“Oh, you're pathetic!” Lucan cried out, and I felt his words directed at me. “You're truly the most rebellious creature God has ever created, aren't you? And now look at you, so helpless, so.... mortal! Such talent.... such.... potential wasted. And for what? Misery? You disgust me. There's no other way to say it. You, more than any other Immortal, make me regret the very day I first met you. It's not enough that you try to turn my kingdom against me, or that you blow up my favorite palace! No, it's not even enough that you have ruined the happiness of my son! Now this? How did you do it Eden? How did you manipulate the blood oath?” His voice turned gravelly with disgust.
I cringed, but forced myself to open my eyes and face the brightness of the room. I struggled to prop myself up on one elbow so that I could stare into his eyes and summon the small bits of rebellion I still held deep inside, deep enough that no amount of exhaustion or pain would ever take them away from me.
“I don't remember,” I growled, lying obviously. Lucan's face flushed red and his eyes bulged out of his head in a way that made me hope he was suffering from a heart attack.
“You stupid girl!” he shouted, lifting me roughly off the ground with his magic and shaking me violently.
A scream involuntarily escaped my lips and I shut my eyes tight to hold off the crippling nausea.
“Enough!” Kiran yelled, interrupting whatever abusive deed Lucan planned next for me. “Enough, father, she can get it back. She is trying to get it back. She just needs more time, that's all.”
“No!” I found my voice. I opened my black eyes and screamed at the evil king holding me in the air. “I will not get it back! I do not want it back! Do what you want with me, but that magic is protected!”
“You spoiled, petulant child,” Lucan scolded, setting me back on the ground while seeming to come back to himself. He calmed down, smoothing out his black tunic and clearing his throat. Now more than ever, Kiran resembled him, his blue eyes piercing me, his blonde hair tussled but kept. The way his anger was carefully concealed, masked by strong self-control reminded me too much of his son. Lucan stared at me for a minute, while I struggled to stand and his eyes softened from pure hatred into intense determination.
I was more afraid of his wit than his anger, but I held my ground, tilting my chin and squaring my shoulders. No amount of pain would weaken my resolve.
“Fetch me a prisoner,” Lucan commanded calmly, his hand stroking his goatee. “Get the mother of that Transmogrifier she's so fond of. Do it quickly.” Lucan turned on his heel and walked back to his throne, settling into his seat with renewed arrogance.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, moving to the base of the throne.
“Teaching you a lesson,” he answered simply.
I was swept away with fear. I turned on my heel, hoping to enlist the aid of someone else in the room. I realized then that this was Kiran's fear too, and Sebastian's. They were never concerned for my safety, but knowing the wrath of Lucan more intimately than me, they understood what he was capable of.
I paced the room anxiously, unconcerned with propriety and forgetful of the migraine and the still dripping wound to the back of my head. There was nothing I could do, nothing to save Lilly's mother from whatever cruel fate Lucan intended for her. I was weak without magic, and helpless to make any difference. Even ideas for diversions were lost in my muddled brain. There was nothing I could do for her.
And whatever happened would be my fault.
I came to this castle to protect those that I loved. I offered myself in place of everyone else, and yet here I stood, a powerless witness to more bloodshed at my expense.
“You can't do this! You can't hurt someone else just because of me!” I cried out, accusing Lucan in my very tone of his tyrannical blood-lust.
“Dearest child, I can do whatever I want,” he chided me gently, his voice sickly sweet and churning my stomach. “Lest you have forgotten, I am the king!” He jumped up, shouting at me with more aggressive force, spit sprayed from his lips and his eyes turned wild with hatred and evil.
“Kiran,” I turned to him, pleading with him to intervene. “Please, you have to do something; you have to reason with your father.”
He held my eyes for a moment, his face oppressed with grief and I knew that he tried to warn me. I felt his admonitions and his daily pleading like a knife in my heart. He broke his gaze, looking away ashamed and emotional.
“My son has done enough, hiding you away in his bedroom, lying to me, manipulating me. So, let this be a warning to you both,” Lucan began lecturing once Lilly's mother was dragged into the throne room. “You will learn to obey, child. When I give a command, you will follow it. When I tell you to do something, you will honor it without hesitation. I am your king and you will treat me as such. And if you cannot follow these very simple directions then there will be consequences. It is your disobedience that has cost this woman her life, and if you are not in full possession of your magic by tomorrow morning at dawn, then I will execute every other prisoner held here, one by one, while you watch helpless and mortal. Is that clear?”
Tears started to stream down my face at the gravity of his words. And as much as I wanted to blame him for his cruelty, he was right, this was my fault. “It's impossible, I've tried to get it back,” I whimpered, pathetically, looking at Lilly's mother who had just started to understand what was about to happen to her.
She was a beautiful woman, with more auburn hair than Lilly's fiery red, and it fell in delicate waves down her back. Her green eyes sparkled with magic, after the suffocating prisons that deteriorated one's power. Her skin was as porcelain as Lilly's and she radiated the self-sacrifice any mother would gladly give for the freedom of her child.
