CHAPTER ONE

Water dripped through the cracks in the bitter dungeon. Torches held mysterious blue
flames that gave out a chilling freeze, numbing everything they touched. A musty
smell of mould and cold shivered all around, lingering in the air like death.
Snakes littered the floor, tongues flicking from dark shadows, trying to find their
prey.
In the middle of the cave was a table. Lying on top of it was a woman, panic-stricken
and confused. Questions spread through her mind, all of which lead to the same man,
the only one who possessed the answers: Why would he do this? What was his intent?
The snakes coiled like ropes around her wrists and ankles, binding them. As she tried
to move the serpents hissed, angry at being disturbed. Her blue eyes made contact
with the infinite black eyes of the snakes, which pierced her soul with deadly hatred.
The victim watched her breath escape her, coming out like hurried gasps of smoke.
She knew what they were, why they despised her. They were Keahi, and she was the
reason why their master grieved. The woman dared not move for fear they would
infect her with their deadly poison, despite the fact she was trying to tell herself he
would never let anything harm her. She squirmed as the snakes wrapped around her
with more intensity, their determination cutting off the blood supply to her hands and
feet, restricting her sight, and forbidding her to hear anything above the thumping of
blood pulsating in her ears, and so she didn’t see as one of the snakes slithered along
the floor towards the table, the woman couldn’t hear as it made its way up the table
leg.
Excitement from the sickly show was arousing the snakes that bound the prisoner; the
time had come to dispel of their King’s one weakness. They hissed eagerly in her ear.
She breathed in, and held it as the sensation of a serpent crawling along her body
electrified her nerves. Its tongue smelt, tasted her skin. It crept onto her face, its
tongue licked her lips. Another snake slithered along her arm and bit down, hard,
drawing blood and delivering poison as a substitute into her veins. The woman’s veins
and arteries throbbed as her heart beat venom around her system. A voice slashed
through her agony, broke through the barrier of blood still pounding in her ears. A
voice which dripped in deceit.
“Aka,” the woman said under her breath, finding her throat was sore and harsh. She
felt a numbing sensation and again came to wonder why he was letting them do this to
her.
It was no secret that he still loved her, they both knew that. The scar still glowed
vibrantly where he had tried to cut it out of him, knowing for the sake of his people
that he couldn’t allow himself to give in to his feelings. Trouble was he already had,
and in doing so Aka had caused great grief for all his family. They’d had a son
together, and she was sure that Aka relished in the power that would be a marvellous
asset to winning the war between their two people: the prospective his son had of near
indestructibility. Kaelem would be twelve years old now. Aka needed his son before
he came into his teens, to capture the unused mind of an innocent, and the fragile
imagination held at this age, before it crumbled.
Lily-Anna tried to swallow, but with fright she realised that her windpipe had
narrowed. Torment filled her soul as a deprivation of oxygen spread through her body.
Her breathing became shallow and started to heave out of her. She dimly noticed a
man whose eyes shone intensely back as bottomless pools of darkness in deeply
tanned skin. Threat and sorrow seemed to rise off him. He was tall, she knew how
high: six foot four, exactly half an inch taller than she was. He was dressed in a long
black coat and trousers. His hair hung limply down just past his shoulders, and shone
a dangerous black. She knew hidden beneath it, on the nape of his neck, was a tattoo
of a circle with a dot in the middle; the symbol that represented his status in the Keahi
land: the symbol of a king. Another tattoo was printed on the inside of his right wrist,
which mirrored that of her pendant. His whole essence reeked of emotional turmoil.
Lily-Anna wheezed and averted her gaze, suffocating anguish in replacement of the
inescapable knowledge that he was the cause of all this, someone who had been so
gracious to her, so gentle. But the truth had given him away; he had used her as well
as loved her. She wanted to cry as she thought back to all those times when it was just
her and him. Alone and free in each other’s arms.
“Please look at me.” The sound was deep and entrancing, with a sharp edge. The same
as it had been ten years ago, reminding Lily-Anna of all the goodness that had once
been so vivid and extraordinary. But now it also brought connotations of the
deception that he had woven through her, using words to hypnotise. Look where they
were now: It meant nothing. It meant everything. She moved her eyes, he passed his
hand gently over her throat, a thin black-green smoke coming out of his palm,
highlighted with sparkling bright white lights, and suddenly she could breathe
properly again.
