The Huntsman of Adamos (Quartet)- draft

CH THE HALF-TRUTHS OF HER FALSEHOOD

Fleur knew Lucif had come to confront her, but he didn’t realize the razor’s edge she was treading or how far she was willing to go to convince him she was truly the Dark Oracle. This morning on her walk to memorize the inside of the Towers, she had murdered three more of Demona’s followers. She repeated her question, “Why have you confined me to my rooms?”

Lucif walked slowly around the Dark Oracle. “I can’t have you killing my people without cause,” He stated, and she laughed malevolently. “They insulted me with their lack of faith.”

“They don’t know you and neither do I.”

“Then perhaps you should introduce me, take me to dine with them instead of letting them stare at me from behind glass like some insect. I am the Dark Oracle of prophecy and I will not be disrespected by those who hold barely a tenth of my power.” She rose up and stalked toward him, snapping vehemently, “And that includes your daughter, we did not find her worthy before and we do not find her worthy now.”

“We?” Lucif stared at her cautiously.

“I carry the queen of the shadows. So yes, ‘we’ do not find her worthy. If you doubt my sanity. Lucif, I can end you like the others but then I would have to find another body for my lord to share before the Celestial Alignment.” She threatened bluntly.

“You wouldn’t dare!”

She smirked at him, “You have no idea what I would dare.” The she waved at him dismissively. “I want to have dinner with my subjects, arrange it. I expect a blood pledge of loyalty.”

Lucif stared down at her, her rage felt like waves buffeting him, but she wasn’t using the siren’s magic that he could discern to persuade him. “It truly angers you that there are those who doubt you?”

“Didn’t it anger you when your father chose your brother over you?” She taunted.

“I got my revenge,” he stated flatly.

She tipped her head to one side and blinked at him very slowly before saying coolly, “No, you did not, or you would already be sealed to the Lord of Shadows as I was meant to be sealed to the Siren Queen. The Huntsman of Adamos proved himself worthy by killing your father and took your revenge from beneath your blade that day, then he freed all those held in the temples and gained the allegiance of half our people.”

“So, were you my mother’s prisoner?” He inquired as he traced her scars with his fingertip. They felt colder than the skin around them. It was just like his mother’s tattooed marks and his own made by the Essence of Darkness.

A soft sigh parted her lips, as she revealed the truth from her time, “The Siren Queen had already chosen me over Demona, an Aetherian oracle instead of a blood-sipping siren priestess. She always seeks the most powerful of a generation, and She will never be able to fully bond to a weakling like Demona. You shouldn’t have wasted so much time on her. Your youngest, Serapha, does not require blood magic to make her strong, whereas Demona must consume blood every day like the parasite she is.” By the end, Fluer did not attempt to veil her true contempt for the elder princess of Xelusia. She rose to walk away from him, but he pulled her against his chest.

His eye burned with lust as he demanded, “How do you know so much about us?”

Fleur gave him a half-smile. “I wouldn’t be much of an oracle if I didn’t, silly puppet.”

She didn’t pull away from him just stood very still letting her magic sway him, “Be careful, you don’t tempt the Lord of Shadows to choose another because you angered me.”

He trembled, resisting the siren’s magic, whispering harshly, “There will be no other.” He felt compelled to kiss her, and she let him. Pressing her painfully against the wall as his hands explored her curves, when she felt him at the edge of his control, she breathed out the words, “Not yet... The prophecy... Our union must wait.”

“You make things difficult, my queen.” His breath hissed out in displeasure then he snarled in her ear. “You will dine with my inner circle tonight.”

“Without Demona,” Fleur demanded, he answered with a curt nod.

He stalked out and went to his rooms to satisfy him lusts with one or two of his concubines. The more he thought about the Dark Oracle’s words the more he realized she was right; Demona would never have been able to be the true vessel of the siren queen.

That night, dinner with Lucif’s inner circle went well. All were shocked when she led them to believe she had been in the dungeons of the Temple and been rescued by the Aetherians. The two oldest of Lucif’s allies admitting to knowing the former Siren Queen had kept what she called her special acolytes hidden from all. Her scars and their revelation bolstered Fleur’s false narrative that she had been a prisoner of Xelusia and allowed her not to say when. Walking through the Tower, Prince Lucif brought her to the highest level. The place she had seen through Demona’s eyes and Serapha’s mind the night she and the house of Adamos had saved the Kings’ City. The memory of how Yuri had turned on her afterward brought a stab of bitterness to her heart that she couldn’t contain.

“You are troubled, my queen?” Lucif asked gently.

“I know this place, I can’t see it, but I can feel that I have seen it before. Through another’s eyes on the night you tried to open the Gate over the City and would have killed me,” she said softly. “The House of Adamos deceived me. They made me think that I wasn’t what I was meant to be, what I was born to be... but it doesn’t matter. You found me.”

