Crowned In Shadows by Amber Ella Monroe
Chapter 1
Sadie
I’ve raised Asmodeus—Apollyn’s brother—from the dead.
The confession that Sydney had just made left me feeling a range of emotions. Shock, disbelief, confusion, and anger were all coursing through my veins, and I found myself struggling to find the words to express what I was feeling. Her confession echoed in my head like a broken record, each word repeating itself over and over again. I had so many questions and so many things to say, yet I couldn’t bring myself to utter a single one.
I felt like I was stuck in a dream that I couldn’t wake up from. Everything seemed distorted and surreal, as if I were looking through a broken glass. I wanted to run away, to get away from the uncomfortable silence that had settled between us, but I just stood there, frozen in place.
Finally, I took a deep breath and forced myself to speak. “Why did you wait until now to tell me this?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper. The question was more of a plea for understanding than anything else, and I waited anxiously for Sydney to answer.
I was still trying to process what she had just told me—that she had raised Apollyn’s brother from the dead—and I couldn’t believe it was true. The feat seemed impossible, but given the last few weeks of my life, I shouldn’t have found anything impossible at this point. I had already made several seemingly impossible things possible with sacrifice…with perceived betrayal.
I was still in shock from Sydney’s confession, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that she had been missing for months. Months. And the first thing she did when she got back was confess to doing something that could only mean chaos and strife for us. For me. For her.
I wanted to understand why she had done it—why she would bring someone back from the dead without consulting anyone else—but I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. At first, my initial thought was of betrayal, but then I realized that wasn’t fair to Sydney. After everything we’d gone through in the past few weeks, I couldn’t just jump to conclusions and accuse her of ulterior motives without any evidence or knowledge of what had actually happened.
My confusion quickly turned into anger as I began to think about all the risks she’d taken without even considering how this could affect us—how it could tear us apart if things went wrong. It seemed so reckless and irresponsible, and I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated with her every passing second as I waited for a plausible explanation.
“Are you even going to answer me?” I babbled.
The color soon came back to Sydney’s cheeks, and the shivering and tension in her body ceased. She almost fell over, but I quickly grabbed her shoulder, steadying her before she could lose her balance.
“Wait!” She blurted out, shrugging away from me. “Don’t touch me.”
I swallowed, shaking my head. What was wrong with her? Why didn’t she want me touching her all of a sudden. “Okay…I…are you okay?”
She nodded, her breath shallow. “I’m okay.” However, she bent forward, her hands on her knees as if to steady herself. She had a hand to her mouth and appeared to be retching, ready to vomit. “I feel so sick. I think I’m going to throw up.”
Morpheus jumped into action and ran to grab a trash bin from the other room, but Sydney shrank back from him when he offered it to her. I found it strange—her actions. She didn’t trust Altair, Dominik, or Morpheus at all. Even when they were only trying to help her out, she was still scared of them.
The pulse in her neck thumped frantically beneath her skin.
“Sydney? Were you running?” I asked.
She glanced up with a deer-in-the-headlights stare.
“You were running from someone, weren’t you?” I pressed, when she didn’t answer.
“Don’t worry about that,” she snapped. “You don’t know what I had to do to get here. To you.”
“That’s because you broke our connection, remember? Did you do that so I couldn’t find you?”
Her gaze dropped to the ground as if in shame. “I didn’t want you in danger. I had to do this alone.”
I frowned. “No, you didn’t, sister.”
She whirled around, her eyes darting around in disbelief. “What is this place?”
“This is Nebulae. Another realm. We’re in the past.”
“The past?” The bridge of her nose crinkled. “So I joined you in a time already gone? No wonder I’m exhausted. Why would you come back to the past?”
She looked at me with such disdain that I could have sworn I had done something wrong. My heart sunk and I glanced over at Altair, who gave me a worried look in return.
Sydney sighed. “Sadie, you were so hard to track. You never stayed one place long enough for me to send a secure message. Trailing you here was the only way.” She pointed in the direction of the rift she came through, which had disappeared only moments earlier. “There were spirits running after me. Trying to jump through with me.”
“Sydney, where exactly did you come from?”
She shook her head. “You don’t want to know. It felt like hell. Nothing but dark spirits and lonely ghosts. Souls on the edge not ready for peace or dodging Hell.”
“Sounds like you were with the Damned,” Dominik offered.
Sydney slumped restlessly down into a sofa, letting out a pained moan as she rubbed her aching forehead. “Ugh…I just…”
She looked tired. Dead tired.
“Is that where you were? With the Damned? You said you raised Asmodeus. I hope that’s not true.”
She nodded. “It is where I was. I traveled to the Land of the Damned. I was there for months. Trapped there.”
I gasped. “Nostro told me you were after a magical dagger. It seems you have found it then.” I folded my arms across my chest. I was upset, but I was also glad that my sister didn’t end up dead like Nostro predicted.
“Wait. You know about that? About Nostro?”
“Yes. And Aunt Naima is dead. She—”
She held up her hand. “I know. I know what happened. Magda killed her. I hope that bitch goes straight to hell for killing our innocent aunt.”
“W-what? How do you know?”
“Aunt Naima was in the Land of the Damned, but only briefly. She couldn’t help me. We got separated.” She stared up at me and a look of pity crossed her face. “Don’t worry. She found her peace. She’s not with the Damned anymore.”
