A Violet Fire (Vampires in Avignon #1) - Kelsey Quick Page 0,56
Down the forked path, to the right. That same violet light from the first night in the castle. The library room. Dropping my previous idea, I trot toward the emanating light. It’s as it was before. Shining, rippling, plum-like water, harnessed and fixing into the shape of a wall, a door, and a handle. I waste no time opening it.
I expect the library, but instead a dark room welcomes me. One shrouded by crimson, emerald, and sapphire hues—stained glass depicting the lost religion, filtering in the last bit of sunlight. I know instantly where I am. My hand somehow finds my mouth to cover it as tears burst forth to my lashes. The Cathedral de Avignon.
None of the windows are busted in, none of the walls demolished, none of the pictures clawed through… even though I remember, distinctly, that they were on that final night. I turn to retreat, not ready for whatever sort of nightmare, demonic magic, or hallucination I’m playing with. Whatever it is, it’s not real. It can’t be.
To my horror, the violet door is gone. The entire violet wall is gone. I can’t leave.
“No!” I shout, opening the next best thing—one of the room’s doors only to find a dark hallway leading to the familiar mezzanine. In the center of the hall stands Castrel. His pale wheat-blond hair curves around his childish face, while his leathered form stands taut and alert.
“Wavorly?” he says in the same voice I recall from memory.
Once again, my hands find my mouth. My mind fills with boiling heat, my vision dizzy, my fingers numb. I slam the door shut and sob.
Why here? Why did it bring me here?
“Wavorly?” A different voice permeates from a split off section in the room, from my parents’ old bathroom.
I manage to find my will, my normalcy, my composure as I recognize the voice.
“Mother?” I hiccup, brushing away the heat from my face.
“Darling, come here. What are you doing up at this hour?” her voice is angelic, unchanged, much unlike the last time I heard it.
This all feels somewhat too familiar. I remember this night.
I approach the room, toward her voice. Her reflection in the mirror becomes apparent through the open doorway. This version of her is nothing like in my nightmares. The strawberry-blonde of her hair isn’t matted or coated in blood. Rather, it is freshly braided on either side of her head, leading to a perfectly straight ponytail, curling only at the ends. Her ears are weighted with gold and turquoise rather than jaundice and scabs, her lips pastel pink and her skin, half burned and half tanned from playing in the afternoon sun with me. Her eyes welcome me warmly rather than trying to scare me away.
“Did you have a nightmare?” she asks, pinning the right side of her cloak, connecting it to her left.
I don’t respond but I remember how I did back then. “Yes.” I had said. The nightmare back then was about loneliness. This is my memory.
Is this the power of the violet wall? What kind of power is it?
“Mother.” Tears form as I test the confines of this reality. “Are you alive? Do you know why I am here?”
She tilts her head. “Wavorly, dear. Go back to bed. Your father and I will be out late and you need your rest.”
It’s proceeding as I remember it. My mother bore a soft heart, but my father, the lead priest of the entire city, made her discipline me to his standards. Her eyes, the twist of her mouth, it all shows that she would have rather hugged me and rocked me to sleep. If only I could run into her arms, but every bone in my body is frozen. She stands her ground against my youth.
“You know what disobedience means. Go to bed.”
The walls to my left and right, even the mirror that I see her through from outside the bathroom illuminates violet. I turn. Behind me, the wall reappears, the door as well, and I waste no time throwing myself through it, collapsing onto the floor of the dark, sandstone hallway of Zein’s castle. I’m nearly sick as I recall that days after that incident, I would never see her again. Except I did. She was so real.
I’m barely able to stand when a shadow filters down the hall. I stand rigid and pretend to be normal, although I’m sure my scent is full of adrenaline. The shadow gives way to Madam Ceti.