Chapter 60: Chapter 60

Lily

Without her mother’s garnet ring adorning her finger, Lily’s hands felt oddly empty. The urge to twist the ring surged through her, and she found herself picking at her cuticles as she stared unblinkingly at her father.

“I–“ she began, only to cut herself off. Lily shook her head.

“No, Lily.” Her father took an uncertain step towards her.

She closed the last of the distance between them and pulled him into a hug. “Dad,” she murmured, pressing her face into his neck. “I’m so sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too.” He patted her back awkwardly. “I failed you.”

“I failed you,” she said, words morphing and twisting around a sob. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “I had to leave, but I should never have left without you.” She gripped him impossibly tighter. “I will not fail you again.”

He loosed a breath, shuddering on the exhale. “You do not only have your mother’s eyes, my child. You have her spirit also.”

Lily clutched at him, chest heaving, and then, all of a sudden, she stepped back. Frowning, she looked upon her father with fresh eyes.

“Mum had blue eyes, not brown.”

“It – it has been a long time.” He smiled ruefully, firelight from the torch casting his face in strange patterns. “Forgive me. Blue or brown, they were beautiful.”

Lily took another step back. That was not how her father spoke.

“What’s happened to you?” she asked, fingers fumbling for the non-existent reassurance of the ring.

“Oh, fine.” His voice changed as he spoke, swirling from the eerily familiar to the unknown. “This is not a shape I relish wearing, after all.” His visage too began to shift, her father’s features morphing into a face Lily had hoped she would never see again.

He had rubies for eyes. Red hair – true red, the red of autumn leaves – hung straight down his back, curling at the ends. As her fear set in he smiled, revealing two rows of jewels that sat where his teeth should have been.

“No,” Lily whispered, heart thundering in her chest. She shook her head. “It’s impossible. This – this is one of their magic tricks.” Tears clouded her vision.

Efaffion inspected his gemstone nails. “I’ll give you a moment to let this sink in. Either way, there’s no getting out.”

Lily ran to the door. The abnormal cool of the veil drifted straight through her, making her body twist and shudder. But the door was locked, and no matter how she tugged at the handle she knew, deep within her, that there was no way she could get it to open.

She turned instead to the window. The sky paled outside, cold blue edging the horizon.

“I have already told you,” Efaffion drawled, “you won’t get out of here. Besides,” he sat down, resting his distorted, too-long chin on his knees – the white hair above his upper lip writhing like a den of vipers, “do you not wish to hear my information? I have been here far longer than you, after all, Lily.”

“I do not wish to hear so much as another word from your cursed lips,” she spat. Wrestling with the window panes on her tiptoes, she pointedly ignored Efaffion’s dramatic sighs.

“I am a magical being, Lily dearest. If this cell is able to hold me, I am quite sure that you are doomed to die within it – should they not set you free.”

Anger snapping at her, she spun. “Do they know what you are? Could I trade you, my beloved father,” her lips pulled back from her teeth with rage, “for my freedom?”

He looked away, lips curving upwards. “I doubt it. You were brought here for a purpose.”

Exhaustion swept over her, an unforgiving tide. Lily slipped, skidding down the wall until her back rested against its base. “Fine,” she said eventually, the realisation of her situation making her numb. She was, as Efaffion had said, not getting out – regardless of whether or not she deigned to listen to him. No matter the hatred curling in her gut, ready to spit fire from her mouth at him, hearing what he had to say could not do any more harm.

“But,” she held up a single finger, “can you take on another form first?” Wrinkling her nose, she added, “This one is ugly.”

He had the gall to look offended. “No.”

“Then do not feel disrespected if I face the wall instead.” Lily shuffled until she was staring blankly at the stone wall. Light began, ever so slowly, to slant through the windows at the very top of the back wall. Hugging her arms around her knees, she closed her eyes.

“Why did they not just kill me?” she asked quietly. Frowning, she turned to peer at him from the corner of her eye. “And why have you not?”

He smiled. Lily shivered at the sight of the raw jewels filling his gums. “So you do have some small sense of self-preservation left, then.”

She turned away again. “It would seem so. Are you going to answer my questions or not?”

“I will,” he drawled, “but only because doing so suits me.”

Lily did not bother to respond. Sighing, she rested her head on her knees.

“The Red Ripper wolves did not harm you because of me,” he said, his voice unusually sincere. “They ravaged Oakhame, as they have ravaged so many other places across Eldda. Their magic… it is not in line with that of the natural world. Many of my people fled. Many of them, however, were killed.”

