Page 48 of Light Fae's Love
“Why? What’s happening?” My head is full of cotton as I struggle to sit up, Quinn’s arm is like lead where it holds me to him in the sheets. He’s still asleep in his bone-deep exhaustion; I’m little better as I shake him.
Finally getting him to blink awake, though he stares up at the ceiling, vacant.
“Ariana.” Quinn finally comes to, pushing up as he scowls and glances to Arturos. “Arturos. What is it?”
“A Summons for the Council. On the porch. I have wards up to prevent their messengers ever coming inside.”
“I’m up.” Quinn is out of bed like lightning. It’s far slower than his usual emergency response, however, as he slips into the men’s robe Arturos offers.
I’m up also, receiving my green robe from Arturos and drawing it on, though everything inside me burns. It’s fatigue and Lucca’s power, and my muscles protesting from too little blood and oxygen, as I reel from standing up too fast. Quinn shoots a hand out to steady me, but because of his fatigue, Arturos is faster. I nod my thanks as my vision clears.
Arturos releases me, then gestures at the door.
“Now. Hurry.”
As we make our way out the door into the hall, as fast as Quinn can manage, I see steel in his gaze. Though he accepts an arm from Arturos and me to help him down the stairs, he releases Arturos’ arm as he heads towards the front door, setting my hand on his arm instead. It makes it so he escorts me, rather than the other way around. I understand his reasoning; we need to look strong before representatives of the Council, even if we feel like shit. It’s one thing for them to hear a rumor we were weak tonight.
Quite another for them to see it.
Arturos waits for Quinn’s nod, then opens the door with a flourish. He gestures us outside and Quinn goes, me on his arm. Arturos follows as we approach three individuals standing on the porch. Though they were facing the rising sun, its rays not quite reaching us yet from above the topiary hedge beside the manor, the sky is light now.
As I wonder if these three Vampires can daywalk.
Arturos has ducked behind the door frame, lingering in the shadows. It is clear he can’t much tolerate the touch of the sun, though Quinn and I stand boldly in the rising light. Smoke rises from the three Council emissaries now as they turn towards us, however. The same Vampires from before—the lean, grey-haired man, the 1950s brunette, and the bee-woman—they lift their hands in unison again, as if giving some sort of demonic sermon.
And the Council’s voice is pouring from them, as dawn rises and banishes the night.
Master Quindici DaPonti of Florence, we welcome your arrival in Rome, as we bid you. Attend our Council chambers one hour after sunset tonight, and we shall discuss your upcoming challenge—to return a Revenant to their sanity and flesh before us, and prove your worth to attain your Sire’s seat in our esteemed Council. Fail to show tonight, and be damned. That is all.
With that, the sun’s light rises above the topiary hedge. As those rays of sunlight touch the three Vampires standing on the porch, they catch fire. None of them struggle or fight it, though I see despair in all three’s eyes as they lower their hands and close their mouths, finished with the Council’s message. They burn, flesh from bones, falling to ash upon Arturos’ white front porch. Grisly, the scene is beyond horrible as the Council proves what they can do to any Vampire they wish.
Even ones that did their bidding well, but were sent to prove a point to someone else.
As Quinn takes a deep breath in the rising dawn and I shudder, I feel his heart beat. It gives a terrible thud and then another as he watches those three piles of ash blow away to the morning wind. It’s awful, as he escorts me back inside. We close the door on the sun, and Arturos steps back out from where he watched the entire thing in the shadows.
Safe from the deadly sunlight.
“Are you alright, Quinn?” Arturos asks, concerned.
“No.” Slowly, Quinn shakes his head. “The Council knows I’m weak from everything they’ve orchestrated by their previous Summons and also Florian’s failed attempt on my life. They want to speed this whole thing up by starting it tonight, in the hopes I will simply fail and can be quietly gotten rid of.”
“They have another thing coming, though, with your Dark Fae and Summer Fae prince bound to you,” Arturos says, confident now, as if bolstering our courage for what lies ahead.
As Quinn and I glance at each other, though, I feel how that confidence is not inside us. It’s not in Lucca, either, as I feel a wisp of dark worry reach me from our connection, so far away. As if all the cards have been stacked against us, we’re gambling for our lives now as our plan threatens to crumble to ash, just like those three Vampires on the porch.
Because what Arturos doesn’t know is that we don’t have enough of Quinn’s energy inside me now to balance Lucca’s and do our Revenant re-awakening demonstration before the Council. I’m not even sure we have enough of Quinn’s energy to catch a Revenant in the first place, as he glances at me with sober, dark eyes.
More afraid of what we are soon to face than I’ve ever seen him.
19
HELP
Ifeel Quinn get stabbed through the heart and I wake from a dead sleep, clutching my chest and gasping. It’s not even light out yet, dawn still an hour away as I heave hard breaths, my heart pounding like a charging wildebeest.
I have a flash of Quinn sinking down to moonlit grass somewhere in Rome; Ariana goes down with him, biting her wrist and making him drink as a Devilswood knife protrudes from his chest. I heave as much magic as I can through my bonds to Quinn and Ariana, trying to help, but I’m too exhausted and too far away. I don’t even know how I got to the door of my room at the top of my Livingtree.
But I’m through it fast—as nothing fills my mind except getting to Rome.