Ravenous (Taint of the Gods #1)

62. RIEKA

62

RIEKA

W ind howled, a wraith lamenting its loss as it passed through the alleys of Lantern Town. The residents wore heavy cloaks to shield themselves from the chill and the wind that threatened to overturn their stalls.

I felt a kinship with the wind song, as if it were written for my ears alone. It sings of the ache in my chest that does not belong to my grief for Tiny. A hymn of anguished tears shed for a stranger whose face lingered in the back of my mind. Ocean eyes, golden waves and the scent of a pine forest after the rain.

I could not recall his name.

The note in my hand told me it was my choice, the words penned by my own hand.

The Soulstitcher who gave it to me claimed I asked her to. After she had taken my memories from me.

You have done this for them. You need not know what was taken, just that it mattered enough to forget about it forever. Know that you have done it for love. And you do not regret your choice.

I could not fathom what had been taken. I would not have committed myself to something so irreversible as removing memories if I had any other choice.

The tent flap behind me opened, the scent of apple spice and pipeweed accompanying the woman as she circled my crouched figure. I’d taken to sitting on the stoop of her establishment, knowing it would be safer for her if I wasn’t inside when he came for me.

“You say I’ve been here for a day?”

The Soulstitcher drew on the stem of her pipe. “Arrived last night. You had company, the company left, you stayed. I told you that already dear.”

“Sorry, I know you did.” Because it had been the first thing I’d asked before she’d handed me the note.

She drew on her pipe again and held out her hand. “You want this, or can I trade it?” she asked, holding my collar. The silver metal winked, the light of the luminous lamps bouncing off the cold steel.

I ran a hand along my collarbones, and up the curve of my neck, my fingers grazing over the new scars that accompanied the old one. It had been gone when I had come out of the Soulstitcher’s trance, placed on the table before me, the note folded underneath.

I knew I’d spent five months in the collar. But no matter how hard I tried, I did not know where I’d spent those five months, or with whom. I just knew that they were someone I loved enough about to forget for their safety. The collar was part of that time. I feared it, hated it and yet I loved it because—because of someone I cannot remember.

Now my neck was bare, and whilst a part of me was grateful the collar was not longer around my neck, I still felt like something was missing.

“You keep it,” I finally said. “I don’t need it where I’m going.”

Overhead a raven cawed and my body startled. I watched as the Soulstitcher looked up at the creature with a smile.

“He’s found me,” I found myself saying.

“Who dear?’

I glared at the black bird as it returned my gaze. “A god.”

The woman seemed to chuckle. “With the raven? I doubt it, dear. The animals belong to the Eldertides. Your gods can’t touch them.”

The Soulstitcher then pulled her hood over her dark red hair, took another puff of her pipe, and tucked the collar into her cloak before heading off down the alleyway into the howling wind.

I stood and watched the woman leave, her words as confusing as they were comforting. The wind lamented once again and it swept past me, tangling itself in my hair.

Heat brushed against my neck.

“I’ve missed that smell.”

My body froze as his hand caressed the curve of my neck, the scent of milk and vinegar engulfing me. The inclination to reach for Etrina was strong, but even she was missing from my boot sheath.

As his fingers reached around my throat, his thumb stroked over the long scar that was a constant reminder of our first night together. Brushing my hair aside, he buried his nose into my neck and breathed me in.

“You’ve been a very naughty little wolf, Odelle,” he tutted. “Running when I told you to stay put. You refused every one of my invitations to be reunited and for whom...”

There was a tingling in the back of my head and his thumb stilled.

“Now you’re keeping memories from me—I should punish you for this.”

He kept his hand on my neck as he orbited my figure, coming to a standstill right in front of me. He was so close I could taste the clover on his breath.

Unbearably beautiful, my Huntsman gazed down at me from golden eyes that swam with the light of the stars. Never had a more beautiful man existed. The way his eyes held me, the intensity of his gaze was indescribable. He was exactly as I remembered him.

But he was supposed to be dead?

The corner of his mouth rose into a smirk. “I incentivised you to leave Deos,” he said, replying to my thoughts.

