Whispers and Shadows

Chapter 9

Blue

Acornus was several thousand years old. Though no one knew his exact age, everyone knew that he’d been around far longer than anyone else alive. His life was mostly legend at this point.

He’d seen the rise and fall of many empires, and had placed the crown upon many heads. Apart from coronations, it was said he never left his tower. With so little known about the man, his appearance begged the question: why was he here and why did he want to see me of all people?

I was fully prepared to open a portal to the middle realm for a quick escape if Acornus even so much as sneezed. Propriety be damned. Not that he couldn’t follow, but… I wasn’t taking any chances.

“Sit with me, little one,” he said, and he moved to sit on the bench beneath Enolo’s statue. His movements were more spry than I imagined they should be at such an advanced age.

I hesitated, but not for long. I was smart enough to realize that when someone like Acornus bid you sit, you sat.

With a slight roll of his bony fingers he called forth a whisp of darkness. I watched as first a jagged-winged moth emerged, then another, and then another flitted out of the darkness and filled the sky above us. The moths glowed with a faint bit of fae light. Oddly macabre and beautiful.

“Now you,” he said.

The spell was a common calling-card of advanced mages, meant to display their mastery through the quantity, level of detail, and complex movements of the swarm. And even though Acornus’ swarm had quickly blocked my view of the night sky, I knew he was likely holding back.

I couldn’t match him, but I would make a good showing. I flicked my fingers, and my own cloud of moths surged out of the shadows to join his in the sky. But while his glowed darkly green, mine shone iridescent blue. It was a sign of my mixed heritage, the blessed light of the goddess suffusing every little creature.

I glanced at him, worried my impure magic would displease him. But when he tilted his head back to look at the clouds of moths above us, I got a sudden impression of satisfaction. Warmth. I looked up too, and against his dark storm my twirling blue moths looked like pinprick stars in the night sky.

“I was there the day your mother gave birth to you,” he said, breaking the quiet of the night.

My brows dipped and my heart raced, unsure of what he was saying.

He nodded slowly. “I foresaw two visions when I held you: one of fire and pain, and one of destruction.”

I swallowed hard, closing my fist into my lap. My other life; he’d seen that? He’d been there? Why had Mother never told me?

Sighing deeply, he held out a bony finger and waited. It was one of my moths that alighted on the tip of it, and I swore I could hear a smile in his tone as he spoke.

“I rejected you that day. You had too much of the light fae in you. I felt their powers all over you, and it was obvious their goddess had claimed you from the start. And in my hubris I hid just how powerful you truly were. I thought by doing so I’d spare you. Somehow.” He snorted softly.

Was he saying that I might have been taken into the arcane tower if not for the quantity of light in me? I’d always assumed that I was of such little value to the lower realm that they’d denied me my training.

He sighed. “You were the daughter of a prince, so it was risky to deny you. But it is to my everlasting shame that I did not follow your path more closely. All of Demonia suffered for my oversight.”

Sucking in a sharp breath, I finally looked at him full on. “Are you saying that—”

He shoved back his cowl and turned to me.

I’d expected nothing but a skull to stare back at me. Instead I saw the face of a surprisingly handsome man with a sharply square-cut jaw. His horns had long since turned quicksilver blue, but the blue of his irises was bright and sprinkled with hundreds of stars. His long hair was white as freshly fallen snow. He was old, but not withered and decrypt as someone his age should have been.

“Yes, little one, I remember the other world. And that night, as you lay dying, I heard you cry out.”

I held up a hand. “Wait. You heard me?”

Just how powerful was he?

“But,” I rolled my wrist, “the Dark and Light Fae are at odds with one another. We always have been. My prayer had been to the goddess, so how did you… ?” I trailed off, unable to complete the thoughts rolling in my head.

I eyed the elder mage studiously. His power was beyond any I’d been around, but nowhere near the level of a god.

My tongue burned with the need to ask him to explain himself, to tell me who he really was, but I knew I could not. Displeasing him could very well be the end of me.

I shook my head. What and who he was, was more than I was capable of focusing on at the moment, what I really wanted to know was why I’d been called to him this evening. “Elder Acornus, I must ask, do you know how I was spared when I time traveled to the past and killed the child me?”

“What do you think?” he asked cryptically.

Pulling my bottom lip between my teeth, I thought of all the many scenarios I’d played out in my head and the only one that’d ever made any sense was that the goddess had spared me.

“I,” I swallowed, “thought perhaps the goddess—”

He sniffed, and there was the subtle hint of a smile on his lips. “No. Though, perhaps she did give this old mage permission to interfere a little.”

My eyes widened and it was like all the air had suddenly expelled from my lungs. “It… it was you? But. Why?”

