Tasting Darkness

The next memory morphed to their eighteenth birthday. Tobias heard a portal open and sat up, rubbing his eyes, his powers had manifested during the night, but too exhausted to care he never checked his infinity mark. He knew the familiar energy to be that of Darius. He yawns, stretching his arms above his head. Darius smirked as he stepped through the portal into Tobias’s room, holding up his wrist. “It appears we are destined, brother,” Darius tells him.

Tobias’ brows furrow as he yawns, looking at his wrist when Darius rubs his fingers over the infinity mark on his own, and Tobias gasps, glancing at his own when warmth spreads up his arm. Tobias chuckles. “Well, looks like you’re not getting rid of me now,” Tobias smiles. He was glad that his best friend was destined to be part of his life. Their brotherly bond is now completely solidified.

Tobias stares down at the names on his wrist. “F***k, feel sorry for whoever she is. I wonder who the other two are?” Tobias says, brushing his fingers over Kalen and Lycus’ names.

“No idea; I called on them but got no reply,”

“Probably saw our names and went to hide under a rock,” Tobias g*****d.

“I’m more interested in why her name is faded,” Darius says, reaching for Tobias’s to see if he is the same. My name was etched into both their wrists, yet mine was faint. Tobias glances at Darius’.

“What do you think it means?” Tobias asks him, and Darius’ eyes darken.

“One way to find out is to get dressed,” Darius tells him.

“What about the other two?”

“They’ll come to us when ready. Give them a chance to come around to it, and the idea of us, that would be a bit much for anyone to take in. Their magic is strong, hers I can hardly feel,” Darius tells him, and Tobias gets to his feet and grabs some clothes, pulling on some black jeans and a gray shirt. Just as Darius stepped toward him and grabbed his wrist, Thomas entered the room.

Tobias instantly rushed to him and snatched up his hand, only for Thomas to pull away. “What is it?” Tobias asked him, grabbing his twin’s wrist to see who he was destined for. Only when he does and turns Thomas’s wrist over. Thomas’ wrist was blank. No mates, his infinity symbol was there. It just held no names.

“Wait? But-” “It’s fine, Tobias. Maybe my mates were white fae,” Thomas tells him, but they all knew what that meant, that one day Thomas would run out of magic without his Keeper and mates.

“Who did you get?” Thomas asked him, grabbing for Tobias’ wrist. He turns it over to see our names and smiles.

“Well, what are you waiting for?

Go find them and bring them home,” Thomas tells him. Tobias’ stomach sinks. Guilt set in that he had four mates and a keeper. In contrast, Thomas wasn’t granted even one.

“It’s fine, Tobias; the fates just have me destined for bigger things, you’ll see,” Tobias’ guilt nags him, but once Thomas leaves, Darius steps closer and grabs Tobias’s wrist drawing his attention back to what they were doing.

Darius’ thumb brushes over the mark and power sings up his arm, yet it is different from before, different from the rabbit, darker, twisted, cold. It was like everything darkness could be, amplified but so much colder from when he healed the rabbit.

“Let’s go find her then,” Darius laughs, excited that they had both fully manifested, that their magic was strong; it appeared by their markings and the surging bonds that their Keeper would be a powerhouse. They both saw freedom, and sadness bled into me, realizing they thought I was their freedom from their parents and their parents’ demands.

With me, they could take them down. No longer would they be bound to their families. They could both take their freedom back, and I was that freedom to them. Until the portal took them somewhere, they didn’t expect. My school..

“Okay, then. She is a teacher?” Tobias asks, scratching the back of his neck and looking around. He was confused until the bells sounded and I walked down the front steps. I walked straight past them without feeling anything, not even paying attention.

I remembered that day, I felt sick, and now I wonder if it was because they had manifested and I wasn’t of age. I didn’t even glance up as I walked out of the school gates.

“F****k!” Darius curses.

“Bro, I know she is our keeper, but I am not dragging some young girl off who has no idea who we are to her,” Tobias says as they watch me walk away from them.

“Our parents can’t find out about her,” Darius murmurs.

“We wait, speak with her parents. If my father finds out about her; he will drag her home himself,” Tobias tells Darius.

“Yeah, mine can’t know either. He’ll force me to mark her,” “So what do we do? What if the others come for her?” Tobias asks him. They both knew why my mark was faded, I was underage, and I, as an awkward teenager, made that even more painfully obvious for them.

“Follow her. We will find out who her parents are. Speak with them, and we cloak her,” “Cloak her?” Tobias asks, knowing the amount of power that would take to do.

