Solasta Academy: All Hallows Eve

Chapter Twenty Six

Zale Nox spent his entire life protecting his family and Kingdom from the wrath of their enemies. If he was a better King, he could have saved them all. Their spilled silver blood was on his hands, but there was a chance his lineage could escape the inevitable. He would sacrifice everything for his four daughters, Marietta, Gwyneth, Thalassa, and Maren. Despite the Fae and their hunters wanting their sacred blood, they deserved to live.

Months before the attack on his Kingdom, he secretly planned his sacrifice. It was a noble thing to do, he thought. If his people thought he was a coward now, they would think differently after this deed. He ensured the magic in his blood could travel great distances—even through marble floors and water. Everything was perfect until the day he took his last breath. He didn't want to say goodbye to his lovely wife, who loved him more than anything, or his beautiful daughters, who knew nothing of the world's cruelty. He wished he could protect them forever, but fate intervened again.

As he said goodbye to Mali and shut the labyrinth's stone door, he turned around just as five enemy soldiers barged into his room. They each had drawn swords, but Zale didn't move an inch. He was much stronger than them if he tapped into his great power, but he chose not to because of his family in the caves below. Their hiding place in case something like this happened to the royal family and would take them to Doris Cove, the beginning of their kind years ago. It was their most sacred place. Zale placed his hands in the air, but his face remained impassive as he said, "I surrender."

He never once let out his storm as the soldiers beat him to a pulp or threatened to hurt his family. When he was on the brink of death, he uttered the words his mother said to him when he was a boy, who heard it from her mother, and so on. It was a promise to their kind. A warning to those who sought out their blood for their own use. Before the soldiers slit his throat, he mumbled the words to a spell that the woman from his dreams told him would save his family. It would work, she said, and Zale believed her because he felt the great power like his in her blood. He recognized it immediately, like meeting a long-lost friend.

As the great and powerful Zale Nox took his last breath, the soldiers tried to save his blood from leaking but it was too fast—too strong—to stop it. The majestic silver blood leaked from Zale's nostrils and seeped into the marble floor beneath his corpse. It landed in the cave below where Maleia Nox and her four daughters were hiding. "Follow it!" one of the soldiers ordered.

Zale planned for everything but not for the fact that his magic would be gone once he died. The door to the caves opened slightly, and the soldiers found it immediately. They didn't think twice before running inside. But the magical blood was faster and could travel through the cave and find the last living Nox family. The daughters squealed at the sight of it, but the wife pursed her lips with curiosity. After a few seconds, she realized it was her late husband's blood and gasped. "How?" she asked meekly as if the blood was alive. But it wasn't—only following orders from Zale Nox.

The silver blood traveled through the caves, and the family followed close behind to escape the soldiers. They managed to dodge the blood in the air from touching their skin as they entered the sacred Doris Cove. The beautiful waterfall on the other side did not stop—even when the people who worshiped the water were long gone. The dead King's last request was to save his lineage, which is what the spell did—it saved. And it will cleanse. The blood plunged into the clear water, and I could hear the family gasping yet again at what it just did.

"Drink," said Zale Nox from the walls of the Cove.

The daughters looked around to find their Father, but he was not there as he was merely a spirit cursed to watch their living loved ones for eternity. Maleia placed her delicate hand on her oldest daughter, Marietta, as the Queen learned what the spell was in the end. Her long silver hair was matted with dirt, and her ripped lavender dress was also damaged. She wore no shoes as she stepped forward to the waterfall and crouched in front of it with an uneasy expression. The young Nox paused momentarily before glancing back at her mother and sisters. Then she turned back to the blood-filled water and drank in big gulps.

Once she was done, she felt like she was replenished. As if she could take on the world that was hell-bent on destroying everything that was made to be. Marietta wiped the leftover water from her mouth and returned to face her family again. She turned her lips into a small smile despite her world crashing down. "It's a gift."

But she knew better than to think it was a gift.

It was a curse.

The oldest daughter watched time pass slowly as a blade slit her baby sister's throat in front of her. Mariette screamed in agony as Maren collapsed to the ground and blood leaked out of her wound. She knew the moment she fell that her sister was gone. Tears sprang from her eyes at the sight, but her mother pushed her forward and yelled, "Run! I will find you!"

Marietta Nox obeyed as she jumped into the waterfall within seconds. Once in the water, she glanced back at her family one last time. Horror struck her as she watched the soldiers following them, holding Thalassa down and hiking up her dress. She screamed as loudly as she could as her mother fought them off, but even she was not as strong as them. Gwyneth cried as they slid her wrists and forced her blood to leak into the sand of Doris Cove before, eventually, she could not stand on her own anymore. Mariette couldn't do anything but watch as her three sisters died one by one. Her mother was the last to go, but before the soldier's blade protruded into her heart, she met Marietta's eyes. "Live," she whispered.

She stayed silent as the light in her mother's eyes left for the last time. Her heart was breaking in half as the lightning in her veins screamed at her to swim away. And for the first time in her short life, she left her Kingdom for the last time and never returned. It was ruined, and Marietta was no longer a princess. She could swim away and into the sea, where she always felt the safest. Her lungs were strong enough now that she didn't have to worry about drowning, and she soon realized the other creatures paid no mind to her invading their home. After some time, she left the ocean and went onto land across the world, where she formed a new life. A new name. Everything.

Marietta hid her powers from the rest of the world. On the night of her thirty-eighth birthday, she realized that her enemies had been trying to locate her for years, and she finally found her. She would have been okay with it if it weren't for her loving husband, who was now dead below her feet, and her now grown daughter crying in the other room. She leaped into action, and just as her mother did with her, she told Evadne Nox to run as fast as she could. Her daughter listened and left their small cottage at the river's edge forever. Marietta cried in relief once she was out of sight and turned back to meet her enemy's eyes again.

Before the male leaped on her, he smirked. "We are the Brotherhood."

"Are you now?" she scoffed.

"And we will chase your blood for eternity."

Marietta Nox fought like hell but soon realized her powers were gone now—they were transferred to her daughter when she was born. In the end, when her throat was slit and bleeding out slowly, she learned her Father did not give her anything.

It was a curse.

For generations to come, the Nox lineage will suffer from it.