Why would the highest mage of the realm pull me back from death? Why would he bother? He was a worshipper of the great darkness, I was a practitioner of the light. It made no sense.

“That, my dear, is a story for another day. Suffice to say that I felt responsible for the path you had taken, and I wanted you to have another chance.”

He grinned and the moths scattered in a frenzy, their deep indigo light burning even brighter. They lit up the night in a sort of fantastical wash of deepest blues, vivid purples, electric greens before fading into colors unknown to this world.

“I did not reveal myself to you to make you fearful. I merely wish to be on equal footing with you this night. Ask me whatever you will, my daughter.”

“Why? To what end? Will you now tell the emperor that there is a traitor amongst you?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. I’ve kept my eye on you in this life. Studying you. Seeing if your plea was true. If you truly meant what you’d vowed.”

Clutching my hands in my lap, I sat perfectly still.

“And what conclusion have you come to?”

“You are once again planning to overthrow the empire.”

I dug my nails into the palm of my hands and squeezed my eyes shut. I’d not considered this possibility. I’d been found out before I even had a chance to truly enact my plan for revenge. What if he was my enemy after all? What if he demanded I no longer alter this timeline? Could I back down?

I wasn’t sure I could.

Not even for the Darkness himself.

Tossing my moth off his hand, he turned to me and grabbed my hand in my lap. He gave me a gentle, bony squeeze.

“You are right. Claude’s reign must soon end, for the sake of all Demonia. I’ve always known Mikael was the rightful successor. He failed last time and now I know why: he did not have you, and thus he could never have succeeded.”

“I am not so powerful,” I said.

“I know what you did for your father. All that you sacrificed to seat him upon that throne.”

“Why didn’t you stop me? If you knew what would come from Father’s reign, why didn’t you stop me then?”

He shrugged and then sighed, releasing his hold on me as he stared broodingly into the night. “Though I am powerful, I am not omniscient. Would that I were. My arrogance led you down a path I was unable to stop. The wheels of time had been set into motion and there was nothing even I could do. Fate is a fickle beast, she enjoyed watching me suffer for my hubris. But when I heard your prayer, I knew then I could set things right. I had to make sure this time, you see. I too learned from my past.”

“What you speak of is treason,” I said. “No mage has ever turned against the empire. If the tower discovers you’ve meddled, they might attempt a coup. You could lose everything.”

“I’ve seen the rise and fall of many nations. At the very core of us we are no different. Beings seem to never learn the lessons of the past, sometimes rules are meant to be broken. Do you understand, Blue?”

Not. At. All. I was not ashamed to own it either. He seemed to speak of matters well beyond my own comprehension. I felt as though he was speaking of riddles that not even Prince Mikael would be able to decipher.

“The mages were created to serve the land and its people, not a bloodline. Somewhere along the way we forgot that simple truth and we became blind protectors of an increasingly mad bloodline. At the end of the day I take full responsibility for where we are now.”

The dancing lights of the moths somehow eased my mind.

I looked at him, his kindly blue eyes stared back at me.

“When the time comes, Blue, I will back you. I vow it. Know that the Arcana will stand beside you at the end.”

He did not make his vow to the darkness that binds, that was the usual oath said to relate sincerity in the matter. It was also a binding pact, sealed by magic when uttered. Elder Acornus was like nothing I’d expected. Kind, yet arrogant. Meddlesome, yet also a bystander.

Wetting my lips, I dipped my head.

“You’ve already altered the events of this timeline significantly, so I cannot tell you if you will succeed or not. But your path is righteous. Protect the child at all costs; he is the key.”

I blinked; of course he knew of Erene, but hearing anyone openly speak of the boy made my blood run like ice through my veins.

Elder Acornus stood, replacing his cowl. His eyes once more burned with dark flame. Reaching out a bony hand, he gently scraped his knuckles down my cheek. “The blessings of the Darkness rest upon you.”

I shuddered. Acornus had almost sounded commanding, imperious at that moment. Not priestly at all. I heard the eternal in him; as though Balmoor himself had spoken directly to me.

I felt the infusion of darkness fill me. But it wasn’t pain, instead, it was an embracing warmth that almost brought tears to my eyes. I looked up at him.

“You look so much like her. I see her light in your eyes and it’s beautiful.”

I cocked my head. “My mother?”

He framed my face in his bony palm, almost like a lover would. Staring deeply into my eyes something I could not name trembled powerfully through me. Like the beginning and the end and everything else in between. For a moment I could swear I almost felt the very heartbeat of Demonia itself ring in my ears.

Without another word the grand elder departed. No trace of him remained. A cold wind rolled through the tips of my hair, lifting strands about my face.

A dark moth landed on my knee, and I watched as it slowly turned to ash, scattering in the nightshade-laced breeze.