Maeve
Mom stands with her arms crossed on the balcony overlooking the ballroom in our castle. In the city below, the once beautiful, tropical landscape is cast in shadow. The crystal bridges lined with greenery are now painted in banners of black. A field of flowers stretches beyond the gates of the castle, left by mourners. Left for my sister.
Veiled Valley has never been this quiet and dark. The sun has barely shown itself since Brie left us. The castle itself has barely stirred in that time. It’s magic just… can’t handle Brie’s loss. It mourns with the rest of us, sometimes sending a low, choked groan through the corridors that make the lights flicker, like the magic is crying.
“I’m not ready,” Mom says quietly as she watches the women below mingle in small circles, most, if not all of them, dressed in dark fabric–mourning gowns.
“I’ll tell them we’re waiting. It's not a problem,” I reply, gliding to her side, reaching to lay my hand over hers as she grips the balcony, but she turns and walks away, disappearing behind a curtain.
My chest quakes while I watch the curtain fall back into place. I’ve never seen Mom like this. Yes, she’s an anxious person by nature but… seeing her shattered is…
I blink away tears and turn back to the group of high-ranking ladies, all of whom have gathered to offer their help with a memorial service for their princess. It’s been over a month, after all.
I take my time walking down the steps to the ballroom. I only have to say three or four words before the women bow and take their leave. No one steps up to me to speak privately or offer me condolences. In fact, everyone gives me a wide berth, some glancing wearily over their shoulders in what I can only describe as fear.
The doors shut, closing me in with my own grief once again.
I’ve never felt alone in my life until now.
The corridors are quiet. Gray daylight slips between the folds of the curtains. Everything is dark, gray, and damp as rain pours and thunder booms overhead, like the Goddess Herself is rejecting Her decision to take Brie from us. I find myself in Brie’s room, pacing in a circle along the walls, running my fingertips over her things. Her books, her skincare products, and little knick-knacks. The magazines she likes to hide between the mattress and the bed frame–magazines that said such awful things about her. She still read them, though. She drank that criticism in, turning her hard and icy until she believed herself unlovable unless she did something worthy.
Like marrying a fucking Alpha.
I sit on the edge of the bed, grabbing a notebook off the bedside table, flipping through it and finding it totally empty. I smirk. That’s such a Brie thing to do. She seems like the kind of person who would write in a journal, but she doesn’t–not about herself. Nope. I glance at her desk, at the piles of textbooks pertaining to history and law, and the scattered notebooks with so much wear she had to tape the spines multiple times to keep the pages together.
I lift a finger, and a pen goes whizzing off her desk, landing in my open palm. I cross my legs, sucking in a breath as I wrack my mind for all the names of the men–the Alphas and their heirs–who ever rejected her.
I don’t think I’ll kill them. That sounds a little… extreme, doesn’t it? I mean, I want to. I want to hurt each and every one of them… slowly. Painfully. I want them to live with that pain so that someone in the world might know how it really feels to lose her because they had no idea what they were giving up, did they?
I scribble the names then rip the paper, folding it neatly and stuffing it in the front pocket of my jeans. A slow rush of air flutters through the room before settling as quickly as it came. At first, I think the scent I’m smelling is just… Brie’s things. Her warm, soft, clean scent is everywhere here but… this is different.
My skin prickles as I rise, glancing around like she’s going to jump out from behind the curtains or out of her closet to say, “Surprise! I fooled you. I’ve never been missing, you idiot!” But…
I feel her. I swear on the Goddess Herself… I feel Brie.
I don’t think. My mind goes blank as my powers erupt around me in a whirl of red light and stars. Paper catches in the storm, swirling around the room as I’m sucked into oblivion, into darkness, where I float in a vat of nothingness, where time stands still.
When my powers fade, and the light creeps in again, I’m standing in an apartment in a towering high rise overlooking Crescent City, the kingdom of Crescent Falls stretching out all around me in a shimmer of blinking lights against the starlight overhead, through the glass box where Blake hoards himself away.
A blue fabric sectional stretches along pale gray tile floors. A large television blocks an entire corner of the room where a rather violent video game is sending shockwaves through the apartment, the floor beneath me vibrating.
The dark-haired man sitting on the couch has his back to me, resting his elbows on his knees. He doesn’t stop the game or look in my direction.
I look around at the spotless apartment. It’s clean. So clean I could eat off the floor.
“What do you want, Maeve?” Blake grumbles, his voice deep and dry–monotone–not a flicker of emotion behind the words.
“Where have you been? You never came to Maatua. Nor Moonrise. I know you haven’t said a Goddess damned word to your own aunt and uncle about the loss of Logan.”
“Why would I?” His fingers fly over the controls, his glittering violet eyes reflecting the game as I round the sectional, tracing my fingers over the top. His eyes weren’t always that color. They used to be a dark, stormy blue, like his father’s. Unlike some of his siblings who were born with eyes the color of a pale purple lilac, Blake’s… changed, and now radiates power he can’t turn off. It’s unsettling looking at him, honestly.
He’s handsome, sure. The most, if I’m being honest. He’s like me–tall with dark hair and chiseled, sharp facial features. We take after our great-grandfather, Maddox. In fact, I’ve seen pictures of Maddox in his youth… Blake is his spitting image–except for those eyes.
There’s a reason Mystics wear masks. They’re frightening creatures. Looking into their eyes is like seeing the future against your will, or seeing the deepest, darkest parts of yourself reflected in full color.
Sarah is a Mystic too, but Blake?
He’s… a fucking god, and he knows it.
“Turn that shit off before I break your TV,” I growl.
