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It was lunacy. “She will kill me.”
“Perhaps,” Xel admitted, not at all bothered by the idea. “Though it is doubtful. Your mistress craves loyalty because only the most loyal will do her bidding without question. She may wield power, Aldor, but not even she can achieve her ends alone. Why do you think we created the vampires?”
Aldor’s scowl deepened. “To fight your battles for you,” he snapped.
Xel replied with a dark smile. “Why spill our own blood when we could spill another’s?” Bile rose in Aldor’s throat and burned. “Your mistress does not wield an army, though she’s waging a war. She needs all her groveling soldiers if she is to win.”
Aldor was as good as dead if he came to Nestra with nothing more than another story of how he’d failed her. She’d warned him as much the last they’d spoken.
“If you return to grovel, she will know you are hers,” Xel explained. “Otherwise, you would have simply taken the coward’s path and ran.”
“No,” Aldor declared, not entirely sure where he’d gotten the nerve to do so. “I won’t do it.”
Xel looked at him as if he were a pitiful little worm. “Then you are a fool.”
Aldor bristled at the slight. There was no false flattery or devilish charm, just biting, bitter truth. “And you are trapped in a fucking mirror,” he snarled in return.
Xel’voth cocked a brow at his audacity and smirked; his catlike expression returned once again. “You have never wondered why your mistress sent you to do this work on her behalf? She could have sent any of her paladins. When the Star that she so desperately seeks to achieve all her ends floats just beyond her grasp…you’ve not wondered why she hasn’t left her tower to do it herself?”
Aldor narrowed his eyes on the dark creature. He had wondered those things, but he’d always assumed the answers were beyond his right to know. Plus, Aldor had prided himself that he was her champion. The one she’d chosen above everyone else for such a precious task, even though he was only half-blood and cursed.
Xel tutted. “If you were my servant, I would have cut you open from cock to collar the first time you let the Star slip through your fingers.”
A cold sweat spread over Aldor’s skin, and he trembled. Xel’voth was not wrong. He’d failed his mistress many times. Too many. Yet he still breathed. “Why me then?” he asked, trying to force his voice steady.
Xel tilted his head ever so slightly to the left, as if Aldor were a sad puppy. “Perception is not always reality. Oftentimes, those who appear to wield the most power wield the least, and those who appear to wield none hold the cosmos at their fingertips. Your mistress needs you.”
Aldor struggled to believe that. He’d felt her power. How it’d grown over the last several decades. How much darker it’d become. It was why he had no wish to go to her with nothing but more failure. She might not cut him down the middle, but she might plunge a dagger into his heart.
“You’re wrong,” Aldor told him.
Xel took a step closer to the invisible surface of the mirror that held him at bay. “We are all born with finite abilities in magick,” he went on, unbothered by Aldor’s declaration. “Even the most studied of fae can only accomplish what the limits of their own bodies will allow. The path to true power is not to fight these limits, but to know them. Only then can you break them.
“To harness raw power,” the vile creature continued, “is a skill few possess. You cannot merely bend it to your will; you must bend to it. You must give yourself over fully… ” Xel ran his finger over the barrier between them, and a dark tear formed along the path, sending sprays of silver dust onto the floor. From that tear, a tendril of shadow slipped out like a tentacle. Then another.
Aldor’s blood chilled with horror. He stumbled back as the shadows seeped out of the hole and into the room.
It was impossible.
Xel spoke a word, and the tear slowly closed, chopping off the tentacles and sending the remains of their shadowy forms to dissipate in the air. With heavy breaths, Aldor looked up to Xel’voth, who was glaring down at him, his silver eyes set and dark. Even from his prison he had the power to twist the darkness. Aldor felt the grip of that knowledge like a claw around his throat.
“You are a rarity,” Xel told him. “A creature cursed from childhood. The magick of the Pool took your soul to grant your mother’s wish, but it gave you many things in return. Your mistress knows what you are. You are only good to her as you are. She will never give you what you desire.”
Aldor shuddered, unable to speak lest he be sick.
“Watch her,” Xel added. “And when she fails to possess the power she is so desperate to control, remember all I have done for you.”
The fragrance of blooms and earth filled the solarium. Since he’d come to live in the acropolis of the Temple, the mere scent of flowers had begun to make Aldor feel sick to his stomach. He stood, fighting the urge to be ill and willing himself to stop shaking in his boots. He prayed silently to the Goddess, to anyone, that this would work.
Tendrils of the High Priestess’s magick seeped into the room before she entered. His heart stuttered as he felt it coil around him.
“You return empty-handed,” she observed from the doorway. A chill ran down his spine.
“I tracked the woman,” Aldor replied, trying to keep his voice as smooth as possible. “The vampire has taken her to his hold.”
She approached, her shoes clicking against the marble floors. Aldor lowered his eyes as her magicks rippled around him.
“Where?” she demanded.
