Chapter 339. Elara’s Diary II

Chapter 339: 339. Elara’s Diary II

Maisie

I laughed a little, feeling an odd kind of kinship with her. My cheeks were burning and for a moment, I forgot where I was as the next page drew me back in.

"The priestesses say it is time to bind the stone to my will. I told them I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to become mad like my mother. They tell me it is my duty. Only one who is blessed by the Goddess can truly wield its terrible power to the fullest. But if it goes wrong, I rip open a rift to a different time or dimension, and die. I should be scared. I am scared. But I am more scared of becoming my father’s tool, a husband’s trophy and instrument of pleasure. I think I would rather let it consume me. At least, I wouldn’t need to live like this anymore."

I blinked, something nagging at the back of my mind.

If only the Goddess’s blessed could wield the stone, how had Lysandra been doing that? And the late Queen Lyanna? And the queens before them?

Brynn once mentioned that the crown chose the next monarch by hopping heads. Margaret had cleared up that misunderstanding. Only one keeper was born in each generation. The ruby was sentient in the sense that it found the best line, the best path taking it back into the hands of its owner. She had been so sure that when the Queen died, it would find its way to me.

I thought she was right, but the how of it was more complicated.

I remembered the dreams from Elara’s crossing. Warriors had protected her. Fellow Lycans. I hadn’t seen another female. A handful of purebreds had landed in this world with a pregnant keeper. Elara had died shortly after, according to Gruer.

The survivors would have had almost no choice if they wanted the purity of their bloodlines going, especially if they were sure they had left the rest to perish in the other world. Controlled breeding. Close breeding. Enough generations of it to rebuild their numbers while keeping the true keeper hidden and rewriting their history.

I shuddered, entertaining the thought for a second that Mercer, Soren, Quinlan, Jericho, and I had all come from--

No. That was centuries ago. The purebred lines had long since opened. Outside blood had entered. Political marriages, conquests, the occasional wolf or human matings, who survived long enough to leave descendants.

By the time my father was born an Omega, the original founding bloodline would have so diluted across so many branches that it barely mattered.

We were about as related as dogs were to dinosaurs.

How ironic was it, that for all of their worship of the pure breds, the keeper had been born from a watered down wolf Omega? I wondered if that was by design. Or by accident.

Either way, it explained a lot of things. If my theory was correct, then the ruby needed wasn’t merely jumping from head to it. It needed a drop of the Thorne line somewhere in the ancestry, to make a choice.

Because the Thorne bloodline was as close as it could get to the Goddess.

But that didn’t mean having the bloodline made you eligible to access its full power. Which explained why it had kept hopping.

The previous queens could use it. Lysandra could. The journal made that clear enough that only the blessed--I imagined the keeper--could be bound to it and access its full abilities.

Like opening the rift.

And I could imagine what had transpired after Elara had died. They would’ve been scared of having the rift opened again, scared of having the wrath of the other world brought down on them.

If they had erased history to hide all of this, then I didn’t want to know what they had done to whoever had shown signs of being ’blessed’ by the Goddess, that somehow, the keeper bloodline vanished for such a long time and reappeared with my father. A wolf.

Was that why Lysandra had been trying to kill me? Because she knew not just what I was, but that the ruby was hopping in search of its owner, because it hadn’t been bound to anyone in a long time? And that I had just the right amount of it in me?

Oh goddess.

Is that what I did? Bind it to me somehow by accident when I opened the rift? Is that why I could still feel it in my bones and my blood even if I was nowhere near it?

Pulse pounding in my ears, I looked down at the pages, chest tight as I forced myself to remain calm.

"It is a wicked, hungry thing. Too clever. Too old. It talks to me. I can barely think over the discordance. I can do things I shouldn’t be able to. Make and unmake them. I do not know who I am anymore--"

The hairs on the back of my neck rose, and my Lycan growled in warning.

My head jerked up from the notebook and I noticed the air had dropped a significant amount. My breath was perspiring in front of me, and the torches were flickering, even if there was no draught coming in.

Frowning, I shut the book, glancing around.

The last I’d felt something close to this, I’d summoned something. But that couldn’t have been it, I thought, as the feeling of wrongness tripled.

I heard a distant scraping sound of claws against metal. The torches flickered, almost dying out.

I backed up a step, packing up the books I’d come for in a rush to leave.

I wasn’t the girl in the movie who went deeper saying, "Who’s there?", and I definitely wouldn’t be the girl who glanced up at the roof when the saliva of something grotesque hit her shoulder.

My heart began racing like my body could sense a danger that wasn’t there. But I knew something was here with me. I could feel it, the aura settling over me like a phantom kiss.

I jerked, swiveling for the entrance, but I smacked into something hard, screaming.

I stared at it. The matted black hair. The naked chest with familiar tattoos winding down his skin, and the smell of burned amber.

"Gruer?" I echoed, holding my chest. "Why would you scare me like that?!"

He cocked his head down at me strangely. And I noticed for the first time that his eyes weren’t green. They were white. I mean, the he-didn’t-have-any-irises-kind-of-white.

But he blinked and the shiny green I was used to was back and his expression went from stony to panicked. He wheezed, hand flying to his throat, his eyes wide. "Leave!" he snarled at me.

I frowned. "W-what?" Then my nostrils flared. "Leave?! You’ve been ignoring me for days! Where have you been?! I swear to the Goddess that if this is your way of avoiding the conversation of what you did to Jul--"

His wrist snapped and I gasped when his fingers wrapped around my throat hard enough to hurt. His eyes pleaded with me, flashing iridescently. "I have... been ... summoned. To bring you. Forgive me..." He wheezed, eyes burning. "I can’t... won’t go back there--"

Fear filled me, my eyes widening as he forced his fingers to widen, bellowing at nothing as he let me go.

He was fighting something, clutching his hand around his neck, his eyes turning bloodshot as spittle frothed at his lips.

He looked like he was in pain, and I hesitated for one stupid moment, wondering if I should leave him, even if he wanted me to.

Go back where? The dungeons?

But in a second, he stopped gurgling, and his body calmed. He exhaled, his tongue sliding past his lips, forked and long, and a serpent’s hiss followed. "Thorne."

When his eyes opened again, they were white and dead. And I got the disturbing impression I didn’t know who was standing in front of me, even if I knew that face, that scent.

I backed up three rapid steps. "Who are you?" More like what.

He grinned. His teeth were all as sharp as fangs. "Your jailer. I’ve come to collect you. You can come willingly, or we can do this the hard way." His licked his lips with a wicked smile. "I much prefer the hard way."