“Yes, I am not about to turn her world upside down and have Kalen and Lycus come for her, we don’t know them or what they are willing to do if they find her,” Darius tells him.

All night they camped outside my house up the street where the bus dropped me off, waiting for me to go to school; it was odd because I was terribly sick that night. They had slept in their car at the end of my street.

My house was the last one next to three vacant blocks and almost completely obscured by trees that ran either side of the dirt driveway. The three vacant blocks on either side made the place look like a dead end. Until you came to the dirt driveway, you wouldn’t even know a house was there.

Watching through Tobias’ eyes, had I noticed them, I would have thought it creepy, yet their intentions were anything but. Their only intention was to make sure my other two mates didn’t try to come for me. They stayed to keep me safe, unsure of who Lycus and Kalen were.

Yet that day, for some reason, had stayed with me, etched into my brain no matter how much I tried to forget it. My mother forced me to go to school, I had begged and pleaded to go to a real school, and now I was tossing it in her face by saying I wasn’t going. Instead, dad drove me and the shock of Tobias and Darius seeing him drive out of the driveway with me was nearly as strong as finding out I was a teenager.

Darius growls and Tobias grips his arm as he went to start the car to go after my father.

“He is her father, Darius. You’re his daughter’s mate. He wouldn’t hurt his own daughter’s future,”

Tobias tells him. But what they were most confused about was why I was kept a secret, why I was never registered with the council. They figured that out when they tried to go down the driveway.

Nausea washed over both of them, and they had to back out of the driveway. Darius and Tobias both got out to find they had crossed wards, wards my father put in place to hide our house, hide my mother and me from the world. It took them half the day to break through them to find my mother at home. She immediately called my father, who rushed home.

It was also the same day my house burned to the ground, the day I lost my parents, only I relived it from Tobias’s point of view, and I found everything Darius had told me was the truth. They left and only returned when they felt my distress, Tobias suffered severe burns trying to save me, while Darius exhausted a good chunk of magic breaking the wards and getting us out.

Tobias used his magic to heal me instead of himself. Healed some girl he barely knew because I was theirs and they would do anything to keep me, knowing I was their only future, and they were mine.

Darius then cloaked me and they took me to my grandmother and cloaked her too.

Tobias’ memories weren’t as dark and twisted as Lycus’ or Kalen’s, yet his struggles were just as brutal when he returned home with Darius. Both of their fathers demanded answers from them both. Tobias even endured watching his brother be tortured with magic. It was the only time Tobias forced his brother to suffer.

He refused to give me up despite knowing he was causing his brother pain. He chose me over the one person he spent his entire life protecting, and Thomas, I found, took it without complaint, trusting his brother had good reason. Darius, too, refused to give up my location.

Yet as the last of Tobias’ memories fizzled and died out, I learned Darius was the only reliable constant person in Tobias’s and Thomas’s life; I understood why Darius felt guilty. Seeing Tobias’ grief as he tried to heal Thomas, begging the fates to take him instead.

That was when Tobias turned to the bottle. For years he held himself together, and all for Thomas, everything he did, he did for his twin. For his other half and Darius unknowingly took him from him, and so did I. Darius loved him just as much, and I now understood the destruction I had caused by running, no wonder Tobias hated me. I took the only person he truly loved from him.

Tobias and Thomas had turned their backs on their family for me, had his title removed because he took the others as his mates to keep power, and all to keep me safe, to let me grow up, and me running made it look like it was all for nothing. I basically threw it all back in their faces as I felt the agony of Tobias’s loss. His brother clutched in his arms, his mutilated body tom to shreds from the hellhounds.

“We need to go,” Darius whispers to him, trying to make him let go of Thomas.

“I hate her, I f***king hate her,” Tobias sobbed as he stared at the letter drawn on the ground in his own b***d. However, peering through Tobias’s eyes, it wasn’t all I noticed, and my heart sputtered in my chest in the waking world.

How had I never noticed it before? How did I not see it in Darius’ memories? So caught up in both of their grief as I watched that scene play out on a loop, first through my fragmented memories, then Darius’s, and now Tobias, yet it was Tobias’ memories I noticed.

The Moonstone clutched in Thomas’s hand. Tobias even picks it up. He glances at it, feeling the energy in it, but unable to place it before tossing it aside, thinking his brother had found it, believing the power within it was mine. Yet I recognized the stone as he dropped it, recognized the energy writhing through it because I had the same stone sitting in our bathroom, a stone that I could feel contained remnants of my mother’s magic.

