Cursed: Scarlet

~Ian~

That night, as I lie in bed, remembering everything, I regret not taking Scarlet into my arms and telling her what was nagging at me. I wish I’d had the courage to confess to her the way she has to me.

As she walked away from me, I wished I could say what I felt, tell her all I knew and leave no more of myself in the small part of me I feared. My fears were probably unfounded, but they ate at me all the same. I was, by far, not done with telling her yet.

In my mind, I imagined telling her, I imagined that she was standing next to me, in that dress. I imagined her holding my hand as she listened. In my mind, she was still as a statue, her hair over one shoulder and her eyes trusting. So I put myself into that small piece of imagination and pretended that it was so.

“For most of my life, I’ve questioned everything about myself, including my biological parents, my powers, everything that I had no control over what I blamed myself for. Now that I knew the reason for my mother abandoning me, my doubts began to seem trivial, in a way.”

“My mother had tried to protect me from my father because she knew he would try to corrupt me as he had his other son. She tried to keep me from being made into a monster like Tristan, though I wonder if his heritage had anything to do with it.”

“My heritage is questionable; no one knows what will happen to me when I come of age, which is probably why the High Council will be here when I come into my powers. With everything you are capable of, I’m almost afraid of what might happen, and what they might do to me.” In my mind, she’s looking at me, with those giant blue eyes, willing me to keep going.”

“When I was younger, I used to wish I wasn’t me, that I was anyone else. I used to dream that I had a normal mage family, with two parents and a brother. Not that I hate my adoptive parents, but they told me at a young age I wasn’t theirs, and it bothered me.”

“The family I’ve discovered has two parents and a brother, but they don’t even live in the same realm and I’m pretty sure that they hate each other. My half-brother tried to kill my girlfriend, my father cursed my girlfriend and if it weren’t for my mother, I’d probably have turned out just like them. Talk about putting the ‘fun’ in ‘dysfunctional’.”

But my reverie is short-lived, I snap out of it, only to sink further into the pillows, wishing I were anywhere but here. Wishes, on this night, were not coming true.

And now I’ve hurt the one person who has ever accepted me, and cared for me. I broke up with the only girl I’ve ever given a damn about, just to protect her from my family, her family, too, I guess. Sighing, I turn over in my bed, trying to block out the memory of her face when I told her that I didn’t want to see her anymore.

Well if it rains it pours…I guess it only makes sense that it’s my heart’s turn to shatter after my reality has.

When I finally fall asleep, I have the vision again, nothing has changed. “And nothing ever will, little brother,” a voice calls out, and I turn around.

“Tristan, how surprising,” I mutter, shoving my hands into my pockets and glaring at him in a way even Scarlet would envy. He dismisses me with a wave of his freakishly pale hand and walks toward the stone slab I craved to forget.

“You were expecting me, how strange,” he says as the scene changes, we’re in the garden he died in, right by the tree I found Scarlet kneeling next to on All Hallows Eve. He sits in the bench nearby, acting as if it’s a throne, and looks me up and down.

“Isn’t it just,” I say, leaning against the tree. I return his look, pretending to be unimpressed by what I see. His hair is lank and greasy, his clothes rotted and old-fashioned, but most of all, his face which reminded me of an old-fashioned vampire.

“She killed me, you know, right there, where you’re standing,” he says, getting out a knife and playing with it. For the first time, I realise that he’s dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, like a normal person. “Did she tell you all the gory details?” he looks up and smiles at me, reminding me of that cat from Alice in Wonderland, all creepy.

“She told me what you tried to do to her,” I say, looking up at him properly. He drops the knife and it disappears, leaving his hands to curl up into fists. Why can’t he just disappear? Even though this is my mind, and my dream, he doesn’t seem to be bothered by my attempts at mental barriers. I guess it’s because he has had a few thousand years to practice, what with having nothing better to do when he was trapped in the Underworld.

“I was going to marry her, then take her powers, but I got hasty,” the creepy smile returns. “But thanks to her, I can have another go at getting the power I need to get what I want.” This guy makes my skin crawl with revulsion; I don’t know how anyone could have dealt with him when he was human.

