Promise of Dusk (Endings #1)

Chapter 32

Even when it ends, it doesn’t.

Even when the Pooka’s jaws unlock, the teeth slicking from my torn flesh.

Even when my body falls to the ground in a catatonic jumble.

Even when I curl in on myself on that familiar cell floor, the cold chilling me to my core, and hope to meet an icy death.

It does not end.

The nightmares both lived and imagined.

Mariana’s ocean blue eyes, wide with fear—Thatched roofs afire, the smoke choking me, everything I had known, every speck of good littered between the bad, burning to embers. I hear them. The sounds of helpless desperation and sizzling flesh.

Endings that come screaming and stained with crimson blood.

Every fleeting moment of happiness tainted with loss.

Fionn’s body, the place where his eyes once burned into mine, sockets picked clean by crows, staring towards a hopeless sky.

It’s all happening in my head. Does that mean that it isn’t real?

Aine’s laughter comes to a shattered halt, morphing to screams of unimaginable agony. Blood spilled on castles of sand. Screaming for me to help, but I am a phantom existing only in shadows. Poison in the water.

I can taste the brine in the air, I can feel the chill of the breeze and the sand between my fingers as I try to crawl to her but move nowhere.

Huge hiccuping sobs, tears freezing on chubby cheeks.

I reach up to my face, wiping them from the sharp-faced stranger I have become.

They run in an endless, cruel cycle in my mind. They curl around one another, blending together until I cannot tell lies from reality.

In all of them, the Pooka’s hot breath fans across the back of my neck. The lurking nightmare of it shadows every memory.

Violet horn-tipped wings, huge and membranous, obscure the path of bleeding smoke on an overcast sky. Filtered light trickles through, veins webbing under the skin that catches wind and sweeps their owner upward and onward.

I pry my cheek from the floor for only a moment before it becomes too heavy. Sweat beads on my skin and my clothes cling to my limbs, making me claustrophobic. I let unconsciousness swallow me once more, unsure what torment is worse, that of my body or of my mind.

Warm candlelight casts shadows on a night-darkened room. A muscled arm falls off the side of a bed, the rest of the owner obscured by my mind’s limitations. Sweat beads along the strong length of his arm as his fist clenches, tense even in rest. Bold scarlet ink is etched into tan skin—a scaled pattern that sweeps and defines the contoured muscles of his tricep and trails down his forearm, fanning out across the back of his broad hand in even patterns that point to his knuckles. The hand trembles and I watch a drop of sweat fall, glinting in the firelight, to the burnt-orange stone floor.

A hand smacks me across the face, jarring me from the dream, the first that doesn’t feel like a nightmare in some time. It feels like a loss, to wake up back in this cell—greater than any I’ve known.

Peeling my eyes open to the twisted face of my torturer almost makes my tears fall. Almost.

I ask no questions as he pulls me from the room. He takes me from the chamber in which my deepest nightmares resurface and melt to new ones.

I take no note of the path we travel, withdrawing into some familiar dark room, seeing the world around me only distantly. We navigate endless tunnels, and he drags me up stone steps; their coolness feels good on my too-hot feet. They feel good even when I trip, unable to keep up with my captor’s pace, and scrape the skin from my feet.

A double-door, larger than any house in Comraich, greets us at the end of a long windowless hallway. It’s made from a dark wood, ageless and rich against the dark emerald and gold stone. Gold filigree flows over the wooden surface, carrying the golden veins of stone through the wood. Torches line the way, the only light permeating the space as my captor’s footsteps echo in the large empty space.

The door opens seemingly of its own accord, revealing a throne room of dark regalia. A dark stranger sits atop the throne on the dais, his figure striking, elegant, in a way men usually aren’t. Dark brown hair, cropped short on the sides, curls slightly around the golden crown, encrusted with emeralds. As my steps lightly pad against the smooth ground towards this man, the Pretty King, I know why they call him so. His eyes are so blue I can see them from halfway across the room, piercing in their iciness. They almost sparkle, glinting with shared curiosity, while the rest of his face remains stoic.

