Twisted is the Crown, page 4
With a heavy exhale, he decided it was likely both and that it wouldn’t stop him.
Pulling on the soul of the wraith beneath his skin, he used the madness of a rage thief gone rogue to cover him in shadows as he strode for the gate. There was no lock, no latch, no opening. It didn’t matter.
Lazarus reached up and grasped the heavy metal in both fists, using his strength to lift himself off the ground and clear over the metal spikes. As he dropped toward the ground, he felt a slight resistance, followed by a tear. He glanced back at the wad of black fabric mounted on a spike, whipping back and forth in the frozen wind like a flag of death.
Lazarus sighed, his attention dropping to the ragged tear in his cloak from the waist below. Two skinny strips of black barely touched his boots. The rest of it hanging on the iron gate. He plucked the fabric from the barb and turned to survey the side of the building. Straight up with no real handholds or ways to climb, he resorted to walking down the side. Grass couldn’t grow here in this frozen wasteland, but trees did, and the twigs that resulted snapped underfoot as he trekked the length of the house, pausing around back.
Voices drifted over him, familiar, though he couldn’t understand the words. He slowly rounded the corner, pulling on the wraith’s soul and manipulating the shadows to conceal him.
Light spewed forth from a window and he moved to stand before it in the quickly darkening night. Standing not three feet from the pane, Lazarus peered in.
His blood heated. His pulse quickened.
What was she doing with them?
Twisted Memories
“For every bit that Lady Fortune is fickle, his Lord Ramiel is just—but never merciful.”
— Quinn Darkova, vassal of House Fierté, fear twister, white raksasa
* * *
Ice nipped at her bare hands but she hardly noticed. Once upon a time the cold was painful. It made her burn from the inside out. It suffocated her. Confined her. Until the day she was sold like a common whore. Quinn stopped before her childhood home. The pale walls were ghostly in the night’s light, but there would be no whispers from the dead. No. Everything that went on in this wretched place stayed here.
She paused, the memories assaulting her like a physical blow. Images of her youth flashed before her. Glimpses of little silver-haired girls and white robes stained red. Echoes from the shouting followed her still. A chill ran up her spine as the day it all came to an end pushed forward in her mind. She stalled, letting those last moments wash over her once more.
Reliving the pain because the hurt kept her cold. So cold she burned, but as she’d learned that day—some things were worse than the cold.
Quinn had been hiding for days. Her last outburst had changed things. She’d known it in her bones as surely as she knew the sun would set. Her mother had been quiet in her presence every time they spoke. Her words stilted. Stiff. She avoided her father entirely every chance she got. He often stayed late at temple or meeting with the Council, and that made it easier.
Simpler.
She stayed in her room as much as she could. Keeping anyone and everyone away. Not that anyone was coming to see her after she did what she did.
Quinn had always been strong. Her magic the purest and also the vilest in all her family. It was their secret. Their shame. She’d been seeing the dark wisps as long as she could remember, but lately it was more than that. She smelled them. She felt them. They called to her like a babe did its mother. In the dark when she was alone, she liked to play with them because they didn’t judge her. They didn’t hate. They didn’t throw rocks at her or threaten to drown her in the ocean for her black magic.
She’d heard what other Maji’s magic was like. That they needed to reach for it and the power of the gods would be bestowed on them to do great things. Quinn never had to reach for hers, though. In moments of pain it came to her, seeking her out, giving her comfort as nothing else would.
That’s what it had done that day.
She didn’t realize that in her comfort, other people would hurt. She didn’t know it caused pain like no other.
She just wanted her own torment to stop—but then the screaming started.
So, in her room she stayed, because there she was safe. Alone. She couldn’t hurt anyone nor be hurt. She had the wisps for company, and while it saddened her for the friend she had to keep away, it was better than the alternative.
Her tiny hand curled and uncurled. The black strands rising. Twining. They slithered over her skin and the hairs on her arm rose in response. A chill crept up her spine as she sensed dread coming from downstairs. Quinn lifted her head and stared at the door, debating whether she should venture out.
The choice was made for her.
“Quinn,” her father called. His voice was not soft, but it wasn’t hard either. That chill crept higher, the hairs on her neck tingling. Even as a girl no older than thirteen, she knew when she should worry. “Come down for dinner, Daughter.”
She swallowed hard. To refuse his order would incur his wrath. Her gaze trailed over the wood paneled floors and toward the long branch of ashwood in the corner of her room. There was nothing next to it. Nothing on it. The singular branch was near two inches thick and four feet long.
And when she disobeyed an order . . .
Quinn swallowed again. She took her beatings in silence and kept her head held high, but just this once she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to test the boundaries because she’d pushed them too far already. Broke them. Shattered them.
She was scared that those splintered pieces would cut her should she get too close to it again, and that when she bled, she might not stop.
Quinn pushed her legs over the edge of her bed. Her feet were bare and the floor cold to the touch, but she hardly noticed it at the time. Her pale arms wrapped around herself as she went to her door and twisted the handle. It swung open and the only thing that carried up the stairs was fear.
