Seconds to Midnight: A Maiden of Midnight Prequel
Destiny- Day Sixty

Destiny- Day Sixty

“You can’t marry the Nephilim,” Cain’s reminder split through my quiet focus, cutting off my perfectly silent thoughts and sending my mind spinning for the hundredth time in this training session alone. Blue eyes the colour of the ocean, sun-kissed, soft blond hair…

“I- Know-” I grunted, bouncing on my heels. He’d broken my focus. I owed him one punch in the face for it.

My one and only mission today had been to train. Cain’s, it seemed, was to reproach me for looking through Seth Smith’s file again when I was meant to be sleeping.

I couldn’t help it. There was something intriguing about his blue eyes and easy smile.

The Night-Hunter descendant was intriguing, but marriage material? For me? No way! But Cain had been on my case since catching me, and I knew now that I would never hear the end of it, not even if I were to marry a Demonic-being in the next hour!

“You can’t fall in love with a Nephilim.” His words were forceful. And out of character. If I had to choose anyone in this Manor who would encourage me to marry as I wished, it would be him.

I was secretly glad for his constant heckling about Seth. It was keeping my mind off the anniversary of my mother’s death- which was the last place I needed my mind to be.

A blood-stained bathroom, a razor-blade, its gleam dulled by blood brighter than rubies, my mother’s lifeless face- I gave a little shake of my head, enough to push the memory back, and hissed my cousin’s name, feigning embarrassment.

Judging from Seth’s file, my mother would have liked Seth for me. He was described as kind, clever and with just a hint of sarcastic humour about him.

I thought he was naïve, ignorant and deflecting it with humour, but c’est la vie.

“Cain!” I hissed, embarrassed, beginning to wish I’d burnt Seth’s file, shoving his sword away from my throat before it made contact, using Inferos to deflect its razor-sharp edge, my beloved blade glinting in the candlelight. Every now and then, he would have his Guardians blow them out, and we would spar in the dark, relying on our hearing. After the first two rounds of losing to him, I’d learnt to just open my eyes and let my eyes adjust.

“I’m just reminding you, Des,” he said, and suddenly, the room plunged into darkness. I closed my eyes, allowing them to adjust, and when I opened them again, I could see him standing toward the back of the room, the candles lit again, a smile on his face.

“I knew you were cheating!” He called, and I flushed when I noticed he was flicking through Seth’s file, murmuring, “Maybe, if you do well in this next training session, I’ll recommend him to Zeella as an adequate match for you?” Zeella would kill me. If I sneezed wrong during this mission, he would kill me.

Bring the wrong person back, and you will suffer for it.

“Don’t you dare!” I snapped, and he pouted, lifting Seth’s photo from the file, “Aw, poor Seth, rejected by such a pretty girl!” There were worse things pretty girls could do to him than reject him.

Like sacrifice him to open an inter-planar Rift.

Once my dagger went clean through his neck, Seth would probably be wishing the worst thing I’d done was rejected him.

“Cain!” I whined loudly, the Guardians hiding their smiles as Cain continued to relentlessly tease me- the only person I allowed to do so without fear of being executed.

I beckoned him with Inferos, and he grinned.

“Oh, do you want to dance, little cousin?” He turned to the stereo in the corner of the room, and I shook my head fervently. Cain knew how much I despised dancing, especially his dancing! He was too good at it! It made me look bad! That wasn’t the only reason I hated dancing, but it was the reason I gave people. I wasn’t just ‘bad’ at it. I was downright abhorrent. Something in my brain refused to let me relax enough to replace joy in simple movements, designed for no purpose other than expressing oneself.

My energy was better spent on other things. Like ramming Inferos through my cousin.

“No!” I said, “I want to train! Stop teasing me, or I’ll replace someone else to train me! You’re insufferable!”

“No one else would tolerate all your lovey-dovey looks at Seth’s file, Des. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone- Ah!” I tackled him, the two of us smacking into the floor, and I punched him in the jaw, growling, “I am not in love with some filthy Nephilim! Shut your damn mouth about it!”

“Who’s in love?” Zeella purred from the balcony above, Cain helping me to my feet, and the Lord of Hell just glared down at me in disgust and disappointment, muttering, “I expect for a Princess of Hell to have a bit more grace and tactic in combat other than tackling. Run through your routine again. I wish to see it.” If only he’d entered the room earlier, and seen my magnificently flawless routine before Cain ruined it with his whining. I couldn’t tell if the current look of disgust on his face was because we’d been discussing loving a Nephilim, or because he had caught the tail-end of my graceless tackle and found it lacking.

