Ep. 9: The Taking

Dark as Dawn, Bright as Night, a novel

DARK AS DAWN, BRIGHT AS NIGHT is a dark fantasy novel serialized in seventeen episodes. This is Episode Nine.

New to the story? START HERE.

Previously: While Ten has been occupied with Hesper, Blythe has been doing some important work of her own.

Up ahead: Mae follows Bram to the realm of the Sluagh and Hesper decides it’s time to make Ten’s votary.

CONTENT ADVISORY: This episode would probably be rated TV14 if it were made for television due to some sexual content. Reader discretion is advised.

Excited for the adventure to continue? Let me know with a like, comment, or restack.

MAE

Home. 

On a dreary rooftop, rain sliding through him, this beguiling stranger—Bram—has promised me home.

It’s been too long since I had a place I could call mine. And despite myself, I feel the prickle of tears in the corner of my eyes. I clench my jaw and swallow them down. I need to stay on guard.

“What are you talking about?” I ask, my voice thick with unexpected sadness. 

Bram looks at me with a pained expression. He’s obviously not used to being asked to explain his actions. Someone with power then.

“It’s all a little involved to get into here,” he says, spreading his hands to indicate the wet rooftop, his face crinkled with disdain. “And the sooner we move on, the safer we all will be.”

“Funny thing,” I say, “I don’t much feel like following a strange man I just met unless he has a pretty good reason.”

Bram lets out a frustrated sigh. “Fine,” he says, trying hard to control the irritation in his voice. “Although I hardly know where to begin.”

I remain quiet, fix him with a skeptical glare.

He sighs again, then says, “What you call the Gray, we call the Sluagh.”

“Slew-aww?” I ask, testing out the strange syllables.

“It’s usually said with a little more finesse,” Bram says, the condescension in his voice difficult to ignore. “But that’s close enough, I suppose. It’s an old word, and our kind are older still.”

“How old are we talking?” I ask, eyeing his youthful appearance and, if not contemporary, then at least not ancient, apparel. 

“Enough interruptions,” he says through a grimace. “Let me say my piece as you have asked. I do not wish to tarry here any longer than necessary.”

He pauses, but I stay quiet and wave a hand at him in a circular motion, indicating that he should continue. He throws me a petulant glare, but then collects himself and launches back into his story.

“Our kind have a special sort of afterlife, which only seems fitting as our lives among the living are very often tortuous. In life, we see with more nuance, feel everything more deeply than the rest of humanity. We are artists and inventors, dreamers, loners. Outcasts and iconoclasts. The weird and the strange. In short, we possess more of that quality, call it spirit or heart or consciousness, that connects us to the world beyond this world.”

He stops for a moment to study me, gauging my reaction. I meet his gaze and give a small nod. I know the type of person he’s describing, I think. My mother was one.

And so am I.

“When we die,” he continues, “most people melt away in the normal way of mortals, their bodies returning to the earth, the rest of them traveling back to that great beyond that the world’s religions are so fond of naming and policing. Each of us is but a momentary fold in the fabric of time.

“But our kind do not recede so easily into eternity’s mantle. We are not so quickly erased. Those that hunt us call us snags. We are nothing as crude or simple as that, though. We are sovereigns of the spirit. We claim the prodigies of soul and shade for our own Dark Horde. But I get the sense you may have guessed much of this already.”

“Not exactly,” I say, and scuff the toe of my shoe over the roof. The scatter of pebbles there shifts an almost imperceptible amount. A barely there presence, but not gone completely, not a fold smoothed away.

I look up at Bram. “But I’ve always known this world wasn’t for me, always felt that there was something more. I’ve known it, and I’ve seen it. Them. Your Sluagh.” 

“Ah, yes, those are the watchers. They are the least…” He pauses here, searching for a word. “The least present of our kind. Not everyone can be as solid and vibrant in death. Not all Sluagh are like you and me.” He gives me a slight smile and then continues. “But our watchers are very good at their job.”

“Which is?” I ask.

“Which is observation, of course, information gathering, protection, even.”

I think about what his words mean, and I can’t help feeling a little queasy. All those times I saw the Gray, from my very earliest memories until just a few hours ago. How much had they seen? How much did they know?

