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darkpoisonouslove · 5 months ago

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Fallen Love Chapter 3

Chapter summary: Griffin wakes up alone. She sets out to bring Valtor back. A new chapter? Already? I'm as surprised as you! Today on the menu we have: panic attacks, disappearing acts, a scavenger hunt and a game of chicken, the occasional pet name and shooting to kill (...a man)*. Complete with LOTS of dialogue - to compensate for last chapter (and the first half of this one). Oh, and Griffin gets to blow something up - as a treat. Valtor will get treats when he learns to shut up. :) *metaphorically speaking Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 Read on AO3 | FFN

The lightness behind her eyelids only seemed to replicate that in her entire body. She was floating, weightless, the sheets and mattress barely palpable against her skin.

She rolled over in search of Valtor. To bring their chests together so that his breathing would move her, too. To bridge the space between them and find herself in his reach, the weight of his arm on top of her centering her into her body again. She didn't mind the reminder that she wasn't omnipresent but instead confined to her physical form that his presence against her would be.

The cold lying in bed with her instantly seared her nerves.

---

Familiar warmth enveloped her like gentle morning sunlight caressing her eyelids.

Sleep had been elusive, her mind always alert, mistrustful of her surroundings, of the pulse of heat in every surface she touched. It drove tears from her eyes like hands around her neck choking her until she failed to recognize its telltale wrongness.

She must have finally succumbed to exhaustion after countless nights of staring at the ceiling. The grief beating in her chest was still a fresh, bleeding wound. The ooze from it stuck to her fingers whenever she reached for her magic or hair.

Words lodged painfully in her throat when she pushed to swallow them back down for the sake of another peaceful moment she could spend basking in the joy bursting in her chest. Her fingers greedily soaked up the warm touch interlaced with them.

Never one to be sated, she opened her eyes in search of glacial blue ones.

The intensity of Faragonda's storm-like gaze was cutting.

The garbled noise that slipped from her lips kept ringing in her ears; it was impossible to convince herself that it didn't resemble a legitimate word when, between her teeth, it tasted just like the name burning on her lips.

"I didn't mean to startle you," Faragonda's voice was a rope plunging to the depths of the panic drowning her.

All she had to do was reach for it and the fairy would pull her out.

Griffin had to stifle the hysterical laughter carving through her chest. It was already petrifying, bloodcurdling, just as it was, echoing on the inside.

The smile on Faragonda's face was only marginally more bearable – as if she were welcoming the sun after a century-long winter when Griffin's touch could set her life aflame.

"How do you feel?" Faragonda settled for rubbing the back of Griffin's hand with her own rather than pressing a palm to her forehead, placated by Griffin's complacency. "Did you get some rest? Would you like a touch of magic to help revitalize you?"

Griffin cringed at the thought that Faragonda might have noticed her avoidance of using her own magic, or that she might have misinterpreted it.

She hurried to cover it up, "I was just thinking about looking all fresh and rested in my little solitary cell. Or even better – to be paraded out in front of your allies"–the venom she imbued in the word didn't faze Faragonda in the slightest–"for yet another very public and humiliating execution of whatever dignity I have left."

That finally landed a punch.

Faragonda had the decency to let go of her hand and look uncomfortable. "This is a tense situation for everyone but with time they'll get used to it."

They could get in line for feeling out of place. At least they were in their own home. Both of Griffin's were a smoking pile of ashes – by her own hand.

"I wouldn't care what they think of me if that didn't dictate how they treat me. They can think me a vile monster or a senseless whore."

Faragonda flinched.

Griffin pretended not to see, pretended it hadn't been her aim to jolt the fairy. "It makes no difference to me so long as they listen to what I have to say."

She was wasted on countless arguments with Marion and Oritel that only ever went one way. She was losing her mind pacing the same trail through the palace only to be met with their disregard again. She was their greatest asset. They had to put her on the battlefield, at the very least give her access to it on paper and listen to all her intimate knowledge of the enemy they had no hope of defeating. It was unthinkable that anyone could forget how closely she knew Valtor, that they could doubt it still after they had seen her perfectly match his movements in battle without even looking in his direction.

"I've asked them to-"

"You shouldn't have to!" Griffin's teeth clattered together when she redirected in the last moment to avoid biting off Faragonda's head. "You'd think their perception of me would only lend credibility to my inside information but they're ready to tear my throat out because they don't like what they hear."

Faragonda's fingers fidgeted in the sheets, "You're not exactly... encouraging a change in their attitude."

Griffin shot up.

"This wasn't a social call, Faragonda! I'm not here to make friends." The mere word tasted vile on her tongue, like poison.

She wanted them afraid of her, wanted them to see only the woman that she had been – powerful and cunning enough to be Valtor's partner. Not the wreck, who could barely get out of bed unless she was feeding on spite, on her own refusal to die, rather than on the hearty meals magically delivered to her room. She'd lived too long like that to go back to it.

She couldn't go back.

Faragonda's eyes glimmered with unshed tears, her voice just as wet with them, "This was the only safe place for you."

"We both know that's not true." The words were tight in her throat, in her chest. "Your mother would have been happy to take me in, would have secured my protection, readily used all my information."

And she could have contacted her if she'd wanted both Valtor and the Company destroyed. It was Faragonda's own fault if she couldn't reason that far.

"You dragged me here to keep an eye on me."

"I didn't-"

Griffin slapped away the hand reaching for her. "You were thinking about what you wanted. Look at you! You're sitting here like a kicked puppy that the owner abandoned at the curb."

Faragonda looked away at that, vacated the chair at Griffin's bedside but only walked further into the room, trapping herself in there, trapping them.

"I'm not the same person from your past!" If she'd learned anything from Valtor, it was how to pick the sharpest words, twist the knife in to spill the most blood and cut deep into the marrow. "How could I be after what you did? Or more accurately, what you didn't do."

Faragonda stiffened. Even with her back turned, her aura was like a concrete wall.

Griffin's skin crawled. Her tongue itched with prayers that her mother would forgive her for weaponizing her death against Faragonda of all people – as if she weren't grieving just as much, as if she hadn't lost someone just as integral to her life.

It was the only way.

It was for Faragonda's own good.

"You're right," her friend's small voice made her doubt herself, who she'd become.

If Faragonda was still the girl for whose sake she'd burn the world, how could she do anything other than let her magic spark and start the fire? How could she look through the flames for someone else's face? How could she feel anything but relief at not finding him anywhere when his very proximity would turn her own fire on her, on Faragonda, and make her the culprit of her own loss again?

"We're both different," Faragonda turned to look at her, tried to meet her halfway as always. "I just don't know how to get used to it."

"I'm sure Hagen won't mind helping you figure that out," Griffin scoffed.

She bit her tongue as soon as the words left her mouth. The bitterness would only be like honey to Faragonda, would draw her in with the implication that she was jealous, that she'd missed her.

Instead, something raw flickered over Faragonda's face. The nature of her restraint shifted–like it wasn't for Griffin's sake anymore–to make the chasm between them painful. As if Griffin had already rolled down to the bottom, scraping and cutting herself on every sharp edge and breaking her bones on the hard stone.

"Of course," Faragonda's voice was quiet to make her lean in just to hear – a trick she'd learned from her mother for delivering a fatal blow. "Anyone but you."

She paused.

Waited for a beat.

Then another one.

When the silence remained unbroken, Faragonda's magic swallowed her to leave Griffin sticking out like a sore thumb amidst the room.

She'd love to blame the way the air grew much colder against her skin on the two majesties torturing her but they wouldn't have that much backbone.

She was starting to think that wasn't such a bad thing.

---

Griffin bolted up.

The sheets fell away from her body, revealing it to the stifling morning air. Sun rays magnified by layers upon layers of glass, every speck of dust sticking to her, even the touch of her own fingers to her body, to each other – they were all like needles in her skin. The plush white carpet tickling her soles was a live wire hooked directly to her nerves.

A sharp pang of hunger sliced through all of that, a weakness in her knees, as if she'd collapse on the floor. With her bones in a heap, knees poking through her ribcage and spine – through her skull, maybe the rising nausea would subside, wouldn't have to splash acid all over her insides just to chase away the emptiness nestled there.

Her magic fired through her body like an instant poison breaking down her cells to hurl them through space in every direction. Upon collision Valtor's presence would pull them back together. The shock wave would pulverize their surroundings as if her need had taken physical form in a bid to match the heat of his being, in a bid to leave nothing that could steal his gaze away from her.

The self-satisfaction that'd waft off him with her clutching his arm like a lifeline was already cloaking her, choking her. He could very well be waiting for her behind the first corner, just far enough for her desperation to slam her into him.

She motioned her magic to map out her surroundings instead and ground her amidst them.

Valtor had deflected her question about their location more out of vanity, to revel in the mindlessness to which he'd driven her. He'd brought her here for a purpose. He wanted her to know – sooner or later. Sooner, apparently, or he would have stayed to continue unraveling her grip on reality.

The room around her was a stunning mosaic of black and green granite – a forest canopy filling the dark void of space, breathing life into the vacuum. Only the windows and cornices, shaped like strings of icicles, were made of dyamond. The reinforced with magic and harder than diamond glass made up the rest of the building almost exclusively but the last floor relied on enchanted stone both for privacy and protection.

