spellbound | book #1 | completed

X V

[edited: 19/07/2017]

She is not at the beach anymore, the way she had been in all of her other dreams. She is in Astracia now—she can tell from the pink glow that illuminates her surroundings and the strange gold markings etched into the walls—though she is sure she has never been here before. She takes a moment to find out where here actually is, and discovers that she is in a place that looks an awful lot like a church, though it is empty of anything that might confirm her suspicions: a skeleton without its body, she thinks, and shivers as a draught brushes past her like long, cold fingers tracing lines into her skin.

As she walks closer to the front, her footsteps echoing noisily in the silence, she realises that she is not alone. A man and a woman stand in the shadows, and Remy cannot see their faces. At first, she thinks that the man might be Maksim, but as he steps forward into a ray of light that seeps through the stained glass windows, illuminating his skin so that it is fragmented into millions of different colours, she realises that she is wrong.

Of course it would be him, she thinks. The man dressed in black, the one who is in every dream I have dreamt since meeting Maksim.

There is something different about him now. His eyes look darker, if that is possible, and his expression is more confident and sinister than she has ever seen it. She searches for the sword that is usually clasped in his left hand, but it is not there, having been replaced with black sparks that flutter and jolt off his palm as though they cannot be tamed.

The man has almost reached Remy now, and she tries to turn back, to run away, but she is stopped before she can even begin to by a wall of blackness. She falls backwards and realises that the wall of blackness is Maksim, and if he has noticed Remy, he does not show it. His eyes are like glass as he stares back at the man, his lips drawn into a harsh line.

He watches as the man reaches for Remy, and as always, his hands find the key around her neck. She looks at Maksim desperately, pleading silently for him to do something to stop him, but he is still stood motionlessly, as though he is nothing but a cardboard cutout.

Before she can scream, the black sparks fly towards her and she is flung backward. She gasps in pain as her body ignites, flames licking her skin at first and then engulfing her entirely. The last thought she has before she wakes up, drenched in sweat, is that she is no longer on fire, but that she is made of it. She is the fire.

She screams.

* * *

Maksim returned home in the early hours of the next morning. He was glad that his brother had been so thorough in hiding the evidence of his short stay in Astrakane, otherwise Maksim was sure that he would still be there now, trying to decipher what on Refilyn it was that Ackmard truly wanted—besides power and the freedom to always dress in black, that was. Maksim was not sure he would ever understand.

Warmth greeted him as he stepped into his house, and he threw his coat off carelessly, knowing that his mother would nag him for not putting it on the coat hanger in the morning but not caring enough to prevent it. He felt like he had not slept for weeks, and perhaps he hadn't. Even when he did sleep now, he never felt much better afterwards the way one was supposed to. Until he found his brother, he had concluded, he would live in a constant state of tiredness.

That did not stop him from treading slowly to his bedroom, his shadow large and hunched against the lamps that lined the corridor. He was ready to open his door and fall onto his bed when he heard a scream from the next corridor along.

Without thinking, he ran in the direction of the sound, his feet slipping against the carpet as he went. He didn't have time to wonder who or what the sound was, instead finding out for himself as he stopped outside one of the spare bedrooms—he assumed Remy must have been in there—and pushing the door open without knocking.