I sighed in relief, and then knelt in front of her, careful not to touch her for fear that her reaction would be out of character. After all, she had been with the Damned. I could only imagined what she went through.
“Were you in the ancestral realm, too?” I asked, thinking back to the time when we all thought Sydney might have been there either dead or alive.
“Only briefly. The spell I did required separation of soul from the body. Since I wasn’t actually dead, I was pushed out of the ancestral realm almost immediately after I got there,” she said.
I pressed my hand to forehead in disbelief. “You were playing with fire. If you did the spell I think you did that means you had to be dead first to accomplish it.”
Her lips twisted together in a frown. “Not really. I managed to find a way around it. A loophole. I’m glad it paid off, or I may have been a goner for sure.” Her laugh sounded slightly strained.
“Sydney,” I uttered, my voice full of exasperation. “I searched like hell for you. Why couldn’t you have just come back to let me know you were okay?”
She twisted her fingers together in distress. “I couldn’t find a way out. Every time I had the chance, something would stop me. I was stuck there for a long time. You have no idea what I went through. I was tortured there, too, sister.”
“Tortured? By who, sister? Tell me. Tell me and I’ll make them pay,” I urged.
“You’re no match for Asmodeus,” she scoffed.
“Asmodeus.He held you captive. And tortured you. And you raised him! Is he…is he on the Earth realm?”
Sydney’s eyes glossed over in alarm. “I’m…uh…”
“Sydney, what have you done? Why would you do that? Why did you raise him?”
“Yes, Sydney…” Dominik crossed his arms and inched close, his voice low and suspicious. “Why did you raise that dark evil?” he asked.
I could see that Sydney was uneasy in the presence of Dominik, Altair and Morpheus, especially when they weren’t making any effort to mask their true identities.
“I can’t tell you,” Sydney said, her eyes darting to my men. “I don’t trust them. I had no idea you were with them. If I did…I would’ve never come here. I thought maybe we could work together to finish this. As you can tell, my powers are no where near the level they once were. I don’t know what happened.”
“You need me because of my powers?” My heart almost turned to stone, yet I refused to let any bitterness towards my sister rise. After all, we were always taught to stick together no matter what.
“I need my sister,” she lashed out.
“I’ve always been here for you. That won’t change, but Sydney, you went on without me. After doing something so careless, why would you reach out only now?”
“Because I know you would’ve stopped me from doing what I was going to do anyway!” She hissed through tight lips. “If you weren’t with dark evils yourself, you would see my reasons. I’d have no qualms about revealing them.”
“That’s not good enough,” I snapped, anger creeping into my voice. “Asmodeus is our enemy. He’s the reason our parents are dead.”
Sydney collapsed onto a nearby couch, her breathing labored. I rushed to her side, trying to keep her conscious. “No…” she whispered.
“You’re sick. Why did you do this?” I demanded, my voice softer now.
“I can’t tell you,” Sydney said weakly. “It’s too dangerous. Just know that I did it for a good enough reason.”
“I trust them,” I said, waving a hand back toward Altair, Dominik, and Morpheus. “They’re my future.”
“You are mistaken, and I can’t risk it,” Sydney said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“We’ve all made mistakes, Sydney. We can fix this. We can put Asmodeus back—”
“No!” Sydney shouted, releasing a wave of energy as she grabbed my forearm firmly. I knew the words she uttered were meant to initiate a spell that would transport us away from this place. Away from my men. Unfortunately, her magic was too feeble to power the spell.
She convulsed and then collapsed in my arms.
“Sydney,” I whispered, checking her pulse and wiping the beads of sweat from her temples.
My protectors rushed to help, but there was nothing they could do while she was unconscious. “She’s alive. She’s just exhausted herself,” I said.
Morpheus laid a hand on her forehead. “She’s scorching hot,” he said. “I noticed she wasn’t doing well when she passed through the portal. There’s barely any magic here, not enough to replenish her if that’s what she was hoping for.”
“Then let’s focus on getting back to Earth just like I planned,” I said, stroking Sydney’s hair.
With a flick of my wrist, I finished my spell. The magic seethed and burst around the five of us. Like grains of sand on a beach, we traveled through time and space back to the present. There was a small popping noise as we crashed back into reality, back into my apartment.
When we landed, I couldn’t shake the feeling that things were about to get a lot more complicated. There was a good chance that Asmodeus was now on Earth, and we would have to face him sooner or later.
I carefully laid Sydney on my bed and tenderly draped a thick quilt over her frail body. My protectors stood in a semi-circle around me, their faces tight with worry.
“We need to find out what Sydney knows about Asmodeus and what he’s planning. About everything,” Morpheus said, his eyes flashing with determination. “And we need to take care of Asmodeus before he can cause any harm on Earth. Knowing him, he will. He loves taking innocent souls. It’s in his nature. And it’s how he feeds.”
I shuddered and nodded, knowing he was right. I knew we were walking into danger, a blind leap into the unknown. But even as we prepared to face this new threat, a nagging voice in the back of my mind whispered that things were not as they seemed. The only other evil which existed that might’ve known what Asmodeus was up to without having to ponder on it was his brother, Apollyn.
I didn’t know if I was ready to bring him into the fold just yet, but I knew, just knew, that very soon, we’d need the enemy of our enemy to win this fight.
But for now, I had to focus on helping my sister get better. No matter what she’d done, she was still my sister. I wouldn’t abandon her.