The windows were also layered with spells capturing every ray of sunlight and keeping all the warmth inside even when they were open. From her vantage point Griffin could see light dancing over the thin crust of ice covering the famed Diaphanous Lake outside, making it impossible to see anything under the surface. The ridges of the surrounding mountains were streaked with white already to explain all the furs and wool blankets draped over the walls and floor, the chairs and armrests furnished with thick covers. Dyamond was the only planet that had a forewarning of the early winter advancing through the whole solar system, the curses unleashed too powerful to be stopped by mere light-years of space.

Flames started in the fireplace as if by her thought, confirming the nagging realization in the pit of her stomach.

Valtor was toying with her, had been all along – with all of them. He was probably watching her right now, never one to miss reaping the fruits of his labor.

Griffin didn't bother opening the closet doors inlaid with stained glass in intricate patterns. He'd never been in the habit of leaving her clothes to replace the ones he tore off her form until they were nothing more than useless scraps of fabric. Sometimes not even that much survived of her outfits.

Her magic spilled over her body conjuring a fabric that was so dark it could easily be mistaken for black. The blue only revealed itself when light hit the brocade woven in it as if it'd been dipped in stardust. The laces of her cleavage were looped around the buttons she'd stripped off Valtor's shirt the previous night. The lacing in the back was almost too rigid to allow motion – giving her no choice but to remain upright. String-like, the ends of the silver hem of her gloves threaded through slits in her sleeves like starlight spilling from the insides of her wrists.

She liked to remove every tangle from her hair herself, spending up to an hour in a nearly meditative state as the brush would quietly move through her tresses. That was when her hands weren't clammy and shaking, lacking any semblance of dexterity. Now magic was her only viable option for securing her hair into her typical braid to keep it out of her way.

She'd bet on practicality for years but combat boots simply didn't make sense without the threat of war hanging over her head. They would only take her back to the battlefield. Returning to heels was the only natural course of action. In a few days they would no longer make her head spin from just the couple inches they added to her height.

A quick spell confirmed the absence of movements or sounds outside the door.

She slipped into the empty hallway, her steps and breaths absorbed by the thick carpeting and ostentatious tapestries and curtains by the windows. She didn't have the time or inclination to spare them more than a glance as she made her way down the stairs.

She wasn't economical with her magic, using more than strictly necessary to create diversions for the few guards she sensed in her way. The air around her rippled wildly with every burst of power from her, charged as if with electricity, prickling against her skin and heating up as if it'd catch fire. Every spell she cast was a beacon giving away her position. It would be no trouble at all for Valtor to find her.

He'd located her the previous day when the atmosphere around them had been thick and loaded with deadly curses. If he'd not intercepted her yet, then he was either making a fool of her in front of the queen again or he was off-planet, using the chaos that was partially his fault to reshape the dimension to his liking.

It was no matter. He'd run along soon enough.

Griffin made a turn to find herself staring at a vaguely familiar portrait of Dyamond's previous queen hanging on the glass wall. There weren't any guards in sight to differ from last time when a pair had been posted at every three steps ensuring no one strayed from the procession. The transparent doors of the ballroom had closed behind her like a trap springing.

Being able to see everything occurring in the hallways outside, looking at a column or wall and having someone stare at her from the other side of it had been more unnerving than the threat of Lysslis poking around in her head. Dozens if not hundreds of wolves had sunk their teeth into her every word, every part of her to see if anything would tear, ready to call her a liar just because she bled the same as them. And that had been only the beginning of the evening program.

Griffin closed her eyes and forced an exhale from her lungs to kick the past out of there before it could take over her body, start breathing with the life force it was sucking out of her. All she had to do was feel for a magical essence.

In this palace not every surface was imbued with the ancient power that had created the whole universe. It made locating a magical device infinitely easier.

A potent pull compelled her towards massive glass doors overlooking hundreds–thousands–of books appearing to be floating on their dyamond shelves. With Valtor's help the queen's restoration program had been more than successful. Under the guise of retrieving Dyamond's cultural and magical heritage, she'd easily expanded her collection of tomes further than any of her predecessors could have dreamed.

Griffin pressed her palm against the door, the call of the knowledge that was at her fingertips too great to resist. Any self-respecting thief would be tempted by the unlimited arsenal of spells and incantations, potion recipes and coded secrets until they forgot themselves and any other objective they might have had.

She swore she'd be back first chance she got and hurried away.

A different magical current swirled around her once she put some distance between her and the library.

More in the style of the royal apartments, massive doors of white and purple granite guarded the ceremonial chamber. Recently renovated for the naming ceremony of Crown Princess Icy, the masonry depicted a dark purple sky raining sapphires that bloomed into a sea of flowers as soon as they touched the snow-swaddled ground. In the middle of it, two white swans, one on every gate, faced each other, bearing crowns of aquamarine drops. Silver streaked their plumage and their wings ended in sharpened white zircon.

All the gemstones decorating the doors focused the constant energy stream from the supposed centerpiece of the room. Purposely kept a nebulous concept in the eyes of the dimension, the Ice Spring remained shrouded in power and mystery, and thus the object of all manner of wild rumors and speculation.

For Griffin there was nothing of interest behind those doors. If the spring were a weapon or a defense measure, the royal family wouldn't have flaunted its existence for generations.

It was more bait. Just like the library and the vault shuddering with ancient and forbidden power.

Still, Griffin had to concede to the strategy's effectiveness. Standing in front of the vault gates made even her heart pound in her ears with awe and excitement. She, who had seen the native magic of every world, had used the rarest spells that had ever been created by the most knowledgeable and powerful beings, couldn't help herself at the buzz echoing through her bones and moving her limbs.

These gates were forged from a sturdy metal alloy, all of its components tailored to the protective spells guarding the entrance. Even that would have failed if the doors hadn't been inlaid with pieces of bone–human and animal alike from the looks of it–to contain the most destructive of the magic's effects.

Griffin had to remind herself the kind of prize she was after before she could give into curiosity and explore. The artifacts in that vault would have to impress even her if their presence was loud and palpable behind all the enchantments keeping them safe.

Flexing her fingers, she tried to draw the thrill of adrenaline deeper into her body, to her core where she could save it and come back to it when she needed the boost.

She headed into the opposite direction, listening for a whisper of magic that was out of tune with the booming cacophony she'd left behind.

The hallway she'd chosen ended abruptly in front of another dyamond door. Here, like in the other corners of the palace that weren't meant for prying eyes, the walls were composed differently. The glass was thicker and refracted the light hitting it as if it were the precious stone it was named after. It was impossible to see what was behind it but no ordinary lock was a match for her abilities.

Used as a storage room, the space was bursting with old paintings and furniture that was out of style but was too high-grade to throw out. Easily amounting to a fortune or two, none of the objects in here could be the source of the trail she'd followed. She was missing something.

Upon closer inspection, the room's proportions didn't make sense. The paintings in the back end were squished together as if the wall was pushing against them and the ceiling above had a slight curvature to it, the wooden frames braced against open air while the ones against the other walls went all the way up to the ceiling line. The pressure of a spell that was bursting at the seams threatened to pop the room like a cheap balloon.

Griffin conjured a knife. The incantation to animate it was tediously lengthy but allowed her to keep a safe distance while cutting through the glamor. Avoiding the spots where the spell was already distorting was crucial to keep from triggering an explosion.

She had to admit the security measures surpassed her expectations. Suspecting this alliance between Valtor and the queen wasn't a fragile, newly-established one of convenience didn't make it any easier to swallow the confirmation. He had laid out a trap for her and the worst thing wasn't that she'd fallen in it but rather that she hadn't been alone in her failure, that along with herself she'd dragged down-

The paintings crashed back into the wall despite the residue of the spell that whipped her in the face like a particularly violent gust of wind. Frames cracked, pieces of wood breaking off and raining on the floor, canvases folding over or straight up tearing – all to reveal another door.

The air sizzled, all the vulnerable wood and fabrics around slowly blackening and starting to shrivel as if licked by flames. Sweat beaded Griffin's forehead, ran down her back like a shiver. Her own skin turned uncomfortable, clammy and parched at the same time, burning and stretched taut but still wriggling with every tiny gasp as if it were an entity of its own. Her lips cracked despite the sleeve pressed against them and her nose. She had to turn away just to protect her watering eyes.

The growl that escaped her didn't sound like her own voice. Frustration burst through her body, unfocused and white-hot, overwhelming even the grievous heat from outside.

She marched out of the room, the two closest dyamond doors tearing off their hinges with her momentum. She turned them sideways and barricaded the hallway. They wouldn't hold but she only needed them to buy her a second to throw up her own shield.

It took her longer than she would've liked to build a sufficient charge in her palm. The battle with her mother's murderers had taken its toll on her just as much as the emotional roller coaster that had preceded it.

Her jaw clenched painfully at the thought. Her outrage simmered harder than the heat that had already begun devouring the hallway as well. She poured all of it in her own spell before launching it directly at the enchanted door.

She dropped to the floor and curled in a ball. The smaller her shield was, the stronger she could make it without wasting power. Mistakes were not an option against Valtor's spellwork.

Everything quaked. Crystal chandeliers rattled in shrill disharmony like knives in her brain. Her ears were ringing from the shock wave. The racket of furniture hitting the floor was like fists pounding at her skull.

Her heart loosened in her chest, drumming painfully against her ribcage. Her senses sharpened as the ground shook underneath her like it were about to break up into pieces and open the gateway to a pit of volcanic lava. Everything came into focus as if time was stretching around her to accommodate her, to welcome her as she sifted through every detail coming her way, dived eagerly into that flood.

