Lord of Eternal Night by Ben Alderson

20

The chair creaked painfully as I leaned back in it, hands folding behind the back of my head. The tome discarded before me. And my stare did not falter from the page with that one, unbelievable word scrawled across it. I winced at the heavy pounding of my heart as my mind raced for an explanation.

It made no sense. He told me he wrote the stories long after the Claim’s final day. Yet here sat a story with my name scripted across the first page.

“It is not what you think.” Marius’s voice sounded just out of sight. I turned slowly, mouth agape, as he stood in the doorway. He was shirtless, his hair ruffled from his long sleep. Had evening arrived already? Time was truly slipping away from me. My eyes dusted over the unbuttoned waist of his trousers and how it revealed the hairs that crowned his manhood. He spoke again, bringing my attention back to his placid face. “Would you prefer for me to explain, or to leave you to read and uncover the truth?”

I would have hauled the book from the table and waved it at him if I had the strength. “I will get clarity far sooner if it comes from you.”

He bowed his head, trying to hide the sad glint in his eyes. “When you first arrived and revealed your name to me it was as if that single word had torn down the walls I had built within myself. Your name, his name, had not been spoken in this place for many years. It took me by utter surprise.”

“Which explains your reaction…” I added, watching him walk to the other side of the desk.

“I am well accustomed to ghosts. Yet with your reveal I felt the worst of them being dragged to the surface.”

I looked back to the book for a moment. “He was your first Claim.” The body that was left at the border of his castle. The one both Mother and Victorya had kept so quiet about.

“He was not my Claim. It was those after him that arrived with that label. Jak was…” Marius paused, putting a closed fist to his mouth and clearing the lump from his throat. “Jak was the very reason for why you and I are standing in this room. If it was not for him I would likely be bones beneath the ground. The remains of a withered, old man, who’d died from old age. Instead I fell for him, as he fell for me. And we were punished for it.”

I could not speak. All I could do was stay silent and listen as Marius unveiled his truth. A story I had not heard of before. But one that tugged on the familiar strings that seemed to twang within my chest.

“I thought it was some twisted punishment when you arrived, Jak. Beautiful Jak, come to remind me of my undoing. Come — just when I was beginning to forget — to ensure I would not.”

“Who was he, Marius?” I asked. “Who was he to you?”

“The love of my life.” He looked up slowly, his eyes narrowed and wet. A tear sliced down his cheek, falling carelessly to the ground at his bare feet. “We were young and naïve. Jak was betrothed to another yet we did not care. I was selfish to think he would ever be mine, and he was stupid to believe the same. When we were discovered, we were…”

Marius turned quickly, putting his back to me.

“Were what?” I said, standing from the desk with a scratch of wood against stone. I needed to hear it from him, but I had pieced the story he told to the one I had been taught to believe. “Tell me, Marius.”

I paused my plea and waited for prolonged moments. When he finally turned around he no longer held onto sadness. His eyes had narrowed and darkened in colour, as if the ruby of his irises had expanded across the entirety of his stare. His lips had turned white with tension as they snarled above his exposed fangs.

“We were cursed. There were always rumours his betrothed was a witch, but it was never believed. Idle gossip and warnings that we looked over. That was the first and only time I ever underestimated their kind. She discovered our secret and punished us. At first we simply could not leave the grounds. But I grew colder whilst Jak stayed warm. My hunger changed. His did not. I became the beast and he…” Marius choked once again on his words before clearing his throat with an expression of distressed irritation. “Then I killed him. On the day when the moon was full and bled red, I lost myself to the creature that the witch had moulded me into. And I killed him.”

Slowly I moved around the desk, unsure if the creature buried within Marius was about to finally show itself. With caution I closed the space between us and pressed my hands against his cool, bare chest. “You fell in love and were punished,” I said aloud, more for myself to understand. It was not the version of events I had been taught. Similar in the sense of my ancestor cursing him for stealing someone that belonged to her. Yet I was seeing it from a different light.

“She never cared for Jak,” Marius said, looking down his nose at me. “If she did she would have punished me, and not him. Yet she trapped him with me and knew what would become of him.”

“I am sorry.” My apology meant more than he would know.

Marius gripped a hold of my forearms. “Do not be.”

I felt sick, as though my stomach was ready to empty its contents whilst the one revelation raced through me.

Mother had named me after the catalyst for the curse. Knowing I would one day be the Claim. The last Claim, come to end Marius and in doing so be a painful reminder. What did she want to achieve from that? To throw him off guard during my stay? To make it easier for him to fall for me to achieve our end goal?

Or was it more personal? More twisted? A name used as a weapon to slice at Marius whilst he was already down?

“I did not know,” I muttered.

“How could you know?” Marius put his finger beneath my chin and lifted my face to his. “From my knowledge the witch died years ago and with it the chance of this nightmare ending. You were not to know.”

“But…” I swallowed my words, biting down on my lip so hard the pain was what was required to silence me.

“You have served me a great deal of armistice, Jak. I cannot fully explain how your presence has given me more peace in my mind than I have felt in a long time. Do not apologise. This is not your doing.”

He was wrong. It was mine. My Mother’s, my covens.

