Her senses had prepared her for what laid ahead before the scene unfurled before her eyes.
Though the stains had seeped into the dirt floor, a pungent smell still lingered thick in the air. Brimstone and copper, the smell of ancient Medeis blood. At least a handful of all three Medeis kinds had spilled their blood on the very ground they stood on. Unlike the floors they had passed, not a single shelf or monstrous plant was erected in the premise.
A single bark-bounded volume was perched upon a stand of oak that grew out of the wall of limestone. The way its roots climbed the uneven structure reminded her of the scene out of the tapestries she had seen. Yet she could not read a single word from it.
“The Fulgels?” she repeated after Cornelius, forcing her eyes from the inscriptions glinting silver.
Cornelius nodded, gesturing for her to take her place beside him.
The faded lines of gold printed onto its dog-eared pages were the branches of the Tree of Life she had seen. She trailed after his finger, narrowing her eyes at the bits of parchment that remained from a page reaped out of the bundle.
“Have you heard of the Maganti Household?” he asked out of the blue.
Rowan felt a sharp jolt of heart. She could barely nod in reply. Her senses numbed and her skin burned. It was a name all too familiar to her. A name that felt more repulsing than the thick scent of iron and mould that lingered in the stagnant air.
“I was but a toddler back then,” Cornelius recounted, tracing along the edge of the brittle page without looking at her. “Standing right here in this very room, watching my father work his magic on the walls while mother worked on the soil below.”
He casted his glance at the room around them. His gaze caressed each detail with such tenderness Rowan could not help but hold her breath, afraid she might shatter the brittle moment.
“Walter and all from the Cellarius household were here too. It was fascinating, watching the roots come alive under his fingers, the tree grew by feet in mere seconds. It seemed impossible that anything would ever go wrong then.”
A pause and the frown between his brows deepened.
“Until they came.”
He had his back turned to her, his head threw back as he regarded the vines that had grown in place of dark branches. Lost in a nightmare only he could see.
“The Magantis were only of lower Fulgels back then. They came to us, hoping for more but their affinity for magick could only afford them much. There was nothing my father could had done for them.”
His fingers hovered over the remains of what had been forcibly reaped, trembling as he snapped his eyes shut. The thick fans of his lashes quivered against his pale skin. Faint shadows danced across his cheeks, darkening his weary features. “One of them snuck in one night and found the hidden page within the forbidden volume.”
“What was in it…?” Rowan’s voice came out in a soft whimper, her throat tight at the sight of the Duke’s darkening features.
“The weakness of Maguses.” For split moments, Cornelius’s voice broke but he recomposed himself fast enough. His features hardened with anguish as he continued, forcing himself from the hell that made his memories.
“A Magus’s magick lies in the contract with the elements that rest in his eyes. Whoever ingested the eye of a Magus would become the bearer of the contract and thus, inheriting the direct magic of said Magus.”
Rowan’s breath caught. Their eyes. Her brother’s hollowed eyes, the parallel lines of silver that ran down his cheeks—it was all too fresh a memory.
“None would’ve expected Fulgels could kill before then. We’ve all thought they were a peaceful kind, their love abundant. It was all too sudden, none of us could react fast enough…”
A look of pure loss crossed his face. He turned his gaze to her, seeing but not seeing her. “I had to watch my brothers fall one by one…the look in their eyes…their pleas for help… I could still hear them in my head till this day.”
A sense of recognition bloomed within her. They were the same. Broken and…afraid. Just as she had thought herself a jinx, Cornelius saw himself as the bringer of death. They had both lost and forced to bear witness to a loss that haunted their every awake moments.
“My powers awakened then. A snap in my ears before the shadows took over my mind. By the time I came to myself again, the trees had all dried up, bodies piled and…another with my face was there.”
“Another you?” Rowan asked, her mind flashed to the creature from the night before.
He nodded, expression shadowed. “He—it…I never knew it was in me. All my life, I’ve been told that the day would come when I could wield the magick of life. No one would have predicted that when I did, it came in hand with the magick of death.”
“But what about the wooden carvings that serve you? Weren’t they a part of life magick?”
He shook his head. “They were only marionettes embedded with shadows, vessels for the darkness that roamed the land. I am sure you have seen the forest on your way here?”
Flashes of the valley of death surfaced in her mind. Dark waters of red and silver flowed between dead trunks and the smell of death had rotted into the air. It once puzzled her how a Magus from the lineage of life magick wielders could survive in a place without life. Now, it was all too clear.