She could see the cinders swirling in the air, carried by a cold breeze, could hear glass shards hitting the floor. A curtain rod crashed down. The purple drapery withered in the heat along with the carpet. Only the patch covered by her shield didn't burn.

Dyamond chunks and the occasional metal shim or mangled spring bombarded her mercilessly. Her barrier hissed every time they drummed against it and flung them back, sometimes repeatedly when some of them ricocheted off the walls.

She forced herself to wait a full minute once things appeared to settle before letting up on her shield. A quick look at her handiwork sated the bloodthirstiness churning in her belly, for now.

Digging her nails into the satisfaction rushing through her veins, Griffin took to the air. Laughter bubbled in her at the sight of the rubble lying harmlessly beneath her on the soot-covered floor.

Amidst raining ashes and smoke the grotesque crater she'd blown in the back wall of the storage room was another flux of strength through her body. A wave of her hand cleared the black, toxic plumes to let her see her prize.

The blast had pulverized the hidden alcove, only jagged edges protruding from the floor left of the dyamond. Behind that the outer wall of the palace was also damaged, hollowed out nearly all the way, daylight streaming in through the gaps and cracks in the stone. Yet, in the midst of the destruction, on an untouched pedestal lay-

Griffin lurched back as if she'd cut herself on the crystals.

Swerving abruptly mid-air, she stirred up a small vortex of ashes. Her velocity swept more of them in the air, spraying them to her sides as she rushed back into the hallway.

She forced herself to land, conserve her magic.

She'd underestimated Valtor's involvement with the security system, and his pettiness if no one had shown up to stop her yet.

Then again, she hadn't accomplished anything necessitating an urgent response. The smoking hole in the palace wall could be fixed at any time and her strategy of following the magical trails of the building had proven futile.

She needed a fresh perspective.

In the centuries since The Point of Salvation had been devised, various conjectures had been made about its location but not one based on any tangible even if flimsy evidence. If her discoveries were anything to go by, Griffin could rule out the last floor of the palace. It was closest to the royal apartments but also the first place any invaders would look for an escaped monarch and their failsafe. No, it would be at the last possible place one could expect, just like the crystal amplifier.

To think that had been a few hallways away from the ballroom the whole time. She would grind her teeth to fine dust if she didn't watch herself.

She had assumed it'd be kept near the war room on the second floor or the armory – for easy defense. While it wasn't The Point of Salvation, its creation had been not just a key moment in Dyamond's history, but also the start of another era of magic. Treating it like a shameful failure to be buried in the back of your closet–or storage room in this case–had certainly deceived others too, not just her.

To have any use for The Point of Salvation, Raina and her children would need to secure themselves safe passage to it first. Relying on the regular hallways that would be swarming with enemies during a vicious raid on the palace wasn't just stupid but suicidal. A secret emergency route was the logical conclusion.

Testing the walls for hidden passageways was useless. She'd have to start all the way back at the royal apartments and follow the whole system of corridors to her target. It'd be a waste, especially since the passageways were most probably cloaked and impossible to detect either via magic or technology. With the crystal amplifier bombarding her with the charge it was sapping away from the wake of the explosion, she wouldn't be able to sense the Dragon Fire itself if Valtor stood right beside her anyway.

If her theory was correct, then the royals could move around the palace freely, get to any part of it undisturbed. The last place anyone would expect them to try to escape to would be the most remote point of the building – the basement. It was perfect for their last line of defense.

Griffin headed to the stairway she'd passed on her way here.

Judging by the pitch-black darkness that accosted her as soon as she rounded the first corner down, the basement was empty. She had to conjure her phone from her pocket dimension to light her way.

The first trace of magic in the air raised her skin into goosebumps like the cold draft carrying from every stone hadn't managed. A device that generations of royalty had fretted over to such extremes was bound to emit a constant charge even when not in use but this was too obvious.

The magic curling around her was invasive. The air hummed with it and it burrowed into her skin as if to reach its clawed fingers underneath and hollow her out. It tugged on her own energy to pry it lose and start siphoning it away. No one could ignore such a threat to their own integrity even if they wanted to.

She turned right at the bottom of the stairs, towards the source.

Struck as if by a lightning bolt, she stopped dead in her tracks.

She couldn't take another step. Her arm shook violently, making the flashlight rove the walls, cast shadows that writhed over them like demons welcoming her. They reached for her to drag her into one of the cells where the enchantments would suffocate the rest of her powers.

Griffin stumbled back, dropped her phone. The returning darkness choked her to strangle the remaining air out of her as memories kicked her in the ribs.

Her magic hadn't been locked away, instead flooding in her hands, rushing in harrowing waves. When she'd refused to release it, it'd gathered in her fingertips, stinging hot and electrifying. Pushing on the underside of her nails, it'd twinged, burned, like someone trying to pluck them off.

Tears had streamed down her face but she hadn't reached to wipe them away. Any movement could have been catastrophic, the agonizing tickle in her nerves already unbearable.

Stopping her leg from bouncing had required inhuman strength. Her teeth had been frantically picking apart the tender inside of her cheek that'd already been a pulpy, chewed mess. Her mouth had reeked of copper; the trickle of blood over her tongue and down her throat had choked her, forced her to hold in coughing fits that'd wracked her whole body.

The guards outside her dyamond prison had stared at her without blinking as if they could have burned holes into her with their eyes alone.

She'd stared back at them. At them and not the automated laser gun pointed at her, poised to strike at the first wisp of magic she summoned.

In hindsight, the trap had been obvious. Catching wind of one of the Coven's operations wasn't unheard of in and of itself but the alleged target should have given her pause. Valtor and the Ancestral Witches would have never had use for the crystal amplifier, their power already exceeding most everyone else's. The descendants had only ever been pawns to be used and discarded as it served their masters. And if that hadn't made the bait obvious, the personal invitation from Raina to her younger daughter's birthday celebration should have given her pause.

It had all been for show. She could have walked out of her cell whenever she’d wanted and exposed Raina’s alliance with Valtor. At the cost of announcing to the world that she was untouchable, that he valued her life more than those of his allies. Unless she’d wanted to fuel the suspicions of their continuing partnership, she’d had to play along with the charade he’d set up for her.

Unknowingly, she’d become her own jailer.

The paralysis released its hold on her. Her chest expanded; her shoulders sagged with relief.

She was in no danger of repeating her mistake now.

She called the phone back into her hand. Turning away from the dungeon, she left all the loathsome memories it'd unearthed to rot in there.

Her hand wobbled without her permission upon casting light on the rest of the corridor.

Her confidence quickly seeped away as an even dozen of doors greeted her. And those were just the ones she could see. It was a given that there were several times as many down the six additional hallways that branched out from the one she was in. She could easily be standing in a maze of rooms that would take far too long to check one by one.

She would have avoided all this trouble if she'd just threatened the queen from the beginning. It would have forced Valtor to return from whatever little excursion he could have gone on. The guard would hardly be able to contain her without any assistance from him and she assumed he'd want to keep his access to the Dyamond palace if nothing else.

Raina herself was useless to him, even in her quality of being queen. She didn't add anything to his arsenal – neither political prowess and connections, nor particular intellect. Following her uncle's abdication in favor of her mother, her startling, unprecedented lack of magical ability had been a cultural shock to her people, threatening to upend the belief upon which their entire monarchy was founded – that they could make a proper ruler out of anyone. All eyes were on the young crown princess now, waiting hungrily for any sign that she wouldn't turn out just like her mother.

Another reason why Griffin had overlooked the trap that'd been set for her – she'd deemed it wasteful even for Valtor to enter such an unfavorable alliance just to spite her. The easiest way to gain all the influence and access to magic he'd want would have been to put his own heir on any throne he wished, inserted himself in any court across the dimension.

She didn't need to raise the topic to know the deep aversion with which he'd meet it. Such a permanent, personal connection to any royal bloodline would be nothing but a liability, leverage to be used against him whether by enemies or even the child's own relatives and court. It was too messy for him and his preference to keep his options open even if he rarely had cause to turn on his allies, his sharp mind letting him spin any situation to his benefit.

If it were someone else's weakness, however, he wouldn't hesitate to exploit it.

Sapphire's father and his wife had been standing next to Raina for the entirety of the celebration, proudly holding the baby. The leaders of certain planets had found the circumstances of the princess' birth scandalous but the people of Dyamond had been overjoyed – just as much as the couple of nobles. Being part of Raina's own court, they wouldn't be any use to Valtor – if he'd noticed them at all.

Things could look very differently where Icy's father was concerned. Raina had refused to divulge his identity even to her own advisors per his wish to remain anonymous. It was possible that she weren't the point of the alliance at all. It didn't make her disposable, however, if she were a means to an end.

Were she wrong and Valtor was still in the palace, tracking down Raina would likely end up leading her directly to him. The last thing she needed was for him to overpower her in front of the queen. She hated to admit it but it would be embarrassingly easy for him to do it after she'd thrown most of her magic on a wild goose chase.

No, she had to make him come to her this time.

Griffin's eyes widened; the breath got stuck in her throat. She spun around on her heel to look at the dungeon again.

She had assumed Raina had held her imprisoned in a see-through cage to let others witness her humiliation. She hadn't had the presence of mind to stop and ask herself why she wasn't the only one that had been caught in the act but had never seen the inside of the cells in the dungeon.