She felt it in her veins as she took every silent step toward the stairwell. She pushed it down, despite her gut telling her she was going the wrong way. That she should run. Quinn did what every good daughter did, and she listened to her father.
But when she reached the end of the stairwell, it was not her father waiting for her.
“Who are—”
The words she was asking didn’t even register before they tugged at her arms. Three burly men, stinking like fermented ale and day-old piss, surrounded her. The black tendrils leapt to her defense. They tried to protect her, but unlike her family, she didn’t know how to use her magic. She was never taught. Only shamed. Only shunned.
The black magic in her veins tried to stop them, but ultimately it failed.
Manacles were placed on her wrists. The stone on them glowed red.
When that couldn’t contain her dark power, they tried for her legs, and a true panic consumed. “Stop,” she screamed. “Please!”
They didn’t stop as they grabbed both of her arms. One of the men crumpled to his knees. Through gritted teeth, he said, “Hurry.”
The third man did. He crouched down. Larger, more menacing chains in his hands. Over his head she saw them. Her mother and father.
“Mother,” she called out. “Please don’t let them take me. Please—I promise I’ll be good. I promise!” She screamed at the first touch of iron against her ankle. It was a feeling she would become well acquainted with. The second man holding her dropped to his knees as well. The breath hissed between his teeth as the tendrils went after him. Like a rabid dog loyal only to its master, they laid into him with a ferocity that not even power-stripping manacles could contain.
“You brought this on yourself,” her mother said.
“I’m sorry,” she cried. Quinn’s eyes watered. “I didn’t mean to hurt her. I just wanted it to stop. I just got so angry when she told me about—” Iron wrapped around her other ankle and the tendrils dispersed. Like smoke in the air they drifted off and she couldn’t catch them. Her only friend in the darkness was gone.
She reached for the power inside her, but something was stopping her.
A wall so thick, so tall, she couldn’t go around it—her power was caged.
She couldn’t hold back the sob as they placed one more manacle on her. Iron two inches thick wrapped around her throat. The lock clicked and the metal scraped as the man in front of her stood. She’d never forget his eyes. They were blue, like her own; like her families—like N’skara.
Blue as the ocean. Blue as the ice. Blue like sin.
People thought that black was the color of corruption, but they were wrong.
All things corrupt in the world were tinged with blue.
He lifted the chain and yanked once. She fell to her knees on the white marble.
“Thank you,” her father said. “Now as promised . . .”
She felt the first blow the hardest. Through watery vision she looked up at him.
Percinius Darkova. Her father. The man that had raised her.
“Why?” It was the only thing she would get to ask, as the next blow struck her mouth and she tasted blood.
“You’re vile,” he said. His fist struck again.
“Evil,” he continued. Again.
“Twisted.” Again.
Over and over he hit her. The punches blurred together. So did the blood. Snot ran down her face and she’d stopped crying somewhere along the way.
“Hey now—” one of the men said. “You sold her, and we promised you your kicks because it makes them more compliant in the long run, but we need to keep her alive.”
The punches stopped, but the pain didn’t. Her stomach ached deeply. Breathing sent sharp pains into her sides. Every part of her face hurt. She couldn’t see out her left eye. She could only make out distorted images on her right. The slavers that took her had to carry her after that. They smuggled her onto a ship and dumped her in the cargo hold.
It was only in the coming days that she’d learn why her father had been in so many Council meeting those last days. The slavers had been invited ashore by her parents, and though the Council denied them the right to sell, they got what they came for.
An N’skari fear twister too young to know the power she held.
A child that for the first time in her life was completely and utterly powerless.
She learned in the coming weeks the blessing that was the cold. The power to be numb, to be silent, to be as unforgiving as the winter she’d known her whole life.
That cold inside is what kept her alive. The burn it created is what kept her going.
And now, she’d returned to finish what they started.
Quinn strode up the front steps to the door. The last time she’d seen this door was over the shoulder of a stranger as he carried her away in the dead of night. Today she came back of her own volition.
Quinn took a deep breath, knowing that at least she was ready.
Then she lifted her hand and knocked twice.
The Dark Inside
“Even the damned once had the innocence of a babe, just as the good hold a seed of darkness in them too.”
— Quinn Darkova, vassal of House Fierté, fear twister, white raksasa, second daughter of the Darkova Household
* * *
Quinn trailed the tips of her fingers over the straight-back lounge her mother always entertained from. The fireplace roared nearly as loud as the wind, but that was a distant thing compared to the subtle rage that pounded through her veins. She no longer had a heated anger toward her parents; that fire had died long ago. Instead it was the ashy remains that froze over that plagued her now. An anger so cold, a fury so succinct, that the edge of her blade was dull by comparison.
She’d used that violent fervor to hone her body and her mind and her magic—all for this day.
Yet, as her parents stood across from her, their expressions as uncaring as the winter night—she found herself struggling to maintain that element of normalcy. The slight fidgets and minor quirks were what made people at ease. Made them comfortable. She’d learned in this very house how to manipulate reactions with her body, even when her mind would never, and could never, work the same as theirs.