Lucif watched her walking alongside the altar, trailing her fingertips over the carved symbols with little black sparks crackling under them. Her power was so strong he could feel it, and even smell it, like flowers and brimstone. He stepped closer behind her and lifted her hair to the side to kiss her neck.

“After that night, I never stopped looking for you,” he claimed.

Fleur turned to look up him, her eyes glowing faintly, “I felt you watching me, watching me change.”

“It was beautiful then as you are beautiful now. The Darkness suits you, especially with the way the moonlight makes you glow. I didn’t know oracles did that.” He was relaxed but she could feel truth discerning magic like the vibration of an off-key violin string.

She grimaced, telling him the truth, “Not all oracles do. I was bred to be this way.”

He lifted his lips from her shoulder and leaned back slightly to look at her. “What do you mean... bred?”

“I was bred by the House of Adamos, by Lord Adamos himself to provide their house with the most powerful children to be born in generations.” Her new truth said so bluntly made her heart weep, but no tears fell from her eyes. She had fulfilled her purpose as breeder, and now she was fulfilling her purpose as a weapon.

“They hurt you!” His shocked statement startled her with its brusqueness. “But they are Oracles of the Light.”

“That does not mean that they don’t bend the rules or lie or keep secrets to get what they want,” she snapped bitterly. “I was very young when I was sealed to the last Guardian of Adamos by a misuse of magic. He killed me, my son died in my body. I killed him and fled.”

She held up her hand, a wall of shimmering light appeared like a screen, playing the visual memory of the night Kaleth had finally killed her while under the influence of the blood magic insanity. Without feeling or sound it appeared very different. Next, she showed herself reviving and running away into the rain.

The scene changed to Damien bleeding her and then cutting a child from her body. “Later, a blood mage captured me. He said he had never tasted blood as powerful as mine.”

“I thought the guardian of Adamos died when the Temple of Light fell,” He asserted.

“It was a deception, the Guardian did not die at the Temple. The House of Adamos escaped to the Isle of Angeles.” Her statement wasn’t a lie or the whole truth.

Her son Kalen and Karstien's son Adami were the Guardians of Adamos and were alive in her time. The House of Adamos had fled the temples to the Isle of Angeles after the attack. Two truths separated by thousands of years made her words feel true to the magic.

“And my mother?” Lucif asked. “How did you come to meet my mother?”

Fleur showed Lucif the time in the far future when the Dark Oracle had indwelled her and then Yurieth had killed her. “She came to me in the forest when I was younger, but the Huntsman stopped her from being sealed to this body. After I ran away, the blood mage who found me offered me to the Siren Queen as her vessel.”

“Lord Yurieth hates me because of my connection to Her and was always cruel to me, but Adamos wanted me to be joined to him after the Guardian died, simply for the power our children would possess.” Images of Yurieth’s cruelty were many and flashed around them. “I am glad they are gone. I was nothing but a concubine to their house.”

Standing in the middle of the fading images, Lucif asked, “Are you sure they are dead?”

Fleur stood regally beside the altar of his deity, looking in his direction with a hard, cruel glare. “No one in the castle could have survived. Adamos and his son were not there. The Huntsman killed me to keep any other from having me to fulfill the prophecy, then they left this world. Adamos and his surviving son are gone. They fled the coming war to another world with his followers, and good riddance.”

“You seem like you really hated them,” he observed. “Why stay with them after the peace treaty?”

“I wasn’t given a choice. But when the Queen shared my flesh, I learned the true power of hatred and I learned to pretend to be what I was not. They rarely let me out of their sight, except when they tried to convince me they would let me choose another, like Oren.”

”Oren of Odini, who prefers the company of males, betrothed to a creature as lovely as you?” Lucif scoffed.

Fleur smirked in agreement. ”When we met at the Autumn Equinox Ball, you didn’t recognize me, or come for me. And then The Devourer appeared over the city and Adamos ordered me to close the gate before they took me away again and made me bathe in the Water of Light every day to suppress the Darkness... You have no idea how much it hurt.” She seemed suddenly small and vulnerable as she asked, “Why did you not come for me sooner, Lucif? Why let them force me to fight both sides of the battle?” She let her first tear fall.

Lucif tipped her face toward him. He pressed his lips to her tear, tasting the salted sweetness of it. “My apologies, my queen. I wasn’t sure you were whom I hoped, none of those sent to find you returned. The Lord of Shadows has stopped whispering to me in preparation for what is to come. If he had been sealed to me, I am sure I would have known you.”

He kissed her slowly, savoring the taste of her mouth, and the feeling of her full breast pressed against his chest. She never closed her nearly blind eyes or blinked as they made out. Pushing him down on the altar, she did a few of the things to him she had once seen in the Dark Oracle’s mind, things the entity had wanted to do with Kaleth and Yurieth. He cried out in surprise as her magic and actions pushed him over the edge of desire.

“By the Shadows, come to my bed, my queen,” he begged as his body vibrated in pleasure.