Every time an intruder was captured roaming through the palace, they were hauled away with the excuse that it was safer that way. The truth to it had kept her from asking another logical question – why did the palace have a functioning dungeon if it was never in use? The space could be converted into a more secure vault or at least be used for storage purposes but instead, the Dyamond monarchs had kept wasting the building's energy on enchantments canceling out magic.

Griffin marched down the path between the cells. Her own powers grew fainter, dissipating like mist on her skin but a steady stream was still running in her core like an underground river. Concentrating enough energy in a powerful charge would still allow her to cast spells. It was the confirmation she was looking for.

Running her hand over the bars of several cells proved they were all calibrated to stunt magic but not sever it completely. That served just as well for masking the active power source of the device as it did as a back door in case the royals ever ended up thrown in their own dungeon. There was no way to tell which cell their captors would choose for them so all had to be connected to the secret passageways.

Griffin flung the closest door open, another rush of energy making her dizzy. Or maybe that was just the speed at which she was moving.

The side walls would lead to the neighboring cells so Griffin made her way straight to the one across from her. Any hidden passageway would be locked behind it.

The door didn't slam shut after her as soon as she was through. If Raina wasn't alarmed yet, she had to take another look at the crater in her palace walls. It was unlikely she would have disclosed any information about her failsafe to Valtor either, at least not of her own volition. She was confident in her own security measures and Griffin couldn't wait to make her regret it.

Blood magic was her best guess. A lock defended with it couldn't be forced open with stolen blood or via a coerced hostage. It had to be done out of one's own volition or through a complex, time- and energy-consuming system of spells that corroded the integrity of any magic they came in contact with.

While she wasn't closely familiar with The Point of Salvation, she could deduce it would require maintenance, or at least a periodic check to confirm it was operational. With how paranoid the queen had been about another attempt on her kingdom's sovereign status, she had certainly inspected her insurance policy for her and her daughters' survival before inviting the enemy to her celebration. Probably even more recently before the massive destruction that was about to occur on her neighboring planet.

A person well-versed in magic would know how to remove their blood traces from a once opened lock but Raina was not a magic user. Indeed, when Griffin brought her hand next to the wall, careful to keep a distance between them, and scanned it, Raina's essence was still in there like a fingerprint left on a doorknob. All she had to do was use it like a glove to hide her own essence and deceive the spell.

Quiet fizzling filled the cell as the stones in front of her vanished to leave her staring at a dark niche hidden behind it. Stepping inside triggered another mechanism that restored the wall to its previous state before the niche opened into a claustrophobic antechamber.

Another lock requiring blood didn't slow her down much.

The vanishing granite revealed a relatively larger circular chamber. The soft glow that lit the room had no visible source. It appeared to stream through the stone itself and finally allowed her to return her phone back to her pocket dimension.

The device located in the middle of the otherwise empty chamber was nothing like she'd expected it to be. It would be comical if not for how baffling the design was.

It appeared as nothing more than a dyamond tube with a... She had to stifle a hysterical laughter at the sight of the sliding door. Having been hosted by nobility and royalty all across the dimension, she'd seen infinitely more elaborate shower stalls.

The magical current that the whole charade with the dungeon was supposed to mask was undeniably stronger in here. Palpitations moved the floor under her feet like she was standing on the back of a living, breathing beast. It was probably the source of the light as well.

A more thorough look at the composition of the device revealed the reason for its simplicity. Its power source was dug into the ground along with all the rest of its vital components. A last, desperate and rather useless effort at protecting its integrity. If any enemy made it this far, The Point of Salvation's destruction was ensured.

Still, Griffin carefully examined it for any more security measures only to come up empty-handed. It was possible the thought of a panicked, hasty child reaching their ticket to freedom and being hindered by the very system set in place to protect them had overpowered even the paranoia of the earliest generations of Dyamond royalty.

The inside of the tube was just as simplistic as the outside. Apart from the amethyst crystals lining the parts of it that didn't move, there were no controls. It powered up as soon as Griffin stepped inside and was meant for completely intuitive use, designed for the worst case scenario – having to be operable by the youngest of children.

It would be absurd then to think that Griffin wouldn't figure out how to use it.

If Valtor hadn't shown up yet, there was no point stalling. It had become tiresomely typical of him not to take her seriously and force her hand into something they'd both rather avoid.

She closed the door behind her, the airtight space instantly setting off her nerves. She could try to force a rhythm to her breathing, focus her mind on her goal, but it'd be no use. Another million years wouldn't make this next part easier.

Anticipation coiled inside and around her, familiar and dreaded. It'd been her companion for years, a constant presence in the back of her mind that squeezed around her at the very possibility of Valtor's face appearing to her. She'd been waiting for the moment when she'd fail and crawl back to him just to avoid the feeling anymore, to replace it with the wild rush of having him so near she could always reach her hand out and touch him. Then the fear that everyone else that'd grown dear to her would look at her with hatred wouldn't have mattered.

She'd been such a fool. There was nothing she wouldn't give to see them hate her, nothing she wouldn't give to see them alive.

She closed her eyes and let the image of Sylvia form in her mind. She couldn't be sure where to look for her. Her mansion would be the most logical place but she had no guarantee someone as active on the political scene as Valtor was would be home. She had to focus on the woman herself and let the amethyst crystals boost the psychic waves that were supposed to guide the rest of the process.

The walls disappeared around her, the air moving freely, spinning around her body and yet still stale on her skin. There was nothing solid under her feet; she was floating in the air despite the power surges of the device still rippling under her soles.

Her nails tried to dig into her palms through her gloves. The grayish void she found was surrounding her when she opened her eyes didn't help.

Something had gone wrong.

Her palm slapped against the sliding door of the tube despite all the empty space surrounding her. The glass slid open and the gray in front of her eyes was replaced with the familiar inside of the device and the stone chamber around it.

In all of Raina's paranoia, she couldn't have missed to make sure her last line of defense worked properly. She would have tested it, maintained it, done everything necessary to keep it operational at all times. The mistake must have been hers.

Griffin closed the door again and visualized Sylvia's face carefully behind her eyelids, imagined her voice – never loud but perfectly authoritative. She hated to admit it but Sylvia had intimidated her well into her teenage years. She'd been the epitome of everything Griffin had wanted to be – powerful, respected, feared even, and perfectly unmoved by the greatest powers of the dimension; she was one of them and more often the one that everyone else had to accommodate. Yet, she'd still hated her – not because of Sylvia's treatment of her, but because of her treatment of-

The light behind her eyelids shifted dramatically. Sunbeams hit her in the face, making her raise a hand to protect her eyes.

Her heart leaped in her throat when she opened them to find Sylvia leaning against an ornate, polished desk in a spacious room she didn't recognize. She looked disturbingly smaller than usual, her curly hair loose down her back and unbrushed. It was when she turned around that Griffin jumped back and hit the wall behind her.

Sylvia's hard, sculpted features appeared frozen in place as always. Griffin couldn't identify a single wrinkle that had appeared since she'd known the woman but her eyes were now so wet and red-rimmed. Rather than the arctic blue she was used to seeing, they looked completely ashen and gray, devoid of color. Her lower lip quivered with something unspoken but it was her hunched shoulders that would poke Griffin's eyes out. They made her look like she was trying to curl herself around a piece of her that was no longer there.

Griffin opened her mouth but instantly closed it. It only made her breathing more frantic; the irregular gasps barely kept her conscious as her vision swam, to her relief. It made it impossible to look Sylvia in the eye.

"Griffin," her voice was nothing like she remembered, soft and fragile, a distant echo of the woman she knew. "You're alive. What happened on Domino?"

She didn't sound surprised. If anyone would have reasoned Griffin had gone with Valtor, it was her. Still, Griffin couldn't decide if that was the reason for her disgust or the mention of her other enemy, the one that'd fallen, the one that should have meant nothing to her anymore.

Griffin grappled for her own voice; she wasn't sure what would be worse – for Sylvia to speak again or for her to do it.

"We... I couldn't... I-I... She's dead." She was repeating Valtor's words, had to focus on the memory of his voice, the cold, steel certainty of it carving into her chest, just to be able to utter them.

"The Ancestral Witches?"

She had to bite herself to keep from laughing. She had to bite herself to keep from screaming.

"They're gone too, but Fara-"

She swallowed, then again. If anything came out of her throat, her sanity would escape with it; she wouldn't be able to keep it down.

She couldn't sit still.

If she made one step, she'd leave the device and risk being stuck with Sylvia. She couldn't take the chance of losing her way back to Dyamond and being left only with her own magic that had crawled in the darkest, dirtiest corner of her mind and curled into a small, useless ball.

Her hands found her braid, fingers picking at her hair, pushing to force their way between the tightly held strands and pull them loose. That pain was welcome, grounded her in her body, the sting of it far more tangible than the words she forced herself to fire out while she was distracted.

"You have to find her, bury her. She deserves- Not this. So much better than this... We're certainly not the ones that will give it to her."

How had it come to this? The two of them being the ones left to remember Faragonda – the ones that had failed over and over again to see her for who she truly was, to accept her, to be there for her. This had to be a cruel joke.

"Where exactly should I look for her?"

The question echoed in Griffin's mind like a slap against tiled walls. "I-"

She'd never asked. Had never asked whether there was anything left to be buried at all. No, she would have crawled inside Valtor's ribcage if possible where the only thing that mattered was his heart – beating – for her.

