"You do not understand. I left Argyncia already when Hayes took power. I was looking for his brother and found Coralie." His voice wobbled a fraction on her name.
"We only had months together before they captured me, and Hayes killed everyone to punish me. I won't leave them again." Magnus' voice followed Sylvie as she wandered dejectedly from the room.
Where the hell was Kian?
She wanted to go.
The conversation was pointless.
Magnus, just like any other male parental figure, was a disappointment, and she shouldn't have expected any more. Men were generally underwhelming and disappointing, except for her mates, who were exactly what she needed.
She missed each of them so much right then.
Where was Kian?!
"You still don't even know if I am your father. The Fates lie."
Yes, yes, deny paternity - classic.
"Not this time."
"I don't even know your name."
She laughed humourlessly. Did she really never get to that the last time they met? Kian would be proud that she stopped giving her name out though maybe it wouldn't have mattered all along.
"I don't think I do either. I thought it was Sylvie Hart, but maybe it isn't. Maybe that was what the family thought it was after the note got smeared-"
"Smeared?"
"By Coralie's tears. She left a note for the family she abandoned me with. Kalina Sylvie was the name before she cried all over it."
Magnus hummed, clasping his hands and nodding like it was an obvious situation.
"Kalina," he said softly, and it felt right. It was the first time hearing it from another person, and it fit. Something in her clicked as he continued. "Kalina is a type of tree in some languages. A Rowan tree, I believe."
A Rowan tree? "No fucking way." A hell of a coincidence or tinkering of the Fates...
"Sylvie is a French twist on the name Silva. Spirit of the woods."
Huh.
She turned back and eyed the man the fates called her father. "How do you know all that?"
"Because that was what Coralie and I wanted to name our first child."
It stung more than it shouldve. It burrowed a pain so deep into her chest that her marks ached until her heart started beating erratically. The concept of family was so foreign, but she longed for it. She wrung her hands together and pushed the pain deep inside.
Yes, he said all the right things that dropped her guard without even trying, but he still wouldn't help her. He cared more for the vampires than her.
She could just bide time now. Kian would be there soon, surely. He could wisk them to earth, and whatever the fates had in mind could come true. She made Magnus no promises, and his anger towards her for ignoring his wishes could not affect her.
He was just a Vampire she barely knew. He wanted to save his people, and so did she. He just couldn't see their mutual interests, and right then, she didn't care.
"Kalina-"
"Don't."
She walked to the door, this time to lock them both inside to wait for Kian when a faceless figure cast darkness over her. She blinked to clear the shadows, the gleam of white teeth shocking in the void.
The figure didn't speak nor move beyond its place in the doorway, and Sylvie didn't know what to make of it. Magnus hadn't said a word since its arrival. It was as if she had dipped into a dream, but this time she was awake. She dug her nails into her palm just to be sure and winced as their sharpened edges cut crescent moons into her skin.
Swallowing, Sylvie worked her jaw, unsure if speaking would be wise as its hazy face slowly materialised. The grey eyes, button nose and light-blonde hair. It- they- she-
Magnus' sudden chant filled her ears before a dull thud impacted her temple.
"Kill the girl. Kill the girl. Kill the girl."
She fell to the ground.
*
"Ahh fucking hell," Sylvie spun, her feet clawing into the slippery floor as her wrists, bound above her head, held her entire weight. Her head ached where she had been struck, and her vision was still blurry. The sunlight slowly streamed into the cell through a tiny barred window.
How long had she been out?
Where was Kian?
As her vision returned, she couldn't help but laugh at her situation.
Yet again.
"What are you laughing about, bitch?"
She froze, the boorish voice triggering terror inside her-a familiar terror. As if the voice activated sensations in her body, her legs began shaking, remembering the violent beatings up and down her thighs.
She rocked on her feet until his face was illuminated by the morning sun. He sagged in the corner, his wrists bound to wall-mounted cuffs and his grisly upper body on full display.
Jace.
"You look like shit, Jace. Been here long?" Her false bravado gave her a boost of adrenaline as he sneered at her from the ground. Even sitting down, his energy oppressed her until she felt small under his gaze.
"You deserve everything you're going to get."
She almost laughed.
Almost.
Instead, she spat at his feet and hissed. "I did nothing wrong, Jace. You're the one who tortured me. You were a fool, and Rowan was right to banish you."
One look below his neck, and she knew he, too, had suffered a tortured fate. The cuts and old scars littered his exposed chest and forearms. He knew her pain, yet he still hated her. What a hypocrite.
"And now what? You're with the very creatures that you hated me for being. You tortured me for being a bloodsucker, but now you're just a glorified feed bag." Her nose crinkled as she noted the fang marks all along his neck and collarbones. They'd gnawed on them like it was a chicken bone.
"You have no idea what it's like-"
"I know exactly what it's like! You fucking swine."
"That's enough," a velvety voice cut through their anger just before a knife sliced Jace's head clean off, the body part rolling across the floor and hitting her feet. She jerked back, accidentally sending the skull to the wall between the twitching limbs of his headless body.
