Wake of Darkness [1]

Chapter Twenty-Three

♕ Long Live ♕

"That shadow..." Aubrette said, trying to understand. "It was you wasn't it?" Deirdre shrugged. Pure black shadow and smoke pouring from her fingertips, her eyes turning darker than death. "How?" Aubrette asked, needing to know.

"Use your words princess, you know I can't read minds"

"How do you have magic?" She said.

"It was a gift." She shrugged. Aubrette felt every inch of her skin filled in goosebumps.

A gift. A gift.

"My mother..." Aubrette said not daring speak the words out loud. "Nerezza..." she said not able to understand to connect the dots. "Are they... Did you..." Aubrette stopped talking as her voice started to shake.

"How dramatic Aubrette. I was just having a little fun" Aubrette felt her hands turn into fists, but she refused to move. Deirdre's laugh echoing softly on her ears. "You know, your mother was always so mean" she said, her eyes turning into icing fire. Was.

"She gave you everything" Aubrette said. "She loves you like her own" she said again, thinking on all of the times she'd thought her mother preferred them. Deirdre rolled her eyes.

"I took what I needed from her. She's paying for her sins now." She shrugged and Aubrette stopped breathing.

"No."

"Always so proud your mother. So sure of her power, so trusting" She said shaking her head. "It was so easy to get her to let her guard down. So easy to take everything she took form us"

"What did you do?" Aubrette said. "Where is she?"

"She's rotting underneath the ninth hell where she belongs!" she said, and Aubrette almost saw her eyes sparkling at her. Almost saw shadow pour from her skin.

"You're lying" said Aubrette. Trying to breathe, trying to push past the sinking feeling on her stomach.

"You should have stayed home princess" she said. "Would have saved both the trouble of such a boring trip"

"You will pay for this. Both of you." Deirdre laughed harder.

"Oh you really are clueless, aren't you?" she said. "My sister is a dumb child that couldn't stand up for herself. She had nothing to do with this."

Aubrette thought back on the things she'd seen, the grey lady, Layla, Izabella, all of them had been drained, even the guards... all of them had something she needed, all of them had a drop of magic in them, tattooed into the skin, on their markings, the part of their blood that remembered. Deirdre had drained it all from them.

"You took it didn't you? The book of the blessed?" Deirdre grinned. "That's how you figured out how to take magic away from people just like the king did"

"If you're so sure it was me then why don't you do something about it?" She said, tapping her lips with her finger. "Oh, that's right, I forgot you're nothing without magic and even then, all you know how to do is run."

Aubrette reached for Deirdre, but she would have been better off fighting air.

"Who is running now?" She said, and Deirdre simply started at her. Shadow wrapping around her slowly until she was nothing but a cloud of darkness, and then nothing but solid air. "Do you like my new trick?" She whispered in her ear. Aubrette screamed, but Deirdre became only shadow. "I was inspired by you, I had never seen it so close, you know? Not until the night the king arrived. But it surely helped me a lot that night at the court. Taking a bit of your blood... whatever" she said and waved her hands at her. "Did you enjoy the show?"