Glass Dominion

Chapter Twenty-One

Vanya

I should've known that, despite my greatest efforts and submissive willingness that I'd get put to sleep anyway. They didn't carefully put me to sleep either, as they'd done with Amelie, they used their fist. It didn't knock me fully out the first couple of attempts, so the antagonizing headache had been inevitable. Yet it was excessively more tolerable than the headaches I had from that burning intuition.
Luckily, it'd been less burning as of lately. Since I'd been taken in I was kept in an empty room until I was needed. Now that I was here where I knew I was meant to be, that antagonizing feeling had quieted, since I finally started listening to it rather than trying to escape it.
After some time being kept alone in that room, I was finally taken to whatever I'd been brought in for. I was being lugged up a spiraling staircase over the shoulder of a big watchman.
I just kind of clinched my stomach, baring the unsteady haul until we reached level ground, and even then, it was still unpleasant.
"I can walk, you know," I said sardonically, startling the watchman.
In relief, he slid me off his shoulder to stand alone. Two warriors took me by my arms, and we continued down the corridor. It was dark and gloomy and practically screamed that they kidnapped people without reason just because they could.
Suddenly, I was pushed through a tall and dark door. The warriors closed it back behind me, leaving me to stand alone.
I had a conspicuous theory that everyone in the palace was incredibly depressed, having to live in such a dark and melancholy environment.
The room I was standing in was an office, which looked more like your average bachelor parlor, with a large selection of seating and spirits.
The fireplace on the western wall was home to a blazing fire whose reflection danced across the dark shadow of a person. He sat at the edge of a green velvet chaise lounge, leaning forward to be closer to the crackling fire.
My theory was beginning to be proven true, his head was dropped low, staring crestfallen into the fire. He held a glass of alcohol that looked to be from the open bottle sitting on the side table of straight Bourbon whiskey, an incredibly strong drink us Scorpio's stayed away from. Whoever was drinking that had to have been a Gemini.
The man cleared his throat, catching my attention, which lay elsewhere. I waited patiently, feeling the depth of the situation through the energy he radiated.
"Helunai is not real. Am I right, Ms...." he began, in search of my name.
"Vanya," I croaked. "Hindley."
"Hindley," he spoke, and though in such a hushed manner, his voice thundered. "And yet..." He sipped his drink and then looked back at me, but my eyes had a hard time fixating. "It courses through your veins."
I had to bat my eyes. Look away, then look back, to be sure I wasn't mistaking what my eyes saw before me.
"Christian," I muttered in realization.
It could have been possible that the bastard was a Gemini, after all. I truly didn't know how I didn't recognize him before, he wasn't an easily mistakable man.
I couldn't help but smile at that point. "Amelie doesn't do well with liars."
"Amelie knows I am no liar," he snapped, not having to wear any kind of facade considering Amelie was not present. He was, though, very handsome. From his sharp features to his pretty eyes, and muscular body.
"Does she, though?" I asked skeptically. After all, he was staring into a fire with the effects of alcohol swimming in his eyes. "Or is that just what you manipulated her to believe?"
I felt the energy in the room shift like the tide of the sea.
Christian stood up to face me. "So we both have secrets. Damning to know and depict, so we keep them veiled." His voice, cold and coated in liquor, nearly made my skin crawl. "Secrets and lies are not the same."
"Did you manipulate her to believe that too?" I asked vexingly, unable to remove my eyes from him. I wanted to be my usual witty self, but continuously, I got brought back to that cold feeling of fear.
He took his long coat off and left it on the chaise lounge, revealing a white button-up shirt. His neck was draped with a couple of necklaces, and his sleeves were slightly rolled up. My gods, there was no way I could blame Amelie in the slightest.
"I can't believe you haven't figured it out yet," Christian said as he approached his liquor table to pour one more splash. "My abilities are finite in regard to the lovely Amelie Ambrose."
I didn't know much else I could do but stand and listen, intimidation tightening its grip around my throat and hindering me from speaking.
"And the only type of person resilient enough to resist the exuding power of will..." His voice trailed off, almost knowing it was all coming together in my mind.
"Are of your kind," I nearly gasped through the tension that was holding my words back. "But Amelie—there's no way."