Just as that realization dawned on me, the memories faded, and I felt the sting in my thigh, felt the devil’s bane run through me. Though it was weak and wouldn’t stop my shredding, it would, however, give Darius time, and for once, I wasn’t mad he did it because now I had to confess something myself.

I unknowingly trusted a woman they warned me about, trusted my own mother, and I had just brought a ward breaker into their castle, our home. The Moonstone was never intended for me to call on her. No, it was intended to break the wards.

Tobias knew the energy felt off and tossed the stone, yet I brought it home with me. I once again endangered my mates. My eyes opened to them arguing over Darius drugging me, yet I wasn’t angry at him for it. I was angry at myself as I opened my eyes.

“You promised,” Tobias hisses at him.

“I made no such promises. It’s weak, she is still in the shred, but she needs a break, I will complete it, she needs rest though,” Darius snaps back at him, and I sit up.

“Don’t argue,” I g***n, clutching my head as the heat rushing through me eases off but lingers around the edges, my head pounding with knowledge and power in excess.

“Aleera,” Tobias hisses, rushing over to me, but my eyes go to Darius. Guilt floods me through the bond, only amplifying mine.

“I have done something stupid,” I murmur and Darius watches me for a second waiting for me to explode at him stopping the shred even if only temporarily. I just hoped he would forgive me because I truly f***ked up, and that clarity had me shoving past them and running for the bathroom.

I rummage through the basket of soaps and pull out the Moonstone just as Darius comes in behind me. The furious growl that leaves him as every hair stands on end as he stalks toward me.

“What have you done?” he asks, and I swallow. The moment my magic touched it, it glowed, and my eyes widened as I felt the energy inside it.

“Aleera,” Darius panics, but I step back, knowing if I didn’t get it out of here soon, it would absorb his ward’s just as it was my magic, stealing it from me, every ounce I just absorbed, and I looked at them in panic as Darius reached for it. Jerking my hand back I shake my head.

“None of you can touch me. It will take yours too,” I tell them before groaning as cramps rippled through my stomach as it devoured the devil’s bane and forced the shred, the stone urging me to complete it so it could take my power, our power, I would kill her. I would f****king kill her, This was never to protect me butto absorb my magic after i completed the shred, to weaken me and take my mate’s power from them,

But she f***ked up, because ! figured it out before I completed il, and now the only power she would get was the wrath of phoenixes. She had taken so much from them, and I wasn’t allowing her to take anymore.

“Aleera, No!” Darius screams at me, feeling my intention through the bond.

Using the remnants of what I still contained, I toss up a shield blocking Darius as he goes to take it and run for my old room. Blasting the window, I grab a cloak, I spot hanging by the dark fireplace before whistling. The moment I do, I hear Sparks caw, and I do the stupidest thing I have ever done. I jump from the window, praying to the fates that Spark reaches me because, with the loss of my power, I just lost my wings, and we were six stories high.

Wind rushes past me as I fall, and I watch the ground grow closer. It was like time stopped, everything slowing down, and I saw every particle in the air, every vapor and streak of light from the moon when suddenly arms wrapped around my waist. The stone glows and burns hotter in my hand as I try to fight it from taking his magic through me when Darius opens a portal directly beneath us.

My eyes widen when Darius grips my wrist, shaking my hand, but I refuse to let go, knowing what dropping that stone would do to the city he opened a portal to. When I refuse, he blasts me with his magic, stunning me, and I scream as my arm spasms, my fingers twitching, and the stone slips through them, falling toward the portal. I grasp the air, trying to catch it, when Spark caws loudly, swooping off the roof toward us.

My fingers outstretched, reach for the stone, as I try to stop it, knowing the destruction it would cause, the power it would absorb, when talons caged around my body, and I scream as Spark grabbed us, plucking us from the air and he takes flight, his powerful wings taking us higher. In contrast, my scream of horror rang out loudly as I watched the stone disappear into the portal before closing.

He killed them; he killed them all. Spark moves toward the field below before dropping us to the ground and I round on Darius the moment my feet hit the ground, my hands slamming against his chest, and he staggers backward. Spark landed on the ground not far from us, but my anger was ignited like a match had been struck, and my rage was the fuel it needed as I called on my Phoenixes.

“How could you?” I scream at him, tears streaming down my face as I shoved him; Darius puts his hand up, backing away from me. The phoenixes on the roof caw loudly, feeling my burning anger and take flight. They circle the sky above while Darius’anger also rippled, his energy amplifying, and the air around us heats as the tension simmers between us, my shred tries to override my anger, calling on his power I could sense while mine was lost with the Moonstone.