‘Be a dutiful daughter,’ I reminded myself in the space of my mind, ‘You need Zeella to like you now, so he loves you when your family is back together. This hatred is just a minor set-back.’

“Yes, Zeella,” Cain and I murmured, and I picked up Inferos from where it had fallen, Cain grabbing his sword.

Zeella had been increasingly impatient lately, especially when it concerned the Paradoxin Rift, and I often wondered, between studying the files and practising with Cain, if the Lords of Hell were hiding something concerning it. They definitely were. Cain believed that, and his notes convinced me of it. They’d wanted NightShade dead too quickly for it to be mere impatience.

We ran through the motion quickly, moving fast enough that I barely managed to keep up, actually beginning to sweat a little. This was good. This was the pace I needed to distract myself. Cain knew that. I could see it in the way his jaw finally relaxed, despite our brutally fast routine. Sweat gleamed across his brow, but as we clashed again, my dagger slamming up against his sword, he gave me a little wink, and yielded just a tiny bit, feigning difficulty fending me off.

I would have smiled, if Zeella hadn’t been watching like a damned hawk.

Breaking the clash, I took a step backward, intending on luring Cain closer and pressing Inferos against his ribcage, I felt the floor grow slick seconds too late, my feet sliding out from underneath me. The world tilted, a curse exploding from my lips before I hit the ground, the wind knocked from me, though I still held Inferos.

It was wine soaking into my hair and clothes. I grimaced, looking up to where Zeella held his wine glass, now empty, upside-down over the balcony, hissing, “You need to learn to watch your surroundings! Things change, and change quickly!”

I gagged, trying to breathe through both the pain in my back and the shame of falling in front of my Lord, and Cain asked, “Are you alright?”

I held my thumb up in answer to both of them, groaning, and sat back up, before sweeping Cain’s legs out from under him. When I looked up to see if Zeella approved, he was gone…

*

“You called, Zeella?” It wasn’t the most graceful greeting in the world, not when I should have been calling him Lord and dipping my head, but after a full training session, I was too exhausted to care. I still reeked of wine and sweat.

Slipping into the room, I realised something- So did he.

Unless Zeella had been down in the Dome, pounding a punching bag for the last couple weeks, he must have drank a ridiculous amount of alcohol.

“Desterium. Shut the door.” His voice was stern, and I noticed immediately the scattered bottles of wine around his study as I followed his order, not daring to so much as wipe the sweat from my brow as I stood in front of it, noticing that none of his Guardians, not even Tingen, were present. On his desk were more files for Operation Eden, marked with my name, and only my name, and a large sum of gold, my satchel next to it. Was that my pay?...

“Take a seat.”

I did as he asked, keeping my posture straight, though the bruise I had from landing on my back ached, running along my entire spine up until the back of my neck, and he ran a disapproving eye over my exhausted body. I swiped my hands down my uniform, and grimaced at how sticky the fabric was from wine. My scalp itched from it.

“You haven’t slept.”

“No,” I whispered, knowing that his words had not been a question, but a simple statement of fact, “I haven’t.” Strange dreams had chased me from my sleep lately, haunting me with images of faces I didn’t recognise, places I knew only by a map on the wall, and I hated them enough that they drove me from sleep. The only face that consistently showed up, that I recognised, was Seth’s, and that scared me even more than the ones I didn’t recognise.

Looking at his file was one thing, dreaming about him another.

‘Talk to me!’ I screamed internally, ‘I know what day it is! I know what happened! Tell me you still love me as your daughter! At least tell me you loved her! Please!’ I wouldn’t go so far as to say that hearing him say it would fix the broken parts of my soul, but it would heal over a crack or two. Arguably, the ones that hurt the most.

“Sleep is important, Desterium,” he said simply, spinning in his chair to pull a box from the shelf behind him, and I buried the thoughts running through my head, wishing I could go back to the training ring. The anniversary of my mother’s death, and Zeella’s wife, was tonight, and the only thing that could even come close to adequately distracting me was training with Cain. He knew, which was why he’d agreed to train so early in the night, and promised to train again later, before I slept. Or tried to sleep.

I hadn’t done much sleeping recently.

But then again, that was why I was here in Zeella’s office.

He placed the simple silver box on the desk, turning it to face me, and I paused, hope filling me. Was this a present? He used to give us presents, before Sarah died and our family fell into the ashes. I had long ago given up on it rising from them, the childlike images of a phoenix emerging from flames gone, although the irony that my half-sister had been named after the creature hadn’t been lost on me.