He never found someone to take her place. It roused a grim satisfaction inside her to know she haunted his thoughts, too, that he could not look at another and see anything but her. He'd never taken another partner, another confidante, and any lover after her would have been subjected to brutal, merciless comparison, all of them bound to disappoint. No one would have moaned like her, uttering his name through trembling lips and clutching him closer, her magic spilling for him to kiss over it. She had ruined everyone else for him, had ruined the taste of life unless he was drinking up from her lips.

It was only fair.

"How did my daughter die, Griffin?" Sylvia's voice pierced through her skull like an icicle. "Watching you fuck her– your–mortal enemy? I'm surprised you took a break to call me and arrange her burial. How do you intend to come to her funeral? Hand in hand with her murderer?"

Griffin's fingers clawed at her throat – to open it for more oxygen or to let the blood spill out, it was impossible to tell. Maybe it was to let her soul escape, away from the razor-sharp teeth in it, tearing it apart for sick entertainment. That gleam in Sylvia's eyes...

It wasn't natural.

It wasn't her.

She was talking to an impostor.

Her spell-charged fist hit the dyamond tube around her. All it accomplished was a painful reminder of where she was.

She threw the door open and jumped out, the image of the impostor in front of her popping out of existence like it was nothing more than an ephemeral soap bubble.

She couldn't wrap her mind around any of it.

Sylvia would never be so crude about it. The subtlety of her words always made them that much more brutal. She would have circled around her, Valtor's name hanging heavy in the air like a guillotine that only nicked her flesh, each cut skin-deep. It would have been the itch that would have made Griffin herself reach to tear them open, swallowing her own tears and begging for mercy.

Sylvia would have known that sticking her fingers in Griffin's wounds would only make her retreat to lick them closed – directly into Valtor's arms. He was the only one she could bear to hold her, the only one she hadn't betrayed, at least not worse than he'd betrayed her.

There was only one person who'd know how to hijack the signal of The Point of Salvation, to manipulate it.

She'd been talking to none other than the queen of Dyamond herself, had once again fallen into the trap Raina had set out for her. She could have easily made her way to the device after the explosion that had shaken the whole palace while Griffin had been wracking her brain trying to find it.

It wasn't right. She had no magic...

Valtor did. Had an excess of it to give away.

A volatile charge made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, as if the air had filled with static electricity.

She whipped around and nearly slammed into his chest, their faces mere inches apart. His quick spell steadied her just in time.

It was a miracle his proximity didn't singe the hair right off her body. Only his intent rendered the sizzling aura around him harmless to her.

She refused to move. He'd been the one to decide the current distance between them didn't work. He'd have to bridge or broaden it.

This close to him, she could only take in separate, little fragments of his appearance – the ruffles of his shirt, completely identical to the one she'd destroyed, his unmoving throat clearly implying he found nothing to correct in their current position, his blond locks falling about his face as if he'd just stepped off the set of a hair product commercial.

His power had settled into his skin again to leave the stage all to his flawless composure. His posture was always that of someone who owned the whole world as if his height alone weren't imposing. Now it was too stiff, his shoulders pinned back to mask the restlessness that shadowed his every movement, looking for an opening to possess his muscles and ruin his carefully crafted image. It was why his gaze was trained on one single spot, perfectly poised to meet hers once she looked him in the eyes.

He had been on the hunt. The only thing that had his blood boiling beyond his control was an unfinished business, especially when he was chasing someone. Someone that wasn't her.

An ugly thing rose in her chest, hissed like a snake that'd been crushed under someone's boot, maimed but still surviving. She had to restrain herself from attacking him, latching to his mouth until he was too busy mapping out her body with his hands and kisses to remember anyone else existed.

Because she was staring so intently at his lips, she saw the sigh leaving them in a grand performance.

"I was hoping this all could be avoided. Yet, I come back to find that you've already provoked our hostess," he pressed his fingers into his temple, the image of a tortured diplomat. "I reasoned that you'd at least behave yourself long enough for me to return, if you noticed my absence at all."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Griffin seethed despite her best efforts.

"I suppose not. After all, you exhausted all this magic for absolutely no reason at all. But you can take comfort in the assurance that all my efforts were invested in a posthaste return to you, starlight," he abandoned his theatrics to take her hand, his fingers twisting the silver strings of her glove around them to tie her to him.

Oh, he was enjoying this.

Whatever power her scowl might have had was demolished by the tremble of her lips at the sound of the endearment. Heat was rising in her sides–apparently so if she were to judge by his smirk–as if he were a sun nestled inside her chest. His response to her ironic "sunshine" never failed to disarm her. Of course, he wouldn't hesitate to use it now.

She could play his game.

"Why, I find the discovery I made to be more than worth it, wouldn't you agree?" Griffin looked over her shoulder at The Point of Salvation. "You can reach any part of the dimension, find anyone you're looking for."

It was better that she didn't draw his attention back to whom specifically she'd been trying to contact but she could always remind him there were still people out there that she could go to and leave him to stew in the implications as he liked to do to her so often.

Valtor's lips tickled the shell of her ear insistently, demanding that she spare no thought to anything but him, "Were you going to hunt me down, dearest? Come join me in my affairs?"

The moment she raised her hand to slap him, he'd snatch her wrist and pull her glove off, bring her fingers to his lips. All her rage, her indignation and her resolve would slip right between them and she'd fall into his bed again, without a single thought spared on how she'd be setting herself up for a repeat of events.

"I must admit that your devotion to bringing me back here is immensely flattering," he cupped her cheek and turned her face towards him again.

Griffin had to bite back a grin at how quickly his patience unraveled the moment his ego took over. It would cut that much deeper when he realized he'd set himself up for the crushing blow.

"Oh," her eyes widened to accompany the exaggerated way her lips shaped the sound, "I rather thought that since you were out there taking care of your affairs, I should do the same. You see, when I found you gone-"

His lips curled around a vicious snarl, baring his teeth – involuntarily. It settled as soon as she faltered, giving the impression of capitulation.

She could already taste his magic souring, prickling into her mouth with every breath. It'd turn to knives in her flesh if she relayed to him her conversation with Raina but she'd have wrested it from his control, would have turned it on him as much as on herself.

He'd had to fight for her undivided attention for years and settle for failure when she walked away again, hand in hand with the fairy she'd returned to, the fairy that'd had everything he wanted. Just hearing her name would set him off like a bomb that would take out the entire palace, blow a crater straight through to the core of Dyamond.

Her heart shuddered in dark, delighted vindictiveness but her jaw trembled before Faragonda's name could start forming in her mouth. Her vision flickered, losing him for a moment only to find nothing else in the gray emptiness he left behind.

"We all have to make sacrifices in our line of work, regrettably," the yearning in his voice was so potent it guided her like a lighthouse in the dark.

His warmth against her skin grounded her; his face came into focus again. The back of his fingers stroked her cheek and there it was – the ice of his gaze melted for her.

"That blue looks stunning on you," his arm slid around her waist and pulled her closer, too close for him to be able to see anything other than her face.

The light around them burned brighter than it had before, making her dress shine against her skin rather than let her be lost, engulfed, in the dark fabric and the matching insides of her mind.

Valtor's lips sealed hers like fire scorching the ground, cleansing it for new sprouts to take root – a whole garden in the making.

She leaned into him, burying her hands under his coat, under his vest to clutch at his shirt. It was bathed in the heat that had long evaporated from the sheets when she'd stirred awake, sent little thrills shooting through her as if she were holding real flames in her hands and they only licked at her skin without burning her.

It wasn't enough.

She'd have to wrap herself in it to chase away the bitter taste of smoke and lies on her tongue, to be able to stomach his words again. He should have awakened her himself, lips and hands on her skin and a hunger in him that could only be sated when matched with her own. He should have trembled with sheer offense at the very possibility of her mind straying from him for a single moment, of her body–her whole being– not trembling for him.

A single kiss was just a cruel reminder that he'd failed to prioritize her.

Valtor was quick to dive in for another one as soon as she'd drawn the one gasping breath he was willing to allow her.

Her palm against his chest only earned her a second to deter him from distracting her again. "Are you sure you won't accuse me again of provoking our hostess?"

Valtor let go of her and stepped back, allowing cold to consume her when he was the warmest thing in the room, the warmest thing in existence. His gaze abandoned her as well, moved over her shoulder to The Point of Salvation behind her.

Her heart twisted. She had to clench her fists to subdue her magic, bite her lip to tame the hexes on it that would explode the dyamond tube behind her into silica dust raining over them like snow.

"As long as I remove you from her precious device, she'd be content. Though," the corner of his mouth twitched up, "I'm sure her appreciation will grow exponentially if I deign to employ a silencing spell this time."

He looked at her, an eyebrow arched delicately as if seeking her input when the moment he decided he'd had enough of this silliness, his name would be the only word left on her lips – for the whole world to hear.

Griffin suffocated the desire to get ahead of him, "Too bad for her."

"Indeed," Valtor purred, satisfied with her acquiescence. "You can see how dangerous you are to her, Griffin. You could ruin her."

He circled her casually, knowing she'd turn after him as if magnetized, his words just as much a pull on her as his presence.

"All you have to do," he motioned for the dyamond tube in front of him, "is contact the Council, warn them of her alliance with me."