“Don’t put this back on me! You brought it back home; you lied! You should have told us!” Darius yells at me. “I did what I had to do!”

“The city, that city. You just killed them all, led the power hunters straight to them!”

“I had no choice. That stone would have absorbed you, absorbed the wards and the power of your phoenixes,” Darius says, walking away from me toward the castle, and I charge and tackle him, furious that he would sacrifice an entire city when I could have led the Phoenixes straight to them.

“You monster, you just wiped out a city,” I scream angrily, and Darius rolls, pinning me beneath him.

“It’s better than leading them here!” Darius bellows at me before pushing off me and getting to his feet and I shake my head knowing that that stone would absorb any protection of the city’s wards offered, absorb the power of those that lived there, and lead the power hunters directly to them while they are defenseless.

“I could have taken them down; I have the phoenixes,” I scream at him, getting to my feet when the sky suddenly ignites, glowing crimson, as lightning streaks across the sky. We all look up at the trees toward the city as the power of the blast, ripples over the dome encasing the castle from Darius’s wards, shielding us from the blast, but I knew the city’s wards with an explosion that strong would have shattered, leaving them open to attacks. My eyes widen; I cup my mouth with my hands in horror before getting to my feet. I whistle calling on my phoenixes when Darius charges me, clamping his hand over my mouth.

I struggle against him, shoving him off.“ I can help them. I can save them!” I spit at him, and he stumbles back.

“You don’t know that! I am not willing to take that risk,” Darius screams back at me “But I am!” I yell at him as Tobias, Lycus, and Kalen come out of the castle, jogging over to us, their eyes casting nervous glances at the sky where light sparked and illuminated in the distance. Tobias waves his arms in the air trying to calm us. I wanted to beat Darius senselessly for his stupidity and for mine of believing her, trusting the one woman they warned me about.

“Picking up a rock, I chuck at him as he walks away, it hits him in the back, and he whirls on me, stalking toward me and Tobias backs up. Our mates watch from the sidelines as he reaches me, and I pummel Darius, hitting him wherever I can. My Phoenixes above caw and swirl in the night sky above like glowing beacons of infinite power, their magic zapping and recharging me with each cawing blast. “I could have taken them; I would have ended them,” I scream at him when he grips my arms.

“And at what sacrifice, your life? That sort of power, the power needed to kill the power hunters would have killed you. You can’t harness that kind of power blindly, you aren’t ready!” “Better me, than them!” I cry as our mates draw nearer.

“How could you?” He was a monster. Thousands, and thousands of lives he has just put at risk because of me.

“Better them than you, because if it is between choosing between you and them, I choose you. I have lost you once. I won’t lose you again. I can live with their deaths on my hands. I can’t live with yours!” he says, shaking me.

“We don’t know that! I could have taken it, I could have absorbed the Phoenixes – “. Darius grabs my face in his hands.

“Look up, Aleera, there aren’t enough of them. You think you could, but you can’t. That stone was a power absorber. The moment you touched it, you activated it. It wouldn’t stop absorbing you or your birds until it contained everything you had left. Then what? You were giving the power hunters the ultimate weapon, the ultimate power.” I shake my head, tears streaming down my face at my stupidity. I was angry at him but mostly angry at myself, knowing this was my fault, I should have killed her when I saw her, should have told them.

“We don’t know that.” I croak.

“I do! Because the magic that was used to create that stone. Is mine. For years I was their weapon,” Darius says, letting me go and I stagger back and look at him.

“What?”

“As soon as I saw that stone in your hand and the rune on it, I knew it was mine.” I shake my head. He was wrong. It was my mother’s magic. I felt it inside that stone.

“No, it was my mother’s power. I could feel it.”

Darius clutches his hair and screams in frustration. The torment coming through the bond from him caused him physical pain, and my chest was restricted.

“I couldn’t save them, you, I can save,’ Darius yells at me.

“What are you talking about? It was my mother’s magic!” I scream at him.

“It was mine, think Aleera. Think about it, think about everything I have told you, what you have seen! What you know!”| shake my head when he grasps my face in his hands.

“Think, Aleera, the second plague. How did your mother survive it?” Darius asks me.

“My father, he did something to her.” Darius nods before he whispers. “He fed her my b***d.”

