on hearing what Iris has to say.

We follow her up into the light. Once again, the Hidden City of Venice blazes with the resurgence of the dawn, everything angels and rainbows shining off the water in the rising light.

It’s beautiful, and as Iris sheds her robe and mask now, standing in a simple shift of sparkling rainbow-white gossamer that glitters in the dawn, I am stunned by everything about her.

As the waterfalls and spouts flowing all around us generate rainbows, they seem to cascade off her long white hair and pale snowmelt beauty, increasing a hundredfold. Like a diamond-bright prism, she shines in her natural element; in the city of water, sun, and rainbows, Iris is like a blazing gemstone, searing with beauty in the dawn.

Up on the plaza now, standing front and center before the towering beauty of the Basilica di San Marco, Iris faces us. She takes us in as she blazes with Light; the Music begins to cascade off us, enfolding around her and increasing.

She takes that Music, and like the most masterful harp, sculpts it. As her hands move through countless intricate forms now, and her body, too, I realize she’s dancing with the Music. She creates incredible shapes that I see blaze through the otherworld , the place the Ascendants came from.

Of which she is one—though she Descended long ago, to be in mortal form with us.

“There,” she says at last, as her sculpting is done. Her masterful, ineffable Ascendant sigil floats away upon the morning breeze, even as the Music comes to silence between us all. “I have given you what I can to aid you in your journey.”

“By changing our fates?” Lucca asks, as he stares at where that incredible sigil went.

“Something like that.” She smiles now, kind, though her pure white irises simmer with every-color rainbows in the morning. “Only you can take masterful hold of your fates enough to change them. You have already done so, taking the first step at liberating yourselves from my once-husband’s most awful taint. Though there are many more steps to go; this is far from the end.”

“Couldn’t just be easy, could it?” Quinn gives a wry smile, his dark eyes thoughtful. “What do you think we should know about Staphylogenes that you believe can aid us?”

“First, you should know that he is not a creature that can be killed.” She watches us intently now, as if sensing our disappointment. “I feel that this is your intent; it is a false one. The vast, incredible energy of an Ascendant or even a Descendant, as Fallen and twisted as my husband is right now, cannot be ended. It can only change form; as such, he will never be entirely obliterated upon this plane or anywhere else. I’m sorry if this was your aim.”

It takes my trio aback now, as we all pause in the new day. Though the Wanderer told us the same thing, that had indeed been our aim; I feel Quinn change course through our bond, as he decides to take in as much information on the Gold Eyes as Iris will give us right now.

And determine later if we can kill it.

“What do you know about Staphylogenes, that you think might help us?” Quinn reiterates, as he watches the ancient Descendant we once liberated from her Revenant state.

Who, quite possibly, feels a debt to us now.

“I do indeed feel your call.” She looks at me, as if she heard my thought. Her rainbow-white eyes dazzle me with their glory; I remember how those eyes felt upon me when she was liberated from her Revenant state in the Summer Fae King’s throne hall.

And I wonder now if her husband put her there.

“He chained me into my Revenant place, yes,” she answers my thought once more, without me having to say anything. “Back in those days, after he tormented our most beautiful daughter Cereus for far too long, I could not take it anymore. We warred; I did everything I could to bring him down, and un-make the power that had Made us. But I could not do it; the destiny that had been created in the universe by our decision to Fall could not be undone by my Music. So my husband captured me and tormented me. Until I Descended completely into my Revenant state. And could not come out… until the three of you saved me.”

“Why could you not make it out? You’re powerful enough,” Lucca says as the same thought crosses my mind.

“Some pains go deeper than the heart, into the very soul itself.” Her gaze pins me again, as if feeling our souls resonate. “I could not escape my soul-pain, for deciding to Fall in the first place and everything that came about because of it. And so my husband used that to trap and torment me in my Revenant state, for millennia. ”

“You said you tried to un-make him.” Quinn focuses on the conversation like a laser. “Could our Music do such a thing… and return Staphylogenes to the discorporate energies that Made him?”

“Perhaps.” Iris cocks her head at him, thoughtful. “Where I failed, perhaps you three might succeed. Recall what I told you when we first met: You shall know true power. And none shall be able to stand against you, when hearts and minds are one. The Music favors your trio, when you are united… indeed, in ways I have not seen in a god’s age. But you will not be successful in Mastering my once-husband without first Mastering the Ascendant’s Sigils themselves. Which you are far from doing… and you do not have the hundred thousand years or more it would take to learn how to wield them to create thusly.”