Valtor turned towards her again as if he couldn't bear to leave her out of his sight, every moment his eyes weren't on her excruciating.

Delight flared in her chest rather than the appropriate fury. The craving for violence that possessed her was only directed at his clothes and the space between them.

With his hands clasped behind his back and a solemn, subservient expression on his face, he seemed to place himself at her feet. If not for the gleam in his eyes, even she could believe he was doing that rather than taunting her.

She was only useful to the Council dead. They'd always considered her Valtor's spy; a single trace of her survival would instantly renew the interplanetary hunt for her head. No information was worth more than dispensing justice and crippling any plan of his that relied on her involvement. In their eyes she was only a tool in his arsenal, the only type of weapon he wielded on the regular and with pleasure.

"They are desperate beyond reason, scrambling to find a scapegoat to take the fall for their own incompetence." Valtor moved closer, his gait that of a predator cornering his wounded dinner. "Dyamond is just the perfect candidate that they've overlooked... until someone sheds light on my patronage of the queen."

Griffin couldn't fight off the shiver quaking her. If he could do this to her with just words, he wouldn't even need his mark to ensure Raina's compliance with his every whim. It took two to keep a secret, yet she alone would suffer the consequences if hers was revealed.

She'd made her antagonism towards Domino public every day of her reign, the fallout between her and Marion an obscene spectacle for the whole dimension to witness. Pinning the blame on her would pacify the other monarchs and all concerns they'd have for the safety of their own kingdoms. A personal grudge only succeeding with the help of a now-extinct faction was much less troubling than a conquest of a universal scope that was not entirely fruitless.

"Fear drives people to excessive, extreme measures," Valtor's voice startled her like the cracking of a whip. "I gave her the means to protect herself, provided her with security to minimize the potential for rash decisions but, apparently, she still finds you intimidating. Can you really blame her?"

Griffin pursed her lips. He couldn't expect her to fall for such a sloppy attempt to get a rise out of her, could he? She weren't Raina. She deserved more effort.

"You have always been formidable, especially to someone who has only just discovered the possibilities of magic. She's but a child playing with her new toy while you with your impeccable mastery of your craft and your reputation alone, not to mention my respect for you were bound to be imposing and draw her caution. She's not foolish enough to think herself a match for you just because I looked at her twice."

When she didn't immediately crumble at his feet or lift herself on tiptoes to bestow the kiss she'd denied him before, he added, "You did also aid those who'd colonized her planet once already in a plot against her kingdom."

The effect was instant.

The words ripped through her throat like a dagger slicing it open, "The plot was against you!"

Her ragged, heavy breathing filled the room, stuffed her chest with a clawing panic.

There wasn't space inside her for the onslaught of memories, of voices screeching in her head, fighting to take over.

They will have multiple times the firepower that they do now.

No one can know what we're doing there.

What was the nature of your relationship with Valtor?

There are intruders in the palace.

Members of your court were caught in the act, or do you deny it?

I'm sorry, Griffin.

I'm sorry. I'msorryimsorryimsorry

She was choking. Her mind was unraveling not thread by thread but all at once. Her body followed, shaking-

Valtor's hand seizing her wrist pulled her to safety, into his soothing presence. His breath was a warm breeze over her face that chased away the water from her eyes. She could focus on his.

They bored into her like she was a butterfly pinned in his gaze, paralyzed and exposed, wings fluttering helplessly. "She doesn't like being collateral damage anymore than she does like being betrayed."

The one drawback of him seeing her betrayal in everything was that it was the one thing he saw when he looked at her too.

She couldn't take it back.

She'd known that when she'd left.

She'd never been prepared for it. Especially not now that she was by his side again, in his arms and the triumphant relief of their reunion was so fragile under their feet, wailing at every step and threatening to send them crashing into the rage bubbling underneath like an active volcano.

"I'm sure she'd warm up to you if you put a little effort into showing remorse," Valtor tucked an invisible lock of hair behind her ear, the gesture more a warning than an olive branch.

Something burst inside her. Not so much a dam as it was a fuse, overloaded from years and years' worth of his veiled threats and her own regrets, anticipation and the horrible, crippling anxiety of having him so near only to lose him for good.

" Fuck her!"

Valtor's eyes flashed ominously. His jaw worked – to grind to dust the words erupting from him and replace them with other, measured ones.

"Now how would that make you feel, dearest? I'd never be so careless with your feelings." He had to love the taste of her blood to always twist the knife as viciously as possible. "We wouldn't want you to blow up the rest of the palace, now would we?"

It had to bother her more. But as long as she was in his mouth, he would never learn to live without her.

It helped her keep the petulance out of her voice, "Raina was quick to run to you with all of her problems."

"Thanks to your handiwork," Valtor gave her fingers a squeeze, "a thick smoke curtain has claimed the first floor. All the ash you've trailed down the stairs hardly compares with that but was rather useful. How do you think I found you?"

Of course. She hadn't been using any of her own magic.

Judging from his words, Raina hadn't told him where to find her, had hoped he would drag her away from her hidden failsafe with his mere return. And he would have if she hadn't left him such a convenient trail to follow. So much for Raina's secret.

"I trust you can refrain from causing further destruction to our new home," Valtor continued as if she hadn't just provided him with a–grossly unneeded–advantage.

"Where are you going?" the words tumbled out before she could catch herself, her fingers flexing, forcing him to release her.

To his credit, Valtor had the decency to look annoyed rather than smirk at her. "You have created work for me, dearest. Someone has to fix all the property damage you've left in your wake."

Instead of her jaws clenching together, her mouth fell open. The hiss on its way to leave her morphed into a rush of air that sounded suspiciously like a sigh of relief when Valtor pressed his lips to her forehead in an unexpectedly tender kiss.

"The library is yours to explore at your discretion and so is the rest of the palace," his thumb stroked her cheek to completely offset her balance alongside the wistful look her gave her.

She had to grasp at his wrist with both hands to remain upright. She didn't miss the wave of smugness rolling off him, his eyes already dissecting every twitch of her fingers in his sleeve and the fluttering of her lashes.

She had to take him down a peg.

The look she gave him was made all the more cocky by her poorly feigned demure act, her fingers toying with the hem of his sleeve, "You're leaving me to gallivant around unsupervised?"

"You are a guest here, after all. The guest of honor," Valtor fired out in contrast with how stiff his fingers had grown on her cheek. "Do try a more amicable approach when it comes to weathering the queen's moods, won't you?"

Griffin made a show of intertwining their fingers and turning to kiss his palm despite his glove.

Then, in the most level, innocent voice she could manage, she asked, "That would mean, of course, that I could roam further than the palace grounds?"

Valtor frowned, nearly pouted at the mere mention.

"Within reason." Always one to recover quickly, he leaned in like his next words were only for her ears – a love confession to tug on her heartstrings and bind her in his orbit. "Your face is not as anonymous as it used to be. You'd be putting yourself and the queen in danger if you're noticed in the heart of her home."

Griffin pulled back to meet his eyes, "There's a simple solution to eliminate the risk to Her Majesty."

The moment she dropped his hand, his magic spiked as if she'd thrown a stone in a lake and awoken the creatures in the deep. Turning her back on him was the equivalent of pouring oil in the fire.

It burst in the room, dropped the pressure and made the air crackle with static as if they were in the middle of a storm. It clawed at her form, compelling, demanding that she turn around to look at him or it would slither inside her and make her.

It shivered in delight when small charges trickled in her fingertips. Wisps of his power gathered around her hands to urge more of hers out, coaxing, cajoling her to join him, give him everything she had.

She forced herself to ignore them and focused on picking a destination. The Point of Salvation wouldn't take her anywhere but she weren't Raina. She could do it herself.

She could swear the tiniest gasp of alarm broke through the chaos in her thoughts only for him to cover it up just as quickly.

"Where are you headed to, starlight?"

His voice was an arrow through her chest. It pierced in and out to pin her heart to the wall across from her. An excessive, underhanded attempt to keep her from leaving.

She turned to look at him, to return the favor.

"Oh, I don't know. Probably Solaria. I could use the sunshine if we are to have a... shortage of it in the next few months." She feigned contemplation, "On the other hand, no one would expect me on Magix and I haven't been on a decent book hunt in ages. I can easily think of fifteen bookshops I could tour just off the top of my head."

Valtor's expression slowly changed – from furrowed eyebrows and a storming gaze to a fond, saccharine smile, "If you do end up shopping, I trust you to surprise me with an appropriate gift, for all my assistance in your relations with the queen."

A moment of silence settled between them before her heart threatened to detonate in her chest. He could certainly hear its pounding against her ribs, trigger it with a simple gesture, a single look even. Her magic dripped too slowly into her palms to provide a real outlet. He must have taken her depleted reserves to mean hesitation.

Fine. Her absence would strike him that much harder when she disappeared – this time right in front of his eyes.

Denying him her company was her last bargaining chip. She wasn't really denying him, more like delaying him, spiting him. The power she had was so little, practically nothing, but she couldn't let go of it. He'd already robbed her of so much, even now that she was defeated, completely at his mercy.

Valtor didn't budge despite her building spell.

He could find her on the other end of the universe.

She had to count on it.

Her magic ran the length of her body like little shock waves, resounding echoes of a disaster that had already happened. She hardly heard Valtor's voice over it.

"Stay out of trouble."

His gaze easily cut through the haze taking over her, drove the air out of her lungs.