“You made me believe I killed you.”

In a rush, his face was against mine, the tips of our noses touching. Lips so close he could kiss me. But he wouldn’t.

Because he’d never kiss me like that.

“Would you have preferred the alternative?”

But he already knew the answer.

I had been the Treasured One. The Five Hundredth voice of the Celestials, who had been so devoted to the gods I was worthy of becoming an Astral in the God Sphere. Whose only words permitted to be spoken aloud for a year were the names of The Chosen, who I was condemning to suffer the same fate I had.

Death by exsanguination. The only difference was, I had a stay of execution. My death came slowly. Every night, over and over again, until the morning of the next cycle, where had he not played with my mind, I would have died in my bed, my body drained of blood. Or I would have been murdered for carrying the child of a god. Either way, what was left of me would have burned with the rest of that cycle’s chosen.

I swallowed hard. My body involuntarily reacted to his presence as he slid his face gently across mine to rest his lips by the curve of my ear. “I’ve decided I will punish you, but not because you stole the child of my blood from me—”

“I protected my son from y—”

“SILENCE! ” he commanded into my mind with a terrifying thunder that rattled my bones.

“It is a shame the boy is not here,” he continued calmly. “But no matter. I can always make another. No, I have decided to punish you for the face in your mind. Tell me, do you even know why you chose to recall his face but not his name?”

The desire to suppress the stranger with the blue eyes into the back of my thoughts was fruitless. Lemir was too powerful. My mind was no longer my own.

I clenched my jaw and spoke as I was only now permitted to. “Perhaps I did it to tease you?”

He took a step back and smiled, entirely amused. “You forget, I know you Odelle. And no matter how far you push me, I know death is not the freedom you crave. You shall receive neither from me. ”

Lemir raised a hand to the black strand by my cheek and then brushed it behind my ear. “Now, let us go home.” He then turned, the black silk of his robe a shimmering shadow, and he walked away.

And against my will, I followed him, my voice now his.

The sun kissed my face, the warmth as gentle a caress as my lover’s. His fingers trailed down my arm, tickling the skin at the dip in my elbow. Soft lips touched my neck and my fist in the grass groped for a firmer hold as his tongue teased in ecstasy.

His hand gripped my chin and I was turned into him, my body moulding into his, made for his. Ocean-blue eyes gazed into mine in desperation, a craving for what only we could give one another. A strand of gold had fallen across his brow. I raised my hand to move it, to touch him and make his body ignite for me as mine did for him.

My fingers danced across the bare skin of his chest, his breath hitching as I traced the dark whorls that marked that skin as mine.

His hand moved from my chin, trailing down the skin of my arm, the sensation torturous, like desperate whispers spoken but the words unheard. His hand slowed at my hip, his caress firm when he reached my ass. Then in one swift move, he gripped my leg and moved it, raising it over him, hooking me upon his body. He slid my dress up, his hand roving deliciously lower, my skin sensitive to his very touch as his fingers found their target, the contact forcing me to bite my lower lip in anticipation.

He teased me. One finger moving in achingly slow motions. I kept my eyes open, relishing in the expression he bore. Excited and wild. I loved to watch him work. I stifled a moan, biting my lip as the power his hand held built within me, a well slowly filling.

“Say you love me,” he whispered in my ear, his voice low.

“I love you,” I said breathlessly. He hastened the collapse of my resolve, his fingers unrelenting in their fervour. I sucked in a breath at the sudden surge building within me.

“Say you’re mine.”

“I’m yours.” He kissed me, the words absorbed by his lips, consuming them into himself.

The well inside me cried out for freedom, his hand having finally reached my soul and pulled until all I could feel were his lips on mine and the tether between us pulled taut, threatening to snap, taking my sanity with it.

He growled. “Say my name.”

“I can’t,” I teased back, the blue in his eyes a sea of chaos at my being so near to the climax he so hungrily wanted to see on my face.

“Say my name,” he pleaded again.

“I can’t. I don’t remember,” I said, relishing in retaining what little power I had left, forcing him to take me higher, to move his hand slower once again. I was not ready. It wasn’t enough. I wanted more.

