Page 39 of Queen of the Wicked
Everyone is gone.
I stand, my clothes ripped apart and my feet bare. My feet stumble over stone and ash. The wind stirs, disturbing the trees across the lake, but there is no sound.
“Kaius?”Nothing.“Rowan?”Nothing.
The Well buzzed faintly as if taking shallow breaths itself. It pulses once, and my body shivers in response, pain shooting down my spine.
A glimmer of something catches my eye in the heap of Eternity’s statue–one of Rowan’s iridescent feathers. The only thing left after they ripped his wings from his body.
I pick it up, hands shaking, and hold it to my chest. Tears burn in my eyes as I stumble to the liquid of the Well and look down. I have no reflection, only a strange, endless golden light where I should be, like a wound in the water itself.
And then I hear Eternity’s dark, twisted laugh in my head.
At last, you are mine.
“No!” I wail as I hit my knees, the magic within my stirring in answer to her. It knows I’m alone. It knows Eternity has won.
“Kaius,” I whisper again, more broken now. “Rowan.”
Still nothing.
Only the low hum of the Well. Only that feather in my hand.
Only the terrible, unbearable silence, because I’ve lost everything all over again.
Thirty-Five
Adelasia
The Cambouri Desert stretches endlessly before me, in a shade of vivid orange sand bleeding into golden skies just as my father once described it. So much beauty and crisp, fresh air, and yet I still find it hard to breathe. The heat of the day kisses and clings to my skin, and the sand falls softly through my toes, and yet I can’t shake the harsh cold lodged inside my chest.
It’s been three months since it went quiet. Since Rowan and Kaius. Since we traveled to the Well and foolishly thought we could best a Goddess and her servants.
The Desert is a place where the air smells of smoke and spiced meat, where music threads through the streets well after sunset, and where the lives of the al-Abadi people carry on with their simple, complete lives while I remain suspended somewhere in the crushing darkness of my past.
Saddiq and his family opened their doors to me without hesitation when I showed up at their home, distraught, tear-stricken and broken beyond repair. No matter how many warm smiles Anya offered me, no matter how many late-night talks I shared with Saddiq, and no matter how many times I watched Habiba show me her dances, I’ve remained hollow.
I silently earn my keep folding silks and hanging them to dry outside, fetching water from the small oasis that serves the region, and watching over Habiba when Saddiq and Anya are busy.
Habiba…gods I love that child. She’s sometimes the only light in my life. Her laugh is unguarded, untouched by the horrors of life. As Saddiq suspected, she took to me like she’d known me her whole life–like I was a sister. She tugs on my hand until I join her games, insists that I help her with her school lessons, and asks me to teach her to dance like a real ballerina.
Sometimes, when I spin her through the kitchen while she giggles, I almost remember what it feels like to be alive.
Almost.
I don’t use my magic anymore. The thought of it makes me sick. Remembering what the thirst for power did to me and the Priestesses, and what it did to the people I love. It’s taken everyone from me. My family, my mates, even my own life.
Since Kaius and Rowan were my only source of sustenance, adjusting to life without them was hard. The Cambouri Desert is far from the Blackwood where most demons live, so I can only survive by stealing vials of demon blood from the back corners of the market. If anyone here found out I wasn’t fully human, they’d kill me. Not even Anya and Habiba know, and it staying that way was the only condition Saddiq had when I showed up at their door.
To them, I was just another prisoner of the vampires that helped him escape, and we got separated in the Blackwood. Not entirely untrue, but it still feels like I’m walking a line that puts them in danger every single day.
While Saddiq’s family treat me as one of their own, the rest of the al-Abadi people are still somewhat wary of me. My pale skin, bright-colored eyes, and the way I tower almost all of them all mark me as different. Other. Foreign.
Still though, they are not a confrontational people, and since I mostly keep to myself, the stares and whispers have mostly stopped. I don’t believe any of them realize that I am curse-kissed by the magic they rejected long ago, and it’s another reason why I am careful to never let it slip.
Anya has tried her best to be a friend to me, but she does it out of pity. I can see it in her eyes.
But as my lover once said, I do not want pity.