She was stuck on the cold of it – frozen in place.

The shiver running through her kicked her spell into motion.

Valtor disappeared.

Her body crumbled into the depths of her magic. The pieces of her launched through space and her mind followed in a smooth jump with none of the impact of rattling around in her physical form.

White-hot agony tore through her to split her in half – one continuing to hurtle forward and the other flung back and spat out in the stone chamber again.

She was yanked backwards, each of her atoms crushing the rest, melding them into one again. The force of it rang through her bones like she'd hit a wall.

Valtor's grip on her wrist was brutal, searing through both their gloves. There was no magic to it, only his devastating fury.

Her own power was silenced; everything around them had fallen still. The air between them was charged with unbearable tension. One hair moved by her inhale was all the friction needed for a spark, for an explosion that would char them to ash.

She didn't dare breathe. Her lungs strained, burned, but she only looked at him, waited.

He could lean in and kiss her, or he'd finally go for it and choke her.

Valtor grabbed her chin instead of her neck – as if she weren't fully gripped by him already.

The quiver of her lips drained the blood thirst from his gaze and touch, made the pressure around them crumble in shards. Her shoulders sagged along with it but her eyes never left his.

"You've never been wasteful with magic," Valtor's voice unfurled through her body, from her head to the pit of her stomach, dropping heavy in there like a sinking stone. "Don't start now."

Griffin had to catch herself when his grip disappeared. It couldn't have taken her more than a second to steady herself on her feet but he was already halfway across the chamber, standing next to the exit.

He turned to her and offered his hand, "Where would you even go?"

Anywhere.

It wouldn't make a difference. Without him by her side or at least pursuing her savagely it wouldn't matter one bit if she were walking the lush forests of Linphea teeming with plant life extinct elsewhere or infiltrating the vaults bursting with all the secrets of the black arts underneath the ruins of Spheria. It would only ever feel one way – deafening, oppressive stillness that with time only mellowed out to a dull emptiness when she was alone with her thoughts.

"I didn't want to leave. I never would have if..."

The first months after had been excruciating. The smallest of charges in her fingertips had echoed back at her tenfold, tearing at her own flesh when there'd been no answer. Uttering the simplest of spells had been a death wish, a suicide. Instead of a cautious step inching forward, it had been a fall off a half-standing bridge. Yet, you couldn't see where the stone ended until you'd dropped off.

Only when she'd met him in battle, she had started recovering with the slowness of rehabilitating a broken spine, and just because Faragonda hadn't let her do it alone.

"If what?" Valtor's voice whipped against the stone walls as if he'd seen the name written all over her in the way Faragonda had nursed her back to functionality.

He bridged the distance between them again when she didn't answer, attempted to pull it out of her with his mere presence, with the mirage of it.

Like a hound to blood, Griffin latched onto that one weakness she had forced on him.

He stalked over to her before she could take her second step back. He took her chin in his hand. The firmness of his touch echoed in her body when the hard wall met her back.

He'd teleported them just to have her cornered. A clear message to pick her words carefully but not make him wait any longer, lest he decided to take them straight from her head.

It was the perfect payback – his own strategy turned on him in retribution for his silence about her friends' demise. He had to be dying to brag about his cunning and skill in outsmarting them, taking their lives in his hands and crushing them into nothingness. But he wanted her to ask, wanted her to be complicit in the pain he got to cause her. Now she had the power to make him wonder in turn, ache for the truth, for a reason she could give him to put his mind at ease, stop it from tearing apart every little memory of her for hints and clues just to have something definitive, something tangible to explain the worst part of his life.

It didn't feel like a victory, or even like an advantage of any kind. Just another fall deeper into the pit of misery they were burying themselves in. It was a miracle they were both still breathing.

Griffin raised her hand to cup his face, her glove melting away, but Valtor swatted it away like her caress was an annoying pest.

His eyes were throwing sparks, the words shredding through his teeth, "I found no trace of you where you were supposed to greet me. I found you on enemy territory – not as a captive, but worse – as a traitor, an informant, their ally."

She couldn't help but shrink away, his vulnerability always the sharpest weapon he could aim at her throat, but his fingers under her chin held her in place for the onslaught.

"How many times have I watched you choose to walk away from me and whimper after them like a stray animal half out of its mind with starvation? Was that my fault? Did I cast you aside, shove you into their arms? Was I the one to push you away?"

The cold amidst which she'd woken flared inside her chest, spread through her body to make her frigid like a stone. If she tried to beat him over the head with his own mistakes, he'd spin it around, put the blame on her again.

The realization that she didn't care settled in her bones like a chill she couldn't shake off. As long as she could spit venom in his face in turn, it was worth getting burned by him.

Valtor forced her jaws closed, trapping her tongue between her teeth. "You were wanting for nothing. You had my respect and my trust to execute plans as you deemed fit. I offered support to any agenda you had, ensured your access to magic no other witch had been allowed to witness, let alone use for herself. Did I ever meet you with judgment for your heart's desires or any act you've committed in my name or your own? I have only ever granted you the freedom to be yourself, to speak your mind without having to bow down to people who hate your guts."

Not just her mind but her heart, her feelings for him that had been denounced as more abominable than the corpses she had created with her own ha-

Griffin bit her tongue until she tasted blood, the sharp tang of it severing her thought.

His palms were feather-light on her skin when he cupped her cheeks – as if she would set him ablaze with the mere contact between them.

His voice came out guttural, growling, like he was digging deep into his core just to get it out, "I have proven time and time again that I would give you everything, that I would stop at nothing for you, even after what you did."

His shoulders shuddered just barely, his eyes stabbing through her. His breaths were too fast and shallow, like he couldn't draw in a deeper one without flinching... like he was in pain.

Griffin swallowed her blood, the taste of it soaking her insides like there was a monster there thirsting for it, making her feral – to match him.

Calculation had played no part in his disappearing act, only self-preservation. Keeping her an arm's length away had been the only solution he'd come up with to the gnawing hunger that had ravaged them both for years. Yet his fingers pressed into her skin, hard, to erase the possibility of her existing on her own, without being marked by him. His control was slipping through the fissures running across his mask from the gut-punch that was her proximity.

A sharp inhale rattled her whole body when Valtor leaned in, lips just shy of covering hers.

"I told you, Griffin," the way he rasped her name made her weak in the knees. "I am not careless with your feelings."

She blinked and he was gone, a respectable distance away from her and perfectly composed once more, smirking at her obvious need to brace herself against the wall now that the support of his body had disappeared. She'd lost count of how many times he'd subjected her to that kind of bait-and-switch just today.

"No, I could never call you careless," she crossed her arms, leaning fully against the wall, determined not to be the first one to budge. "You invested two years in this charade of an alliance just to... irritate me."

The words were small on her tongue, tasteless.

She wouldn't give him more.

The glint in his eyes was... troubling. She'd seen it enough times not to begrudge herself for the buckling of her knees, for her nails digging into her arms in a desperate bid to hold her together.

"Oh, Griffin," Valtor crooned like he meant to soothe a scared prey animal. He was leading her like a lamb to the slaughter. "You of all people should be aware I never play on a single front. Raina has been much more useful to me than you could imagine."

The dagger landed perfectly, a sharp point straight through her chest. A confirmation that he was lying would only force it deeper, would make it hollow out her sternum as well, not just slice her flesh open.

It would be much preferable to hearing about all the alleged uses he'd had for Raina of all people.

All the time they'd spent fighting each other he'd claimed his anger had been on her behalf – partly at least. Yet, instead of gunning for the heads of those he'd insisted were beneath her, he'd sunk even lower – for the sake of rubbing her face in it.

"I am well aware," the words shook off her lips and shattered at her feet but he couldn't ignore them if he wanted to close in on her. "No one in this entire universe knows you better than I do so don't even try to play your games with me."

Valtor's lips parted like he was eating up her performance, like he only delighted in her adorable attitude.

"You wouldn't have looked at her twice if you couldn't use her to spite me," Griffin spat out to keep the words from sanding her tongue down to a pulpy mess. "If she knew even half of what I did for you, she would have fled into another fucking dimension!"

The mirth drained from his expression, replaced by a grim seriousness that would frighten away a thunderstorm. "If I wanted you jealous, I would have given you thousands to be jealous of."

Valtor slipped to the other end of the room upon the sight of her bared teeth. His pace was unhurried as he circled from afar, leaving the device between them, to separate them and hide him from her gaze, only his disembodied words flocking to her side to haunt her.

"Everyone you ever met you would hate. In your mind I would have replaced you with every – one – of them."

The force in her clenched fists would be enough to pluck every ounce of magic straight out of Raina with her bare hands. Let's see how useful she'd be when stripped down only to her own strength and abilities.

"Not every one."

Three steps and she was facing the outline of her own body in the diamond tube. Another fraction of a second was all it took for a devastating spell to pool into her fist, make her fingers shake with the power of it.

Valtor snatched her wrist before it could connect with the dyamond surface, her strength failing to eat away at his... just according to plan.

She grabbed the ruffles of his shirt to pull his face down to hers. Now he was the one that had nowhere to go.

"You like to think you do everything with class, including spiting me. You wouldn't consider most people worth it even as the face of your retribution."

Valtor tilted his head like she was finally making sense, like she was finally worth listening to.

Twisting her arm only had his grip tighten like a vise around it. Her heart unclenched and she could dismiss her spell at last.

