Page 17 of Dark Fae's Destiny

But then those cards shuffle again, their ancient surfaces glossy now like a thousand mirrors.

Reflecting my own face back at me—the center of my hate.

I know at once that this is what traps me to the Gold Eyes, Staphylogenes. I know that my inner self-hatred is the only reason I remain tethered to that terrible creature, as I see a thousand awful scenarios in my mind of all the things I’ve done to survive in this world.

As that hate takes me, I’m devoured, as I’m thrust into the coldest, furthest bottom of my pit. I’m in the center of it; I’m at its epicenter. And it’s a cold, dark hell as I stand alone.

Alone, with the only person I truly hate.

I’m myself, yet I’m not, as I come to that place. I’m Quinn, but I’m a devil in the night, as a massive mirror descends before me now from my mirrored cards, grotesquely ornate.

I see myself in that visage, cold and pale, deathly white. I see my inner fire and my outer chill, and all the ways I’ve used that to seduce, destroy, and annihilate others over the centuries.

Bitter hatred seethes through me now; a taste of ashes is in my mouth, and I know they’re mine. I could burn myself up, summon my Fae-fire to eliminate myself from the inside out, charring myself to ash if I wished it.

As the mirrors replicate a thousandfold around me now, I witness myself doing countless atrocities for Emiliana, or standing by while she committed atrocities on others. I feel like a punisher of the deepest hell Realms as I stand there, freezing and burning to my darkest Night as I watch myself do awful things, over and over.

I told most of those things to Lucca and Ariana, unburdening myself to them after I returned from my Revenant state. But the horrors still linger, despite how I’ve bared them to my beloveds now, trusting them to hold me even though they know what I am.

I still have yet to forgive myself, however—and that’s what keeps me trapped down here. I see faces I’ve killed now in the mirrors, and faces whose deaths I’ve helped orchestrate. Many have died by my hands; I’m not a saint, I’m a sinner, and it’s something about myself I’ve hated for so long.

But it’s how I had to be to survive in Vampire society. Vampires are not nice creatures; anyone who says they’ve met a truly kind Vampire is lying. Because deep down inside, the tremendous beast of our Night magic reigns. It always will, and it wants to kill.

Without ever looking back.

Death is the counterpart to life; without it, life cannot truly thrive. I know that, yet I punish myself for what I am, for what I have been, and for the self-hatred that still seethes so deep in my heart.

The pit I’m in is vast, devouring, and black. And as Staphylogenes himself comes to me now, laughing at me from the darkness, his bright gold orbs reflect in every surface around me now like a mirrored horror house.

It is then that I succumb. I am death, I am dead; Ariana and Lucca should leave me when they depart from the Dark Fae Sages, because I’m never getting out of this place. How can I ever forgive myself for all these things I’ve done, all these atrocities I’ve committed?

When all I espouse in life is beauty, equality, and grace.

I’m lost, as everything darkens inside me. I feel it as my heart flickers, going out, my soul along with it, dying to the black. The last holdout is my mind; desperately, I think there has to be some way out of this, some way I can rebound from this and catapult myself up to reach that nearly-gone light far above.

Only one thing comes to me; the taste of cherry on my tongue.

Cherry? I think, confused, as it at first makes no sense.

Then it comes to me; cherry was the first flavor of aphrodisiacal chocolate cordial I developed once the Dark Haven of Florence became mine. Cherry was the first flavor I tried in those most lovely chocolates; I remember reveling in them all night, one after another, after another, as I listened to Beethoven and sat on my bathroom floor.

I cried. I cried so hard that night, long into the next day. I secluded myself and would not come out, no matter how much Curio banged on the door or pleaded with me to let him in, because I did not yet have Devi in the Dark Haven I was painstakingly beginning to restore.

I cried, reveling in the beautiful notes of the symphony and the beautiful flavor of the cordials, as I let my sadness devolve me. And when I came out, I was Quindici DaPonti.

Master of the Dark Haven of Florence—a man who would never hurt the innocent, ever again.

I come back to myself now, as the mirrors all around me shatter. I cannot hate the man I have become; though the darkness still lives inside me, I changed all that over a century ago, to be the person I wanted to be and am today.

That thought catapults me up from the darkness. As I have the sudden thought, I love you now, Quindici DaPonti. I love who you’ve become, Valerio Incendari. My deepest darkness shatters, thrusting me upward towards the light.

I hear Lucca’s and Ariana’s, and Curio’s and Devi’s voices in my mind now: we love you, Quinn, you’re a good man, though you never thought you’d see it. It thrusts me up higher as I realize with a sudden joy all the love I have in my life that I’ve built by being a good person through the past many decades since I was freed from Emiliana’s might.

I freed others, and I freed myself; that thought hits me now like a slingshot, blasting me upwards as I know I was the master of her undoing. I was the one who killed her to liberate countless others from her endless torture and suffering, even though it wrecked me to do it.

Because I had no clue how to lead a Dark Haven at the moment of her death. I only had the thought, I can do better.

And I’ve been doing better, ever since.

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