Page 22 of A Story of Mates and Temptation

I’ve talked myself in and out of this plan about a hundred times, but I’m still standing here like we discussed yesterday. Still in front of the locked room where Daegan keeps one of the books, and I know he’d rather I’d not be here at all. Ziven is in rare agreement with him on this subject, but the books are in here. The books, the locked-away deities and our chance of fixing everything in a much less bloody way. But still, I hesitate at the door to the locked room.

Daegan spelled it so only he and I can get in there. If I hold anyone’s hand, they can come in with me. Avaluna looks at me with the same hesitation in her eyes as she stands at my side. When I asked her to face the books with me, she didn’t even ask why. I might never know how I got so lucky to have friends who come with me into anything without needing me to explain. “Are you sure we should do this? You told me what happened last time—the tree, the threats…”

“No, I’m not sure any fae alive should go near that book, but she was right.” I stare at the simple wooden door like it might suddenly spring up with a big warning or answer to the million questions I have. “She said I would die, and I did. Emyr brought me back, but I died and that is the point to all of this. She knew. That means she knows the future.” My eyes drift to the box that Luna is holding for me. “That book in there—this is her sister. It’s what she wanted: to free her or for me to bring the books together so she can. This time I’m not walking in clueless, and I have a bargaining chip. The box won’t open unless I will it. Ziven and Daegan have made sure of that with spell work.”

“And what exactly are we asking for?” Avaluna presses.

I take a steadying breath. “I read a book of an ancestor of mine—a life account of one of our ancestors—and he told how two deities got trapped in books. I explained it to Ziven and Daegan in a meeting yesterday.” It’s the only way we got him to agree to let us near the book. We could have fought him for it, but going forward, this peace between all of us—it’s the only way. I meet her gaze, unwavering. “I want the deities to stop the vampyres by undoing the magic that turned them from fae to vampyre in the first place. To turn them all back into fae at the same time and end the war. In exchange, they can be free.”

Avaluna stares at me for a long moment. “We are asking them for a considerable amount of power.”

I nod. “Who better to ask for a miracle than mad deities?”

Her voice drops to a whisper. “I’m not sure we should do this. These are our gods. Two of them are here, and one is in my hands right now, in this box, and it feels wrong.” She touches the box. “Why not use this book to help and not that one in there?”

“That one helped the vampyre king make an army of Silkvir to beat us. So, no, I don’t trust it.” I arch an eyebrow at her, and she nods. “It is likely more nuts than the one in there.”

That one in there has also done awful things. I think about the disease that wiped out so many in the mansion, about how it twisted Daegan’s mind, and finally about the threats made against me—the pain it inflicted last time. I’m not here to plead with some benevolent, kind-hearted gods, because they do not exist in this world. These deities are evil, but even evil has its desires, and we can make a trade for my people. For my future.

“I don’t like this,” Daegan mutters.

“Neither do I,” Calix adds from his place, guarding the other door.

Ziven sets his eyes on me. “I don’t believe the books just happened to end up here. Of all the places in the world, they landed with us? There’s a reason and I trust Story.” It means a lot that he isn’t trying to hide me away, make me not fight, and treat me like a possession rather than an equal at his side.

“You can pull me out,” I tell them. “Both of you can because of our bonds. Calix is here for Luna, if she needs to be pulled out, too. But the book I read said that two heirs from the Twilight Dynasty would stand with the books, and we are two heirs from the Twilight Dynasty—we’re what’s left.”

Calix exhales sharply. “We only have your hair for proof of that.”

“It’s more than that,” I argue. “It’s a connection to the books. It’s my dragon telling me. Maeve knows, and it’s why we were bonded in blood,” I point out.

“Dragons are not wrong about matters of our ancestry and blood,” Ziven finishes the argument. “And I sense your fear. We all feel the same, but if we don’t try, what rulers are we?”

Silence echoes from his point. This is for the fae, for the lessborn and powerborn, for the riders and the trapped from the mansion. It’s for every fae born into a world of vampyres where their blood means more than their souls. It’s wrong, and it ends.

Avaluna takes my hand, and I open the door, looking back at Ziven once. I hope he can read every bit of how much I love him in my eyes before we slip into the cold, stone room. The walls are mossy and damp, and the book is thrown onto the ground in a puddle of water, but it is not wet. It hovers above the water, untouched by the elements. The moment my eyes land on the leather-bound, blood-red book, my feet stop working. I lose control of my body and am pulled straight toward it. This time, I glide across the floor, hands slamming down onto the pages.

“Story!” Luna cries out.

“No! Stay back!” I warn her, barely able to hold off from the power of the book taking control of my very voice.

“You didn’t come alone,” comes that female voice, that ancient, echoing voice I remember from the last time I opened this horrible book of untold power. The power of it reeks in this room, and I can feel it slithering against my skin, against my mind, too.

It lets me reply. She does, but I don’t know if she is female or if that voice is just for me. “I know what you are now, and in that box over there is your sister. Just what you wanted.”

She is strangely quiet. “Open the box.”

“No.” I smile as I realise she was trying and failing to open it. “If you kill me, the box stays locked forever. It is bound to me.”

Silence. Then?—

“Why?” The word is cruel, pointed, furious as it is screamed in my mind.

“Outside, in the cities, vampyres are burning fae every single day. I want to make a deal—one that will stop it. Stop the war that’s coming and, in return, I will open that box, and you can have the book,” I tell the deity. “I know you were once a powerful being from the heavens above, and I want to return you, but we will make a deal for it.”

“I do not make deals with mortals like you,” she snarls.

A burst of red light explodes from the book, like a storm, and I brace myself, but it moves past me. It slams into Luna, throwing her against the wall with a sickening crunch. I scream as I hear bones snap, her body hitting the ground with a thump. Red blood pours from her mouth, her nose and her eyes as her body shakes, and she cries out my name for help. The box crashes to the floor next to her, but it doesn’t move as the red power, like a rain cloud, hovers around the box.

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