Page 93 of A Queen Of Broken Realms
“There’s another one behind you.”
“Fuck you.”
I pin her with a fierce, vampiric glare of crimson light before I turn around and retrieve the second bag to the sound of Aglaope’s gentle laugh. The pain throbbing in the side of my head begins to lesson as Ashen’s blood fizzes down my throat. I press my hand to my mark. There’s a weakened sense of his emotions beneath my skin, and even with the dulled sensation, I can tell he’s fucking enraged. I glare at Aglaope again on his behalf.
“Ah yes,” she says. “I am sure he feels a little angry. I do like him, my love,” she says.
“Yeah. I could really tell when you stabbed him and pushed him into the sea.”
Aglaope lifts a shoulder. “It had to be enough to slow him down. A simple leg wound would not do. I like your eyes, by the way, sister. The sparks within the glow are very pretty.”
I narrow my glare at her and turn away to test the boundaries of my small cage, the dome thoroughly surrounding me in a thin shield of light. “Are you sure you’re not the villain, Aglaope? You sound very villainy right now.” I give the dome a few hits and kicks to test it for weaknesses, a growl building in the depths of my throat with every unsuccessful attempt. I try whispering to my pendant for Ediye as my back is turned, but the magic only bounces back at me. My sister waits in silence as I complete the circle and face her once more with a menacing hiss. “Let me the fuck out.”
“You always were the most dramatic of us, sister. It makes it even more impressive that you managed to spend the last three centuries living a quiet, clandestine life. I suppose it does make sense that you would swing from that to the exact opposite by claiming the throne of the Shadow Realm.”
We regard one another for a moment long enough for fear to start corroding the edges of my anger. Aglaope clearly has all the cards here. She stands outside the barrier between us with my bag for the Soulfate stone in within her reach. I hear it humming, and another purr with it, the sound of the Deathfate stone.
“How did you get that?” I ask, nodding to the bag containing the stones. “The safe was spelled.”
“You can spellcast too, can you not, my love? Then you can undo them,” Aglaope says, and I watch her, thinking for only the first time now that maybe I could have undone my binding spell with Ashen, though I’m glad it never occurred to me. Perhaps, in my loneliness at the time, I just didn’t want the idea to surface. I’m glad it never did.
When I tear my gaze from Aglaope’s, I survey the rest of the landscape that surrounds us. There’s short, bright green grass among crumbled stones in the vague shape of ancient, fallen buildings. To my left, cliffs overlook the sea. Beyond us are jagged hills interspersed with thin scraps of forest. And to my right, an arched granite structure. The rock still looks as though it was hewn days ago. The edges are clean and precise.
Anthemoessa.
“Do you recognize this place, Leucosia?” Aglaope asks. She nods not to the village, but the archway itself. I slowly nod my head. Even though I recognize it from our life on the island, it was never more than a simple stone archway past which our small cottages lay. I’ve walked through it a thousand times.
“How the fuck…” the realization dawns and I look down at my hand before tightening my fist until my nails press bloody marks into my palm. “The ring. You spelled it somehow so you could get us here.”
When I meet Aglaope’s eyes, she gives me a sheepish smile, and she looks a little saddened, as though the sight of the archway structure nearby should have sparked a memory that doesn’t exist. Aglaope turns to toward it and reaches out to trace her finger along the arc. “All those years with the last of the true gods on the other side of a veil, forever tying the threads together to lead us right here, to this very moment. I have seen it before. You and me, here at the gate, just like this.Exactlylike this.”
“Where? How?”
“A premonition. Long, long ago. In dreams that plagued me. Those visions found me once more in the time before you washed to the shore. Not all memories were lost, not for me. This is what we were sacrificed for, Leucosia. A mystery hidden in plain sight.”
I stop my pacing and look at my sister, though her gaze is still caught on the sweeping curve of stone that casts its shadow through my dome. “What do you mean? You remember seeing this before you came to Anthemoessa?”
“Yes,” she says, and I tamp down the desperation I suddenly feel to ask her what else she might recall from her life before Anthemoessa. “You. Me. Our sisters. We were never what they forced us to become to protect gods who have long since abandoned us. We were powerful. Magical. It is time to regain what we have lost, and to take that which is owed for our service. Oursuffering.”
Aglaope holds my gaze for a long moment. I see not only empathy in her eyes, but determination. And Aglaope’s brand of determination is what makes me particularly nervous about being trapped in a spellcast dome. She is intent on dragging me with her in whatever plan she’s set into motion. She’s like a rip tide, and I’m already halfway out to deep water.
My sister turns away and I resume my agitated pacing at the edge of the glittering barrier between us. “What are you doing?” I ask as I watch Aglaope kneel, withdrawing a folded page of parchment from the inside pocket of her jacket. She carefully lays it on the ground and presses it flat, and I recognize it by the scent before I even see what’s on it. It’s a page from the Book of the Fatespeaker, the one with the image of my mated mark. Aglaope looks at the page in detail and turns it to the blank side. Then she takes two vials from her other pocket.Ushgada.
“Where did you get that? Where’s Wynter?” I ask as I watch Aglaope unstopper the vial of liquid. For a moment I think she might knock it back, but she doesn’t. Her eyes are still caught on the page.
“The apothecary is fine, not to worry, sister. She just has a little bite and a bump on the head. She will recover well, if that is what you wish.”
My heart drops to my feet, hitting every bone on its way down. “If I wish?” I ask, but Aglaope doesn’t answer. I watch as she tips the liquid on to the page. The parchment replies with a light that illuminates hidden text. From where I stand, I can see the Dingir writing, though I can’t make out every word. But it seems that my sister can.
Aglaope’s lips move as she reads, a smile pulling at their corners.
“The Nephilim never needed theushgada, did they? They never came to you at all,” I say.
“No,” she admits, darting a quick look to me before returning her attention to the page spread before her. “They do want the stones, yes. But not theushgada. They can withstand opening the gateway without it. They can take what lies beyond it with only the stones.”
“What lies beyond it?”
“Freedom. From pain. From purpose. From fates. Eternal freedom, and the power to shape the realms to the design we wish, not the one imposed upon us,” she replies. Aglaope leans back against her heels and regards me for a long moment, her eyes softening. She regards me with the same sisterly affection she did that first moment I saw her when I washed up on the beach, but I’m not sure I recognize the woman looking back at me. “I see the burden you carry as Queen of the Shadow Realm. Enemies not just at your back, but right in front of you, aiming their arrows right at your fierce heart, even though you only hold the best intentions for the demons and creatures there. These are obligations no one person should be forced to shoulder. It does not have to be that way.”
