Page 21 of Dark Fae's Destiny

Some part of me feels like giving up, then. Some part of me thinks this might be better, to just stay this way and never even give it the chance to use me for whatever its terrible, grand plans are.

But another deep part inside me screams, Fight! It roars with Lucca and Quinn’s voices now, as that ephemeral sixth sense feels them trying to shake me awake.

Dawn is coming; I’m losing my chance. The sun has nearly broken over the horizon; I can see the light brightening the sky.

As if that sixth sense somehow powers me as I see true light return to the world, I know what needs to be done. Deeply, I center myself. Slowly, I inhale the profoundest breath.

And then I say, inside every fiber of my being, I do forgive you, I do. Let this hate be drained from me, because it is not who I am. I am love, and I am loving, and I love the two men I have brought into my life—because of me. That was my doing, Staphylogenes… no matter how much you might wish to claim it. Or me.

As that thought reaches its pinnacle inside me, I feel the chains break. As forgiveness and love flood me, for everyone and everything here upon this green earth and every other, I feel myself catapulted up from my own inner darkness.

I hit the surface, just as my world floods with light; the moment I do, the sun crests over the top of the waves in Venice. I gasp awake, cradled between Lucca’s and Quinn’s bodies, as I shiver and shake. I sear with the strongest Light now, emanating not just from my heart, but from my very soul.

As I come wide awake—blazing with true Ascendant’s Music, at last.

8

HOPE

Light has returned to the world, as I flare with Ascendant’s Music in the underground hall. As Quinn and Lucca sear with me, everything around me blazes white. I feel it as the Gold Eyes’ influence is burned away, now that we’ve all mastered our own inner voids. We’ve faced our deepest hatred and found forgiveness for the darkness that plagued us; as we all rush and flow with the brightest Music I’ve ever felt, I feel it reach through to that otherworld.

Shaping something new around us, for the very first time.

It’s incredible, leaving me high and breathless even as the Music ceases singing between us. Because for the very first time, Quinn, Lucca, and I have manifested the Music free of the Gold Eyes’ taint; as I search deep within now, I feel nothing where his terrible emptiness used to plague us.

It was only doing so, thanks to something empty-hearted in each of us that allowed his resonance to persist. Once we removed that darkness, by flooding it with Light, his bonds to us were broken.

Never able to come back.

“We’re free!” Quinn’s laugh is incredible, as he seizes both Lucca and me and kisses us in an almost frenzied delight.

“Fucker’s gone! Good riddance,” Lucca says, as he grins and laughs like a bright maniac now, squeezing us both in his formidable embrace. “I never thought I could feel so fucking light…!”

“We had to vanquish our deepest hatred inside each of us.” I gaze into both their beloved faces, feeling giddy that we made it. With our bonds to each other restored, I can feel echoes of what Quinn and Lucca went through, though it all feels like distant memories now that this brightness shines within us.

“What was it for you?” I ask Quinn now, as clearly, he and Lucca have had a chance to discuss this before I woke.

“Myself,” Quinn says as he stares me down, then lifts my hands, kissing them. “I had thought it might be Emiliana DiClario, but what I hated most about everything I had done for her was that I did it. I hated myself deeply… with a passionate fire that could not be quenched.”

“And you?” I ask Lucca, as I gaze into his so very blue eyes.

“My father,” Lucca’s smile is wry, but kinder than I’ve ever seen it when mentioning his father. “It wasn’t much of a surprise for me. What was surprising was that there was so much hate inside me. Quinn was right; behind my brightest light lived a deep darkness. I had to forgive to find my true Light again—and I did.”

“We all did,” Quinn says, serious now. “But what was your deepest hatred, Ariana? You had us worried that you were never coming out. What was it that kept you in there so long?”

“The Gold Eyes. Staphylogenes himself.” My truth-reading power sings inside me, and I know I have to tell them everything. “I hated him because he took my life from me. He took away everything I could have had… and changed it, right from the day I was born. I hated him because my life was never my own. Even though my adopted parents gave me the best chance they could, hiding my magic from the creature all those years, it really just postponed the inevitable of when he would find me again and use me for his own agenda.”

“You forgave the Gold Eyes?” Lucca’s eyebrows lift as surprise takes him. “How in the gods’ names did you do that?”

“I don’t know. I just sort of… did. It felt right. True, for me,” I say. Even though I still feel angry at the Gold Eyes, I realize that void-like inner place isn’t still devouring me. It was in my heart, but it was also inside my very soul.

Which feels clean and clear, now that I’m no longer wrathful at it.

“Felt right?” Lucca lifts an eyebrow at me.

“I just realized I was love, not hatred,” I say now, as my truth-power sings inside me. “I have always been love in the universe, and always will be—being with the both of you showed me that. I will do everything for my love, including forgiving myself of my hatred and letting that hatred go. Because I’m worth it, and the both of you are, too.”

For a long moment, Lucca and Quinn both just gape at me, amazed. And then they’re raking me in, holding me close and kissing me hard on the chaise.

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