Beneath Shadows and Secrets

♔ 𝔉𝔦𝔳𝔢 ♔

"I am actually quite busy today, Nira, but in a few days then maybe," he begins.

"Oh, that's alright. I will go alone. I'd quite like to see Achilles, and the stables aren't far." I hold Ezekiel with a cold stare. "I only thought I'd offer you the chance to expiate your guilt."

I move to walk away, but Ezekiel reaches out and grabs my forearm. It's impossible to withhold the flinch or disguise the disgust as I snatch myself from his grip. "You can't go outside alone."

"Then I will find someone to join me." The amicable falsetto has dropped from my voice. Now each word is sharp and unforgiving.

Ezekiel shakes his head, seemingly at war with himself. "Zaire has told everyone that you must remain inside." The temperature in the hallway drops. The warmth inside me ices over. "You are not allowed outside, because you are supposed to be dead. And, until after, Zaire does not want to risk anyone beyond the Court House seeing you alive."

It is freezing. Before, my anger had been scalding, burning me from the inside out until whatever vicious power that lurks within me exploded. Now, it is icy fingers that stretch from my stomach, out to my heart, and down each limb. Not limited to me, either, for where my feet wait on the floor, crystals of white, glittering with shards of the palest blue collect around them. Frost, growing out from my feet, towards the walls, and up them too.

Ezekiel watches awed or horrified, and when he breathes disbelief, his warm breath condenses before him in a screen of smoke. "So, not only was I forced into this body, captive within it, now I am a captive of Abutilon?"

"You are not a captive," he tells me, but the way my tongue rolls over my teeth – he knows I am in no mood for his half-truths and omissions. "It is just until after –"

"After what?" I seethe.

He flounders. "Nira, you need to believe that I never expected any of this. I thought after the Equinox,"

"After you helped him kill me!" That ice within me, it cracks beneath the weight of my anger, and the dam before my power crumbles. The molten heat shows itself, dominating my body until it is not frost that surrounds my feet, but those wisps of darkness again. Hungrier than they were before. Savage. They stretch around me, coiling around Ezekiel's wrists, his ankles, his throat.

I am not sure what he sees when he looks at me, but it is enough to pale his skin. Still, he doesn't relent. "I never meant to hurt you." But he knows he did, and he has not even apologised.

I explode.

My body is launching for the restrained Fae before my mind has time to compute the action, and when my curls fists meet his chest, the darkness drops him, and Ezekiel sails down the corridor. He lands in a heap, groaning at the impact, his eyes flicking back to me. He has no time to find his feet before the darkness is on him again. This time, with intent.

They curl around his limbs, his torso, and force themselves into his mouth. They're invading him, these extensions of me, and I cannot find it in me to call them back. Either because I cannot, or because I will not. I want him to hurt like I have hurt. To feel as betrayed as I did, when he held me still to take the blade of that dagger. They lift him from the floor, wrapping tighter and tighter, suffocating, surrounding him, while I stand perfectly still, only the heaving of my chest to be seen.

"Nira!" Whoever's voice it is, I ignore them. Darkness begins to crawl up the walls, extinguishing the light as it absorbs each spark. I do not even think it is me anymore. I have no control, it overwhelms me, my body is covered in the same stretches of blackness, it steals the beams of sunlight leaking through the windows. It is consuming, and when I finally realise, when I finally want it to stop, I notice I'm trembling. It will kill me, like it plans to kill Ezekiel, like it plans to kill all the light in this hallway.

"Nira, stop!" It is Sloan. I turn to look at her, I see the fear in her eyes. She sees the desperation in mine.

Her hands come out before her, and I almost thank her when the metallic sharpness of her magic coats my nose, the back of my throat, and disconnects me from my mind. Briefly, before my eyes flutter closed and I hit the floor, I watch the darkness fall limp, dropping Ezekiel without grace, and he heaves a desperate breath.

I fall with them, and there is no one there to catch me.

♔

When I wake, it is with Cenred and Sloan by my side. Both wear matching expressions of concern, maybe it is even fear, but they remain unmoving when I bolt upright in bed.

"Is he alive?" Is the first thing I ask.

Cenred nods, and I am surprised by the sigh of relief. In the moment, I had wished to hurt him, but to kill him, without even being able to control it... that would have not settled well with me.

"He doesn't plan to tell Zaire of what happened." Sloan tells me, looking at my fisted hands. "He does not want to threaten your freedom, not over an accident."

I run a heavy hand down my face. "It was not an accident Sloan. I wanted to hurt him." My eyes settle on my hands, unfolding them and rotating them. So normal, but with the potential of such destruction. "I was so furious with him, with Zaire, with the lies and the betrayal, that I let those powers attack him. I could have calmed down, I could have walked away, but I didn't."

"You will learn to control it, Nira." Cenred tells me, but I don't believe him.

Not when I notice the hum in my chest, that heavy weight has lessened, only somewhat. Yet, still enough that it is as though when that darkness erupted from me, it took that feeling with it. I blanch, considering that maybe it did not take that weight at all, but it is that weight. All that power, collecting inside me, until my body can contain it no longer and it will just break free. If within minutes, it had a Fae hanging limp from its hold, what will it raze if I were to use it, to let it free when I saw fit, or even when it goes more than a few days without an outlet.

"It controls me." I argue, though my voice is soft with exhaustion. "Great potential, or greater destruction."

"What?" Sloan asks me.

I turn to her, tears in my eyes. "It is what the Seer said. What I would be capable of. I think it is clear what path I have taken."

"Do not be so hard on yourself." Cenred's tone is forceful, but in a way that is sympathetic. As though he can hear the thoughts that are swirling in my head. Because, even now, I hope that Ezekiel is terrified of me. Mortified by the thing he helped create. I hope he flinches when I am near, I hope he panics at the thought of being so weak and vulnerable, just as I was, when he held me still. Every fibre in my being does not want him dead – it wants him fearful and worried, and hurting, until he wishes for that sweet relief of death instead. I want to ruin him, and ruin Zaire, and I cannot tell whether that is my own scorn, or the desire of the power which has taken root in my blackened, wounded heart.

"I am petrified." I tell them both, and the tears that come are not from upset. It is from confusion, from trying to battle the horrid, vengeful heat within me, that consumes my mind, my soul, my entire being. I am scared that I will feel satisfaction from seeing them fall and crumble. All of them, every last one that played a role in what I am today. Every Fae that forced my hand, every human that saw that I fought those Fae alone in the courtyard, the Old King of Cracuria that let them take me and let them take dozens before. I am petrified of what I want, and that now, I have the power to see it happen.

"I want to go home." I weep, bundling myself into a ball as I cry into my knees, arms hugged around my shins.

Sloan is not so discreet this time. She cries with me, hugging her body around mine, unafraid of what I am. Cenred too, the weight of my bed dipping as he sits himself beside us both, stroking down my hair. They are too good to me, too kind. If only they knew what harrowing things I really think of.