There was not a justified reason for the curse to be cast and I understood that now. I almost took some pleasure in knowing the curse had taken the witch’s power and all those who came after her. Until me.

Magic is not taken, without something given in return.

“What did she turn you into?” I reached for his cheek, clearing the stain of a tear from his skin.

“A nameless beast.” Marius stared unwaveringly into my soul.

“Nothing is ever nameless,” I said meekly.

“Is there anything else like me out there? Tell me, Jak, for you have experienced more of the outside world than I. Have you heard tales of others that hunger for one’s life source?”

I knew the answer. Whatever twisted curse had been laid upon Marius was unique. The witch herself had grown mad trying to find a cure for her lack of power. And so did the many that followed after her. She died with the mad want for her power. Mother told me that it was only on her deathbed when she finally grasped a single slither of magic to prophesise my birth and what the child would mean for our kind.

I used to think it was some cruel play of fate, giving my ancestor her power back just before she passed. As though it dangled itself before her in reminder for what she lost.

But now, standing before Marius who was the product of her jealously, it made me feel satisfied somewhat. Knowing she died, punished in a different manner to Marius. But still punished.

By taking away from him what he desired the most, she gave up her own most treasured love.

Her magic.

“You are unique,” I told him.

“I am a demon.”

“We all are demons. Some have just learned to hide it better than others.”

Marius took my hand in his and guided me to the rugged floor. We left the book open upon the desk and laid upon the ground and looked up at the painted ceiling.

“It was Jak that helped you paint it.” It was more a statement than a question.

“He always had the steadier hand.”

His reply was short, an obvious sign that he did not want to discuss it further. But I could not cope with the silence. Every break in conversation had my mind full of guilt. Guilt for having the same name. Guilt for the role I had to play in this.

I drowned in the feeling and the silence was the ball and chain strapped to my ankle, keeping me down.

“Just tell me if you do not want to discuss it further,” I said, feeling the need to provide him with the option to escape such discomfort.

He rolled his head and faced me, a smile tugging at his lips but not quite reaching his eyes. “You must think me a sappy fool.”

I forced a smile in response, my lips quivering slightly. “I have no words as to how I would describe my thoughts for you, Marius.”

“Say it again,” he breathed, blinking and holding his eyes closed for a beat longer than normal.

“What?”

“My name.” When he opened his eyes again they found mine. As though a cord connected us both, that moment sent a thrilling explosion of feeling through my body. “Please, say it again. It… it reminds me of one great difference between you and… please.”

I wanted to press him further, but could not muster seeing the wince of his eyes or the paling of his taut lips when the storm of memories coursed behind his gaze.

So I obliged, running the back of my finger down the side of his face. “Marius. Brave Marius. Terrifying Marius. My Marius.”

“Thank you.” His voice was a bare whisper.

A stabbing sensation in my gut snatched my breath away, but I forced the feeling down.

We lay like that for a while, the book discarded and the room silent. Marius wrapped his fingers between mine and held on tight as though his life depended on it. At one point I thought he had fallen asleep. A place of peace for him, at least I hoped. But as I began to tug my hand from his, he spoke, breaking the quiet.

“Katharine has not returned as she promised she would.”

“But she was only here…” I trailed off. Marius showed no sign of caring that I clearly had overheard their last encounter.

“It has been five days. The moon is reaching its third quarter and Katharine should have returned.”

I leaned up on my elbows, echoing what Marius had said. “Five days?”

Impossible. I was aware we had lost time to each other, but five days? I shook my head. That couldn’t be right.

“Perhaps we missed her?” I asked, having flashes to our entwined limbs.

“I would have felt her presence at the boundary. It is how she can come and go as she pleases.”

I faced him, brows furrowed. “You are telling me you could simply let me leave if I chose?”

He shook his head, eyes blank. “It does not work like that. Not for the Claim. Many have tried and you are welcome to if you so desire. But for Katharine and her family, they have remained outside the twisted rules of the curse.”

Why?The thought echoed through me.

“So you let her in?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. I sense her presence and provide her with the invitation to enter.”

Intrigue breezed through me, blowing away the cobwebs of guilt for a moment. “Have others tried to enter?”

“Not for many years, but yes. I did not let them in. For fear of what I may have done to them.”

“But why Katharine? Why her family?”

Marius paused. “I do not know, Jak.”

“I am sure she is okay,” I said, but I could not ignore the tugging in my gut. It was becoming hard to distinguish my worries from one another.

“Yes, she must be.” Marius did not sound so convinced. He made a move to lie back down on the floor beside me, but instead he ushered my legs apart and leaned forward above me. “My mind is a storm right now. Care to help me calm it?”

His voice grew silky with each word. His invitation to me clear and enticing. This is what I needed, to take my mind off my own storm. Him. His touch that had ways of taking me to different worlds. With him, on me, in me, nothing else mattered.

“How may I help provide your mind reprieve?” I asked, running my tongue across my lower lip. It was not only Marius who was in need for a distraction.

I longed for it. For him.

He lowered himself further atop me, his arms tensing as they carried his entire weight. His face came close to mine until he stopped a mere hairbreadth from my mouth. “Let me have you.”

I nipped at his lip, urging a low growl to bubble from his throat and replied, “You already do.”