“What do you mean ‘thanks to her’?” I ask, wondering if he’s crazy. Then again, he tried to go up against Scarlet, and that never ends well. You kind of have to be crazy to even try it.

“She’s the reason I died, so she was the only one who could bring me back. When she made that tribute on Samhain, she invoked my spirit, freeing me from the realm of the dead. I will never forgive her, but I can think of a way she can earn it. You see, for my life force to truly be restored, she must die. I get my retribution, and she gets what she’s always wanted,” he shrugs, clearly impressed with himself.

“The only one with the short end of the stick is you, but I’m sure you can find a better girlfriend,” I lunge for him, but I jolt awake instead of breaking his neck. I understand now why she killed him; my half-brother is an arrogant ass.

I can feel her stirring, in the back of my mind, but my mental barriers seem to work again, so I give up and roll over, hoping that my mind can relax enough to go back to sleep again. Instead, I lie for hours, stewing in my regret and pain.

I haven’t even had the courage to tell her my true name, the name Hecate gave me, which my adoptive parents changed. Adrian…the Dark one.

***

~Scarlet~

I’d always wondered how I came to be, seeing as birth control for the Originals and First Generation was easier than for mortals. My mother only had to admit to herself that she wanted one, and the next time she had intimate relations, one would be conceived.

Knowing that this was possible for me, I obviously wished to be infertile and froze my body in that state. I did not want to be caught off guard, ever.

The question was, how had it come to be that Morgana and Marcus would even go that far? Well, apparently, when the world was very young and the elves and Elementals were the only creatures with a semblance of intelligence, my parents met.

It was all extremely romantic, I am told, and they met under a willow tree near a river on the Asian continent. What they were doing there is beyond me. As cliché as it sounds, their eyes were said to have met, and they fell in love.

After that, they were inseparable. Morgana became so infatuated with him that her people suffered, leading them to the extremes of fighting with one another. But that is not important to the story at this moment.

They met, each day, under that tree, and did what young people did best in love, nothing at all while staring into the eyes of the other. After a while, they were convinced that they would get married, and have lots of powerful little children.

The mating of different races, at the time, was not all that great of a problem, except for the fact that they were the rulers of the races, so somehow, their realms would need to be joined.

Many arguments followed, and they began to drift apart, but they were saved from strife by the realisation that, if they had a child, he or she could be the heir to both thrones, and there would be no need to throw their people into further disarray.

And so, I was conceived, through love and need of an heir. Both my parents hoped for a child who would be stronger than they, to be able to rule both races with no opposition if need arose. And as refreshingly sexist as this sounds, they thought a boy would have an easier time of it.

So when it came time for me to enter the world, and Morgana lay in her maternity clothes, waiting, a vision changed her life. As she held me to her, and my eyes opened for the first time, she felt love as only elves could. Soon after, Marcus arrived, eager to meet his ‘darling little boy’.

I had been swaddled in a gossamer blanket, and was sleeping silently in Morgana’s arms; she refused to set me down, so he couldn’t see the truth as he took me gently into his own.

Cooing at me he lifted the blanket, and nearly dropped me on my head. His shock was palpable, and I woke up. But he shook his head and bounced me up and down, having been enchanted by my bright blue eyes.

“What shall we name her?” he asked Morgana, as she watched him carefully a few steps away. She shrugged, as elfish tradition dictated that she wait a week before deciding.

Elementals, on the other hand, had no such time frame; their children were named for the colour of the first magic they produced, usually a few minutes after the birth when a soothsayer said the spell above their cradles.

Before Marcus could summon said soothsayer, I burped, and instead of plain air, a scarlet flame erupted, grazing the ceiling a few feet above where he was standing. In their shock, my parents locked eyes, obviously thinking the same thing.

And so, I was named Scarlet, for the colour of my first flame. Helena, for the brightness of it, and Mithra, for the sun that had just begun to rise when my magic showed itself. “No other name would suffice,” Morgana would say, when I asked her as a small child. In other words, my name means ‘the Red Light of the Sun’, original much? Well those are the translations of my original names, they’re far too long to write down in the Original tongue.