It was a lie. I hadn’t given up. That hope still flickered; a fire refusing to die.

“Open it,” he said, leaning back, and with hope flaring in my veins, I threw it open. Inside was a single jar. I picked it up, wondering what it was, and he said, “Sleep tonic. I had it made for you, since you don’t seem to be sleeping, and I can’t stand looking at your tired face anymore.” Oh… I suppose I could think of it as a gift, and that he cared about me. It wasn’t because he needed his Assassin in top condition for Operation Eden.

Easier to do that than admit to myself what it actually was. Just like I told myself that the reason he sent me on dangerous missions and had me repeatedly die was because he wanted me to stay a teenager until mum came back. He was trying to prolong my becoming Immortal.

It wasn’t because he enjoyed it more when I, the last remnant of his family, was gone.

Resentment bubbled up alongside the thought. I wasn’t sure I could push that one down.

‘Tell me you’re doing it because you care. That’s it. That’s all I need to hear. Just today. Just once.’

“Thank you, Zeella,” I said quietly, pocketing it, and he pushed the files toward me.

“Luckily for you, I’ve decided to lighten your workload for the morning. These have been completed, you just need to file them. Get some rest. Use the tonic sparingly- three drops will knock you out cold for a few hours. You are dismissed.”

Grabbing the files, I rose, bowing my head to him, feeling strangely emotionless, and as I opened the door, he said, “Here.”

I caught the satchel just before it could hit me in the face, the weight of the coins nearly throwing me off balance, and I looked up at him. He was already pouring another glass from the bottle, and as I walked out, closing the door behind me, I bit back tears. I debated turning around, and expressing my condolences about mum.

I knew better than that. My hand slid away from the door handle.

Cain met me in our bedroom, having used my bathroom, since he believed his was broken. In truth, I’d tampered with his, having removed the pipe to the hot water as a joke hours ago. Dropping the files and the satchel of coins onto the floor, I fell onto the bed, burying my face in the pillow, and burst into tears, unsure which of the hundreds of reasons was why I was crying.

Cain had the courtesy of bringing me blankets from his own bed, tucking them around me like I was a small child, and after a while, when he began emptying my pockets, he found the sleep tonic.

“What’s this?” he asked, pulling the stopper out, and sniffing at it. It smelt strongly of lavender, and Scara.

“It’s a sleep tonic,” I sobbed out, and Cain, reading the label, said, “Do you want to use it?”

“I can’t… I don’t know why. I need sleep, but I can’t.” The thought of drugging myself felt abhorrent, though I knew it was good, and it helped so many others. Why couldn’t I bring myself to do it? What was I afraid of?

Dreaming. I was afraid of dreaming. I didn’t want to slip back into whatever nonsensical world my head was currently building, featuring Seth. If I let myself dream while I was asleep, it would seep into my waking thoughts. I did not want, nor need, a sun-filled cottage where I could somehow stand in the sun, surrounded by a forest, and Seth there with me.

“Here. Open your mouth,” he said, and I shook my head. I wasn’t six. I couldn’t be tricked by the ‘here comes the airplane’ bullshit. Cain, seeing that I wasn’t going to fall for it, coaxed, “Then let me get you something to eat.”

I nodded, watching him walk off, leaving the bottle on the bedside table, and he returned, thanking Lillian, with a huge platter of almonds, and two cups of chamomile tea. Sitting on the edge of the bed, balancing the tray on his lap, he held out a cup of tea.

“Here you go.”

I sat up, sniffling like a child, turning my face away in embarrassment, and took the tea, swigging from it. It was warm, and the perfect thing for a cold night, and surprising me, Cain popped an almond in my mouth. I smiled slightly at the memory it induced, of nights spent watching movies on Earth and tossing popcorn into each other’s mouths, seeing who could catch the most. Finishing the first almond, I opened my mouth to thank him, and he did it again.

“What are you-” I was cut off by the taste of lavender on my tongue, Cain having spiked the almond, and before I could ask what he was up to, I fell back, Cain catching the cup in one hand, my body in the other, my hiss of surprise turning into a slurred noise. Son of a- “Sorry, Des,” he mumbled an apology, and removed the tray from the bed, tossing a blanket over me.

I fought against the lavender-scented sleep tonic for another ten minutes, cussing him out the entire time, Cain waiting by the door, but eventually, medical science won out over willpower, and I drifted off…