Page 9 of Veil of Monsters

He couldn’t have known her. He was a boy until whatever the Rift made of him. It might have been a god or magic, but whatever happened to Louie was pure evil. It has warped everything good about him into this monster.

Louie looks away from me, lifting a leg up and leaning his arm on it. He isn’t fooling me by acting casual. Nothing can hide the sheer evil that radiates off him. I want to kill him, but I’m powerless and without a single weapon. “Did you know that she was forcibly married to the old king of the sea? She never wanted to be his. In fact, she was engaged to someone else. A boy she grew up with, and she loved him dearly. The king never knew about the promise of engagement or how she loved another, or he would have ripped him apart. But she always loved this male, even when she was forced to marry the king and bear child after child after child. When it became clear that the king would never stop breeding her until she died, she made a plan. Your mother knew she had to do something to get a male.” He grins as he sees the pain in my eyes as he speaks about my kind, sweet mother. He can’t be telling me the truth. “Your sister told me everything. Your oldest sister was old enough to be a witness through it all. Your mother had an affair with the male she loved first and, of course, she fell pregnant with you.”

“No, it can’t be true.” My heart pounds so loud in my ear. I remember my mother. She wouldn’t have done that. The more I think about her, the more I remember a woman with red hair and a soft smile, but the smile never spread to her sad eyes. They were always full of sadness, more so when she looked right at me. Was she seeing my real father? A happy life she could have lived?

“She hoped you’d be male. In truth, she was devastated when you weren’t,” he explains, and I can tell he loves it anytime my face drops. “She was just going to keep having an affair until she had given birth to a male. But unfortunately, your real father died. He was a warrior in the king’s armies, and you know how quickly they die if they have a target on their back. Your oldest sister told me she paid someone to kill him.”

I’m shocked and hurt, my heart ripping with his every word. “I think the king never knew the truth about you. He would have gotten a royal child from you if he bred you like he planned.” He grabs my arm and lifts me to my feet with him. He is so much stronger than me, than any supernatural. I slap him hard across the cheek, my nails cutting across his cheek. Instead of red blood, black blooms underneath my nails where I’ve cut, and I step back in horror. His grip tightens on my arm. It’s so painful, but I’m used to the pain. I still cry out when he digs his nails deep into my skin, and pleasure builds in the depths of his eyes. “Come. I have something to show you.”

I know I don’t have a choice but to go with him. He never gives me one. Louie drags me out of the dungeon and through several empty rooms, the scent of blood like a lingering thought. All of it is a blur, as all I can hear are his words in my head, and somehow I know they’re true. I’m not a siren princess after all, and both my parents are long dead. If I’d known the truth, if anyone had told me, then I would have run forever. I wonder, if my mother had lived, would she have sent me away to live freely, knowing the truth? Or was she so scared, so terribly lost in grief over my real father that she forgot to warn me? The king didn’t know. He would have killed me. Louie’s words flash back to me. My oldest sister killed my biological father. She has always known what I am.

Louie’s not just taunting me, lying to me, he’s telling me the truth. He drags me into another room. This place is just as disgusting as the one I was in. Dirty, damp rock fills the room from floor to ceiling, cracked in so many places, with water leaking in from the sea outside. My sister sits on the chair, her leg crossed over the other, her long hair falling down her back. It matches the blood all down her silk dress from where her throat is slit.

I should be sad or shocked, but I barely feel anything for her in death. After everything she has taken from me, there’s not even a slight pang of grief, but I can’t move my eyes from her until Louie forcibly turns my chin.

A scream rips from my throat as I fall to my knees in the blood. Felix’s beautiful wings are nothing but bones, with red blood spread around him. My eyes drift slowly up them to his body. There’s so much blood around him. Too much blood. I don’t know where he ends and where the blood begins, but he’s not moving.

He isn’t moving.

This can’t be real.

Please, goddess, make this not real.

Louie pulls me to my feet by my hair, pulling me hard against his chest. He forces me to look at the male I love, dead on the ground. His eyes are open, empty of life, and his mouth parted. “Your friend killed your sister when I wasn’t here.”