“Not yet... Good night, my prince,” Then she left him panting and aching for more intimate physical contact.

She returned to her room unaided and went straight into the shower. Pulsing her oracle light bright enough to blind any observation devices, she then collapsed in a weeping and gagging heap under the water of the shower until she vomited herself empty to purge what she had swallowed. She loathed everything about what she was doing, but she resolved she would do anything to succeed.

Trembling, she dressed in her night robe and eye veil before she went out on the balcony, just to test her resolve not to jump. As the fabric fluttered over her eyes in the evening breeze, she thought about how the women of Aetheria and Xelusia wore veils over their eyes instead of their nose and lips but in a world where the eyes revealed someone’s magic or use of it, it made sense. The silly distraction of her chain of thought seemed to work to calm her nerves.

“You shouldn’t have shown him all that,” A voice came from above her and her anxiety returned.

“He needs to believe my turning against the Light and the House of Adamos is real, I only showed him the moments that would make him accept the narrative,” Fleur answered coldly as Yurieth dropped silently to the floor.

“I’m sorry I treated you so poorly, I do love y...” Yurieth’s words cut off as Fleur’s slap was followed by a wave of dark energy and rage that slammed him into the wall behind him. Tendrils of shadow restrained him, and he was suddenly reminded of the time he was imprisoned by the real Siren Queen.

“Don’t you dare lie to me.” Fleur hissed, “Your soul revealed how it felt to my soul! Your guilt is not my fault, but my truth!” Power crackled around her like lightning about to strike, then suddenly she gasped and collapsed to her knees, dropping him to his as well. “I’m sorry, Yuri.”

As he panted for breath, she fled back inside. He found her standing with her lace-covered forehead against a dark glass mirror. Slowly approaching with the caution he usually reserved for a wounded animal, Yurieth carefully put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her back against his chest.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you. The dark impulses are so hard to control. I love you and I don’t want you to see me like this, what I have to do...” She trembled as she wept because she did love him, as much as she had loved Kaleth, and every moment of her time with them was a lie to save their house. It was almost too much to bear. “Why did you come, Yuri?”

“Karstien was worried. Mother and Oren showed us the...”

“Quick, act like your trying to attack me,” She whispered harshly as magic exploded around them. A guard entered the room, then rushed forward, shouting at Yurieth to stop when he was blinded by Oracle light and silence by Yurieth’s long blade.

Fleur tossed Yuri’s knife back to him as she whisper-shouted at him, “Go! I’ll say he tried to attack me and demand to be guarded by the House of Baalru. Tell Naphtala to bring Regis.” She wet the guard’s sword with his own blood as she removed his head, so he wouldn’t revive to reveal that he saw Yurieth.

They could hear others running toward them through the open door. Yurieth ran and leapt over the edge of the balcony railing just in time not to be seen.

Fleur pointed the sword at the first guard who rushed in and black tendrils smashed him into the wall across the hall, the other fell on his face, begging, “Spare us, my queen.”

“Who are you loyal to, me or the princess?” Fleur hissed at him and three more guards rushed into the room, bowing.

“You, my queen, we are loyal to you!” The guards groveled.

“I don’t believe you! He tried to kill me!” Fleur screeched and stepped forward menacingly waving the sword.

Lucif rushed in with Demona right behind him. Shield glyphs appeared around Fleur, “Your assassin failed, Princess.”

“Oracle bitc...” Demona started to say but Lucif slapped her hard enough to knock her down.

He held out his hands placatingly to Fleur. “My queen, how... what can I do to put your mind at ease?” Lucif demanded softly.

Fleur pulled the dark magic back. “Send for the seer, The Pale Lady of Baalru. Her enforcers cannot be seduced by your whore daughter! Tell her I want the strongest one at my door tomorrow.”

The guards carried the dead one away and a quickly cleaned the floor. Everyone backed out of the room, except Lucif who hovered, “Were you hurt, my queen? Do you wish me to stay and personally protect you tonight?”

She laughed in a deeply seductive manner, “I am tired, and we cannot be trusted to be alone together. Look at what happened only an hour ago. I doubt there will be a second attempt tonight on my life, but if you wish to double the guards then do so.” She looked up at him and pressed a lingering kiss in his lips, “Good night again, my prince.”

“Good night, my queen.” Lucif left, but he did not go far, only to the observation room behind the glass.

Demona was waiting for him, “Father, I swear by the shadows, didn’t send Geref to kill her.”

“Perhaps, daughter... Or maybe he chose to do it to get back in your favor. It doesn’t matter. We have waited two centuries and you will not interfere. Now, go to your quarters.” Lucif’s harsh tone had Demona sulking as she left.

Fleur felt Lucif watching her, but she knew he believed her as much as he would given his nature. She felt all his intent as she stripped naked and lay down facing away from him with silk sheet only covering her to the waist and revealing her whole back. Her tears wet her pillow until she fell asleep while he counted the scars visible on her back and longed to touch them.