"I am keeping her here by no means. She could've left if she wanted to. And you and I both know that the thing about Amelie is, no one is going to make her do something she doesn't want to." Christian went on, pacing in front of me.
Every time he looked at me, I'd look away. I did not want to believe what he was saying. He claimed he was no liar, which scared me because I knew it was true.
"So what am I here for then?" I asked after realizing that hadn't come up in our conversation—if you could even call it that.
He took his time walking back to the fire, and I felt like a magnet opposite of him and moved away if his energy brushed by me too closely.
"Do you hear that?" he inquired in such an unquestionable tone. I stopped every thought running through my mind to listen. I even held my breath to find out what he was referring to.
I looked at him in confusion, already feeling his eyes on me. "What?" I asked, trying my hardest to hear.
"Exactly," said he, and immediately, I felt like a fool. "Your intuition has been silenced."
I took my hands to my head, quickly reminding myself that Christian was Mortala, leaving me with a feeling of violation. He must have quieted it when I was unconscious, that's the only time his willful power could've reached me was through his touch.
Noticing my look of distress, he marched toward me like a damning shadow that sent a daunting chill down my spine.
"Is Helunai real. Hindley?" He asked through gritted teeth, I knew not what else to do but nod my head.
A sneer spread to his lips, satisfied by my answer even though he already knew what it was.
The tall doors swung open behind me as if right on cue, causing me to shuffle quickly out of the way.
I gasped and covered my mouth with my trembling hands at the sight of who was pushed through the doorway by two warriors. My eyes began to well in relief, then quickly switched to terror when I noticed his bruised and bloody face.
"Bertram!" I ran to him and his attempted grin, embracing me as tight as he could. I was sure the familiarity put his soul at ease as it did mine, breathing in each other's scent as we hugged tighter than I'd ever hugged anyone before.
I was swirling with such relief. Bertram wasn't in prison, and his life wasn't at risk. Instead, he'd only been recruited.
"It's so good to see you," exclaimed Bertram.
Once our time was up, the two warriors quickly pulled us away from one another to face the impatient face of Christian. His eyes narrowed on us like a hawk who was now propped against his desk, which resided at the edge of a dais.
One of the warriors stepped in front of me, blocking my view of Christian, and I had no choice but to look her in the eyes as she took her mask and hood off.
"Constance?" Bertram asked. I looked at him, finding a dismayed expression slowly taking over. Then I looked back at the girl standing in front of me, who ignored Bertram and kept her impassive eyes on mine.
The other warrior forced Bertram to stand over with him, out of range of the conversation I felt myself and the Constance girl were about to have.
"Commander Quinn," she started. I quickly realized she was referring to Christian. "Needs you to remove the protection you've placed on Bertram."
It worked. I couldn't believe that it actually worked. But I didn't let my expression show my excitement, instead, I stood with a very dullness about myself.
Constance, the girl standing before me, was very intimidating. Though I was standing much taller than her, our energies were the same.
She was gorgeous, no fool could stand before her without noticing that. The way she carried herself so acutely matched her long, dark hair, dark lipstick, and high-heeled boots.
"Alright," I said, after having to remind myself that I was brought there for a reason, and within every moment that passed, I was finding that out more piece by piece.
"Are you going to need any supplies?" asked Constance.
I kept catching the gaze of Christian, watching intensely at our body language and my every expression. He was so arrogant, so youthful, I wondered how he was the infamous Commander Quinn we'd all heard so much about. And I wondered how Amelie was taking it.
"Just some candles and sage," I told Constance, who then glanced at the second warrior, who was off fetching the supplies before I even knew that was what he was doing.
Constance left Bertram and me, and she approached Christian to discuss things in a tone far too low for me to make out their words.
Cautiously, I approached Bertram, just to be sure that I wasn't doing something I wasn't supposed to be doing.
"Hi," I said quietly. His eyes were weary, his mind looked to be somewhere else, his hair was a mess, and his usual charismatic grin was nowhere to be found.
"Hey," he said, looking down at me, light fading back into his listless expression as if slowly realizing the depth that absence and missing someone had.
We embraced in another hug, something I didn't let happen often, but I'd make an exception for him.