“Teach us,” Quinn says. “We will learn.”

“No.” She shakes her head. “There is no time, and it would be fruitless. What I can do is inspire you; hopefully, the strange Music that manifests already between the three of you can take your destiny into your own hands, and un-make that of my husband’s. It is all I can hope for. So I will share with you what I think may be helpful. And weave Ascendant Sigils for you, day and night… in the hopes you will be successful in your quest to un-make him.”

It’s a tremendous gift, a blessing from this goddess of ancient times. Quinn, Lucca, and I bow deeply to hear it, Quinn and Lucca even going down on one knee though I simply set my hand to my heart, that Iris would bless us with her own Ascendant’s Sigils day and night to aid us.

It’s all we could ever ask for; she has more for us, however, as we stand before her in the sunlight. She knows something else she believes could help us in our quest to take down Staphylogenes.

And return him to the universe, or take him out—whatever the Music decides is right.

“To master my husband, you must first find his heart.” Iris regards us. “Here. This is where you may find it.” She waves her hand, and a detailed map is etching itself right into my brain. Where I once thought I knew Florence, a crazy map of ancient waterways and tunnels, sewers and catacombs imprints itself forever into my mind, showing me where to go with bright white lines that glitter with rainbows.

Descending somewhere far underground—into a tomb that never sees the light.

“That is his heart’s resting place, beneath Florence,” Iris says as she nods that we have all received her image. “For my husband committed his heart to the land ages ago in that very spot. It lies undisturbed still… for even he could not disturb it. Nor reclaim what was once his, which he so recklessly gave up.”

“If we reclaim his heart… we can destroy it, and kill him?” Quinn asks, rapt as he rises from his bow.

“Nothing so simple.” Iris smiles sadly now as she regards him. “You may claim it, if the Music inside you is true. And return it to him… hoping it may give him what he seeks, and make him leave you all in peace.”

“He wants his heart back?” It comes to me now, my conversation with Staphylogenes from my trance. “But in my trance, he said he wanted my heart, not his.”

“He would take the heart of another, if it could give him peace.” Iris is serious as she holds my gaze. “He has tried it many times over the years, but always it has failed. Yet, he believes your power, your truth, and your Light have finally created the Ascendant heart he seeks, little one. Beware, for he does not believe anyone can reach his own heart, still trapped as it is by the Ascendant magics he left in that place when he created it. Save for those who are still Ascendants themselves. Of which they would never do… and of which, myself and my daughter are not. Not anymore.”

“So he’ll still be coming for me.” My heart drops out from beneath me now, as I truly realize it isn’t over. Lucca and Quinn move close, wrapping their arms around me and cuddling me for comfort.

“No, child. It isn’t over.” Iris smiles sadly at me. Moving forward, she takes my hand.

And everything inside me lifts in hope, as her rainbow waters shine .

“Do not despair,” she says, as she touches me, illuminating me with her presence. “For I feel within you and your trio a vast magic, perhaps even more powerful than the Ascendants themselves. For your power is a wild magic; wild with mortality, death, and the mysteries of life, it seethes and surges in incredible ways, unpredictable to even an Ascendant’s calculating might. Mortality is your gift; use it, and the preciousness of life you feel when you are faced with immortals. They do not feel as you do; they do not hold the preciousness of life in their hand and the fleeting beauty of love this world gives. That love is your power; that Light shines brighter than anything in all the heavens and earth. Use it, when the time is right. The Music shall come to you, as it was meant to… and give us all hope, at last.”

With that, Iris beams at me one last time, and then she releases me.

Dissolving into a cascade of rainbows and diamond-light mist.

She’s gone. As she departs, I feel so much inside that I sob, and Quinn and Lucca hold me. They cuddle me now, Quinn at my front and Lucca at my back. I hug Quinn hard, trapping Lucca’s hand around my middle as I pull them both around me like a security blanket.

Because I know everything is going to be so much harder now that Iris has left us. Now that we have liberated ourselves from the Gold Eyes’ taint inside our magic, he’s going to be coming for us a hundredfold, far harder than he ever did before.

Time has run out, when he thought he had so long to groom us. He couldn’t play us to his endless game; so he’s going to take us by force now, I know to the deepest soul of my being.

I don’t know how that’s going to manifest, as darkness reaches us in the city of sunlight, water, and rainbows. But I know it’s going to be terrible, as Staphylogenes’ retribution finds us.

To tear us down until we accomplish what he wants of us.

Or die trying.