Crescent (Old Version)

+ Part 60 +

The moon was nearly at its peak.

I hoped no one could see that way my shoulders quaked as I feigned a confidence I did not feel and strolled the length of the ballroom. Ajax cleared a path ahead of me, pausing at the bottom of the stairs until I caught up next to him. He held out a scarred hand to me.

Cherith and Sely stood in the same position at the stairwell across the room. Ceth would be waiting above, at the peak where both sets of stairs met. There, a marbled pillar would sit with a stone plate atop it. And I knew what would sit atop that.

Just like we'd talked about again and again and again.

Silence fell when I gripped the golden banister with one hand, Ajax's hand with my other. I carefully walked the steps, counting each of the hundred to the top. I stumbled the last step, stopping just before the podium. A single silver bowl lay overtop, oblong with crimped edges. Tiny stones rubbed smooth by rippled waves sat in the bottom.

I took a breath as Ajax retreated to the line of guards that stood around the back edge of the balcony. The candles burned a bit brighter, illuminating the faces in the crowd below.

Just like we'd talked about.

In his characteristic show of power, Ceth appeared from a billow of smoke next to me. He made no move to touch me, but the crowd whispered quietly... a slow undulating hiss at first.

It grew. Louder, louder, some archaic language now a song throughout the room. Even Ceth hadn't known the full translation when he'd taught it to me. It had been said at every gala for six thousand years.

The crowd said it again tonight as Ceth took my hand with one arm and raised Cherith and Sely's joined palms in the other.

"Coalesco. "

"Iungo," the crowd replied.

Lord Cherith took his wife's hand first. He bared her wrist to the crowd and she watched with beady eyes and a wine-drunk smile.

"Coalesco," he chanted just as Ceth took my arm and ran a finger down the length of it. I shivered as he looked at me, mouth widening into a malevolent grin.

"Coalesco," he chanted.

"Iungo," Sely and I recited back.

The moon was at its peak, its face peaking out from behind the clouds, light shining through the windows.

A breath. A blink. Teeth flashed, canines sharpened. There was only pain. White hot, full-bodied pain as his teeth sunk into my wrist.

There was no stopping my gasp. The whole crowd could hear it. I reared forward, head spinning, pain a blinding light before me. Ceth held my bleeding wrist above the podium, Cherith mirroring with his wife, and our blood fell against the podium. The crowd kept chanting.

It felt my blood hit the bowl. I felt it roll over the stones. Whatever life it held still lived in the stream that mixed with the couple's across from us. Magic joined it. The scent of iron stung my nose.

The crowd took a breath in unison and I felt a heaviness building in my chest. Not pain, not fear, nor any kind of emotion. I felt Sely's breath as it left her chest, just as she felt mine. Our hearts beat in tandem.

My body moved with a mind of its own. I unsheathed the blade from my waist as Ceth rolled the sleeves of his tunic up his forearm. Normally, I felt most myself when I had a blade in my hand. I knew how to wield it- was practiced in its movements. But, as I raised the blade and drew it across the sensitive skin of Ceth's wrist, as I watched blood well from the wound, I didn't know myself at all.

Sely was at my side, gripping the blade in her hand before I even fully realized what was happening. She sliced her husband's wrist and in unison, their blood fell.

I felt each drop fall, felt each of their breaths echo out of their lungs. I felt the power of the moon above me, felt the steadiness of the ground beneath me. I felt the hefty weight of the necklace at my throat, felt the bulky layers of the dress at my hips.

I had only one thought as the pain and the light subsided: Nothing would ever be normal again.

I did not remember the rest of the night.