A Storm of Flames and Deceit

58. Fire and Rain

Nephele

Rain splashes against my flimsy dress as we materialize. It wasn't until now that I realized how late the party had run. It was deep into the night, pitch black, but I knew with a grim certainty it was home.

I glance up at our estate, surprised to find the once proud stone walls overcome with ivy, crumbling into the soil beneath. I blink.

It must've been over a half century since anyone could've really lived here. This whole time I had been shackled... I thought my father and mother lived above, tortured by the sounds of my sobs, haunted by the sting of my decay.

To think they hadn't even been living there...

Flashes come back to me with each stroke of lightning in the field.

I remember the centuries with that insatiable hunger in my gut, that perpetual emptiness.

A flash.

I remember shivering until my body ran out of the energy to even do that, until I was just a pile of bones in the corner of that cellar.

A flash.

I remember feeling alive in those small moments father would visit me to work off his frustrations, the only reminder that I wasn't some distant carving in a cave, never moving, never changing.

A flash.

I remember wishing I were anything but alive, wishing to be a cliff, a cloud, a flash of lighting. Wishing to be anything more short lived than my agonizingly long existence.

I fall into that mindset, my body chilled from the rain, racked with shivers. I feel small again, not in any way I'd wish. I feel like stone, a statue, a hieroglyph.

Warmth presses against my arms. I think I hear my name, but it's hard to say over the patter of the rain, the thunder in my head. "Nephele," the wind whispers. At least I think I hear it. My ears throb from the pain of remembering.

"Neph."

I blink the rain out of my eyes, looking up at Eris, his flaring expression, full panic. "Nephele," he repeats, quieter. I watch his lips as he forms the word, trying to settle my head. "Neph, it was a trap."

I blink again, something striking awake in me. I look around. It's dark- I can hardly see a thing, but I feel the prickle of a glare behind me. Slowly, I turn around, my eyes falling onto my father, a sea of stone soldiers, and Jurian, tied in bonds.

The clearing lights with Eris' fire, and I see the true fleet of my father's men, how they line back to the sea.

That Jurian we had seen at the party had only been an illusion, a projection of my father, meant to lure us in. Now, the storm churned, and I knew father had found his way to my power because I knew then, he intended to kill me.

"Don't look so surprised, daughter. I thought you were the bride of deceit," Father laughs into the night. He stands maybe fifteen feet from us, Jurian spliced in my path to frying him, tied up and kneeling. "But if I knew all it took was a little bloodied illusion of one of your allies, I would've had your power months ago."

I square myself up, Eris straightening beside me, even as the rain pelts at his fire, his flames burn fierce across the grass, illuminating the clearing.

"What? You aren't going to ask me to let him go?" Father tilts his head, glancing at Jurian.

I sigh, feeling tired above all. "What would be the point?" I ask. "You need me dead so that you can finally be more powerful than I ever was. Even if I so nobly gave myself in Jurian's place, he would never consent to me surrendering my power to you, and further, I have my doubts that my husband would consent to my surrender."