“And what kind of information have you learned about me?”

Bram draws himself up, takes a steadying breath. “Well, that brings me to my point,” he says. “We have every reason to believe that you are our next riona.” When I look confused, he elaborates. “Our next queen.”

I burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of that idea, and Bram seems taken aback by my response.

“I assure you, Mae Ellis, I am dead serious,” he says. “I wanted to do this a different way. I wanted the watchers to bring you home. Then I could have explained it to you there, made you see everything that is at stake. Unfortunately, you’ve proved much better than I anticipated at eluding them. But we can’t ignore the inevitable any longer.”

I don’t say anything. What is there to say? Blindsided by all this—the attack in the club, a strange boy with his stranger message—I’m seized by the overwhelming desire to escape, take myself far away from this place.

His mention of home was tempting, but I’m getting used to being on my own now, and this is all too much too soon. I feel myself drifting. Not backwards, this time, but to the side. I can hear voices down below. Breathers. I might be able to jump down to them. I don’t fall so hard now. I could slip into one of them and walk away into the world of the living. Find a place to hide. Regroup.

“Don’t run,” Bram says, seeming to sense my intentions. “I will find you.”

Unfortunately, I believe him.

“And as far as I understand,” he continues, “you have a father that may need your help.”

Damn. It’s true. I’d told myself mere minutes ago that I was done running. But I’ve done it for so long that it seems natural to me now. Run away. Hide. Ignore. It’s what a child would do.

Now, at least, there seems to be a reason for all this. All the weird stuff that’s happened to me. That’s happening right now. I need to understand. And it’s become clear that I’m not making any progress on my own. 

I drift back, look him in the eyes. “What do you know about my dad?”

He breathes a sigh, of relief or exasperation—it’s hard to tell. But when he speaks again, there’s no attitude, just a clear statement of the facts.

“Blythe, you may know her as the hunter; she took him to Hesper Wright.”

I let out a hiss through my clenched teeth. “Neither of those bitches can be trusted,” I say. “I tried to tell him. What do they want with my dad?”

“We’re not sure,” Bram says. “There’s bad blood between Hesper and Blythe. Blythe has been trying to destroy the shade maker for centuries. Then you came along, and the stakes were raised. They know who you are and what you mean to the Sluagh. I imagine your father will be used as leverage.”

“To get me to do what?”

“Lead the Sluagh into battle, to wage a war on these selfish creatures’ behalf. Neither will stop until they have their vengeance. And our kind will be the ones to suffer.”

“Lead you into battle?” I ask, nonplussed. “I’m no leader.”

“But you are, Mae,” Bram whispers.

And there’s more truth to his quiet words than I want to admit. No matter what I say, I can feel it. The pull of the world waiting behind Bram. It’s the same tug I’ve felt ever since I was a child. But it’s stronger now. I can’t deny it. No matter how unlikely it seems.

“And we both know,” Bram continues, “you’ll stop at nothing to keep your father safe, no matter the cost.”

I nod. He’s right. Whatever connection I have to the Sluagh, it means less to me than making sure my dad is okay. That he doesn’t suffer. Especially not on my behalf. He did enough of that when I was alive.

“What do we do?” I ask.

“For now, we go home,” Bram says. “It’s safer there, and you’ll understand better what it means to be riona.”

“I’m tied to this world,” I say. “Hesper Wright has my votary.” 

“Yes, but you maybe don’t realize just how powerful you are yet. You won’t be fully free until your votary is destroyed, that’s true, but you can stretch its confines to at least the border of our world. It won’t be comfortable, but it will be possible.”

“How do we get there?”

“We ride the wind,” he says, stretching out a hand. 

I hesitate.

I know once I touch those finely wrought fingers there will be no turning back. But the truth of it is, I’ve waited for this my whole life without fully understanding the strange aching pull at the back of my heart.

I close my eyes and find it easily—the yearning, so long unfulfilled and stronger than ever, guiding me home. 

My fingers fold around his, and I give a little gasp of surprise at the solidity of him. It’s been too long since I’ve felt anyone’s touch.