Kneeling, chained, at the base of the dais, is Fionn.

My knees buckle in both despair and breathtaking relief.

He doesn’t look at me, he only trembles, panting, staring at the stone in front of him. Unravelling before my eyes.

Now that they’ve found him, my eyes see nothing else in the room. I trace over every injury; see the way he holds his torso just so. His breaths are short: anger or pain. One shoulder seems lower than the other, arm hanging limply at his side, the nails on his fingers removed, leaving only swollen, bloody beds. His cheekbone is obviously fractured, its hugeness obscuring his peripheral vision. Beaten and tortured, he is a gilded knight returned from a bloody battle.

I had wished him dead for this reason. I would have taken all of this for myself if I could, while he slept peacefully in whatever afterlife awaits the brave and strong. Only the dead know peace. And while I deserve none for landing us both here, he deserves it all.

Guilt could not drive my gaze from its well-worn path over every line of him. It consumes me, churns my empty stomach, but it hardens my resolve to save him—to fix this. To get him out of this place where no quick death awaits.

For I know what they may not. That their efforts will always be fruitless with him. That he will bite off his own tongue before betraying the Fianna. And they will let him, for their own wicked entertainment.

My torturer forces me to my knees beside Fionn. I am uncuffed, whereas Fionn has cobalt chains on both ankles and wrists.

A cold voice breaks the tense silence, its tone low and dead.

“I had hoped the Fae that escaped to this realm would have some valor. That you would be daring enough to pose a challenge to my men. How disappointing that you didn’t.”

“The hundreds of Fomorian corpses that lie rotting in the earth by my hand would say otherwise,” Fionn grits out, not looking up from the floor in front of him. Not looking at where I kneel beside him.

I finally look at the king before me.

My eyes clash with his piercing stare.

He wears emerald green from knee to throat, the sleeves coming down to his wrists. His black cloak, gloves and boots almost blend into the dark emerald coloring of the castle. He looks… human. But somehow not. He has that gaunt look about him, almost sickly, but almost stunning. But his gorgeous eyes are distinctly un-Fomorian. They hold so much, but his expression tells so little. Something about his fine features feel so familiar, though I’ve only seen sketches of him before in the papers that come from Raith. None were a good likeness.

Despite my instincts prickling, begging me to appear small and uninteresting to this new unknown threat, I raise my chin and let him look. Let him see my two-toned eyes, my hair, streaked with white-blonde from the roots. Let him see me for the more interesting oddity than Fionn.

His eyes glint in understanding as he looks his fill, though his gaze is not lecherous, but pondering.

“What is your name?” his voice is languid with authority.

“Alyx.” Knowing my name will tell him nothing.

“Alyx.” He picks up the golden goblet beside him, drinking thoroughly. “I understand you injured my captain here, Gyddeon. Or re-injured, I should say.” He smirks only slightly, jerking his chin at the torturer behind me, who grunts begrudgingly. “Good. He needs to be humbled occasionally, by someone who isn’t me. You may leave us, Gyddeon. Don’t you have some rebels to quash?”

Suddenly, I know why Gyddeon spat his title out at me the other day. There seems to be no love lost between these two. I wonder how Gyddeon got in his position if not by the king’s favor.

There is a pause before Gyddeon’s footsteps recede. As if he took an extra second for defiance alone.

With the absence of Gyddeon, there are two guards by the doors and the king. Fionn still stares silently at the ground.

The king rises, lazily stepping down from the dais. “He tells me that you are somewhat uncooperative. I suppose you won’t tell me where the rest of your group is.”

I reinforce my stubborn gaze. “I did tell him where. He just did not believe me.”

“Ah yes, the boat to the southern continents that has already left.” He nods, considering, then waves an elegant, dismissive hand. “You’re about to make this messy, Alyx. I would ask that you don’t.”

