A Court in Flames

Chapter 42

A/N

It's about time that I updated. I hope you enjoy it. Also, I have decided that I will be changing Elentiya's hair colour to just silver. Not that important but still thought I outta let you know.

Elentiya's POV

I stood on top of the tallest tower, letting the wind whip my hair around. A wyvern landed beside me, his violet scales shimmering in the light.

"Up here again?" Cal asked me.

I smiled broadly. I remembered meeting him for the first time all of those years ago. My twin, but not. 

"What are you doing with a wyvern? I thought they were reserved for witches," I asked while letting the first rays of the sun warm my face.

"He was a gift from my mother. She thought that this way I could keep up with you."

"Well, he doesn't deserve to have an ass like you as a rider," I replied.

I heard his bellow of a laugh boom into exisitence. His mount let out a small huff of laughter.

"One day... I'm going to fly to the edges of this world," I whispered the words. "I'll see every hill and meadow. Every city and mountain."

"What about your mom?" he asked me. We both knew -everyone knows, really- that she longs for the adventure.

"She'll come, too. It'll just be the two of us," I grinned at the thought of us running through forests.

"And leave me behind?" he demanded.

"Why of course! We couldn't have you ruinning all of the fun!" I told him as I flashed him my smile.

He scowled and I burst into laughter. "I hate you," he said.

"I love you, too," I replied.

"What about your father and Lyria?" I scowled at the thought of my little sister.

"She can burn in hell for all I care. But dad would stay and run the kingdom while we go off gallivanting, as you like to call it," I told him while I smiled at the thought of her burning.

"She's your sister, you know?" he replied as I sat down.

"She's a pig. I hate her, she steals all of mom's attention," I said as he sat down beside me.

"It's funny. A sixteen-year-old princess, still craving for her mother's attention," he said with a hint of a laugh in his voice

"Is not! You spend the first six years of your life thinking you have no family and then poof! You suddenly have, not only a mother and a father, but Aunts and Uncles and cousins and dogs and a twin!" I shouted at him as I stood up and created an ice stick before snapping it in half.

"Well, thank you for putting me at the very bottom of that list," he ground out.

"No problem. It's not fair that that damn... THING gets so much attention when the only suffering she's dealt with is... is... BREATHING!!!" I stormed towards the next tower on an ice bridge of my own creation.

"No-one ever said life is fair, 'Tiya," Cal said as he caught up to me.

"I know. But, sometimes I wish I could just... I don't know... kill Hades for everything he's done to me. At least, I didn't have to deal with his son." A shudder slid down my spine at the thought of his son, the demon. I had seen him catch a bird and tear off it's feathers and wings while it was still alive. Then he left it in a cage to wallow in it's pain.

I hadn't slept for days afterwards.

"We all wish you could kill Hades. But, I don't think that that's what's really bothering you." He pulled me into his warm embrace.

"Promise me. Promise you won't let him take me," I told him. I could hear the desperation in my voice.

He smiled at me, "I promise."

The memory exploded into a million pieces.

"Such happy memories, Elentiya," he drawled as he brushed a hand against my cheek in a proprietory gesture that filled me with rage.

I blinked the tears from my eyes.

Tears from the longing for Cal, for my mother and father. 

"And such fire..." He kissed me along my jaw and down my neck. I shuddered in anger.

I wanted to burn him, slowly. I wanted to burn Hades, too. I wanted to burn the whole world for what it's done to me.

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I was pulled from my despair but his weight leaving me.

My fire had died. He had taken me before, but this time it had been something more. The iron in my neck was confirmation that this wasn't a dream.

My eyes met those of anger. They were the darkest eyes I had ever seen. But when I looked into them, all I felt was fear. I stood up and stumbled backwards. Away from him. Until my back hit a wall.

When I had seen no farther place from him, I collapsed and curled up against the wall.

Cal's POV

He had captured her. Captured me too and used me to make her swear the blood-oath to Hades.

I held the locket, the one she had given me on our birthday, as I stood before the door. Hades's son had escaped when I had gone to check on Elentiya. She hadn't recognized me.

So here I stood, protecting her as I always would.

Three days had passed when the door creaked open.

She blinked at me before I tentatively reached a hand out to her, stopping just before I touched her face.

The look in her eyes was so sad, so desperate that I couldn't label it. I couldn't describe it. Not as she embraced me, not as she cried into my shoulder, nor as I wrapped my cloak around her shoulders.

It stabbed my heart as I watched her mouth twitch slightly at the corners.

"You came back," she said with a voice that lacked any emotion.

"I will always come for you," I replied as I pressed our hands together. The identical scars on our palms from the promise we had made each other when we were ten. 

"I want to go home," she said and the hopelessness in her voice pushed the dagger deeper into my already shattered heart.

"Rayilys is waiting for us," I replied as I gently guided her to my wyvern.

"Ray-ray?" she asked as we walked a spark of hope in her eyes returned.

"Yes, who else?" I asked her with an amused smile, that faded when she didn't reply. "Your mom sent the entire kingdom in search of you. She has been looking for you herself. She even put a reward out for whoever could find you, so long as they didn't harm you. I forget the exact amount, but it's big enough that everyone is looking for you," I told her. "But I don't care about the reward, I just wanted you safe."

"Thank you," she whispered.