“What do you want, Quinn?” Percinius asked, seeing through the thinly veiled attempt that her dark emotions were making it hard to keep contained.
“A decent family, a thicker cloak, maybe hot dinner and a man to please me.” She tapped her chin and said, “But alas, I’m only going to get three of those.”
Her father’s jaw tensed, his lips pushing together.
“I will not ask again,” he dared to threaten.
“Alright,” she replied, equal amount of ice entering her tone. She came around the front of the lounge to stand not five feet from the people that birthed her, that raised her, and ultimately, cast her aside for something she couldn’t control. No, that wasn’t quite right, but it was close enough. “Where’s my sister?” she asked.
Without pausing to think, her father replied, “Loralye has been married, and now has a house of her own.”
“Well, then, if she’s already married, let’s pray that the gods are either kind or intelligent—either will do—and she never begets a child of her own to treat as poorly as you two have,” Quinn replied. Percinius’ eyes flashed, but it was Ethel that spoke.
“How dare you—”
“Tell it as it is?” Quinn said. She strode forward, the tips of her boots only inches from their sloped wooden shoes. Her chin tilted up and she turned from her father, who wasn’t much larger than her anymore—to her mother who she’d grown half a head taller than. “You may have the rest of them fooled into thinking that you were the loving, doting parents to two highborn daughters, but I know the truth of what you really are.” She leaned forward and lifted a hand to brush down her mother’s cheek.
Ethel flinched, and Quinn didn’t even possess the feeling to be hurt by that.
Not anymore.
“Spare me the lesson in propriety and manners. I came for my sister. Where is she?” Black tendrils wafted off her finger, gently caressing her mother’s pale cheek. Fear stirred at her touch and Ethel shuddered. Percinius spoke.
“Loralye—”
“I don’t want to know about that cunnus,” she snapped. Percinius raised his arm sharply, intending to backhand her. Quinn’s free hand came up and her fingers wrapped around his wrist, nails biting into the thin, aging flesh. Her eyes flashed an iridescent blue as she let a fraction of her hatred show through as she gazed upon her father. “You sold a thirteen-year-old girl to slave traders. I wasn’t strong enough to fight back then. I am now.” Crimson gathered around her nails as they broke the skin. If he felt pain, Percinius didn’t show it. “And I would think twice, if I were you, before raising your hand to me again, Father,” she spat the word at his feet and dropped both hands, stepping away.
“It seems the rumors we’d heard of the slavemasters down south weren’t true if they haven’t managed to beat that evil out of you,” he replied icily.
She smiled, but there was no joy in it.
Only cruelty.
“No more than you yourself could,” she replied. “Next time you attempt to strike me, I’ll remove a limb.”
Ethel gasped, but that glint in Percinius’ gaze only deepened. They thought her evil for the magic that chose her. Damnable, even. They were highborn after all. Quinn saw the secrets and the desires that hid in the shadows, though. She might be a dark Maji, and even a spiteful woman, but at least she admitted what she was, unabashedly.
Unlike the abusive father and cowardly, neurotic mother she had.
Oh no, they’d never admit to the evil that existed in their hearts.
Her blood was just as red, splattered on the white marble floor as it was down south, dripping from the wooden slave posts.
“Loralye is the only sister you’ve had and ever will have,” Percinius said through gritted teeth after a heavy moment.
Quinn tilted her head. The blood congealing around her cuticles. “You want to play pretend?” she asked. “Alright, then where is your servant girl? You know the one I mean—she looks strikingly similar in many ways to the woman that birthed her.” Quinn’s focus found Ethel with a concentrated intention.
They exchanged a look, and while it was short, there was no denying the singular emotion that ran through them both. She could see, feel, and smell it on their skin.
Fear.
“We don’t have a servant,” Ethel said eventually. Quinn narrowed her eyes, her patience growing thin. Lazarus or one of the others were bound to notice her missing soon, and she wasn’t quite ready to tell them the whole of what needed to be done or what had already been done.
“Where is Risk?” she asked, her tone breaking a little on her sister’s name. The only sister she would recognize in her heart.
“Mariska died.”
It was all he said, but those words were the very words that sealed his fate. Those words as they fell from her father’s lips were the very grave he would be buried in. Quinn’s vision bled red for a brief moment and shadows began to take shape. Creatures of fear brought forth from the most depraved parts of her souls started to take shape.
Quinn clenched her fingers, biting the inside of her cheek. She tasted blood and it held her together for the moment. Her gaze grew cold, harder than even the stone from which the temples of the gods had been cut.
“Died?” She repeated the word slowly, as if tasting it upon her tongue.
Her mother slowly nodded as her father stared on, his expression detached.
“Died,” he repeated. Her eyes narrowed.
“How?” Quinn asked. Noting the tremble to her mother’s form. Something about this didn’t seem right. Didn’t line up with the parents she remembered. “If she’s really dead, then tell me how she died.”