Something wet spat across my face and I opened my eyes and saw his wide in shock.

He coughed and blood shot from his mouth and struck me across the cheek.

He looked down at his chest. There was a hand pushed through it, his heart pulsing in the grip.

Lemir appeared over his shoulder, with his brows raised in that bored way of his. “Do you not think it cruel that you chose to forget him?”

He removed his arm taking the heart with him and my lover’s body collapsed onto my chest in a heavy dead heap.

Lemir straightened himself, dropping the heart to the floor beside me and walked away, his black silk robe blowing in the wind that didn’t exist as the illusion faded around me…

And I once again found myself lying on my bed naked in the chambers he’d provided.

“Are you not bored with this game yet?” my inner voice asked, rolling over and covering my body with the scarlet sheets, hugging the nearest cushion

Even here in the Bastion, Kensilla’s religious and military headquarters, Lemir had forbidden me to speak aloud, to speak to anyone but him. The conversation wasn’t the best when the only person to speak to was a narcissistic god.

“I resent that.” Lemir dropped the robe on the floor and walked his perfect naked body over to the wardrobe where his personally curated collection of garments was stored. Right next to the one where he kept mine.

When I’d called his name all those weeks ago, finally giving in to the dream, I had expected him to come personally. What I had not expected was for us to travel to Aredyn, the Kensillan capital instead of back to the Citadel in Aronbok. But Lemir was nothing if not a creature of habit.

He liked control. He controlled what I said, what I wore, what I did and with whom. He even went as far as to control what I ate. Blood must be strong for it to be useful, because it was of use to him.

Every night, he fed from me.

Which, if I had to find a positive in the situation, it was that. Lemir was my only patron. He’d found The Core’s preference for control through fear much more appetizing than through the worship The Celestials craved. And since The Core’s entire system revolved around the slave trade, they could have and feed from anyone they wanted. They could care less if Lemir kept his favourite close by. So he’d abandoned one pantheon for the other and the day he found me in Lantern Town we moved into The Bastion.

The illusions were my punishment. Waking versions of the dreams he’d been stalking me in. His invitations as he’d called them. He would show me the man I dreamed of, knowing I could never recall who he was, and be forced to watch him die at Lemir’s hand every day.

“Perhaps it’s best that you have forgotten him.” Lemir pulled from my wardrobe a dress of a dazzling earthy green, the front embroidered with diamonds in the shapes of pine needles. It was the only dress he let me choose for myself and since it suited my hair, both the black and white, he agreed to let me wear it today. He draped the Kensillan gown over my dressing chair and added, “You can’t mourn someone you can’t remember.”

The ache in my chest twisted like a corkscrew.

A week after I had arrived here, a Navy Captain presented himself to the Core with news of a resistance movement. Just awoken from a poison-induced coma, he’d spoken of how he had captured a Hemopath who lived aboard the Kensillan Territory Rail, a prison that had been the only safe place to house all the undesirable and non-re-educationable Thralls. And he had claimed it was being used as a base of operations to instigate attacks on The Republic.

The Core left the decision to the Venerable Council, and so the generals had the train derailed— to protect the good citizens of The Republic from those unredeemable creatures.

I’d had such a visceral reaction to the news when I saw it on the media reels that I’d come to two conclusions.

The first.

The ones I care about had been part of The Resistance using the rail, which was why I had erased my memories.

Or the second.

The one with the blue eyes had been aboard.

I’d mourned without even knowing who I was mourning for.

The image of the blue-eyed man floated to the surface of my mind and I smiled at the thought of him.

“Odelle, will you get out of bed? I will not have you make me late to my own festival.”

On cue, there was a knock on the chamber doors. Lemir granted them entrance and in swept four Thralls in the charcoal uniforms of Bastion slaves who proceeded to get me ready for the day's celebration. There was to be a parade down the Red Road today, in honour of the Marian 1 st Purge and the establishment of The Republic, and Lemir was the guest of honour. A god returned.

Or at least that was how The Republic’s propaganda machine was spinning the arrival of a new god to The Core.