He gives me a small smile, leads me to the edge of the building, and steps off, pulling me with him. We fall in the strange, sinking way ghosts fall, but before we touch the ground, a gust of wind, like the breath of some primordial giant, lifts us.

And just as it seems the wave of enchanted air has crested, I feel a small squeeze around my fingers. I look at Bram, and he’s magnificent. A pair of silky black wings have sprouted from his shoulders, and he glides on the air like an avenging angel.

“Look,” he says. I turn my head, and my breath catches in my throat. Stretching out and away from my body are my own set of wings, shining black-gold in the reflected light of the city below us.

“My queen,” Bram smiles. “Let’s go home.”

TEN

I open my eyes to a kaleidoscope of black.

A million shining orbs of deepest onyx catch the shadelight and reflect it back, making my vision swim. I fight to focus, straining against the warmth of the stones on my skin that call to me, urge me to relax and give in. 

Suddenly, the constellation of shimmering black shifts and there she is, the Wright.

She’s beautiful in the way that ancient things are: strange and unknowable, filled with a mysterious charisma shaped by centuries of survival.

Her white hair falls over an exposed shoulder, her pale skin offset by the gown of sheer black that clings to her small body. I prop myself up on my elbows and meet her fathomless gaze. 

I don’t know how long I’ve been in this strange place with this strange woman, and I find I don’t care. In fact, this weightless ease is the best I’ve felt in long, long time. 

“It’s time,” Hesper says, and I know I should get up, push her away, run for the door.

I know in my bones that this moment is monumental, yet it feels natural. 

She presses me down so that I lie flat against the stones once more, and then she comes around to the top edge of the pedestal, standing above my head, her expression unknowable.

She rests a delicate hand on each side of my face. When her fingers graze my cheeks, I shudder. There’s something electric in her touch, a primal energy that seems to reach through me to the onyx below my skin, pinning me down.

“Speak your name,” Hesper says, her voice is rough-edged but hushed, her eyes flashing a deeper shade of black.

“My name is Ten,” I say, with unexpected effort, as though I must dredge the words up from some inner abyss.

“Your true name.” And her eyes seem to expand. I see myself reflected in them; I’m swallowed whole by their impossible depth.

“Tennyson Ellis.”

The words force their way from my throat on a sudden rush of air. I feel them escaping my lips, sliding out and away into the air, a bird taking wing. Hesper’s hand moves quickly, striking out with a predator’s reflexes.

A small, fluttering thing squirms in her grip. I blink, trying hard to focus on anything other than the absolute blackness of her gaze, and when I finally tear my eyes away, I notice the bird in her hand. It’s an iridescent black, an oil slick of feathers against her white skin. Its yellow-rimmed eyes are filled with surprise to find itself in her grip, torn from an unknown, untouched inner realm.

The first bite is a death blow. Her small teeth rend and tear with astonishing speed.

She devours it whole, bones and all.

When the last feather floats to the ground, she seems to be rolling something around in her mouth, cleaning it as you would clean a cherry pit. She reaches finger and thumb past her lips and draws forth a stone, a gleaming onyx, which she slips into a shallow bowl nearby.

She smiles, then.

It’s small, but genuine—the first time I’ve seen her be anything other than solemn since we’ve met. Some primitive part of my brain lights up in alarm, although it feels far away, unimportant.

The bird seems to have awoken something within her.

Shadelight surrounds her like a dark halo, and suddenly it’s easy to believe she’s ancient and powerful.

From somewhere unseen, she draws out a blade, and I recognize it as one of the pair that Blythe gave me, with its deadly curve and smooth handle. She slides a finger over the edge, and her smile deepens. In one fluid motion, she steps to the side of the plinth and climbs onto it, swinging a leg over me, a knee on either side of my chest.

I don’t even notice when the blade touches my throat. It’s so sharp that at first there’s no pain as she runs it in a soft line down the side of my neck. As the wound opens, I finally feel the ache. She’s touched a vein and a steady stream of blood courses down onto my shoulder.

I try to lift a hand to staunch the bleeding, but she catches it and pins it above my head, then does the same to the other. The position brings her lips to within inches of mine.

She’s magnetic, and I don’t just want her to kiss me; I need it, ache for it. When she finally does she tastes earthy, delicious. I want to drink her into me, so I kiss back with hungry urgency.