I harden my features, willing to die a painful death with my secrets.

The Pretty King sighs in annoyance.

Fionn chokes on a gasp, collapsing beside me.

He is purple-faced, clawing at his throat with chained hands, making his dislocated shoulder hang oddly as his working arm tries to save him. His power is surely somewhere with mine, beyond reach.

“ Stop! Please. Please stop! ” I plead .

I run my hands uselessly over Fionn’s arm. His whole body is clenched in agony, rolling over stone to escape an invisible torturer.

“I—I don’t know where they went! I don’t know! Fionn knows more than me! Don’t kill him!” I beg again.

My heart is bleeding. Hemorrhaging in my chest, drowning me in my own helpless blood.

The king continues the torture by some sick power.

The veins in Fionn’s eyes are popping, flooding the whites with scarlet.

I go for the king in all of my weakness, desperate to end Fionn’s agony. I will leech every trickle of essence from regal bones. Claw my way up the Pretty King’s body and scar his body and soul as mine has been.

I hit a wall, real under my hands, but invisible to my eyes. I pound on it, peeling at it with any energy left in my bones. Trying to harness power feels like trying to sip from an empty cup. Regardless, I throw everything from my muscles, from my mind at the unbudging shield before me.

“What are you?” I scream.

His face turns hard, meeting my eyes with a bitter smile.

Fionn suddenly gasps, dragging in air through damaged lungs and I sob in relief, able to breathe now that the drowning in my own body ceases. I scramble my way over to him, helping him roll into a sitting position.

“Oh how amusing you are, Alyx,” the king says, tapping his pale fingers on his pants. “So clueless.” He seems wrathfully amused as he crouches down to my eye level. “The eyes are so telling, are they not? Telling that I do not belong. What do your eyes say, Alyx?”

A sudden secret circles the air between us. I cannot grasp it.

Beside us, Fionn rolls up to his knees again, unable to stop his choked cries of pain: something is broken inside him. “Leave her alone,” he says—the first words of acknowledgment since I entered the throne room. “She knows nothing.” The first wavers of fear are on his face, knowing that his words are damning. For what reason do they keep me alive, if I know nothing?

When I look back, the king’s eyes are hungry as they look between the two different tones of mine. “Did you know that Fomorians, when first born, have violet eyes? Only once they consume a soul do they darken to the black you so often see.”

His words are so unexpected that it takes me a moment before my heart stutters—before my vision tunnels on him.

Clink, clink, clink.

The fragile pieces of my reality shatter and fall, fall, fall.

Straight onto unrelenting ground.

I search his face for any hint of a lie, shaking my head until he begins nodding, in amused pity.

“I have my mother’s eyes,” he whispers.

The implication is enough.

His mother, not a Fomorian, who would have violet or black eyes. His gaunt skin-tone suggests definite Fomorian heritage, though the rest of him is something else. Something more normal.

These things are breeding with us: the humans or the Fae. How?

He turns to Fionn, perhaps satisfied that he left me sufficiently reeling. “Were you there, Fionn? You must have been, the kind of hatred in your face isn’t born. Did you see them hack down your people like stalks of wheat? Did you watch them rape your females? And then, did you run?” His face reveals nothing, like he’s discussing the weather.

It’s the first time Fionn has ever looked defeated. Looked like just any other man. He stares back at the king with a blend of agony, nausea, and utter hatred.

The king looks back at me, as if he did not just eviscerate Fionn with words alone. Standing back to his full, impressive height, he goes on, confusing me more with every word, “You have your mother’s hair, Alyx. The silvery-blonde. She was, truly, very beautiful, though of course, no match for your father.”

Somewhere along this conversation my world feels as if it’s tilting—like the ground beneath my knees is shifting to one side and I cannot reorient. My understanding of everything left unsaid, of everything that does not align, blurs in my mind.