She had to bite back her grin. "You know what I think?"

Valtor raised an eyebrow at the shift in her tone, the up-and-down stroke of her palm against his chest.

"If you'd replaced me with anyone else, you would have bragged, would have listed all the reasons why they grabbed your attention – how masterful they are with their magic, how sharp a tongue theirs is, how you had to have them because everything you want, you get."

Griffin yanked her arm again – to prove her point.

His reaction was instant; he tugged her closer, threw her off balance.

Their chests collided, her breath tickling his earlobe. Her smirk had to graze his skin a certain way to cause the shiver he couldn't disguise.

She sighed theatrically, her free hand playing with the buttons on his shirt, "And if nothing else, you would have held back for the sake of appearances."

His initial anger had shifted, melded into something different by their third-fourth meeting on the battlefield. His threats had remained just as abhorrent but he'd no longer been the catalyst bringing them into fruition. He'd burdened her with that role, had never missed a chance to remind her and her friends that she would be the Company's undoing, and her own, that one day she would wake up as if from a dream and would want to take back the problem between the two of them that she'd imagined into existence. Then she'd sacrifice anything and anyone on the alter of their love.

He wouldn't have turned around and destroyed all his work just to make her eat her heart out when he touched someone else, pretended he had forgotten the taste of her name.

"You didn't replace me with anyone," Griffin stepped back, eyes on his face but she still sensed the twitch of his free hand to snake around her and cage her to him. "You just wanted to use my imagination against me."

"And here you are!" Valtor fired out, his voice swallowing hers.

Her lungs stuttered when he let go of her instead and clasped his hands behind his back, the image of restraint. A mockery, once again.

"You've blown up a part of Raina's palace and you're in her dungeons, desperately doing everything you can to lure me back here. Jealous," he spat out as if the mere idea was poison twisting up his insides, "of a woman that you yourself said I only ever allied with to get to you."

The fury in his eyes was overflowing, so much so that they looked wet with tears.

His shoulders tensed; he was clearly fighting the impulse to grab at her, shake her, clutch her to his chest and never let go. "What could she possibly have that you don't, that I haven't given you already or shown my willingness to provide for you?"

Yes! Yes, she was getting to him. Let's see him leave her behind now.

Her satisfaction had to have shown for Valtor homed in on it with laser precision. His palm cupped the side of her neck where her telltale pulse gave him an unfair advantage.

"Any magic I have given her pales in comparison with the impressive abilities you had already developed when I first met you. I have spent years," the weight he put in that one word was a sharp contrast with the centuries he'd shouldered with but a shrug, " fighting to return you to your rightful place at my side. I had you weak with bliss in my bed and disturbing her whole palace with your screams."

"And you were gone before I woke up," Griffin fired out to stop him from kissing her, " gone to scheme with her again."

She had her finger on his trigger. All she had to do was keep pushing until he let something slip, anything that would give her a clue of his plans, of who he was after. If not that, at least spur him to continue declaring his devotion for her.

Valtor's thumb pressed into her windpipe.

The real alarm was the look in his eyes – a bottomless coldness that had her teeth chatter, froze the breath right into her lungs. It was unnatural on him, completely antithetical to his being.

"A momentary taste of your own medicine is too much, isn't it?"

Griffin shoved him back, his presence crowding her, calling back to the beginning of this farce. She was so tired, a bone-deep exhaustion draining all her willpower and any bite there might have been to her point.

"After you preferred to sit back and watch as she poked and prodded me for most intimate details about us? I have to admit that it's becoming a lot, yes," she turned away.

She was sick of talking about Raina. The mere mention of her tasted like rot in her mouth, like she was eating the corpse of him – the old Valtor she'd left behind. The man that had taken his place was more alert, more driven, eager to cross any line just to rid himself of the very memory of pain now that he'd come to know loss. He hadn't stepped in when Raina had demanded that she spill her soul in front of her entire court, had allowed it just to watch her flay herself alive and drown in her own blood.

"You were the one who chose to proceed with it, to attend the celebration at all," Valtor's comeback was quick. Too quick, too clipped.

Instead of smothering her arguments before they could form in her mind, it let her imagine he had regrets about that night as well.

A cruel irony. An ouroboros eating its tail, then failing to retch with the rest of its own body still in its mouth, they were.

"Yes, and you allowed it, planned for it even!" her voice burned in her throat, every sound inflamed and agonizing, forcing her to force it out. "You gave precedence to Raina's agenda over me, over us."

He could kill every person that'd been in that ballroom and it wouldn't even begin to make up for what he'd subjected her to.

She didn't react to his steps but his hands on her shoulders jolted her. The only magic in the touch was the one his whole being was made of and still, she couldn't shut her breath in, behind her teeth. It was drawn to him like the rest of her body leaning backwards, seeking to bridge the distance between them, to soak up the flux of power flowing from him into her.

"No, Griffin," his lips moved in her hair, tingles running from her scalp to the tips of her fingers, to her toes. "If you're jealous of the queen," he squeezed her upper arms, cutting her outburst out at the root, "then it is your own doing."

One of his palms slipped to the nape of her neck, the other tracing over her collarbones as he circled her. The hard line his mouth was set in, the penetrating look in his eyes demanded her attention the same way a complex incantation did – one misstep would be fatal.

"I have killed for you," his fingers settled in the hollow of her throat, the pressure of them delicate, subtle but making her aware of every breath, every beat of her heart. "Do I have to kill her? Is that what you want?" Valtor purred, eyes already half-lidded in lazy enjoyment.

There was no way for her to hide or mask the wild spikes in her pulse, the teeth worrying her lip to carve out some space, a moment of quiet for her to figure out his offer.

He weren't above sacrificing her dignity for the sake of his plans but he was also painfully familiar with her tendency to double down in an argument, had over three and a half years of proof. He had to know that aside from the occasional quip, making her second-guess herself wasn't a viable strategy for him, would only run the risk of exacerbating the situation.

It would have cost him nothing to sacrifice the whole world to her. Raina didn't matter more than any of his underlings had, had been just as much a means to an end, just as much bait as the notion that he would put weeks of planning towards aiding anyone but himself. Eliminating anyone–whether ally or enemy–that could steal her time and attention away from him was a foolproof way to have her all to himself. In his hands those who'd dared lay a finger on her mother wouldn't have died for their sins, but for the sake of his possessiveness. He wouldn't have hesitated if he'd found them before she had.

If she asked of him to kill a pawn he couldn't be bothered to care about, she'd prove she was just the same as him, worse even. He'd be justified in having murdered the people with whom she'd shared a roof, the people with whom she'd shared her life when she herself wanted one of countless footnotes to his schemes to be removed, erased. He could twist it all to make the gruesome fate of her friends his tribute to her, an expression of his devotion.

Griffin pulled his hand away lest it hooked a gasp from her he could interpret as a confirmation, "Maybe."

A shadow passed over his face, the barest twitch moving the corner of his mouth but he banished any disappointment away, instead giving her a knowing look and a squeeze to her fingers. "Tell me when you've decided. She's just an ally – nothing more, nothing less."

He leaned in just a tiny bit and... Oh, that was rich!

Valtor, Heir of the Ancient Coven, cast his eyes downwards and played at being a shy, insecure lover.

"Valtor..." Incredulity got the best of her and the rest of her thoughts remained stuck in her throat, tied in a knot she couldn't pick with her hand still in his.

"No one has claimed the honor of being my partner."

Her heart skipped a beat.

She licked her lips.

A scream was building in her mouth but she managed to wrestle it into coherent words, "Is that... a proposal?"

She held her breath, half expected him to laugh at her.

He wasn't quite as generous.

"Do you have the stomach for it?" His grin bared pearly-white teeth but that wasn't right. They had just been in her flesh, again and again, tearing chunks out and swallowing them just to have her crawling back to him to put her together again.

All the force she would have put in strangling him barely managed to move her lips to shape something akin to a smile.

It had been a plot, after all. Maybe not from the start. Not when he'd woken next to her and stumbled out of bed, his heart pounding in his chest not with a panic but with acute need for her that had only grown along with the distance he'd put between them.

But once he'd been out of the palace, the razor-sharp awareness that her body in his bed was a chain pulling him back, digging in his tender belly, in his throat, he had figured he could keep it at bay if he had control of it. If he chose when to yank her closer and when to strand her away, when to drag her to him on her knees, begging for the respite only his company could provide.

She couldn't win that tug of war but she could make his victory bitter, incomplete. He'd grown used to ignoring her absence but in the process, he'd forgotten how her closeness even felt – the touch of her hand, the ghost of her lips on his skin, her voice calling his name. The moment he included her in his plans, he would fail to shut her out of his mind. She would always be there even when he wasn't with her. He would not be able to escape her or vice versa – she would be his.

Griffin swallowed. "I do."

Triumph set his eyes ablaze, drew his features into something manic, something unhinged.

He had forgotten – he'd returned to hunt her down, had pulled her back as if she would have taken his heart from his chest along with her, had proclaimed his undying devotion to her – all on her cue. She had made him give in.

Why should she stop now?

"I've simply outgrown the position," she pulled her hand out of his. Chin raised, she only answered his warning glare with a challenge of her own.

The tendons in his neck bulged under the collar of his shirt from how hard he was clenching his jaw, his eyes boring holes into her face, the only sound coming out of him his heavy breathing.

For the first time since she'd known him, Valtor couldn't come into a single word.

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