She drew in as much air as she could in one gulp, not caring that it tasted
contaminated and vile with the stench of lies. She looked into the man’s piercing
black pupils. Sadness swept over her as she remembered how it had been when she
was ignorant of his true identity. Aka saw Lily-Anna’s sorrow reflected in her eyes,
and put a finger delicately to her cold lips. He shivered slightly, and whispered:
“I need you.”
Her lips began to tingle as the paralysis wore off them, and she managed a feeble
word:
“Why?”
“I love you. That is why.” She could smell his breath spilling out of him as he spoke,
it had an aroma of mint, but then he continued, saying something that made her heart
stop, made her throat feel like it was closing up again, and she reeled upon hearing the
unbearable:
“And I have to see my son. I cannot let him become associated with the Haukea.”
Tears fell from Lily-Anna’s eyes, drop by drop, welling up then falling, merging,
into one another as they dripped down her cheeks. She felt them soften her lips as
they came to her mouth. She tasted the salty sorrow, and knew their son would never
have the life she sought for him if she granted this request. She wanted to scream at
Aka, to shout, to cry out loud. She wanted to jump up and hit him, suffocate him so
that her son wouldn’t have the pressure of knowing what he was. She acknowledged
that she was the liar now. But only a whisper could pass her lips, and so she focused
her blurred vision onto Aka, expelling through her eyes all of the hate and anger she
felt towards him at this point, and for a second the two pairs of eyes made contact.
Then it was gone, lost forever, but it gave enough information to tell Aka that he
would never get his true love back, and it was enough for Lily-Anna to see her
forbidden love’s secret unhappiness; to realise that Aka had lost someone who meant
more to him than any war. She felt ashamed of herself that she had thought otherwise.
Her husband wanted their son to be detached from this war as much as she, the only
difference was that he was not blinded enough to think this would be possible. When
he spoke again, more softly, less compelling, she listened with more respect:
“You cannot keep his inheritance a secret forever Flower. You know what the Haukea
are like, they will find his power and make him their own. I am sorry, but I am
intending to breach your trust by trying to find him. However I am afraid Flower; who
knows what will become of our worlds with a power like Kaelem’s… ”
Lily-Anna gasped back her tears.
“What?” He asked. She couldn’t answer him, the truth was too painful for them both
to have to handle; she dreaded his reaction to it, just as Aka would have been afraid of
her reaction to his hidden life all those years ago. It killed her to think what she had to
do, what she had done, but at the time she thought she had no choice in the matter; she
was broken and fearful. The Haukea would execute her in their mission to get her son,
and if Kaelem were taken to Hau Houna, her own world, without her, what protection
and guidance would he have against building an allegiance with a group which
brought so much misery to so many people? And with the information that Aka was to
find and take her son she had to take action. So with sincere regret she began to
whisper the spell that would allow her son to see her. Her eyes closed as she went into
a comatose state. She saw her son, and reached out to him as he grabbed her.
However, before she could finish, Aka quickly put his hand over her mouth, the
uncertainty of what she was doing scaring him.
“I thought you were against them now!” He shouted in shock. Blackness seeped into
Lily-Anna’s mouth. She became half-conscious, but was determined to finish what
she had started, there was no time to explain, and bit down hard into Aka’s hand. He
yelled at her, feeling the cold pain crystallising his hand. He clutched it to make the
pain more bearable, and a drop of frozen blood fell from it to the floor, where it
shattered next to one of the serpents. Its hiss was filled with the need to protect its
master. The snakes that were scattering the floor started to crawl up the table legs
surreptitiously and slide over Lily-Anna’s body. One of them lunged at her skin,
passing more venom into her system. Sharp pains erupted over her whole body as
they pierced her flesh with deadly fangs. She saw the magic spilling out of her in
great blue and purple lights. The snakes raised their heads, droplets of venom and
blood descending from their drenched fangs, staining Lily-Anna’s pure white skin
crimson. She watched the connection fading between her and her son. Their hands
unclenched, creeping away from each other through numerous unseen cracks. She felt
him, her son, leaving, his soul full of emotion, could hear his frightened thoughts; Aka
had done something to the connection when he had woken her, and something was not
right. She knew her son would soon come into contact with the war he should never
have been conscious of. The remaining lights floated above her, and disappeared
through the ceiling, and she was gone as she joined them.
Aka cried, his scar still showing vibrantly where he had been told to cut out his love
for her, but he couldn’t, he just couldn’t.