His eyes steal the light from mortal souls
His eyes like deep night and his depths like coals
Mortal flesh is trembling, flames devour it
She disappears – tiny bit by tiny bit
Leira couldn’t unhear this song. The fae were celebrating the month of Lorian’s coming of power. The promising youth of winter faeries, with snow in their souls and sharp-taloned hearts, seemed to enjoy this celebration more than Lunar New Year. Youg fairies – free, unbound and wild – loved Lorian’s reign. Maybe because they rarely stepped the boundaries which he set. For Leira, it was obvious, that they do not want to – not do not dare. The winter reign was cruel, primal and passionate.
The song… a rare jest on the reign, which was more a keen approval than a true jester’s mock. The voices were accompanied by the sound of sitar, soft, atonal and typically fairy-like. Singing fairies enjoyed the beauty of the wintry night, bathing in midnight – the hour of the lost souls. Which fairy court believed to be haunted by something very similar to ghosts. Not fae ones – these were feeding trees and overgrowth of Ain’asel. The humans, who gaining power of cold touch, returned to torment the ones who once destroyed them. Leira heard that only way to stop the cold soul, is to spill own blood.
How peculiar to believe that a fae blood can quench human soul’s hunger.
Trapped between the iron bars
Her body wears the failure’s scars
Join us in a feast, feed us with your smiles
Show us the garden which under moonlight blooms
and in his endless void dies
His soul darker than the night
His shadow feeding on every budding light
She drowns in black lake, her hands are cold
Her soul suffocating, to the lost one sold…
Why this song made her anxious?
Her slave dress fluttered on the wind, warm and changed by the magical barrier set on windows. The stained glass reflected her face as she passed them – now blood engraved in her reflection, which she was taking with reluctance once, fear even, looked like a crowning of her position here. A ghost of Dal’coler. Maybe he was right. Maybe she at once made it. Fit like an unpaired puzzle into whole image – by force, breaking other elements, only to stay in a place she craved for. An element taken from a different set, put into an art that showed different colors, different life. A lonely one, the only one who sees how grotesque it looks.
Her steps led her further into overgrown depths of Dal’coler. Up, the Stairs of Eternal Longing, the only ones which she knew better than the passages to her own chamber. The black railing was carved in raven wings, a craftsmanship of a higher level, which didn’t leave anything to an accident. The master who did them, possibly already passed away, the artists never were hired from the Higher Fae kind, it had to be a lower fey, who usually lived much shorter. But Lorian always hired the creators of ultimate beauty. How much it was attributed to his own needs and how much to mainating decorum of his position, Leira couldn’t guess. Lorian liked pretty things. But he was far from being vain or superficial. Too much pain changes perception, beauty becomes a trivial thing.
She found Lorian in royal library. He didn’t read – he just stared at the book shelf under a high arches, entangled with old birch. His face – Leira was observant, and with their mental bond, it was even easier to catch that – was lost in some old pain, which he never rugged and torn from his soul.
Leira preferred to not show she saw it. But of corse the same mental bond was selling her like an old human peddler on the busy marketplace.
His face lost the tension and wore the smile so similar with beauty to stars behind the vast window, that Leira could see the cracks in it, the crevices through starlight allowed the night sky.
“I allowed him to think that he can win” another crack, so beautiful. It could sip her soul, if he wanted. “Now, he is just a shell, empty, dry and left to rot.”
“I thought you enjoyed his fall?” Leira felt almost assaulted by his aura. It was deeper than lowest bottom of the ocean. With his bells still sounding in her being, she could almost touch it – thick like mud, an ink writing the prophecy of death.
“Oh, I did” he laughed. “Most filling experience, a dish served cold and bleeding. No, Leira. It was not only anticipated. It was a crowning of all games we led, all pleasant lies we shared in the court. All fake smiles, all dark dreams we had of each other.’
“But you do not enjoy it fully” it was more of a statement. His thoughts were closed from her, but… his feelings he allowed into her. So intense. Calm as a dead black desert.
His long fingers lay on one of the books. Caressed its cover.
“I remember how it all started. A young soul, who looked at me like into a painting reflecting his dreams. He was flame incarnate, which was destined to be dulled by my shadow. Perhaps he would – his rebellious, young heart would rot between the walls of this fortress, to my joy. He would become not what he would come for. He would become who he never wanted to be. But he would become more. He would be no longer a guest to Dal’coler.”
He withdrew the hand. Shadows imprinted for a small moment on the cover and withered, dispersed by non existent wind.
“And I started to like more not what would bloom under my touch. I started to like what he already was. He maybe never reminded me of myself in his age… but some innocent awe that we all should had, when our years are young. Awe of life, of beauty, of joy from simply being alive. I lost it, Leira. So long ago, that I don’t know if it ever was there. My needs were different. Not joyful. Not beautiful. Not full of awe.”
He turned again to her. His long eyelashes look almost dream-like in his supple face, touched by shadow that always bubbled under his pallid skin.
“I killed all he would want to be. All he was and all who he would become, if he stayed with me, on the path to decay. And perhaps that’s why I find this victory both fulfilling and bitter. A bed made of soft moss and nettle leaves.”
He had to talk about his son.
Leira never asked Lorian about him. Maybe because she felt regrets of her own, which she wanted to hush. Her betrayal which she would repeat, yes, but it wouldn’t sting less. She was calling herself ruthless, but that didn’t come without a price and particles of souls she sacrificed on the way to earn her shadowed crown.
Alnam was a victim of them both. Created by Lorian, drilled by his relentless shadows and pushed into his claws by her.
She wanted him dead. Because he reminded her of the woman she once was.
And that alone was something that made her soul creep and crawl.
“I create my enemies with joy with which others create friends – restlessly, hungrily. Maybe because they flatter me more. Am I vain creature, in the end?”
No. But you like to be admired, Leira thought and she heard the soft laughter in her head.
No one admires as strong as an enemy, she heard inside her mind, a pleasant tug of his power over her being.
That’s why he took her to Dal’coler. To be feared. To be admired. To be hated. To be a Shadow in her eyes, who makes her love him, even if he hurts her.
“Lady Nymre… examined me…” she knew he will see through her words faster than a storm sends lighting to part the tree bark. His smiled carried even more of the cruel starlight. He left the book behind, approaching soft like a cat. His shadows traveling behind him, a thick veil of black mist.
His thumb brushed through her light tangles, and pulled one, curling it around his finger, his hand digging into her thick hair. A caress and a possessive gesture, yet not demeaning. His respect for her was true, his nature unchanged, though.
“I feel you get closer. Mentally, you shed your fear, she – her jealousy. Maybe if it all falls apart, it will be the only way to stop the decay.”
“If… it falls apart?”
He leaned forth, his lips touched hers, she gasped, when they sent a string of shadow into her. A caress. And possessive gesture. His kiss tasted of frozen fruits, even more than usual. A delicious, calm and strong kiss, which made her relax in his arms.
“It can fall apart into so many tiny shards. Scattered across whole Dal’coler. It can fall apart so easily.”
The lonely shadow touched her cheek. Lonely – just like them.
“And end like many fairytales, which always go wrong. Aren’t we a fairytale creatures? Destined to feed the stars? Falling like them into the mouth of hungry void beast.”