After a few years, they started fighting frequently, constantly in disagreement about everything. It didn’t help that most of their fights were on crystal balls, the magical version of a telephone. After a while, I was the only thing they agreed upon, and it showed.

And after the disaster of my wedding, they stayed on opposite sides of the spectrum, each blaming the other for what had happened. Especially for the fact that I refused to speak with either of them and moved out of Etherea the day after my curse began.

The next few millennia became a trial of their own, with me living in various countries and avoiding both of them at all costs. Soon after the failed wedding, the High and Low Councils were formed, mostly to keep the Originals in check as well as their offspring.

I was appointed ‘Protector of the Peace’, meaning that I would have to patrol the mortal realms while the rest of them sat around in their own, watching over the subjects that remained. All in all, I was horrible at my job, because I kept falling for the young men I encountered on a regular basis.

But now I had Ian to look out for, which fell on its own level of problems. In a single year, he managed to make the entire school hate him, just by breathing. Wiping the minds of that many children takes a lot out of a girl, and I would know, hunting down dragon hatchlings is simpler than keeping track of him.

***

~Ian~

When I think back to the week we spent at Etherea and Scarlet was ignoring me, I remember the day Hecate materialised in my rooms, and how she insisted that I visit the realm of the light mages, Yggdrasil.

I’d lived there for my entire life, not knowing my own heritage, socialising with the other children and interacting with my adoptive family.

Even then, I’d known something was wrong with me, I was too strong for the rest of them, and I could do too much. I spent many days overrun by guilt for having more powers, being able to move things with my mind and reading their thoughts. I couldn’t tell anyone, so I tried to block myself, but my adoptive mother found out and helped me.

She said that she would find a spell that would suppress my abilities for a few years, something to make it easier for me to function on a normal basis. I will never be able to thank her enough for what she did.

I still wear the ring she gave me, with the phoenix engraved on the top. It may be useless now, but I still want to be close to her. She was the closest thing I’d ever had to a mother, after all.

The mage realms had always appeared just a bit too bright, a bit too unreal to pass off as a normal mortal city. The giant tree in the centre of the realm, Hecate’s ‘palace’, didn’t help matters much either.

As a child, I’d been taught that the tree was the symbol of her power as well as the balance between all of our human sides and mage sides. People called it the ‘World Tree’, apparently because it was the oldest living tree ever identified.

The branches towered over head no matter where you went, and the tree’s offspring dotted the entire landscape, all almost as tall. The younger trees were grown from seeds given to newlyweds; a tradition as old as Hecate herself.

We walked through the streets, past the young mage children playing, and the adults bowing for her. It was strange to watch, all these people have so much respect for her, and she just seems so normal. Granted, she dresses like one of those hippies, all flowing dresses and bead necklaces, but she was still the most powerful mage alive.

Looking at her, I could see myself in her features, the same brown hair and eyes. I knew my height came from Hades; he was like a string bean with black hair and a soul just as polluted. But it seemed my features were mostly hers, and I was grateful for it.

Hades was not the most pleasant of figures, in our folklore, and not just because of his treatment of Scarlet. He was famous for his vile temper and cruel ways, many people behaved themselves in life just to avoid his punishments.

A long time ago, he was featured in mosaics from the South American tribes, as the god of death. Their traditions of blood sacrifices were his doing, his affectionate name being the Sadistic One.

Hecate was the opposite, which was even more confusing, if you thought about it. She was the symbol of motherly love and protection, the Ancient Greeks even worshipped her for as much. The whole three face thing, though, was an entirely new level.

Legend told of her face changing as the day wore on; from dawn she was a young girl. At noon, she was a woman in her prime. And at dusk, she was an aged crone, but she could actually change whenever she felt the need.

Some people would not take her seriously as a young woman, so she would visibly age in front of them, just to scare them. She knew how to command respect, and earn it. It is easier for me to accept her than to accept him, I just can’t seem to relate to Hades.

But that week was about learning who she was, and how I came to be, it was the first question I asked, after why she lead me to believe I was a regular mage.

