Page 68 of Dark Fae's Destiny

“Quinn…” A ragged Devi steps up beside us now, Alleno with her as he goes to Lucca. She says nothing, only grips my shoulder.

The devastated look in her lovely, dark chocolate eyes tells me she understands my loss. Lucca is similarly being comforted by Alleno. Lucca heaves a terrible sob from his deepest, most beautiful heart as his cousin hauls him into his embrace.

Curio comes to me now, along with his father, Master Ilyov, and his elder sister Clariss, watching me with somber eyes. Eiseth has taken a gruesome wound to her shoulder, but she finds her feet and comes to me as well, supported by Gunther, who gives me calm, tired eyes.

“We have won this day, Master of Florence,” Gunther rumbles as he gives the saddest smile in his battle leathers.

“Yet, it does not feel like a victory, sadly…” Eiseth says with a terrible sobriety as she reaches out with her good arm now, clasping my hand and letting me feel her woe at what has happened.

“Still, it is victory—” Master Ilyov growls, though he gets no further.

“Ariana! Cherubina! Figlia mia!” Ariana’s mother Illyria has just pushed through the growing ring of observers around me and Lucca, a horrible look upon her face as Adicus heaves through the crowd right behind her. Her dark, fearsome gaze pierces me, a terrible panic in her I’ve never seen in my once battle-General. “Where is my daughter?!”

“Gone!” Lucca sobs as he falls to his knees now before Illyria, weeping as his heart breaks and I feel it.

Because mine is breaking just the same.

“She’s gone.” My voice is quiet as I move to Lucca’s side, slowly helping him up into my embrace. Lucca only sobs harder, however, roaring as he bares all the anguish we all feel in our deepest hearts.

“Gone, gone?” Adicus is sober as he holds his wife, who turns into him, roaring into his chest now as she makes fists and pummels him. He holds her, weathering her storm as his deep grey-green eyes penetrate mine.

“Gone, gone,” I say as the most terrible sensation grips me. “She was taken by the Gold Eyes; she gave herself up to the creature to save us. He has what he was always coming for now. I doubt we shall ever get her back.”

As I speak these last words, it’s like a death-knell goes off inside us all. Because although we won our battle today and the Vampire Council has surrendered, it doesn’t feel like a victory, but the worst kind of loss.

Despair twists deep into my heart, as I feel Lucca’s woe, and mine, devour me. But it’s the look in Adicus’ dark green eyes that breaks me as he slowly nods, and Illyria’s pummeling fists, as she hammers his heart.

Slowly, he turns away, soothing his wife as he takes her with him.

Slowly, everything inside me dies.

As my heart goes still as stone.

25

TRUTH

I’m lost inside the Gold Eyes’ darkness. There is nothing around me; only a howling maelstrom of emptiness as he takes me inside himself. As the terrible void of Staphylogenes swallows me, he takes me some place else, far from the Twilight Realm. I feel it as we travel through space and time, going somewhere my lovers can never reach me.

As he takes me out of all time, anywhere, now.

We land someplace, at last. I feel it as Staphylogenes deposits me on solid stone, then withdraws, leaving me wherever I am.

The Gold Eyes does not draw away entirely as it whirls before me, chaotic in its endless Night. Massive, it towers up into the highest reaches of wherever I am now, as that whirling wrathfulness changes.

At last, Staphylogenes himself stands before me in his black smoke man-shape. Vast tentacles of Night seethe from his back like wings of pure darkness, terrible as the void itself.

But I can see now; looking up and around, I find I am in a gargantuan hall of pure crystal, where domes and pinnacles, and towering columns and minarets pierce to the sky.

That sky is awful; torn in a million places, it seethes with thunderstorms, cosmic explosions, even stars being born in brilliant and terrifying flashes of light. It’s as if I can see the entire cosmos living, dying, even becoming unmade, as I watch.

Through it all, slivers of blue sky still exist. I realize I’m looking at a world that was torn open by the Music, beyond the towering crystal vaults.

Torn open and never repaired.

“Where are we?” I ask, as I finally risk speaking. The Gold Eyes’ furious power has been gradually swirling lower, as if it is finally recovering from losing its heart.

Then punishing Quinn, Lucca, and me for it.

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