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I knew what he was doing, that he was traveling through time to shift his position, he was walking right by me every time, but I had no time stored, I had no way to face him in the Ether. I was trapped, snarling and yelling as I blindly swung my swords as though I could catch him.
I knew it was useless, which only fueled my rage further.
“Caspyn,” he said as I swung and spun toward the voice in my ear. He had already moved, his next words echoing down a hall to my left. “The crimson stained altar is not the end. Do not be afraid to fail.”
“What?” I was still snarling, still pacing before that grave mural. “What are you on about? Stop with the nonsense and come out and face me!”
“Not today, Light Bringer. Today, I just put you where you need to go.”
The pull of his magic faded as his laugh did, as he vanished from everywhere.
“Vaelar!” I yelled, the mural before me cracking as my magic flared, that flare turning into a rumble as his magic popped back into existence, this time right beside me.
I whirled to him, to that face that now held the scar I had given him, his own smile mirroring the darkness in myself. I lifted my blade, ready to slice through him, but as before, he was faster, his hands gripping my wrists as he held me in place.
“Not today,” he said as his magic swelled, and that familiar feeling of time and nothing sped through me.
One moment we were in the endless white of the Temple, the next we stood in the tall grasses far below the winding staircase that led to the entrance, only steps from the blood streaked carriage as the sun dipped into twilight.
We stood, my hand still raised, his hands still firm against my wrists. Time had passed, the world had shifted, but we stood.
“Today, you have a more important task, you must listen to me, Caspyn.”
“I will never listen to you,” I grunted, pushing against him.
“You will, let today be your first. You wish to end the queen? It starts with this: Follow the Shade.”
I would have asked, if I had cared enough to, if I had trusted the monster who had held me. But even before I could form words he vanished without so much of a breath. One moment I was snarling at him. The next my blades sliced through nothing as he vanished, leaving me standing in the quickly darkening world.
The carriage no longer rocked, although that dark Fae power still blossomed from somewhere in its depths. Snakes still stood outside of it, their backs against the door as they waited for something. There was only the still of twilight, the crickets buzzing in the distance as the sky turned scarlet and gold with the setting sun, the blaze of the last light turning everything red, from the sky, to clouds, to the expanse of trees in the Forest of Ok.
The fucking Fae King had led me on a wild goose chase. He had dragged me through a temple only to drop me back where I began, far away from the wedding that was sure to start any minute. If I was to end things at the wedding as I had planned I was already too late.
Taking a step forward, my mind tumbled through any other opportunity to take the queen off guard, only to freeze as the guards flung the door open and the sounds of grunts and fighting filtered over to where I stood as those snakes pulled someone out of the carriage. It took more than one of them to remove a man dressed head to toe in black from the depths of the carriage, his face covered by a shroud so dark that I could see nothing but black.
Nothing but shadow.
But in that shadow was the buzz of a Fae that I had felt before. A Fae had been traveling with Princess Elara. A Fae whose voice I had heard through the carriage. That low hiss of a promise, of love. It had come from a shadow.
No, a shade.
A shade that held such light, but also a permeating black. There was something about his magic that I had never felt before, something about it that pulled at me. It was calling to me.
The guards dragged him out of the carriage, beating and kicking and punching the man who didn’t raise a hand to fight back. He took every blow, every hit, not even a grunt of pain seeping from him before they dragged him to the temple where the wedding ceremony would start in only moments.
I shouldn’t have listened to Vaelar. I shouldn’t have cared about anything that King had said, about his commands.
I didn’t. He was a monster and a trickster and I would have his head in the end. But his words were burning against my mind, they were screaming in my ears. Each word was as loud as the love I had heard from the shade before, as burning as that magic that was calling to me.
And I followed.
I followed that buzz of the Fae, and the consuming black that made the shrouded man feel as though he was already dead.
It was the same darkness I had felt from the scarred woman in Dalyah’s tent.
The darkness that held more death than I ever did.
The darkness that was, somehow, already a part of me.