The story, to be honest, was deeply saddening, because she showed me herself. We went to the palace, to the nursery she’d set up for me, that I’d only spent a night in. As she spoke, she held a stuffed bear close to her, almost as if it was the only thing that could give her courage.

“Seventeen years ago, I was summoned to Etherea by Morgana,” she paused, and it was all I could do not to hug her because her sadness was so palpable. “She told me that I was going to have a child, a boy, who could save her daughter. Naturally, I could not doubt her foresight, the Council depended on her, but the thought of having my own child scared me, so I dismissed it.”

“A few days later, I encountered a young man, the same man she’d shown me that was to be your father,” she looked away, disgust on her delicate face. “I didn’t know that it was Hades in one of his many guises, so I went ahead and let him seduce me. A few weeks later, I learned that I was pregnant, and I was filled with so much joy I immediately contacted him.”

“We met at our usual place, the cottage you grew up in, and I broke the news to him. It was only then that I noticed his strange energy and realised who he truly was,” her shoulders began to shake, and I noticed her tears, so I held out my arms to hug her but she refused. “Hades, for reasons I still do not truly understand, had tricked me, and it was too late to do anything but carry you to term.”

“I ran from him, and then had him banished from Yggdrasil, never to step foot in my realm again,” the tears ran freely at this point, but she kept going. “After that, I spent days worrying about what to do, how to deal with my predicament. Days and weeks passed, until you decided to make your entry to the world.”

I could feel my heart stop at that moment, waiting for her to tell me what had transpired next. I’d taken her hands in mine, and we’d sat on a small couch in the middle of the room. Her eyes did not leave mine for a moment as she spoke then.

“When the midwife handed you to me, with your small crop of hair and grey eyes, I knew I had to keep you safe from him. So while you slept for the first night of your life in that cradle, I made arrangements with a young, newlywed couple. They moved to the cottage on the outskirts of the city, and I promised them that they would never want for a thing, as long as they loved you as their own.”

She wiped her eyes, “They were to call you Adrian, the Dark one, in remembrance of your heritage. Grigori, the watcher, for the part you would play in Morgana’s vision, and Seamus, to make you just a little bit normal. I never stopped loving you, dear heart, not for a moment, I never told our people of your existence, so that you could be as safe as possible. Please believe me when I tell you this, I would never lie to you, not if it were in my power.”

I did not answer her; I just pulled her close and hugged her. My only thoughts were of relief, knowing that she didn’t hate me on sight had really lifted a great weight from my shoulders. I had the kindest mother any child could ask for, and I was grateful.

“But what of Hades?” I asked, realising suddenly that he’d most likely been expecting a child too. “How did he not know about me?” she looked up and sniffed, pulling her hair away from her face and wiping her nose delicately on a handkerchief that seemed to appear out of thin air.

“I told him you were stillborn, and he did not even weep. He just swept out of the room in a huff,” her eyes search mine as I look down at her. “I don’t know what he is up to, but I want you to keep away from him, alright?”

Nodding my assent, I got up with her and we left the room. We spent the next few days discussing my childhood and she showed me the pictures my adoptive parents had taken. She had every single one she could get, framed in her bedroom on the mantel, the dressing table, the table beside the bed. The strength she must have had to let me go like that must have been immense.

When we returned to Etherea, I went straight to Declan, resolute in convincing Scarlet to let me in. I knew who I was, and I was no longer afraid to tell her what I felt, just not my entire life.

I knew that she’d dated him, the servants around the castle gossiped almost as much as the girls at school. So I thought he’d be the best to consult. Instead, he jumped up and dragged to her room, and made me wait while he spoke to her.

Strangely, I wished it were me she was so open with. Granted, she’d opened up once or twice, which must have been hard for her, but I still couldn’t help my sadness at being excluded from her life. Now that I knew I had something to do with saving her, I wanted to start right away.

She was, and is, the best thing that could ever happen to me. Not just because she helped me without any qualms, but also because she opened up the doorway to my past and helped me discover my mother. If it hadn’t been for Scarlet, I’d still be lost and angry, afraid of myself and what I could do.