“I thought you could only die by trickery,” said Lily, glancing back at him.

He raised one eyebrow. “As did I.”

Fear gnawed at her heart. Were Red Ripper really capable of such tremendous deeds? What would that power do to one person – let alone an entire army?

“I ran,” he said after a moment’s pause. “I left an illusion behind – my own corpse.” She heard his teeth chatter, and pictured him shuddering at the memory. She toughened her heart. She would not feel sorry for her once-captor. She wouldn’t.

“You have, I presume, heard the old adage: keep your friends close, and your enemies closer?” He did not wait for Lily’s reply before continuing. “After faking my death, I trailed them on their path of torment.”

Lily huffed a laugh at that. He was one to talk about torment.

“I heard whispers of their plans on the wind, rattled across the great boughs of the pine trees as they worked their way across the continent, towards the coast. Their scouts and their spies reported on the movement of every pack they came to, and then I heard a familiar name on the wind.

“I had heard it in your very head, Lily. Alpha Atticus of the Blood Moon pack. You despised him and loved him in equal parts when we last met.”

“I feel nothing for him anymore,” she sighed, drained both emotionally and physically.

“And so that may be. But his name brought us together again, Lily: for I unpicked a new trail that ran parallel to that of Red Ripper. The Blood Moon wolves were on the march, and they were coming for someone I had met once before.”

Lily turned to face him. “Stop embellishing. I want to get out of here sometime soon.”

“You will not leave this place without patience.” Efaffion wiggled a long, slim finger at her. Settling himself, he continued. “Initially, I wanted you because you had escaped me once before. I had the measure of you this time; you would not escape me again. My friends were gone, my home destroyed. In a life filled with nothing but time, something about you… it intrigued me. And so I began to plot and to plan, and I took the shape of your father once more.

“The whispers of the wind were loud, and they told me what Red Ripper’s scouts had spoken of: that they were to make a move on the Sea Pine pack. I thought little of this, until they said the names of the Alpha and Luna.”

He appraised her briefly. “You do not look like much of a Luna, I must say.”

“Probably because I am not one.” She shifted, turning to face him from the side so she could rest her head back against the cold wall. “Their information was wrong.”

“Ah.” He ran his tongue over his lips.

What had she done? So Elijah was a faelen. So – so what? In that moment, she missed him more than she could ever have imagined possible. Her entire body ached with it, longing to feel his solid warmth enveloping her as he took her in his arms. Tears stung her eyes, but she did not let them fall. Not in front of Efaffion.

“My plan went wrong. If you could not already tell.” He swept his hands down his body, and gestured to the cell. “I went to them, in your father’s form, to speak as an equal – as they preach all wolves are – and they asked if I wished to join them. I told them I had a better idea.

“They were stunned. I said I had heard of their prowess, of their noble vows, of their cause.” He raised his eyebrows. “I was laying it on thick, if you will. And then I made the suggestion that brought me here: I said they needed Omegas, servants, loyal followers. They would have nobody to rule if everyone joined their pack as an equal. With no hierarchy, they would surely eclipse one another.”

“Surely,” Lily muttered.

“I said I knew Sea Pine’s Luna. I claimed you were my daughter, and that I could count on you to parley with the members of your pack. You would give your lifelong servitude – so long as we did not harm your people.”

Too exhausted to properly process his words, Lily merely nodded. She wanted Elijah. She did not care how she had come to be here, in this dank cell with only an eleve for company.

“Then they stuck me in this cell. That was when I knew I needed you – to help me escape the bonds of my own making. You had escaped me, escaped Oakhame; I could think of nobody better suited to helping me escape whatever this side-portal to the backend of nowhere is.

“The first time I was dragged out was when we came to capture you. They said I should be proud – I was their first Omega.” He pulled a face. “I do not know if they know my true nature, Lily. This cell is impervious to my magic. But they may be by chance – a mere precaution. I doubt this cell was designed for me. I am not their only captive.”

“There are others?” Lily sat up straighter. That information piqued her interest.

“There were more.” He looked at her, his expression unusually sombre. “They are all dead now – save for one.”

“Who are they?” She shook her head. “Why have they kept only one other alive?”

“Because it is she that lies behind their great power,” he said. “She is a powerful witch – more powerful than any I have ever known, or heard of, in my achingly long existence.”

Lily bit her lip thoughtfully. “Is there a way to subdue her power?”

“Yes. But from what I have seen in your head, little Lily, you will not like it.”

“Tell me.”

“We must kill her.”