Page 82 of Light Fae's Love
“He’s locked in there now,” Eiseth says with a deep fatigue as she moves to us. “It’ll hold, for a while at least. But the sigils and wards coating this backup box are Quinn’s design; with his sanity and his control over his power gone, they’ll break eventually. He needs to be in a safe place soon, before they do.”
“Thank you, Eiseth,” Lucca says, cuddling me and heaving a deep sigh. I feel his heart break for Quinn—such a terrible thing, as a scream passes through his very soul for the third of our bound trio, our Master.
And our friend.
“Do you know of a place that can hold him? What about here at the Hotel?” I ask as the exhausted Devi joins us, nodding at me before she glances at Quinn’s Revenant.
Devastation in her eyes.
“We have nothing here strong enough to hold a Master such as Quinn gone Revenant.” Devi’s voice is brisk now, though I can feel she’s just as exhausted as the rest of us. “All we have are warded rooms for new Vampires when their bloodlust goes on rampage—that are nowhere near as strong as what we need to hold Quinn.”
“There is a place that is strong enough. Up at the Ice Citadel of Novakitsk. Master Vasily Ilyov’s domain,” Eiseth says now, even as she glances at Arturos with a frown, that I’ve pushed him away—not understanding anything that transpired in the catacombs when I was with him, or what was said.
“Siberia.” I fight to not sink into a terrible place with everything that’s happened. “Master Ilyov is a Vampire, though. Is it safe?”
“He’s Dark Fae, Ariana,” Eiseth says as she seals us in a misty enclosure, so none of our words reach the rest of Quinn’s Florentine Vampires. They’re ushering out now that disaster has been averted, giving tired nods to Devi and Curio. “Master Ilyov is one of the most ancient Dark Fae, and the strongest of us. He maintains our most stalwart secret Dark Fae stronghold—at Novakitsk, where all other Vampires don’t dare to tread. Lest the stories of Master Ilyov’s power come true. Which most of them certainly are. If anyone can help Quinn, it’s him. He has knowledge and ability the rest of us would kill to possess.”
“Or betray your nearest and dearest to get,” I say, glancing at Arturos. To out his betrayal is not the highest thing in my mind right now, however, as I fight to stay conscious and figure out what to do with Quinn.
Again, Eiseth glances between us.
This time, she speaks. “Arturos. What is going on between you and Ariana?”
“Too much.” Arturos heaves an awful sigh that I would have sympathy for, had I not known how disastrously he betrayed Quinn and everyone in this Dark Haven with his actions on behalf of Gold Eyes these past few weeks.
I let Arturos summarize how he misled all of us into our current outcome on behalf of the ancient Descendant Staphylogenes. He tells it in full, leaving nothing out though what’s left of his exhausted power churns in a dark sea all around us now, adding to Eiseth’s swirling barrier of mist. As the last Florentine Vampire leaves the room, shutting Quinn’s tall ebony doors, Eiseth lets her soundproof barrier swirl out.
She’s staring at Arturos now—as if she’s going to rip him apart, as he finishes.
Devi does it for her. She lunges at Arturos, seething with a thousand daggers of death in her swirling scarlet aura, though Curio hauls her back with his brisk, wintery winds. As he holds her, preventing the raging Devi from going completely amok, Eiseth turns to Arturos.
Death in her cold grey eyes.
“Tell me one thing that will stop me from killing you, right here, right now. Betrayer.”
“Only that my heart is broken, at what I did,” Arturos says, holding Eiseth’s wrathful gaze. “I loved Quinn like a brother, and I delivered him to the wolves. Nothing can absolve me now. I did not know what it would do to me when I made that deal with the Gold Eyes. Now, I do. I am broken in my heart. No Dark Haven of the deepest ocean waves can repair it.”
Arturos is quiet as he sinks to one knee like a penitent before the furious Mistress of Britain.
A Dark Fae—which he is not.
“Leave this place.” Eiseth is snarling now as her grey eyes flash with a terrible Light, the rest of us seething with whatever we have left. “I will consider not hunting you down to the ends of the earth. And back.”
“I will make it right.” Looking at me, Arturos holds my gaze now. “I swear it.”
“Your promises mean nothing,” Lucca says for me, staring Arturos down with the most wrathful darkness I’ve ever seen in him. His aura boils with Night now, churning slowly around him.
No diamonds or Light anywhere in it, as his eyes go solid black.
I turn to him, taking his hand. Lucca looks down at it as I feel that deep void Quinn went to devour him like the deepest wrathful midnight. As my exhausted Light flows into him, however, it reminds him of what he is. The heart of our bound trio, the love beyond all darkness, Lucca comes back to himself as he startles.
And his blue eyes clear back to their normal color, if deeply shadowed.
“Don’t go there. Don’t slide into that endless darkness,” I say as I hold Lucca’s gaze. “We have to stay strong, for Quinn. Staphylogenes insinuated to me that there is a way to bring Quinn back. It said, When the time is right, and your trio’s power is finally ready, I shall come for you again. I can only assume it means there is a way to bring Quinn back from this endless Revenant darkness. And for us to become stronger for it, because of everything we’ve gone through.”
“To what end?” Lucca’s eyes go dark again, though not as dark as before. “What does it want from us, that it pushes us over and over to grow our power and bond closer as a group? What is it doing to us that it will use us for later, with all its diabolical schemes?”
“I don’t know.” I wish I had an answer. “It did say, though, the one thing it can’t do is return a Revenant. That is something we can do, Lucca, the three of us. I can only assume it needs this power from us, but that our power is not fully mature yet… for whatever it needs a bunch of Revenants returned in order to do.”