"Commander Quinn is Mortala," he whispered in my ear while still trying to look discreet due to the prying eyes behind us. "He has Amelie here. He tried to use his power to get me to forget that I saw her, but he's found out through Amelie that you practiced Helunai, so he's convinced you've put some kind of protection on me."
"Well," I started, piecing together all the information I knew he was missing. "Amelie is Mortala, she's not here against her will. Quinn fancies her and I think they're kind of involved, another reason she could still be here. And I did come in contact with Helunai power. I didn't think that what I did worked, but it must have.
"Wow." I could feel how the overwhelming news affected Bertram through the shift in his breathing.
"That's why I'm here, Quinn wants me to break the Helunai," I added.
"Amelie? Helunai? What—?" asked Bertram, still trying to comprehend everything.
"Process faster, Bertram," I whispered hastily. "I'm not going to break the spell, though," I continued, "but we have to pretend like I did so you can warn Amelie."
"Okay," agreed Bertram. "Okay, that's good, that's a good plan."
"Are you two conspiring against us?" thundered Christian's voice from behind us. "Or just overly fond of affection?"
Quickly, Bertram and I fell out of each other's embrace to stand on our own again.
"Constance." Christian looked at her, then gestured toward us. I couldn't tell if she so faithfully followed his demands or if he was persuading her to.
Constance marched toward us, taking a stance between Bertram and I, separating us.
When the second warrior returned with the candles and sage, I tried my very best to act like I knew what I was doing, when really I didn't know the first thing about Helunai. The last time I did anything with Helunai, it was a brutal mess, and I was cursed with a crazed intuition trapped in my head.
I started by lighting the sage, letting it cleanse the air of impurities in every corner I took it to. I set it in the ashtray on Quinn's desk, thinking he wouldn't mind, but the look on his face said otherwise. Out of spite, I brought it with me anyway.
I then sat on the chaise lounge, lighting the candles and placing the ashtray on the table before me.
"Can you let the power back in?" I asked Christian, his eyes of ice so fixated on me they could have melted. He approached me, and all he had to do was run a single finger across my shoulder, and that twinge of intuition came flooding back in. I hated that he had the ability to give or take whatever he pleased, it made me feel so utterly powerless.
I began, rubbing some of the ash from the sage bundle in my hands. I closed my eyes and began to focus. I tried to block the true reasoning behind doing this from the forefront of my mind, knowing that if it were there, it would take over any other intention I had. But no matter how hard I tried, it would not go away—I needed to break it.
I tried to hone in on my thoughts, but everything seemed to intensify. I couldn't open my eyes, I couldn't stop it now, I was already far too deep to withdraw, it was like I wouldn't let myself.
And that's when I realized that Quinn had placed that at the forefront of my mind. He may have been a pretentious bastard, but I could assure you he was no susceptible fool and a damn force to be reckoned with.
I felt a steady breeze blow through as my heart beat faster, and the feeling in my soul intensified. Block it out. I had to block it out.
I continued rubbing my hands together in the ash until it got so hot it began to burn my skin. I had to think about Bertram. I had to act like I was breaking the spell but not actually break it.
Broken. Suddenly I knew exactly what was going to happen. "No!" I screamed, knowing that there was nothing I could do about it now.
Suddenly, everything stopped. The wind, the intensity, everything was just silent. I opened my eyes, scared of what I might find before me. The candles were blown out, and the ash on my hands had disappeared. And silence rang in my ears.
Broken.
My eyes were hazed, my body trembled from feeling everything all at once, and then nothing at all. I tried to look up and around, but I was too out of it to understand what was happening. All I knew was that I was being pulled over to Bertram's side, who looked nearly as confused as I was.
Christian approached us slowly, not in fear but in caution, just to be sure whatever Helunai had just flowed through was gone now.
He stared us both dead in the eyes, what I was feeling was yet to be determined, with my mind in complete distortion.
I felt a ringing in my ears, I felt the world vibrating, though I knew it wasn't. And then the silence was pierced by the persuasive tone of Christian's voice. He cinched his grip around both mine and Bertram's arms.
"You both will go back to your village. You will continue your lives normally." He spoke slowly yet firmly. "And you will forget any of this ever happened."