“Obviously, you have not tried hard enough,” Lucan snapped. “You have until tomorrow morning at dawn, Eden, or this Shape-shifter will not be the only victim of your insubordination.”
Lucan stood from his royal seat and walked slowly over to a Titan Guard, reaching for his decorative sword and pulling it from its placeholder at his side. I screamed something even I didn't understand and went blind with a fight that I didn't think I still had in me. Strong hands, forceful against my arms, held me back, and pulled me to the corner of the room. I struggled desperately against them, fighting with everything I held on to, to save the innocent.
Lucan turned on Lilly's mother, as she stood tall and still, held by two Guards that were not necessary. She was ready for death, determined to be martyred with dignity and grace. Lucan tilted his head and sighed with pity before plunging the sword forcibly through her heart.
The room fell silent; even I gasped with horror and then found no sounds to express my outraged sorrow. The Titans that held her, let go so that she could slump to the ground, impaled by the ornamental sword. She held on to the hilt, agony constricting her face, and her magic floating from her body in a visible energy field of soft lavender. She was dying slowly, too slowly not to feel the pain as her violet magic drifted out of her.
“Tomorrow at dawn, Eden, or you will relive this moment one hundred times,” Lucan vowed, staring me down with arrogant resolve.
I believed him.
He left the room, his robes sweeping out behind him and his Titan Guard was close at his heels. Analisa sat in stunned silence for a few more minutes, her face paling with the horror of Lucan's punishment. She eventually stood and left the room in silence, her own Guard trailing after her.
Left alone with just the dying woman, Talbott, Sebastian and Kiran, Sebastian and Talbott let go of me and I too sunk to the floor, weeping in heartache for the unnecessary murder of another guiltless victim. I let my head fall into my hands and my weeping turned into deep moaning as I felt the weight of this war more severely than ever before.
I had been naive, too innocent to understand what I fought against. I had interacted with Lucan and seen what he did to Avalon, but I justified the cruelty to his pursuit for immortality. I witnessed the murder of my grandfather, but I credited an ancient rivalry to the hatred between the two men. This was something different; truly my imagination could never have conjured up this kind of cruelty, the senseless killing of innocent Immortals. I believed too much in the goodness of others to ever anticipate these kinds of repercussions. And now, not just one woman would suffer at my fate, but Lucan promised a hundred. A hundred prisoners, as innocent as Lilly's mother, would die because of my stupidity and stubbornness.
I heard the sword pulled from her chest, and the morbid sound itself, the sharp blade slicing against hot flesh, sent me into a deeper hysteria. I wailed, rocking back and forth, unwilling to look at the woman whose blood now stained my hands.
“Eden, look!” Sebastian demanded but I refused, burying my face further into my arms “Seriously, Eden, look!”
Something like hope in Sebastian's voice tugged at my resolve and I lifted my eyes, carefully finding Lilly's mother and bracing myself against the rising nausea. But instead of a purple energy field moving toward the heavens, the room filled with blue smoke.
The blue smoke, moved in wisps and soft movements, surrounding the woman and wrapping her up in its billowy folds. She gasped, as if being revived from the hold of death and the lavender electricity slowly returned to her. Her chest stopped hemorrhaging and her skin returned from the ghostly white of death to the pale pink of life.
I stood up, slowly, noticing that the gash on the back of my head had stopped throbbing. I stumbled toward Lilly's mom in unbelieving awe. She sat up, rubbing at her healed chest and eying me with intense curiosity.
The room was still filled with smoke, and I took careful steps through it. Now that the smoke had finished healing, it spread across the stone floor in playful movements, swirling in and out of my legs as I walked. I breathed again, a thankful sigh of relief and my heart swelled with the impossibility of the miracle. I had banished the magic and with it I assumed the smoke, but here it stayed, released from some secret part of me, capable of healing and unwilling to leave me.
“How is that possible?” Kiran asked, breaking the silence and voicing the question on everyone's mind.
“I don't know,” I answered honestly.
“It is not bound to your magic?” Kiran questioned, more pointedly, demanding an explanation.
“Kiran, I don't know.” I replied with more force. “This doesn't make sense to me either. But you could tell your father about it, just in case it's enough to convince him I'm at least trying to get my magic back....” I mumbled, finishing halfheartedly. The room stayed silent, nobody offering to tell Lucan anything.
Lilly's mother, stayed still on the ground, unsure what to do or if she should move.
“I'm Eden,” I introduced myself to her, offering my hand and helping her stand. “I'm a friend of your daughter’s.”
“Yes, I know who you are.” She smiled at me, a thankful, genuine smile, her eyes brimming with tears and I felt loved. “I'm Rosalind.”
“I'm so sorry for all of this,” I apologized, humbled by the horrifying event of her almost death.
“No, please, I should be thanking you!” She reached out for my hand again, holding it between hers; the look of gratitude displayed on her face was identical to one I had seen on Lilly's numerous times.