He was a Wyern, of course he went down fighting. Tears never stop falling down my cheeks, some slipping into my cracked lips. “I killed him next. He was useless to me. The Wyern wouldn’t say a word about the cities and his king. He only ever asked for you to be set free.” A sob escapes my throat. “If only you knew about the cities and weren’t useful to me, I might have given him his request.” His hot, rotten breath blows in my ear. “I was using your sister for control over the sea, but once we married, that control became mine. After I learned the secrets of your family, ones she so happily shared with her new husband, I made sure to leave a dagger close enough for Felix to grab. I wanted him to destroy her, not me, so the sea is mine now, as much as the land is mine. You are the last heir, but you’re not. You don’t have enough blood to rule the seas and take the crown from me. You’re from the wrong seed.” He growls like a monster. He firmly turns my head, his other hand going to my stomach. “It doesn’t mean you can’t be useful to me.”

I scream and scream Felix’s name as he drags me away into the shadows for more pain. Felix is dead, and I don’t know what I have to hope for anymore.

ChapterSix

CALLIOPHE SPRITE

“Where are you hiding, Calliophe?”

I jump, falling back into thick mud at my feet that splashes all over my arms and legs as I hastily try to escape him. I look up at the male standing in front of me, a tower of unflinching cool in a face so familiar it hurts my heart. Louie. His eyes drift down, and I follow his gaze to the mud. Only it’s not mud at all. It’s blood. Blood soaks the dock that we are on, so much of it pouring into the sea nearby, the waves lapping up at the edge.

My eyes widen as I look over at the full city behind Louie. The great towers are burning, smoke hiding the clouds in the sky and smothering the light of the sea until everything appears red. The houses are nothing but crumbled ash and rock, and bodies… There are bodies everywhere. Monsters roam the streets, crawling between the bodies, and Louie’s army stands watch. A scream ripples out of my throat in horror as I crawl backwards right to the edge of the dock. Louie walks after me, his eyes glittering black diamonds. “Running again, Calliophe?”

I can’t speak, I can’t say a word. All I can see is my home burning. It’s gone. So many are dead. He leans down. “I’m in your world now. If I hurt you here, you die, and you can’t escape me in your dreams.”

It takes everything I have to turn my eyes from the city and block it all out for a second. “So, you’re going to kill me here, Louie?”

He straightens, and I stand up to face him. If he is going to kill me, it won’t be while I’m lying down. “Louie, I know you’re in there. Come on, please. This isn’t you. We both know this isn’t you.”

Louie yawns. “Are you still this I, Calliophe? The Louie you know is gone. Dead. I’m the better version and the only one you should be focused on.” He reaches out, grabbing my chin roughly, his fingers cutting deep into my neck. I wince and I know I should knock him off me. I should fight him, but it’s Louie. It’s my Louie. “Killing you here would be boring. I want to see you die in front of me because this is all your fault, and you’re destined to die at my hand.”

“How is this my fault?” I breathe out, tears falling down my cheeks. Not just for Louie, but for the beautiful city I was brought up in. The city I had never wished to see like this. I know this dream is real.

“You want answers? I won’t give you them. Go into the Rift and find them yourself,” he taunts.

Screams echo in the air. “I love you. You know that, Louie. Wherever you are in there, I do still love you, and I will save you from this.”

“Are you missing someone, Calliophe? Perhaps your little siren friend?” My heart pounds. “There’s nothing to be saved in me, but Nerelyth… maybe you should come looking for her.”

He shoves me hard, and I gasp, falling into the dark sea that pulls me under, into the darkness where I can’t see any light.

I wake up coughing. My lungs feel like I’m drowning, and Posy is in front of me, shaking my shoulders with a frantic look in her eyes. I violently cough as she frowns, looking at my neck. “You had a nightmare, and it was like nothing I’ve ever seen. You were covered in darkness. It literally smothered you from head to toe. Now you’re bleeding.” She touches my neck as I struggle to breathe, my mind racing. Nerelyth. He knows where she is, and for all I know, he could have her. I need to find her, but how am I going to do that?

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