Page 30 of Dark Fae's Destiny

The trail blazes bright with shimmering rainbows inside our heads, but we’ve yet to find that passage on any map. We’ve scoured human world maps and ones here in the Twilight Realm, all to no avail. Just when we think we’ve found a similar passage on any particular map, that passage twists in the wrong direction.

Leading away from the area we see in our minds.

“It’s no use. The passage Iris showed us to the tomb exists nowhere, except inside our heads.” Quinn sighs at last, as he takes a deep drink from a glass of chianti sitting on the map table. Quinn’s busted out one of his finest from the racks on the walls of his elegant collection inside the solar, and we’ve been drinking it for the past half hour. The bottle’s gone now, however, as Quinn drains his glass.

Heading over to the elegantly lit vault that houses his best red wine collection and selecting another.

“Are we just going to get drunk, then?” I smile at him, feeling as exhausted as he is right now after such a long day speaking with the Dark Fae, plus us getting nowhere now with the map. Moving over to him as he uncorks our latest wine at the map table, I step to his back, winding my arms around him as he pours to refill us both.

“What’s this one?” I ask, receiving my wine from him and swirling it before I drink.

“Châteauneuf-du-Pape. French. I still like it, though.” Quinn gives me a devious smile as we clink glasses and drink. It’s excellent, one of my all-time favorite wine varieties. I heave a deep sigh and Quinn echoes it.

Both of us staring at the map table and the hodgepodge upon it.

“Let’s take a break.” Quinn nods us over to a living area within his solar now. It features a group of chaises arranged around a low coffee table with a spreading Persian rug, where we can take in all the beautiful things he’s collected down here in his private sanctuary, tastefully lit on their blue velvet pads and inside their crystal boxes.

“A break sounds like a fabulous idea,” I concur, as we adjourn to a blue velvet Victorian settee at the living setup. We sit, then lounge, Quinn angled back against the settee’s scroll back with me tucked between his legs, leaning back against him. We sip, staring at all the incredible, rare items Quinn has collected down here.

When a thought hits me.

“Maybe we’re looking in the wrong place.”

“What do you mean?” Quinn glances at me from where he sits behind me. “We’ve gathered every possible map we could find of Florence on such short notice, and some of them date back ten thousand years in the Twilight Realm, from this Dark Haven’s very own annals. We have every Vampire passage and city byway down there recorded, in both Realms.”

“I mean, what if these passages aren’t exactly… in the Twilight Realm or the human world?” I say now.

I feel Quinn perk behind me.

“Explain.”

“Well, you know how Dark Fae can use the Music to create protective barriers around their hidden cities, which separate them from the Twilight Realm somehow, even though they’re still part of it?” I say as I think it through, though it feels right as my truth-sensing magic rings inside me.

“Almost like a Nexus Realm.” Quinn nods thoughtfully behind me now. “It’s said only archangels and Ascendants can create those, carefully partitioning the weft and weave of a particular Realm into a sub-space… not separate from a Realm and all its vibrations, but not entirely part of it, either.”

“Dark Fae can use Ascendant energy with the Music of the Spheres—the Ascendant Sigils.” My idea gels now to what Quinn’s said. “What if Dark Fae like Master Ilyov and the Sages of Venice protected Novakitsk and the Hidden City that way because it had been done before? By the Ascendants themselves, when they created this earth and Fell here.”

“You think Staphylogenes created a Nexus Realm here in Florence, beneath the city, which houses his heart?” Quinn sits up straight on the couch now, scooting me over so we sit side-by-side. He glances at me, an eager fire in his eyes. “Ariana. I think you might just be on to something. Because if that is the case, then we wouldn’t find those passages on any map. They would be in a completely different space. Accessible only by raising the Music… and stepping through the half-barrier that exists between the Twilight Realm and a created Nexus Realm.”

“Iris said Staphylogenes couldn’t get to his own heart anymore, and The Wanderer—Cereus—confirmed it,” I say now. “It stands to reason that the Music an Ascendant had when it made a Nexus Realm would be different after it maimed itself and removed its heart. It seems like Staphylogenes didn’t expect the Music to tune differently after he removed that crucial part of himself. As we’ve experienced, the Music only tunes sour whenever the Gold Eyes is around. Maybe he’s tried to get back into the Nexus Realm lockbox he made?—”

“But his efforts have been fruitless, which is why he needs us.” Quinn is astounded now, his eyebrows lifted so high they’ve nearly climbed off his face. “That would explain why he would need to create a trio of Dark Fae, ridiculously strong and balanced in their magic, to even come close to approximating the original vibration of an Ascendant. Because in our trio, we are not just balanced in our might but extremely powerful—something the Gold Eyes would expect from the Royal Summer Fae Houses we come from.”

“Especially if he’s been trying to make something like our trio for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Judging by what he was doing amongst the Summer Fae, turning us Dark over and over, I bet that’s the case,” I say, recalling what my parents told me about the time I was born, when so many other Summer Fae babies of Royal magic were turned Dark around that same full moon.

Not to mention countless other Dark Fae Made by Staphylogenes over the generations.

“He thought I would be his perfect Animante, to raise from infancy, so I would buy into his plans.” I stew as I think about what the Gold Eyes had in store for me. “He didn’t expect me to blast him with my own power that night to make him leave when my new parents arrived, rather than stay and claim me.”

“He can’t get his heart, and he’s been testing us to make our trio strong enough so we can use Ascendant’s Sigils and get it for him.” Quinn taps one finger on his wineglass, his thinking tic. “Iris has given us the path right to it, but could it be a trap? Could she still be in league with him?”

“No.” I shake my head, feeling my heart ring true. “She didn’t expose herself to us until after we had broken our connection to the Gold Eyes’ taint inside us. She didn’t give us the location of the heart until she knew we were free of his control. That would be counter to his plans. I’m sure Staphylogenes would have given us the directions himself, eventually, once he believed we were strong enough. But only if we remained bonded to him. He was furious when we broke free…”

As I say it, I can almost feel the terrible wrath of Staphylogenes inside me, raging through my Night. But he’s gone now; it’s only an echo of his awful connection that I feel.

My soul is free and clear of him now, glittering like calm starlight inside me, rather than a devouring void.

“You’re right,” Quinn says as he nods, sober. “Iris helped us because she knew we could be trusted, with the Gold Eyes’ connection to us gone. The heart must have some extreme power she knows can help us take Staphylogenes down. Or perhaps change him… so he no longer comes after us.”

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