28
Adair
He stood on the shoreline, the Black Sea crashing, the mist and salt coating his skin. His hands shook as he clenched the parchment between his hands, the words branding themselves in his mind.
Marquis Maher was now the King of the Shattered Isles.
Yelling, he incinerated the letter in his palm, the scorched paper catching and floating in the wind like ash. Calm yourself, our king.
“Is this what you wanted? After everything? To share my reign with a king from across the Sea?” he yelled to the open air, to the wind and to the crashing waters.
You know you and your people need his resources. Growling, he paced back and forth, Marquis’s words bouncing in his mind. Go to war with me and lose your trading routes my father upheld with you. Cross our waters, and I will kill you.
Snarling, he sent emerald green fireballs rocketing out from his palms just to watch them flare and then hiss and die as they hit the water. He envisioned they were Marquis, and it calmed his racing pulse. Wrenching his gaze, he popped the collar on his black jacket, and walked back to his kingdom. He entered the woods, deep purple leaves and moss igniting in the daylight. One that flourished under his reign and protected his kingdom. One that captured the essence of shadows. Hisses and growls followed his footfalls as yellow eyes flickered to life, watching his movements.
In the Noctis woods, or better known by his people as the Heart of Midnight, it was a refugee for ancient dark magic. It was his reprieve, a place where he could just be. The foliage of leaves casted a brilliant dappled light as he looked up.
Across the sea, Marquis thought he had him shackled, backed into a corner. Chewing on the inside of his lip, his answer formed in his mind. Whispers from the shadows pulled at him, but in a flurry of mist and shadow, he was flying. In seconds, he passed through air and stone, and materialized in his court room.
His throne was inky black with bones carved into it, and Adair stared at his loyal guards smiling viciously. “It would seem we are needed to show our allegiance to a new king across the Black Sea.” They shifted uneasily, as he snapped, “Parchment and ink, now.” He glared, watching them scramble, lost in aged memories. His dark gaze flickered back as he was handed what he needed and nodding, he started his letter. “Marquis...” He wrote eloquently and without hesitation, and he knew his old friend would over time come to trust him again. And until the day they didn’t need him anymore, he would convince him he had bowed to their agreement. Only to sink the knife in his back when he dared not to look.
His low growl of laughter erupted from him, bouncing around the room as beneath them, their kingdom grew, because to his people, he was their safety. His guards bowed their knees around the room as he wrote, softly weaving lies, sinking his claws deeper into everyone he could. It would never be enough until he destroyed every flicker of defiance. And he would start with Marquis. The thought bloomed, churning his determination and dark fixation. Diving deeper into that darkness, it encompassed him. And so, he wrote, lying of his compliance, waiting for the day they would meet again.
Epilogue
The Oliean
They felt the shift of energy as they hissed in the darkness. They were stuck in this in-between place, trapped here by that witch. And the Book of Old, over the years, had become lost to them. But today they felt the shift, the balance as it tipped over. That magic that had once answered to them bowed to another, shifting its allegiance. They hissed, this Dark King flickering in their minds’ eye. The world around them was changing, and their mission to destroy this world drifting farther away the longer they were lost in the shadows. They couldn’t leave this spot, but it didn’t mean they couldn’t watch, and so they did, and they listened to the bloodlust and war raging above them.
Years passed and betrayals long forgotten faded, but it did not in them. It flared and grew, and thought became obsession, obsession became madness. A gentle voice broke them out of their stupor, and they realized someone had found them, another witch. Peyton. The name sounded familiar as they connected the dots. This witch was the one to betray the secret organization, to grant them the chance to infiltrate the group. Magic rippled out from them, and for the first time in years, they broke through that barrier, the rocks flaring through their circle and they stood, taking in a trembling Peyton.
They were in her basement, and she quaked underneath their gazes, bowing low. “My masters. I have found you. I have found you.” Their giggles bounced off the walls as they took in the weak witch, and they knew their