“But that makes no sense,” I tell him, gripping his shirt and pushing back against him as the shred coursed through me, sensing his magic, and I try to ignore it, try to focus on my anger instead of the burning l**t writhing and coursing through me, knowing he was the last one, with him I would awaken to my full potential, and my body sensed that with every fiber of my being, and it wanted his power, wanted him.

“It does if I am the plague. I created it; I unleashed it. You want to know how I can sacrifice an entire city for you? Because I already sacrificed the entire world thinking I was saving you all. I told you I have b***d on my hands, and I told you that you didn’t want to know the sort of monster you lay beside at night. I am the plague Aleera, the reason it exists, the reason it got out, and the only cure, or I was before,” he stares up at the sky, at my phoenixes. “Before I destroyed that too,”

“You were just a boy. You have this stupid idea in your head that you did this, but you didn’t!” Darius laughs. “Didn’t I? My father wanted to destroy it, told me to destroy it when we learned what it was capable of -” he shakes his head and clenches his teeth.

“You think you know, but you don’t,”

Darius tells me, and I reach for him, but he pulls away, placing his hands in the air, not wanting my touch. That stung, but I refused to let him escape it this time. “Then tell me?” I growl at him, recharging off slivers of power off my Phoenixes to hold him here, but he breaks it easily, feeding off my energy.

“It all leads back to me, all of you, Kalen, Lycus.” Darius looks over his shoulder at Tobias. “Thomas, it’s all my fault.” He tells me, looking back at me. “You can hate me all you want, but I stand by what I did, their lives or yours?” He tells me, pointing off to our mates. “Their lives!”

“I’ll choose you all every d*mn time. No matter the sacrifice, I did not kill the world to lose what’s left of mine. You are mine. Every single one of you, mine, my life. I won’t lose you again. I just got you back,” he growls at me, with a sheen of madness in his eyes.

“You are making no sense, you— ” “It doesn’t have to make sense, Aleera! I did this. Not you, so what I did doesn’t taint you. It’s all my fault,” he tells me, and I shake my head while he growls, . turning on his heel.

“Show me!” I plead with him.

Darius opens up a portal. “Darius?” Tobias asks, and Darius stops looking at him. “What have you done?” Darius looks back at me.

“I chose her.”

He steps through the portal. “Wait, that’s it? You choose me and f**k the rest of the world?” I scream, charging in after him as he steps back into our room.

“I told you who I was. You didn’t want to believe me.” his anger was palpable, and his voice cold and devoid of emotion.

“Then show me, let me in,” I snap at him, and he shrugs me off as our mates follow us into the room, and sweat beaded on my neck as the heat of the shred tries to overwhelm me when Darius moves toward the dresser.

“They’re going to come for you, but I won’t let them take you,” he says while digging through the dresser, and I could feel his intention through the bond loud and clear. He was going after them. He knew where they would chase the beacon once set off, which is why he tossed the Moonstone into the city because that was his Demonic-far Kingdom’s city, one he was familiar with. He knew they would stop coming for me if I didn’t possess the power of fully merging with my mates if the bond was broken. He turns around, and I see the devil’s bane in his hand.

“Darius!” Tobias hisses as he pulls the, syringe from the pouch. “I won’t lose you all. They’ll stop. You can keep her safe,” Darius informs them, and my brows scrunch.

“What?” Lycus says, stepping past me toward him.

“Her power will die out, she’ll be safe, you all will be safe,” Darius tells him, and I realize fully what that intention I could feel through the bond is. He was going to go after them, knowing that if they killed him, I would never come into full power, and our bonds would eventually break.

“No!” I snarl at him.

“It’s the only way. It started with me. It ends with me,” Darius comes toward me, and my skin buzzes with my anger.

“You’re right; it does end with you,” I tell him, feeling the bond sizzle as I flick my wrist at him, giving myself over to instinct; the syringe goes flying. He won’t escape me this time, I thought as I lunged at him; I was taking his power, and I was ending this, ending my mother and the power hunters for good.

Darius growls, catching me, and before he can toss me off, I k**s him, absorbing his power. Darius gasps, feeling his power bleed into me as I take it, and he struggles, trying to toss me off instead stumbling backward and hitting the bed. I crash on top of him, my legs straddling his waist, and I pin with his own magic, my hands pressing against his chest.

We were going to complete the shred. He will give me his power even if I have to take it myself.

Darius growls, glaring up at me, and our mates back off. Their energy ripples behind me as I stare down at him.

“Three down, one to go,” I tell him before giving myself over to my bond and watching as it forces his bond out, latching onto it.