Her lips leave mine, and I moan, not ready for the kiss to end. But she lets her lips trail down my chin to my neck, and then she bites into my wound.

I cry out in surprise and pain, try to throw her from me, but she still holds my hands above my head and her grip is strong. Too strong for such a small woman.

“Don’t fight it,” she whispers, putting a finger to my lips, before she returns to my neck. 

This time, I don’t shout.

I bear the pain, let it meld with the pleasure, let it take me to the edge.

Hesper releases my arms. She rises, throws back her head.

Blood, my blood, covers her mouth, painting her pale lips red.

The room begins to swim before my eyes, and I feel the pulsing rocks below me that urge me to let go, give in. I haven’t felt like this in a long time. Not since Helena. 

I close my eyes. Helena. My love.

When I open them, she’s there.

It’s Helena whose hips meet mine. It’s Helena whose lips crush against me. I wrap my hands around her, look into her eyes, and let go.

I fall.

Fall into those eyes, twin oceans of black.

These are not the limpid brown of my wife’s eyes.

There is no kindness, no spark here. This is dangerous, sensual, powerful black, and it’s swallowing me whole. But that’s what I want. I want to get lost there, drown in those strange, ancient depths.

But as the tension fades, I return to the surface, blink, and breathe, and Hesper is smiling, still on top of me.

“I haven’t taken someone like this in a very long time,” she says. “Over the decades, I’ve become much more…hands-off. Passions vary from person to person, and surprisingly, they’re not often aligned with one’s partner. But for you, it was only Helena.”

I don’t know what to say to that.

Don’t know what to say about any of this. I’m still trying to catch my breath. It still feels like I’m drowning in her. I can’t shake the feeling, and a cold kind of terror starts to creep up my chest, making my breath shallow. My heart pounds, forcing the blood to flow even faster from the wound in my neck. 

Hesper notices the change, but there’s no comfort or concern in her gaze. She runs a finger down my cheek and lets it come to rest on my lips.

“Shh,” she murmurs. “No need to rush. I won’t be able to finish what we’ve started if you keep panicking like this. Don’t fight it, my warrior.”

Hesper slides off of me, leaving her discarded gown draped across me. I follow her with my eyes, the loss of blood making me weak, the stones on my skin throbbing.

She collects the bowl with the stone inside of it and presses it against my neck, diverting the flow into its basin. I moan a little from the pain, and she applies more pressure until she has what she needs.

She moves to a pedestal nearby, glowing still, radiating a brutal power. A power that’s magnetic, intense, that speaks to all my deepest, rawest needs. I want her still, even with my blood painted across her chest.

She selects a small hammer and chisel from the tools arrayed before her and cleaves the blood-soaked stone down the middle, selecting one half and placing it in the bowl once again.

She picks up another tool, a pestle, and goes to work grinding the stone, her muscles flexing, tiger-like, under her skin.

She scoops the mixture out and kneads it, sinking her white fingers into the dark clay.

I watch as a simple human form begins to take shape. As she presses and smooths, I seem to be able to feel her fingers on me, mirroring each motion. The clay responds to her deft touch, and I too seem to be changing.

I can feel a shift—bone-deep, fundamental. She hollows out the bell-shaped base of the sculpture and I’m suddenly aware of how light I feel, untethered to a world filled with the heaviness of loss. She uses a stylus to outline a simple set of features, and I feel the tension leave my face, feel the years of hardship and grief melt away.

Finally, she seems satisfied with what she’s made. Shadelight collects in shining rivulets on her skin and floods into her eyes, making them glow and pulse with such intensity they seem in danger of imploding, blackholes set to destroy whatever lies in their path.

But then, on a great inward breath, she seems to draw the energy down into herself, pulling it in so it fills her chest, before blowing it out—a gust of dark energy that seeps into the surface of the clay figure.

My skin prickles with invisible fire. It burns icy hot as it sinks in, and I grit my teeth against the feeling of being overwhelmed by all that dark energy. 

Hesper approaches me. She seems pleased, but I can’t concentrate on her for long. The feelings of change, of some primal code being rewritten, have left me breathless with agony. 

