I slid down the tree and let both legs dangle into the mouth of the valley. I knew this place was unnatural. I knew that if I flew a plane over this side of Loslilian Island, there’d be no valley. But beyond the Stone of Truth, it seemed the world went on forever. It felt like a parallel world out here, a secret parallel world, because I was, from what I’d gathered, the only one who’d seen it—almost as if it were a gift only for those connected to the Stone.
The cuts and bruises on my bare feet healed as I sat, and the scrapes and gashes on my arms, hands, and cheeks tingled as they sealed themselves shut. My hair was frizzy, I could actually feel it, and I was sure my face was covered in dirt and blood because, when I wiped my tears away, my hands came back brown.
“I couldn’t save him, Eve,” I said, feeling her spirit beside me.
“Don’t cry,” she said.
“I’m trying not to.” I wiped my face again and held my hands out, showing them to the forest. “But I can’t stop them from coming. How do I do that?”
My heart jumped then, when her small, almost transparent hand landed in mine. “The apple holds the key,” she said.
I looked up from our locked fingertips and into her bright blue eyes; they were just like mine—her face heart-shaped and so youthful it hurt to look at her, knowing she was dead—almost as if my soul quivered, bleeding inside. “What does that mean, Eve?”
She reached out slowly with her other hand and placed it flat across my belly. “The apple holds the key.”
“Do you mean the child?” I said, cupping my hand over hers, but the tiny, cold touch of Eve was gone. I looked up to the place beside me where she sat a second ago, hearing the birds sing louder as the pink light across the trees turned bright yellow under the late morning sun. I knew I’d sat here longer than I thought. I knew David would be looking for me, worried. I knew I’d get a lecture from him and everyone else who treated me like a baby when I returned, but I didn’t care. I hugged my knees to my chest and laid my cheek against them, thinking about the keyhole in the golden apple.
“Mike?” I called to the lone figure heading toward the lower west wing.
He stopped in the darkened entranceway just below the stairs, watching me descend. “What you doin’ up so late, b-Ara?”
“Bara?” I laughed.
“Yeah, sorry.” He shook his head at himself. “I gotta quit calling you baby.”
I stepped off the stair and stood beside him, feeling suddenly so much smaller at the base of his bulk and height. “David threaten to tear your arm off, huh?”
Mike slowly folded one arm into his body, then the other. “I dunno what’s gotten into him lately. He’s, to put it bluntly, he’s scary.”
“No, he’s the same David he’s always been. We’re just meeting the councillor.”
“Well, I’m not sure I like King David.”
I smiled, pushing his arms down from their fold. “Give it time. He’s been through a lot the last few months.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Fine. So, what did you want?”
“Oh, um.” I looked back up the stairs then at Mike again. “David ran off the other day because you had a problem with the Damned. Just wondering—”
“It’s okay.” He touched my shoulder. “It was just Harrison. He wet his bed and wanted King David.”
I covered my mouth slowly. “Poor baby.”
“He’s all right. He didn’t want you to know, though.”
“Me? Why?”
Mike’s sideways smile warmed his whole face. “Duh! You’re a girl.”
“Oh.” I nodded, but my face still wrinkled with confusion. “But—”
“Never mind it, Ara.” He turned slightly and started walking away. “It’s all sorted now.”
“Okay,” I called to the back of his head. “Well, thanks for the chat. Nice to see you. Hope we can do it again sometime in the next century.”
I heard him laugh softly, throwing his hand up in a gentle wave goodbye. He must have been really busy. But I meant those words as more than just a joke. Since I’d fallen off the lighthouse, he and I had spent less and less time chatting casually. He really had stepped into the role of employee and not so much friend.
“Miss you,” I added quietly and turned to walk back up the stairs.
The whole manor was quiet, almost desolate. The Lilithian people finally at rest. They had their queen, the possibility of an heir—one they still believed was foretold to transform vampires into humans—and they would soon be rid of their immortal enemy, even though this meant losing their king, it was, to them, a worthy death. And a king could always be replaced. It was replacing the love of my life that I had a problem with. But, all that aside, those living in the manor were finally free. Morgaine had achieved nearly everything she set out to do centuries ago, yet her success made me feel hollow. My life so far had been lived around fulfilling this prophecy and freeing my people from the darkness of Drake’s reign. Now that had been achieved, what was next? Day-to-day, right? Just ruling, eating and sleeping. Wake up, rinse and repeat. Over and over again for the rest of forever, alone.