“They weren’t so before the Purge,” he swallowed, as if the mere act of speaking drained him, glancing at his hands like they were cursed. “It was my magick that did it to them. That creature…the other me…he was a manifestation of the dark magick in me.”
“It wiped out the Magantis...” Cornelius gritted his teeth as he clenched his fists. His skin turned pale and lifeless, drained of the silvery blood in them. “…and all the Nyphilles servants…” he trailed off and added in a broken whisper, “Walter died protecting me…from my own magick.”
Rowan could only watch him with unblinking eyes.
For the briefest moments, Rowan was propelled back to the sea of flames in Lockhart Castle. Their screams screeched in her ears, spirits of the Fulgels that were slayed still hovered before her eyes.
“It wasn’t your fault…” she found herself saying despite knowing too well it would not reach him. It wasn’t her fault, she knew. But being the sole survivor, her heart had never allowed her to truly feel the words. The way Cornelius looked at her told her he shared her thoughts. “Is that why you carved them out of wood again?”
Try as she might to wrap her mind around the fact, she still could not imagine how he had managed to make them the way they were. Except for the lack of life magick pulsing through them, it was impossible to tell one from another.
Now she knew, each detail put into every one of them reflected his guilt. As if he wished for them to be here still, that his will was strong enough to carve each faces deep into his memory.
“It was all I could do for them.”
Silent spell was casted over them, trapping them each in their own living hell. Rowan felt chilled to the bones. For over a century, she had thought herself useless, tormented by her own inability to bring an end to her enemies. But Cornelius? All these years, he had been tormenting himself with a Keep filled with nightmares of his past—as if atoning for a sin that was not his to begin with.
A hand involuntarily found its way to his shoulders. Under her fingers, the large man’s shoulders sagged, defeated. Trembling as if he was but a lost child finally found among the wilderness.
The shadows around them quivered, flowing steadily through his open palms, the shades of his eyes turned lighter with each passing moment. “There is something I have to tell you, love.”
He locked his gaze with her then. “If I had known one of the Maganti escaped then, I would’ve tracked him down…then all these wouldn’t have happened.”
“What do you…mean?” Rowan inhaled, her hand stilled. The struggle in his voice forced her heart up to her throat.
“That missing page…” he sighed. “It’s with the King.”
Rowan’s eyes widened.
“Davor Lockhart hadn’t become the King then,” Cornelius explained, gently pried himself off her comforting hand and paced the space as if doing so soothed the nerves in him. “Pilleur Maganti gave it to him as a tribute, gained his trust and convinced him to join him in his twisted pursuit. If it wasn’t for that stolen archive, they wouldn’t have dared to go against the flame Magus.”
Rowan’s heart squeezed hard, forcing her to shut her eyes momentarily. There had only been one fire wielding Magus since the Purge.
Lucero.
His was a life of miracle, a Magus born of higher Fulgels acknowledged by the rare fire sprites. But just like the flame from a candle, his life extinguished as fast.
She remembered the look in the old fox’s eyes as he swallowed an orb of her brother’s and spared another for the Maganti Elder. An unnamed flame burned in her throat. Such unfeeling cruelty could only be of a demon.
“That bastard took his eyes before he killed him…” Rowan’s voice hitched and her hands shook by her sides. “…his own nephew.”
Her heart squeezed her breathless. Her uncle’s abrupt change in eye colour, how the Magantis had always had the lightest of hair among Fulgels… it all make sense now. They were the ones who had caused the Purge, the ones who had murdered Cornelius’s family and eventually hers.
The sense of betrayal loomed larger than it did when she was made to witness her brother’s death.
The Nyphilles were only scapegoats.
All for power.
“How could he…?”
She felt Cornelius’s arms around her then, pulling her into his chest before she felt the cold droplets trickling down her cheeks. She was…crying? She held her breath and tried to reign it all back in, knowing the simplest move would cause it all to spill.
Yet, when Cornelius stroked her hair, murmuring words of comfort, all her restraints broke free. Rivulets of tears cascaded in streams, unstoppable as it slowly morphed into soft wailings. The lost girl in her floated to the surface, drowning her with a lifetime’s worth of sorrow.
“Hush...” he cooed against her wild curls of ink and placed his lips lightly to her forehead. His hold on her tightened as if he was afraid she would disappear if he were to let go. “I will make this right for you. Tis I swear on my life magick.”
For a whole century since the loss of her brother, Rowan had not allowed herself to cry. Crying was weakness, something she did not need or allowed. But with Cornelius Darkwoods…all her logics, all her senses, all her restrains seemed to fade into non-existence in front of him.
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