Oh god. She was about to be sick.
The voice crooned, and Sylvie's nausea worsened. She had to be hallucinating. Maybe this was a dream after all, and the Fates were just showing her the next phase in her task after rescuing Magnus.
Maybe that was it.
A spark of hope flickered in her chest and just as quickly died as she lifted her head. Her stomach plummeted, and a mouthful of bile filled her mouth.
"Surprised?"
Sylvie spat the vomit to the side of her and stared, mouth clamped shut against the shock and threat of cursing as fucking Lazuli floated across the blood-coated bricks, her dark dress mopping up the liquids and staining them red.
"How the mighty fall," she said, voice giddy. She almost seemed breathless as she traced her sharpened nails across Sylvie's belly and around her back as she circled her like a shark.
"I mean, what is a Queen without anyone to rule?" Lazuli lifted her hands and looked around as if her gaze cut beyond the cell walls to the city around them.
"The Vampires are mine now."
Sylvie steadied her footing and breathed evenly through her nose. What was even to say? After everything. After letting her go and killing her disgusting father, she chose to turn further into the darkness and take the lives of the Vampires.
"I'm so disappointed."
Lazuli laughed bitterly. "Who are you, my mother? No, that's right, you're my niece. The daughter of the monster that stole my mother from me."
"You knew?"
"Of course I knew." She smiled, but it did not touch her eyes. It hardly reached her lips. She had a somewhat unhinged look about her as if her soul had dwindled into nothingness.
Sylvie exhaled sadly. "He's dead, Lazuli. After everything you had done, unforgivable things to the man I love, the man I assume you once loved, I killed Trion in the hopes you could move on."
Sylvie struggled to stand as Lazuli circled her again, her cold breath fanning her hair into her face.
"You could've found peace like I did with a kindred of your own. You caused unimaginable pain to Kian, and I still let you go. We let you live. You could've been Lady to Stone Court and lived a life any way you wanted. But you come here instead, and what, possess all the vampires?"
Lazuli paused her pacing right in front of Sylvie's face, her grey eyes moving from Sylvie's eyes to her scar, down to her lips, neck and chest. It almost seemed like, for a second, she was getting through to her. The twinkle of understanding reached her eyes as Syvlie talked.
"I never wanted to be queen," Sylvie said, hoping she could drive the point home. "All I wanted was my mates like the Fates decided, and I'm sorry that it got in the way of your fairytale, but you ruined that long before I showed up."
"How?"
"You mutilated him!"
"He liked it. He asked for it."
Sylvie shook her head. No matter how genuine it sounded, she wouldn't fall for it again.
"He told me the truth Lazuli. He gave you what you wanted. He gave in to things he would've never asked for to protect me. You were just too focused on your goals to see the truth. You didn't love him. You just wanted what he could offer you. I thought- I thought once Trion was gone, and the hybrids were banished, you could start again, but..."
"But nothing. You know nothing." The tiny glimpse of understanding in her eyes was gone; instead, they were filled with endless, undying hate.
Sylvie went too far. That was it. She was a dead woman.
But then, Lazuli laughed. She rolled her eyes, threw her arms up like she'd heard the funniest joke and gestured around as if an audience was watching their conversation.
"Ah, you foolish child. I suppose I should let you in on the joke, yes?"
"What?"
She sneered, contempt flashing from the curl of her upper lip only to be masked under an expression of joy and composure. Then, she hummed, tilting her head to the side like a dog.
"It stops being fun when the butt of the joke is an idiot. You really haven't figured it out yet?"
Lazuli giggled as she turned and flounced her dress through the growing puddle of Jace's blood. "Too bad my sister didn't die like I had wanted. I placed her right in the middle of a busy road, yet she endured, only to make the stupidest offspring imaginable. How the Fates decided you would have eternal happiness with a mate of each realm is truly beyond me."
She tried to kill her mother? She was only fifteen when Coralie was born. She couldn't have been evil already. The abuse from Trion came after.
"I can see your little mind whirring right now. Are the pieces clicking together yet?"
She clenched her teeth as Lazuli dragged her fingernail lightly along the scar on her cheek.
"You don't seem very surprised yet. Here, how about another? Trion never touched me. Not once. He was a cunning, sometimes vicious leader, but he wasn't a pervert."
No. That wasn't true. She experienced his perversions herself on the night of his death. Even if Lazuli lied about her abuse, she couldn't deny Sylvie's experience. Even the briefest thought of that night made her want to vomit.
"You're wrong. He abused me. He was a monster."
"No. He was just my puppet." She smiled brightly as Sylvie's body drained of colour.
"Bu- But-"
"Bu- bu- bu -but nothing, you idiot." She raked her nails across Sylvie's front, tearing clothes from her body and cutting into the top few layers of her skin. She hissed as blood beaded and dripped, the warmth soaking down her body.
"How does it feel to know you killed an innocent man?"