Blood Ties

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

        Star absently stared down at her bound up hands, her eyes unfocused and blank. Her thoughts swirled with a thousand different things, all of them hopeless, and she wanted to scream.

        The door to the Desiderium was locked behind her, with some sort of spell to open it, but she could care less. After her hysterical performance earlier, she wasn’t eager to lay eyes upon the tiara again.

        Coming out of her troubled musings, she raised her gaze to meet Marco’s cloudy eyes, a weak, lopsided smile coming to her face. “Sorry. About earlier.”

        He nodded in recognition, but for once he did not reapply his calm mask. Instead, he closed his eyes, his face grim and strained and sad. His mouth set, he took a deep, shuddering breath, and turned away from the fire.

        “What did you see, when you touched the glass?” Star pressed on, forcing him to react.

        “It doesn’t matter what I saw,” he replied in a hollow tone, “it was wrong.” But a tear slid down his face, startling her. “So wrong.”

        Heaviness descended upon her chest, and after a pause she whispered, “I think I know what the word Desiderium actually means.”

        A painful sort of hope appeared on Marco’s face as he asked, “Do you? What does it mean?” His breath caught in his throat and his eyes reopened.

        Smiling tiredly, she shook her head, her burned hands throbbing. “It’s what you think. Or maybe not. I don’t know what you think.” A breathy laugh escaped her lips, quickly turning into a pitiful little sob. Swallowing hard, she lay down upon her back and trailed her eyes across the black sky. The night wasn’t a particularly beautiful one, but she hadn’t seen the sky in so long she found she couldn’t tear her eyes away from it. Admiring the thick gray clouds wafting across the lightly star-speckled expanse above, she lost herself in her thoughts once more.

        She knew now that the Desiderium, while more dangerous than anything she had ever encountered, was not evil. She knew that in the right hands, it could save all of Orbis –or, in the wrong hands, destroy it.  She also knew that she was not the one to wield it, but maybe someday she could be.

        “Pure,” she whispered, her eyes sliding shut. “Harmonia is pure.”

                                                                        *******

        Marco found himself unable to close his eyes. Every time he did, memories of the Desiderium’s effect on him replayed in his head. Depression enveloped him, but outwardly, his face was a blank mask, the only clue of his sorrow being his stormy eyes. Weariness weighed down upon his body, reminding him of his close encounter with death, but he didn’t want to sleep.

        His eyes betrayed him, however, and soon they closed.

        His eyes reopen suddenly at a loud, frantic pounding at his door. His brother is alarmed at the sound, but Marco ignores him, knowing what is going to happen and what definitely is not going to happen.

        He won’t make the same mistake twice.

        Before his mother has a chance to speak to the men, he bursts out of the room, his fists blazing with a pathetic fire. He knows he looks foolish standing there, a mere child pretending to be brave. Except he isn’t pretending, not this time, not ever again.