“You’re fighting again, my warrior,” she says. She sounds like a god. “It’s too late to go back. The only way forward is release.”

Fighting. For so long now I’ve been fighting against a world bent on taking all I love away. I’m tired of losing. So maybe I try something new. Maybe I do give in. Lay down the old me.

Surrender to this new feeling.

Surrender.

The feeling of lightness in me expands. There’s more space between each breath.

I don’t need air to swim in this ocean of blood.

I don’t need a name to anchor me.

I don’t need…

My vision narrows. I close my eyes. I open them. Helena is there. 

My eyes close. 

She’s gone.

MAE

The border between worlds is thin. Thinner in some places and for some people.

Being that kind of person is complicated.

In life and in death. 

No place feels like home. Nothing feels permanent, and because nothing feels permanent, nothing feels real. As though every place is just a stage set, and everyone is just acting out some role, waiting for the play to end and for real life to begin.

Most people never even realize it's all a show. They don’t realize it’s all a tragedy. Or maybe even a farce. And so much the better for them. It makes it all easier.

Unfortunately, I am not one of those people.

For me, the borders between worlds aren’t just thin; they’re nonexistent.

I’ve needed to become comfortable with the unknown, with ambiguity, with the eternal.

But the time I’ve spent here, in the world of the Sluagh, it tests even my grasp of what existence is and what it means.

Hours or days, it’s impossible to tell how long Bram has tried to show me his—our—world. Time works differently here. And so, apparently, does perception.

It’s all a little much for a teen, even a dead one, if I’m being honest.

The best I can think to describe it is to imagine the wind.

It has no resting place, no way to pin it down. You only know it’s there by seeing its effect on other things. It can be gentle, tender, relished, even.

And it can be dangerous, deadly, feared.

The Sluagh are like the wind. 

They’re more a feeling, a force. Form is optional.

Maybe it’s because I’m still tied to the human realm. Maybe once I’m free, I’ll be able to really understand. To integrate with them more fully.

The problem is, do I even want to? 

To me, it all seems a bit ominous, this riona business. Queen of the wind, leader of a Dark Horde.

I’m not sure I understand what it all means or what the implications are. And nobody has asked me what I want.

No one ever has, really.

Not mom when she took my afterlife into her own hands. Not my dad when I told him I didn’t need saving. And certainly not Blythe or Hesper, who think of me as simply a means to their own ends. 

I never asked for any of this.

I want to go back, and I tell Bram this.

Around us, the low, purple light of the borderland’s perpetual dusk paints everything in indigo hues. It’s beautiful, but it suddenly seems to be suffocating me. I feel a pressing need to escape, and it takes everything I have not to swim through the haze to surface in the human realm. 

“You are the riona, you hardly need my permission,” he says. “But do you feel ready?”

“Ready?” I ask. “For what?”

“To free yourself from the Wright’s votary so that you may claim your birthright.”

My birthright.

It sounds ridiculous. I’m not even qualified to get a driver’s license, but suddenly I can lead the spirits of the dead? 

“Bram,” I say, “I–I want you to know that I am flattered by your offer, overwhelmed with it, if I’m honest. I just don’t think I’m your riona.”

The words have been brewing inside me for some time now, and it feels good to finally say them out loud. Bram looks annoyed but undeterred. I try again.

“This glimpse of the Sluagh you’ve given me,” I continue, “has been amazing. It truly has. It’s been a long and lonely afterlife for me, and I haven’t even been dead that long. But I’m a kid, not a queen.”

“There’s no point denying who you are,” Bram says. “And there’s every reason to embrace your calling. Without a riona, the Sluagh are like this,” he says, gesturing around us at the mist. “We’re adrift. You’re the one that can give us direction, remind us of our power. It’s something you were born to.”

“Why can’t you do it?” I ask, an edge creeping into my voice that belies the rising panic in my chest. “The Sluagh have survived this long with you in charge. What difference will I make?”

“You make all the difference,” Bram says. His hauteur has dropped away, and in its place is a genuine depth of feeling that makes me even more nervous because of its sincerity. “We have survived for centuries. But we aren’t meant to just survive, we’re meant to fly.”

He looks up and back at his beautiful, dark wings, their great webbing rippling gently in the breeze. 