I turned the corner into the openness off the great library, and as I started up the stairs to the second floor, stopped and put my foot back down on the ground. The secret door to the Scroll Room was open, candlelight and laughter lilting up the stone stairs from within.
“Hello?” I called down the hole, coming to stop on the cusp, with my arms folded.
“Down here, sweetheart,” David said.
“Can I . . . is it okay if I come down?”
“Of course.”
My head led the way toward David and the other voice, my fingertips trailing the bricks behind me. “Shouldn’t you be sleeping? You have a long trip tomorrow.”
“Vampires don’t require as much sleep as your kind.” David placed his arm around my waist, pulling me close to his body, keeping his eyes on the notes in front of him.
“I found it!” Jason popped out from the door to our right and stopped dead when he saw me. “Ara?”
“Jason.” I nodded politely.
“Hi. Um…what brings you down here?” He walked over and laid a scroll out in front of David, but his whole body was kind of stiff, tiny particles of tension clinging to every inch of his skin’s surface.
“Woke up alone, went to get something to read, heard laughing, thought I’d investigate.”
He smiled at me, eyeing David carefully after to see if he noticed. “Did David fill you in?”
“On what?”
“Look.” David pointed to a page of indecipherable scribble, made less visible in the flickering candlelight. “We found out more about Morgana.”
“Really?” I turned the corner of the page, leaning over it as if I could actually read that language. “And . . . what does it say?”
“It’s a birth record. See?” His finger moved along the page, marking the words. “Morgana LeFay. Born on the Sabbath day to Lilith of Loslilian and Lord Callon LeFay.”
“LeFay? But . . . I thought Christian, Lilith’s first husband, was the father of Morgana.”
“Evidently, we were misinformed.” He stood back from leaning over the table. “Ara? Do you know who Lord LeFay was?”
“No.”
“He was a very powerful witch,” his voice pitched in an interested tone on the last word.
“What’s wrong with him being a witch?”
“Nothing, but it explains why Morgana never survived.”
I groaned, rolling my eyes. “That still doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“Witches are mortals,” Jason explained, handing me a piece of paper. I unrolled it and the face of a stern-looking man stared back up at me in lines of grey and black, his long hair framing his face, falling around a frilly collar. “According to Natural Law, those with the Power of the Earth cannot be immortal. Any who’ve attempted spells or rituals to prolong life have met consistently with severe and often hellish consequences.”
“Right,” David cut in. “So, what would happen to a child conceived of a mortal witch and an immortal vampire?”
My eyebrows slid across my forehead, nearly meeting in the middle. “So you think Morgana died before her body made the change?”
“I’d bet my life on it,” David said, and Jason and I both looked up at him quickly. “What?” He shrugged.
“Distasteful, David,” I said, laying the picture of Lord LeFay down.
David, having realised he just made a pun about his own, now inevitable demise, laughed softly to himself and started rolling scrolls.
I let myself digest this information, thinking about so many random other bits all at once, that when two of them crashed together, a conclusion sparked. “What if she’s not dead?”
“What do you mean?” David said, tying a ribbon around an old, yellowing scroll.
“I mean, what if she lived? What if she couldn’t be immortal but maybe aged at a slower rate than a human?”
Jason and David exchanged glances.
“How old would she be if she were actually alive today?” I finished.
David scratched his nose, bending down a little to lean his elbow on the chair back. “Why, Ara? What’s your point?”
I held my smile for a minute. “What if she’s Drake’s witch—the one you know as Safia?”
“What do you know of Safia?” Jason practically gasped.
“I…” I looked up at David, not sure if I was allowed to say anything. “Arthur told me.”
David turned at the shoulder to look at Jason.
“Ara, did Arthur say if he’d ever actually seen Safia?” Jase asked in tone soft enough for a child.
I shook my head. “All he said was that she’s very old and very powerful, and that he wanted to get his hands on her.”
“So she’s real?” Jason looked at David.
“So it would seem,” David said, playing it like he and Arthur had never discussed such things.
“What’s the big deal if she is real?” I asked.
“I’ve only heard rumours of the Great Witch Safia Demente. But, none were good,” Jason said. “Some say she conjured curses and plagues, killed babies—that she corrupted and influenced the church back in the days before Christ, and there have been rumours that she can change form and become something else.”
“Like a snake?” I asked, remembering my Walk of Faith.
“Any creature.”
“But . . . she’s Drake’s prisoner, right?”
“Or friend.”
“And…is that bad news for us?”
“It’s bad news for any vampire—even Drake—if he gets on the wrong side of her,” Jason said.
