5. Dax
Chapter five
Where there was once a fire in my soul, now there is nothing but ice. My mind has nowhere else to go but inward. I look to everything I’ve been through. Everyone I’ve hurt, failed or touched with my darkness. Then, when I can think of nothing else… I think of her . My wife, my queen, my mate. The last words I heard her speak to me when my body was my own echo and reverberate throughout my subconscious. “Nothing is going to happen to you. You are going to come back to me. To all of us. You gave me your word, Dax Fornax-Ravendene.” Through the memory, I take in the look in her eyes, the glassy sadness coating them. The downward tilt of her lips and the furrow of her brow. Everything in her features told me she didn’t fully trust that her words were true. She knew the risks as well as any of us. “I love you.” She said, and each time I hear the words fall from her lips, the pain amplifies. But even worse is the loneliness when I think of Raelle.
If I’m being honest, I knew this day would come for me.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I say the words into the void around me. My voice is barely a whisper. I hear nothing in response. I knew there would be none. I don’t know how long I’ve been in this state, but I know it’s been long enough that I should be dead by now. Or perhaps this is my purgatory.
“I CAN’T DO THIS!” I scream with all I have. The pain of not only the force with which I expel them but the words themselves cut into me like a serrated blade. All the years I spent wallowing in my own self-pity were nothing compared to what I’ve felt in this shadow prison.
“Gods, I can’t. Please.” My begging falls on no man’s ears but my own, but still I would do anything to ensure her safety. I would beg any man, any god, or demon alike to keep her from hurting. “Take care of her.” The whisper escapes me as my eyes flutter closed and I’m taken far from the dank cave. The darkness overpowers my will to live without her. Everything that I have touched with any ounce of love has been destroyed, and the moment I gave my heart to her, fate did the only thing that could hurt us both. It took what was fragile and broke it.
My eyes are dry as I stare blankly at the ceiling above the bed I’ve been given. Trent lays to my left between me and the door, and Ella lays to my right, budded up against the wall below the window. Neither were here when I laid down to sleep. They each crawled into my bed at varying hours in the night. I was not asleep either time. When I’m not looking down at my siblings, thinking about the pain I’ve caused them—I’m thinking about how I should not be here endangering them.
They would be better off without a monster living so close. My selfishness of needing them as much as they think they need me winning out.
“Dax?” Melani’s sweet little voice breaks through the silence of the room as she rolls to face me.
“Yes, sweet girl?” I tilt my head to look at her shadowed features. The moon lights half of her cherubic face, and even though it’s only half the face of a child, the sadness is unmistakable.
“You won’t leave us, will you?” As though she could read my mind, my sweet baby sister unknowingly crushes me. She plucks at my last heartstring, pulling it taut, and letting the sound of devastation rattle my bones all the way through my soul.
“I’m right here.” I avoid giving her a real answer, knowing I can’t give her the truth. Truth is, this world is cruel, and I can’t give the promise she seeks as much as I wish I could. Especially as I was just lying here considering doing just what she is asking me not to.
“I miss them.” A deep coldness floods my veins, if she only knew how much her words cut me.
“I know, Ella. Me too.” I slide my arm under my baby sister and pull her in close. Placing a kiss on the top of her head, I close my eyes for the first time since I killed our parents. “I’m sorry,” I say, my voice cracking as I whisper into her hair, and within a few synchronized breaths, we both fall asleep.
When I open my eyes, the desolate darkness still surrounds me, and my heart clenches in my chest as I come out of the dream. The longing pain of losing everything nips at me. A slight breeze caresses my skin and blows my overgrown hair across my face, causing goose flesh to rise on the skin of my arms and the hair on my neck to rise. I swallow hard; my throat protests at its dryness, but I ignore it as I push myself up from the soggy dirt and stone wall. My legs tremble, and I’m unsteady as I try to stand. Confusion about the sensation of fresh air reaching me in the depths I’ve been trapped in makes me dizzy, and I use the slick wall for support as I try to make sense of it.
A groan escapes me as my hand comes up to rub the center of my chest. A burning warmth thaws the center of it, and my hand clutches air over my heart, clawing at the sensation deep within me. The organ pounds with a furious rhythm, and with it, a newfound determination blooms. However long I have been in this merciless darkness, this feeling—I’ve not felt in too long. I don’t know for certain, but something… tells me it can only be her .
Using the wall of the cave as a crutch, I stumble through the puddles on my bare feet. Jagged rocks bite at my soles and scrape at the palm of my hand where it runs along the wall. The wind becomes stronger the further I walk. It pushes against me like it’s trying to hold me back from wherever it’s coming from. This has been the first time there has been any movement in the caves other than my own since I entered this hellscape. There is no way that I’m turning away from it.
It’s pure chaos of a howling wind pushing and thrashing my body, but then, as quickly as it started, it stops. I break into a run, not caring about the cuts to the bottom of my feet or the water as it splashes up and soaks my chilled skin. That wind came from somewhere, and I’m determined to find out where. The need to escape beats at my chest with each pounding footfall.
As my feet carry me through the dark, my eyes stay focused on the nothingness in front of me. Now and again I think I see the lighting in the tunnels change, but that is nothing new since I’ve been here. My brain is playing tricks on me in the dark.
A vibration in the ground causes me to slow. My breathing is ragged, but as I suck in as much of the moist air as I can to even out my heart rate… the vibration becomes stronger. Rock from all around me starts to crumble from the stone above and the walls at my sides.
“Fuck!” I curse as I begin to run again, dodging falling stones and dirt as best I can. I can’t be buried here. I won’t be. I have to get back to my body and my queen. “Just help me find a path that will lead me back to her! PLEASE, GODS. FUCKING HELP ME!” My voice rips from my throat as I throw my words as far as I can in the hope that if the gods are looking down on me at this moment, they will hear my voice and do something. As I continue to run and the shaking ground becomes more fierce, the dirt beneath my feet crumbles into sand. A hole is formed, sending me falling deeper into the ground. But nothing is as deep as my despair when I find myself in a round room with arches leading nowhere. Each carved arch is barred by stone walls, just a pit with faint blue and white glowing crystals that climb as far as my eye can see above me. The endless chasm above is punctuated with a pinhole of white light that shines down like a beacon to the center of the cavernous space.
Falling to my knees, I let my head fall back with my eyes closed. I soak myself in it, as though the sun or the moon has granted me its light. As I do, my mind whirls, and defeat weakens me further. I thought I was trapped before, but at least then I had somewhere to go. Now there is nothing.
Everything has changed, yet nothing is different.
I clench my jaw as a shiver rolls down my spine; the icy cold has sunk deep into my veins. So far so, my body is heavy with the frigidness of it. Laying on my back, the glow from the crystals pulses along the walls, giving an eerie but almost relaxing feel to the hole I’m confined to. As though the gods sense my turmoil and have granted me a moment to just be. I lay there watching the wave-like pulsing of the illuminated crystals, and reluctantly my eyes flutter closed. Allowing them to rest, my mind replays memories on the back of my eyelids. Some good, some bad, but each one painful when I consider I may never make it out of here. I may never find what I’m meant to be looking for, and I may never be reunited with Raelle again. Since I projected into this body, my mind races through a place between time and true—in a constant state of unrest, but even though my mind never slows, my pulse finally does, and I drift off. A vision of Raelle sleeping next to me, keeping me calm as my mind roams the parallels of reality and what I wish could be.