“There are more doors to pass through, Mae,” he continues, “places to explore beyond this world or the next. Death is just a threshold. But you are the key. Our key. You only need to step through.”

I look at his strikingly angular face, his magnetic eyes, and I wonder what he was like in life. The same, very probably, confident to a fault, charismatic. Persuasive. I’m wrestling with my conflicting feelings, wondering how to respond, when the haze vibrates and, like a cresting wave, another of the Sluagh materializes next to us and whispers something in Bram's ear.

“Leave us,” Bram says to the new arrival, his face clouding over. 

“What is it?” I ask.

“Your father,” he begins, but I don’t wait for him to finish. I can tell immediately by his tone, the seriousness of his gaze, that something is very wrong.

A sudden gale lifts me, and I’m soaring through the Sluagh fog, the dusk-lit world slipping past me. I feel my way forward, using my votary as a guide. It’s my anchor, but it’s also a beacon, and it’s calling me back to the Wright. 

I will myself on faster, my wings beat hard against the thick air, and with the wind at my back and my votary tugging me forward, I’ve made it back in the span of a few minutes.

I burst through the border between worlds, ignoring the strange feeling of weightlessness that overcomes me as my wings disappear and the world of the living envelopes me once again.

I’m not prepared for what I find there in the Wright’s onyx-studded hall.

My father lies still in a pool of blood. He’s not dead, but only a shred of life remains in him.

A brand-new votary stands nearby.

And the Wright. She’s there, too, hand poised to settle the other half of my father’s onyx namestone into her wall. Bram’s explained to me that it’s the final step in her dark practice. 

Her eyes widen with surprise when she sees me, but then an awful, too-wide smile parts her lips as she reaches for the empty place on the wall, a position of honor, just above the dais where Dad lies dying.

I don’t think. I only will myself forward and dive into her.

Slipping is an awkward feeling at the best of times.

It feels crowded, for lack of a better word.

A normal human is full up with blood, guts, bone and brains, not to mention their sense of self, their drives and pleasures, the lightness and darkness of their being. There’s a lot going on. Add a whole other presence, and things can get complicated fast.

When I slide into the Wright, though, I soon realize things will be complicated for a different reason. There’s too much room. Inside her, there’s space to fight and no place to hide. 

The resistance is immediate. She’s pushing me out before I’ve even had a chance to sink in fully.

I admit I’m surprised; I’ve never been cast out. I never stick around long enough for that to happen. But the Wright’s strength is overwhelming, and she’s almost freed herself from me before I redouble my efforts. I concentrate on her hand, send my energy into her fingers, attempt to pry each one up from the shiny surface of the onyx. 

The Wright attacks again with that strange inner strength, throwing the full force of it at me. I hold on, but only just. She’s so powerful. I can feel myself fading. 

But it’s Dad. I need to fight. This can’t be his fate too.

I try again, pushing as hard as I can against the Wright’s monolithic energy. But she’s curling shaking fingers around the namestone, tightening her hold. The wall is too close, and I’m losing ground fast. I can’t win in this show of brute strength, but maybe I can outsmart her. What would the Queen of the Sluagh do? I try to remember Bram’s words from that first rooftop meeting.

We are sovereigns of the spirit. 

We claim soul and shade for our own Dark Horde.

Soul and shade. 

I concentrate on the Wright’s ancient power surrounding me. It lost any connection to its humanity long, long ago. There is no name or love or blood or bone here. Only the spirit could have endured this long. The two parts of it. 

Soul and shade. 

The queen, I decide, would demand her due. 

And I do.

That’s all it is, really. A command that echoes through the ether of this strange, internal space. She fights the call. Her spirit strains against its bounds, although the things anchoring it to her body are dark and heavy. 

But it’s enough of a distraction to give me a foothold once more. The Wright’s hand shakes, held in a tense equilibrium by the war we wage. But even after issuing my command, it’s not enough to stop her, and I wonder how long I can keep this up. I can feel her anger, her strength, her determination all the more strongly. She will break free. She will place the stone. But I can’t let it happen.

I can’t. 

A surge of strength courses through me and into the Wright.

The stone slips from her fingers.

But it does not hit the floor. 

---

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