Page 23 of Dark Master's Redemption

At last.

Though he’ll always have a far stronger Night element to him than either Lucca or me, I feel how what we’re experiencing now is more the real Quinn than the man he’s had to be as a Vampire for eons. This fire is regal, deep, and purposeful as it flows around the bed now, touching everything but burning nothing in its serenity. Because there are no enemies here for his mystical fire to kill.

Only love to help it heal, as Lucca and I join hands—sealing us in our trio.

Quinn’s magic heats like wildfire now as I pour my love for him through our bonds, and Lucca joins me. As Quinn accepts our brightness and love, something shines in him.

His dark eyes burn; his aura explodes in the night, a deep wave of crimson-gold firelight blazing through the ice dome beneath the rising moon and deepening stars. The flickers of darkness in it are only wrathful towards our enemies now, as something in Quinn heals. Not all of him is mended yet; but with that impressive wave of magic, I know his healing has begun.

Beautiful in the twilight.

As we all hold hands beneath the oncoming stars and moon, my dark rainbows and Lucca’s bright ones surge out now, joining Quinn’s beautiful dark fire. I feel our bonds renew in that moment as we gaze into each other’s eyes, letting our powers expand and merge in the deepening night.

Because the twilight is a Dark Fae’s time, as all our magics surge to be together beneath the rising stars and moon, and the white nimbus that devours the rim of the Twilight sky. We revel in each other, drinking it all in, returned to one another and ourselves, at last. I feel a sudden new bond form in us, then.

As a beautiful chime of the Music rings all the way through us.

Tuning perfectly beneath the twilight stars and moon like a bell, it writes the most beautiful, ephemeral sigil in the air now between us. My breath catches as I see it; it blazes free and wild in our world and that Ascendant otherworld as Lucca’s lips fall open and Quinn’s eyes burn at what we all accomplished as a trio.

Bare in our honesty for the first time, now that Quinn’s come clean about everything he kept hidden, that sigil is powerful and infinitely lovely as it sings between us all. Writing and re-writing itself in the air, it shimmers like bright smoke between us, filled with a pure, cosmic fire.

This is the power of the Archangels, I understand as I see that sigil in my mind’s eye also, flaring bright in the otherworld, though it only glimmers sweetly in ours. I feel the power of this creationary magic as it reaches a confluence inside us, writing a sensation of acceptance and understanding deep into my heart.

Along with a sweet feeling of love.

“My gods.” Quinn breathes as that sigil finally shimmers away beneath the cathedral’s moonlight. “Did you all understand that, just now?”

“Acceptance, understanding, love.” Lucca releases a breath, slow. He blinks in amazement, like a sleeper waking as I gently release his hand, rubbing my chest from the power of what that sigil just wrote within me.

Same as it gave to Lucca and Quinn.

“Did we create that sigil?” I shake my head at the immensity of what we’re all feeling. “Or did it just create us?”

“A bit of both, I think,” Quinn says, as a thoughtful light comes into his dark eyes. “For the power of the Ascendants both creates and is created by. As we create this kind of Music in the world, it also creates us. To fully become that which we momentarily manifested. Until we can do it again, and again, and again.”

“Until you can be it, Quindici DaPonti. Forever.” A rough voice interrupts, as Master Ilyov steps up to the bed. We all startle, none of us having felt it when Ilyov portaled himself inside our enclave in his wintery winds. He raises a hand for us to not rise, as I feel how calm his energy is.

Serene, as he pulls up a chair to the edge of the bed, and sits.

Watching us with a level gaze tonight, rather than wrath.

“You begin to write true sigils of love in the universe.” Vasily Ilyov sets his elbows on the arms of his chair, steepling his fingers and crossing his knees as he watches us. As if his energy was somehow monitoring this space for this very occurrence, he is alert now as he evaluates our trio.

Then gives the softest, saddest smile.

“I envy you, milord DaPonti,” Master Ilyov says, as his gaze flicks to Quinn. “For you do not have just one true love in your lifetime, but two. Do not squander it; for such a blessing is given to few. Especially to those of our Mentale Dark Fae persuasion.”

“Your wife must have been quite a woman,” Quinn says, as I feel an accord pass between him and Ilyov. “I am sad I never got to meet her.”

“The Gold Eyes is not sad he killed her.” Vasily Ilyov recovers with a snap, as he lifts an eyebrow at Quinn, then me and Lucca. “At last, the three of you are manifesting the true Music of the Spheres, liberated of the Gold Eyes’ taint—and you are aware of what you are doing. The gold-eyed creature cannot manifest true love in the world; perhaps it could once, before it fell and ruined itself, but it can no longer. Always, its sigils of the Music twist towards power, ambition, and dominance. The only way you three can beat it is to do what you just did now; to find your rock bottom, and stand in your tenderest place, admitting everything of what you are in your barest intimacy, and trusting it is right. Because the ego never wishes to admit its darkest places. But you all must go there, and discover what lurks beneath all your powers, lusts, and ambitions. Only by standing in your quietest, most tender and intimate place can you overcome that which shouts loudest. The ego will always lust for power and dominate. But the heart, the true center of everything you are in the universe, will only find real power when it is allowed to feel its wounds and flood open. Only then will the quietest voice inside you emerge. With all the creation of the universe behind it, free of the ego’s taint.”

“The Gold Eyes removed its heart when it committed that part of itself to Florence, didn’t it?” I say as my deepest truth-telling ability rings strong inside me. “It removed the true seat of itself, its heart… and became only ego after that.”

“Lust, power, desire; craving, dominance, greed.” Master Ilyov nods. “These are the ego-only sides of what we try to get to with our actual feelings and heart—true love. The Gold Eyes has only ego-emotions left, and their manifestations in the world; it can no longer access its heart. Which is where you three may vanquish it. But only if you are strong enough to lose—everything your ego always thought it wanted.”

As Master Vasily Ilyov stares at each of us, I feel his words sink deep into my very soul. Because I feel the truth of everything he’s telling us ring through me like a symphony now, as I understand the Gold Eyes’ lack of heart is its weakness.

But Quinn, Lucca, and even I have vast agendas in the world that we’re loathe to give up. I feel that knowledge churn through Quinn and Lucca now as they ponder what it means to still love those we care about with all our hearts, but to give up our agendas of power among our people.

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