“Where were you hiding, exactly?” He turns to walk away, back up the steps to his throne. “We looked for you. For twenty years we searched, and you were simply… gone.”

Where was I hiding?

He’s looking at me expectantly, starry eyes waiting.

“I don’t…You weren’t looking for me. I am nobody. I am just a daughter of two humans. I—I lived in Comraich.” My explanation is lacking. And for a second, I worry for Comraich, before I remember it is a pile of embers now. A pile of embers at his orders. “My mother’s hair was brown.”

“Comraich.” He tosses his head back and forth, seeming stumped for a moment. “That shitty timber town out east?” I say nothing. “Figures. I assume before you discovered your power you looked quite ordinary. Lifeless eyes, dead hair, both without the pigment of power. No wonder nobody thought about you twice.”

He’s not listening to me. I’m not who he thinks I am, and the thought begins to feel like panic.

“Let me spell it out for you, if I must.” He waits for me to nod. “You are a child of two worlds—and the only one lost. I know it because there are… few of us. The people who raised you, I guess, are not your true mother and father. Your true mother is Irene; she was renowned with the Fae for her healing abilities. It is they who conspired to send you away, before the new king could return from conquering the lands to the west with those filthy world-walkers and see his new child.” His resentment is palpable. “Your mother paid for it—for her insolence. For her rebellion. She paid for a long time before he killed her.”

Down is up, and up is down. My world tilts on its axis.

I would refuse to believe him if not for my questions. Didn’t I blow a group of Fomorians to chunks outside my house? Did I not fight off a Merrow, turning liquid water to blades of ice? Have I not painstakingly trained with Fionn these past few weeks, wielding a power that should not exist in me?

My mother, my mom. They are not one and the same. They exist separate from one another. Does it make sense to feel devastated, if they are both gone now? If it changes nothing?

“With that in mind, Alyx. I offer you something merciful—your life. Come home. Come back to us, and we will teach you how to control it. Your power is different from his.” He jerks his chin to where Fionn kneels. “He has nothing to offer you. Isn’t that right, Fionn?” The king waits on him, a sneer on his beautiful face.

I can’t help but look. Look into those golden eyes that held me so enraptured before I ruined it all. I look to him for answers, look to him as the leader of the Fianna. What do I do? I would not help the king. But should I pretend?

What I see in his eyes is not what I had imagined.

There are no answers there .

Only sheer contempt. Burning disgust.

His face, bloody and swollen, shows no hint of affection. This is the face that the Crows see before he buries a knife in their abdomen.

I should have seen it coming.

I know Fionn. I know how he loves to run his thumb over his knife’s blade just to reassure himself of its cutting presence. I know how he still wakes in the night, dreams of flame coming to consume him as he battles under the mounds. I know the hatred that burns slowly and then all at once in his chest. Hatred for the Fomorians, for everything they have done and will do. I know that I now represent every one of his worst fears. That I now represent the destruction of his people, the people he swore to go to the ends of every earth to avenge. That I am a direct result of the rape and destruction of his entire race.

I will spend every second for the rest of my long existence looking for a way to make those reeking parasites pay.

He had said it.

The words echo in my mind.

I should have seen it coming.

But that’s the thing about betrayal. It requires trust.

“Fucking have her for all I care. Teach her to eat souls and ruin lives,” Fionn spits the words at me, disowning me in front of our shared enemy. He turns his broken cheek to me, looking back at the ground before him. Even in his anger I see the devastation on his face. Not devastation for the loss of me. Devastation for my mother. Devastation for his people at having suffered this fate.

I’m grateful he doesn’t see how his words hit me. How they suck the air from my lungs and harden my heart. I shut down my expression before the betrayal takes over too much of my face.

“Lovely. See, Alyx. There’s nothing for you with him. Come willingly, and it will be easier—less painful—for all of us.” He awaits my response, hands clasped behind his back.

I have none.

I have nothing.

“I’ll give you some time to think,” the king says, gesturing to his guards to escort us out.