Page 39 of Dark Master's Redemption

For the first time, we’re simply living for each other, trying to stay alive, and keeping close everyone we hold dear. Now that everything has crumbled to ashes, all we have is our hearts.

Living for each other—and truly loving each other, at last.

“But… how are you not upset about all this, Quinn?!” Lucca growls now as he throws up a hand. With everything he discovered today about his father, he’s not ready to let this conversation go yet, as I feel a hot flash of dissension come from him through our bond. “Your Dark Haven has been taken and people you care about are currently being turned over to your enemy! I feel like my entire heart has been ripped out by what my father’s just done, and how it’s ruined the rebellion I worked so hard to build. But you… you just sit there plotting and planning, like always. As if everything with the Vampire Council, your Revenant state, and losing the Dark Haven of Florence never even happened!”

As Lucca hits the nail on the head with what’s wrong about Quinn’s responses this morning, I look at Quinn, wondering the same thing. Lucca is right; Quinn has been acting like nothing has happened, in a way that makes me wonder now if he’s dissociating from all the horror he’s been through in the past week, and especially the past twenty-four hours.

But as Lucca and I both watch Quinn, I see how the Master Vampire in him is still very much alive. Though he’s discovered he’s Dark Fae, there’s an utterly ruthless side of Quinn that has been there all along.

And comes out in spades now, as he stares us down with something cold and certain in his eyes.

“Oh, I am upset—of that, you can be sure.” Quinn is decisive as he regards us, terrible. “I will rip Florian Delano limb from limb for what he’s done with the Council’s help, and gain all my people back. In all my hundreds of years, I have become wise enough to know that Florian wants me to suffer. He has only taken my Dark Haven because he wants me; to become his willing slave in the bedroom once more, and have me as he did of old. But what he does not know is how much stronger I am now than I was then. Bonded to you both, knowing what I am now, having become a mad Revenant and returned from it… all of this has changed me, into something Florian does not know. But I do. And even if I have to march right into the Dark Haven of Florence naked and turn myself over to him unarmed and alone to get my people released, I will do it. Because I hold you both in my heart now… and that power is unimaginable, compared to dark atrocities like Florian, who would try to mimic it. Florian Delano has never known true love. And I have, twice. And no matter what we three do from here on out, I carry that with me—that true love returned me from my darkest place. Your love showed me the man I want to be, which is why I can be so calm now in the eye of the storm. I know who I am now; the Mentale Dark Fae who loves the both of you. And no one can ever take that from me. Only myself—which I will never do again. Even though my copious self-hatred tempts me, every day.”

As Quinn ends this tirade, Lucca and I stare at him, astounded. As Quinn bares his deepest heart and Lucca and I experience it, I feel something between us suddenly tune.

Like a massive symphony of sound, we hadn’t even tried to raise the Music; yet there it is, surging all through Quinn now as he comes clean to us about everything he’s feeling.

As the Music races through Quinn, it pours out to Lucca and me, surging through us, as well. As something so beautiful opens inside me, feeling how Quinn loves me, hearing it all around me now in that chiming, incredible sound, I feel the same thing happen with Lucca.

The Music rises in Lucca also now, pouring through the bathroom in the morning: I see a sigil flare to life in my other-sight. It burns through the darkness of the void, flaring like a sun going supernova as it blazes through to the physical world now.

Seething and curling with the most intensely beautiful sigils and script.

As that Ascendant Sigil writes and re-writes itself in a powerful wave of heat and Light all through our troubled morning.

16

RELEASE

As an Ascendant Sigil flares between Quinn, Lucca, and me in the otherworld from Quinn’s heartfelt tirade, that sigil is pure love. I’m moving to Quinn now in the bath, throwing aside all darkness as I kiss him; Lucca comes to us also, responding to that tremendous magic. Our morning becomes a tower of light as we come together; earth shattering harmonies pour through us as that sigil writes and re-writes itself between us in ecstatic delight.

It blazes throughout this world and every other, but then I feel something within me falter. Even as we kiss, creating this beautiful moment, a place of doubt opens up inside me. Lucca echoes it, as we both worry about what we’re doing. Despite his earlier certainty, Quinn doubts, as well.

Afraid of his Revenant taking him again, if this Music should go wrong.

“Stop!” Lucca breaks from our kissing in the tub with a gasp. Setting his hands to Quinn’s shoulders, Lucca keeps himself away, though I can feel how much he wants to give in as his heart thunders. “We just got you back, Quinn, for Levennia’s sake! Being rash with the Music got us into this whole mess. We need to stop and figure all this out.”

“It’s not rash now, Lucca. Don’t you see?” Quinn is insistent, despite his own fears and doubts. He moves close in the water, taking Lucca’s hand and pressing it to his heart. “The Gold Eyes’ influence inside our magic isn’t driving us right now; all our ambitions have already toppled. The only thing I wish for now is to liberate us from the Gold Eyes’ taint so we can live free, and save the people we love. Do you not?”

“I hate to say it, but I think Lucca’s right, Quinn.” I halt also now, pulling back to look at Quinn even though I’m sitting on his lap in the water with my arms up around his neck. “You don’t know what you’re asking of us, to go wild with the Music right now. After we lost you to your Revenant…we weren’t whole. We weren’t there in our hearts anymore, without you. It was the most horrible sensation, like we were missing a critical piece of ourselves—like we would never be the same. Like our hearts had been carved right out of our chests, the moment yours ceased to beat.”

I see all Quinn’s eagerness fall away now as he feels our fear. Though he doesn’t voice it, his similar fear floods up inside him also; in our raw, heartfelt place, he can’t hide it from us anymore.

He’s terrified something might go wrong with the Music again, no matter how much control we gain. He’s terrified that he might become truly lost in his Revenant state if he ever went there again, despite how much he might want to come back. Quinn closes his beautiful lips now as he finally feels what Lucca and I went through, losing him.

As much as he went through, losing himself.

As Lucca hitches a deep breath, tears fall from his eyes, shed by his tremendous heart. I reach through the water to hold his hand as my own heart clenches, feeling everything we went through without Quinn. The truth is, we all bonded far more than our magic when we came together in that Dark Fae ceremony weeks ago. We bonded our hopes, our hearts, and our very lives as we became one that night.

And have only drawn closer, ever since.

“How we have suffered…” Quinn says now as he takes my hand in the water, then Lucca’s. His dark eyes shine with unshed tears as he regards us, feeling his heart and ours as all his plots are forgotten.

“I don’t want to go through that again, Quinn.” Lucca squeezes Quinn’s hand hard in the water. “I can’t do that again…”

“Neither of us can do that again,” I say as a clench devours my heart, as well.

“I know. I know,” Quinn says now as he releases our hands, cupping Lucca’s cheek, and mine. “I’m sorry. Forgive me. I let my head run wild again without considering your beautiful heart, Lucca, or yours, Ariana. Let us forget plots and schemes for now. You’re right; now is the time to be together and heal from everything we’ve gone through. I’m sorry.”

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