Page 80 of Light Fae's Love
Even though I feel safe from the chase now, I also feel that Quinn is in terrible danger. I feel his sanity and grip on life have fractured from that cacophonous blast of the Music he was controlling with his singing—not to mention everything the Revenant did to him after that.
I feel that utterly empty darkness inside our trio devour him as he sinks into that deep, void-like place. It’s inside all of us, but Quinn is the most drained right now from how the fracturing Music damaged him, and what the Revenant did to him, triggering his most awful memories of Emiliana so it could punish him for capturing it.
I know Quinn can’t come out of this on his own as he falls into that endless chasm. I feel him get trapped in his memories of Emiliana now, with Lucca and me too far away to stop it.
His Light gutters out; his Night disappears also as something else opens inside him. Disastrous, it’s empty like the furthest chasms of the void as it takes him over, to stop the agony of his memories.
And Quinn’s gone—as the Revenant takes over at last.
“NO!” I shriek in Arturos’ arms as I feel Quinn leave us.
Arturos pours a wave of his darkwater energy through me now as he holds me in his embrace. As he crushes me close, shushing me and using his powerful mesmeric magic to stop me rushing off to Quinn, I am rolled by his fathomless oceans. Even as I use the last of my strength to struggle, rabid to get to Quinn, he pours his magic deeper through my bones.
“He’s gone, Ariana! Quinn’s gone,” Arturos says. He breathes hard by my ear, his body shaking now as he uses his spent power on me. “You can’t help him. No one comes back from going Revenant that deeply! Even by the power of the Music.”
“You don’t know that!” I shriek at him now as I fight with everything I have left to foist off his inundating magic and get back to Quinn. “Lucca and I can fight this! We can get him back! We can?—”
“You can get killed, is what will happen!” Arturos is yelling now even as he chokes, clutching me close as if I’m his salvation in this terrible outcome that’s just happened, rather than him mine. “If you go back to Quinn now, he’ll devour you, and you’ll suffer until you die! That’s what Revenants do, Ariana! He won’t care who you are, or how much he loves you, or even Lucca. What you can do now is save yourself. Get far away from Italy; go to one of the hidden Dark Fae citadels with Lucca. Eiseth can get you there. Forget this whole damn thing, and Quinn, and live. Please! I’m begging you.”
The way Arturos says this has me turning in his arms, though. Looking at him, I suddenly see a new side of him I’d never seen before—as what’s left of my deepest truth-reading ability feels remorse twisting all through him.
And then I see those terrible red-black Bloodsigns, written throughout his magic and flesh.
“You. You betrayed him.”
My words are hardly a breath as I realize what’s happened, and what Arturos did. “You made a deal with one of the Council members, didn’t you?” I say as horror crashes all through me now—with rage. “To deliver Quinn to them, to fuck things up with our Revenant demonstration so they could get rid of him, once and for all? Someone wanted him gone, and you made a deal with them. And allowed yourself to be taken over by their Bloodsigns, so they could communicate to you what they wanted to have done, and no one else would sense it. That’s why the Revenant we caught was too strong, wasn’t it? And why the assassin knew just where to wait for us in your hedge maze to get the best angle on Quinn. You orchestrated both events. Hamstringing us… and making everything go haywire tonight, just as Quinn’s enemy planned. Was it Florian? Did he plan all this?”
“It wasn’t Florian. Please, Ariana, you must understand—” Arturos says, desperate.
But then a smooth, dark voice interrupts him.
As gold eyes shine out from the black.
“It was me.”
As a terrible gold firelight flares in a ring around us, darkness coalesces. In that darkness stands a man, a tall spearman made of shadows. Nothing about him is substantial, except his eyes, as they pierce out of that darkness. As his evil golden firelight flickers, the Gold Eyes stares down at us from his magnificent height.
Now standing inside his ring of fire with us.
“It was me, little belladonna of the Fae. I made him do it. Or rather, he agreed to my offer. Which was more than he could refuse,” the Gold Eyes says now as he hunkers before us, practically smiling with glee as I see its shadows swirl in its man-shape in a shockingly similar pattern to what my oilslick rainbows do when my magic rises. Though I feel more than hear its voice in my mind, I also hear it in my ears for the first time.
A terrible, haunting voice like ancient angels mourning as it sings with power in the night.
“What did you do?” I ask, glaring at Arturos and feeling that terrible, void-dark place open up inside me now as I understand he made a deal with our worst enemy.
A deal that undid us—before the Vampire Council and all the world.
“He offered me a Dark Haven, Ariana,” Arturos says, as I watch something die inside him. “The Gold Eyes came to me and offered me the power to Sire other Vampire-Sirens, just like me. I could have become Master of my own Dark Haven. I could have Sired and re-established the Dark Haven of the Deeps as it was long ago when it lived in glory. I could have made my own kind… and not lived like an outsider, even among all the other Vampire Masters, who never could or wanted to understand me. And my own Mistress… who never gave a damn, except for using me for her aims when it was convenient.”
“You sold us out. Quinn, me, the entire Dark Haven of Florence. Your family. For your own gain,” I say, wrath blackening my heart for Arturos. I feel that terrible place Quinn went churning inside me, though I still have enough Light to hang on and not let myself fall into it.
Yet.
“I want to rescind our deal,” Arturos is abrupt as he glances up at the Gold Eyes who towers over us both in his hunker. “I will no longer do your bidding. Return Quinn to his rightful form and take your bonds out of me. And I will give up what I would gain; the power to Sire more of my kind.”
“Though your offer is noble, it is too late, I’m afraid.” The Gold Eyes shrugs, though it still seems to grin diabolically as it glances from me to Arturos, contemplating his statement. “For I do not have the power to return a Revenant to its rightful mind and shape. If I had, I would have returned myself, long ago. Alas, I am a thing of shadows now… and so is your friend. Forever, I think, since he is one-third of the bound trio that makes the Music you so long to create. Too bad.”
The Gold Eyes looks at me now as its terrible glee grins through my very soul. As it reaches out with a hand of swirling shadows, however, it seems to become somber. I feel the darkest void of the cosmos as it touches me.