He finally looks up at me, running his tongue along his lower lip before he smirks, rolling his eyes back to his game. “What do you want? Is this just a friendly visit, cousin?”
“We’re not friends.”
“Then why are you here?” He shuts off the game, tossing the controller to the end of the couch and slouches, stretching his arms behind his head. “To chastise me for not blubbering with grief with the rest of the family?”
“I called for you. I called for you to come help. Your mother couldn’t find Brie and Logan–”
“Because they’re dead.”
I arch a brow. “You’d know. Are they dead, Blake? What have you seen?”
He searches my eyes, the corner of his mouth lifting into a cruel smile. I wish I knew what fucked him up all those years ago. He’d wanted to train in Moonrise with the Mystics so badly. I remember it being a point of contention between him and his parents when they refused, telling him he needed to wait until he was older, but then he started targeting his siblings, stretching those developing powers on his own, and Sarah and Sydney had no choice.
Blake is… incredibly powerful.
He’s the only person in the entire world who would be able to match me, power for power. One day, he’ll be king of Crescent Falls while I rule Eastonia.
If those kingdoms ever go to war against each other… it will be because of us. We’ve never gotten along. Ever.
“I haven’t seen anything because I haven’t looked.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to glimpse my cousin dead on the ocean floor, being eaten by crabs–”
“She’s not dead,” I assert, pointing a finger at him. My voice trembles as emotion I’m desperately trying to keep tamped down echoes to the surface. “I felt her, Blake. I need you to look. I need you to read between the realms for me.”
“No.”
“I didn’t ask if you would,” I snarl. “I’m demanding it. Find her!”
He rises, towering over me by more than a foot. I’m not afraid of him. I’ll topple this entire skyscraper if he so much as moves in my direction aggressively, and he knows it.
“You need to accept what happened so that your parents can move on.” His voice doesn’t vibrate, but his eyes change, going a shade darker, some of the power fizzling out. He looks more like a person all of the sudden and not a demon from my nightmares, but I’m not backing down.
“She’s not dead. I don’t care what you think. I don’t care what anyone else thinks, especially you, you fucking bastard! Help. Me. Right now!”
“No.”
“You care this little for Brie? You loved her. I know you did. She was the only person you truly ever cared about.”
Blake’s mouth tightens as he blinks, his expression softening to grief for a split second before he turns his features to ice-cold steel. “Shut the fuck up, and get out of my apartment.”
“Fuck you! You’re a monster–you always have been. This is my sister! And I feel her, Blake, I swear to the Goddess and the old gods. I swear on Isla and Maddox’s graves–”
“I do not take looking between realms to read the stars lightly,” he grinds out, his tone edged with fury. “You cannot ask me to do so. You can’t, Maeve. I’m not afraid of you. I’m not going to let you bully me in my own home. Swear all you want. Spirit away, to the depths of the sea, if you feel that she’s alive so strongly!”
My nostrils flare, desperation clouding my senses. “Help me. Please, Blake.” Tears well in my eyes for the first time since the day we found out Brie’s ship sank. I haven’t let myself cry since then. “Please. Please. Just try. Just try to locate her. That’s all I’m asking.”
He takes a step toward me, his shoulders rigid and jaw flexed. “I won’t risk seeing something else while going on a wild goose-chase for you, Maeve.”
“Is that what you’re afraid of? Seeing something you won’t like? Using your fucking powers like you’re meant to? For fuck’s sake, Blake. You have to try. If not for me, then for my mom. Please.”
“I can’t.” He turns away from me.
“She–I think she found her mate shortly before she left for Maatua.”
He stops, slowly looking at me over his shoulder.
I exhale, wringing my hands as I continue, “She was acting so strange the day before she left. She smelled different, too. You know how people smell different when they find their mates? I don’t know how else to explain it, but she wasn’t herself. Then she just… left. And for the past month, I’ve been thinking that… if she were alive, and she had a mate, that would be… she could finally be happy and feel like she belongs somewhere, you know? I think me closing in on my maturity and ascension has been hard on her. She’s–she puts so much of herself into our family and has never, ever, had anything for herself.”
“She’s been your little assistant, and you miss that,” he sneers.
“That’s not what it was,” I retort, but his bitter laugh bounces off the sterile, dark gray plaster walls.
“You are blind to what Brie was doing for you, aren’t you? Her little marriage scheme? I can’t be the only one who knew the real reason she was practically begging every Alpha she met to marry her.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She saw something no one else did. Powerless as she may be, she noticed something even the Mystics in Moonrise couldn’t have deciphered… and that’s the rift your upcoming crowning is going to cause in Eastonia.”
I feel my cheeks burning with righteous fury and disbelief. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He laughs again, bitterly, his eyes glowing that intense violet once more. “She wanted to marry someone powerful who could throw their support behind you so her kingdom didn’t topple the second you sat on your pretty, golden throne. You didn’t realize it because your head is so far up your own ass that you’re blinded by your own ego and prowess! You are not as untouchable as you think you are.” He steps toward me again, closing in on me. “And you know what, Maeve? I am going to help you. I’ll show you what you think you want to see. Because you deserve it, whatever it is. But I swear to the Goddess, if you force me to look upon her dead, decaying body, I’ll kill you.”
He grabs my hands, squeezing tight as his eyes shine with the brightest light–starlight, raw and unfiltered.
It only takes a few seconds. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. Dread washes through me as his scornful expression shifts to sudden confusion.
“Blake? Blake, what do you see?”
His grip on my hand tightens as he says, “Take us to Veiled Valley, now.”