Chapter 50
CHAPTER FIFTY
M y pulse thundered as Drake stepped further into the darkness of that chamber, every piece of me demanding I turn and run from this place aside from my foolish heart which refused to abandon him to the fate he had so adamantly accepted for himself.
Let him die. Maybe the next master won’t be so pig headed.
“If he dies, I may as well die too,” I hissed, knowing it was the truth because the end of him would mean returning to the coin, returning to the dark and the emptiness, returning to the broken thing I had become.
And I knew I was still broken in many ways, but I was also becoming something again.
I wasn’t healing exactly, but maybe I was growing, learning to be something new.
And that would all end if he died here now.
Drake kept walking away from me, moving further into the darkness of the chamber while the hum of power beyond anything I could claim made the air vibrate all around us. He could feel it now too. I could tell by the rigid set of his shoulders, though he didn’t turn back.
Well, if you don’t want him to die then you had better follow him.
I swallowed thickly, magic rising up within me as I accepted the truth of that statement and steeled myself to step over the threshold.
I could hear the skulls surrounding the door screaming, the echoes of their deaths lingering on eternally and pushing images of torment, agony and bloodshed into my mind which weren’t my memories at all.
I could see men and women fighting in endless places, from battlefields to darkened streets, jungles to castles, beaches to mountainsides.
Each of them fought with a strength unlike anything I had ever seen, their movements perfect, their strikes powerful.
Yet still each of them fell as I was forced to live through their deaths within the confines of my mind, the truth reaching out to scrape at me with bony fingers and accusing glares.
One by one the warriors found death in bloodshed, each of them falling into the dark, several of them overwhelmed by countless enemies while others were tricked or betrayed. These Fae had been almost impossible to kill, and yet they’d all died in the most violent of ways in the end.
“All who walk beneath the sun fear us,” the whispers of a thousand dead voices filled my mind and a flicker of a memory stirred within me.
My breath stalled in my lungs as I remembered a chair beneath the trees, a warm breeze and blood on my hands.
My eyes were fixed on Drake’s back as he strode further into the gloom and through a tear in his shirt I could see his tattoos, a faint light seeming to outline them, making my hands tighten to fists.
Recognition which I hadn’t been able to fathom before pressed into me, forgotten memories stirring in my head.
I suddenly knew those markings. They were the names of the gods, written in a language beyond Fae comprehension, the beautiful images representing each and every deity.
That language held unimaginable power. None aside from the gods could even speak it and most couldn’t so much as recognise it when they laid their eyes upon it, save for those few names.
Many, many moons ago, before I had been given to the curse of the coin, those symbols had adorned the most holy of all places.
And they had adorned the skin of the Tirbeshi too.
“Wait,” I gasped, my voice like a drop of water falling into an ocean as it hit the silence of that room and dissipated as if it had never even been at all.
My memories were fast and fleeting, skipping away from me whenever I focused on them too closely, but suddenly, I did remember this.
The Tirbeshi Warriors were selected to become vessels of the gods’ power, warriors to serve their will, granted strength and ability far beyond what they had been born to hold.
But that power came at a price. Most died under the needle, the ink used to mark them made with the blood of the gods themselves, the weight of it far too powerful for almost anyone to handle.
It had been called the first test and of all who attempted it, less than one in a hundred had survived the marking.
But after that, they had to face the hands of the gods.
Every terrifying tale I’d ever heard about the true birth of a Tirbeshi Warrior pressed in on me at once as if my mind had only been waiting for me to think of them and my memories hadn’t been closed off to me for longer than I could possibly recall.
The horror of those tales engulfed me, stealing all fear I had over crossing the threshold to that chamber, leaving me with the desperate need to rescue Drake from that fate before it was too late.
I broke into a run, the magic in me flaring to life and whipping my hair out behind me as I raced into the dark after him.
The screams of the fallen warriors were cut off so abruptly that the silence was almost painful in contrast and the temperature plummeted as I chased him down, making my skin erupt in gooseflesh.
“Master, you need to listen to me,” I begged. “This place is tainted with old magic. I can feel the gods stirring. They’re turning their focus this way, and you can’t be here when they do. I remembered something about your tattoos, something from my past and-”
A huge boom resounded through the darkened chamber and a tsunami of magic exploded from the centre of the room as cold and acrid air washed over us, knocking me from my feet and sending me sprawling to the ground.
Drake swore as he kept on his feet before me, a golden light spilling through the room from his flesh. My heart raced in terror as the tattoos which stained his skin all began to glow and burn with ancient power.
The shredded remains of his clothes were burned off of him, leaving him naked before me, his back to me and the names of the long-lost deities brightening all over his flesh with every passing moment.
A huge sarcophagus lay in the centre of the chamber and more bones decorated the walls around us, the watchful eyes of the skulls making my skin prickle with the sensation of being observed by countless dead.
Everything in the room was that same pale, bone colour, the scent of rot clinging to each part of it and the echoes of a thousand warriors’ deaths brimming in the air.
This was a tomb, but not one that had been in existence during my Fae lifetime.
Someone had done this, scoured the world for each of these long-dead warriors and stolen their remains from their proper burial sites.
Someone had brought them here, used the power lingering in their bones for their own designs and created this chamber within the heart of The Temple of Saresh.
It wasn’t right. These warriors had given their lives for their gods, had served their purpose, and been lain to rest. They shouldn’t have been forced back into the world of the living, used against their will like this, their peace disturbed and their joy in the after stolen from them.
I knew that was what had happened. I could feel their souls tethered to this place now, ripped back from death and their rest within the eternal garden, forced to take part in whatever hell this chamber had been designed for.
“You eluded me for a long time, child,” a voice rasped from beyond the sarcophagus, and the chill that passed through my flesh was all consuming.
Pure terror bled through my veins and made my head snap around to take in the robed figure lingering in the shadows.
“No,” I gasped, scrambling backwards as the horror of my past stepped closer to us, potent fear enveloping me even while my memories danced just out of reach, but I knew that voice. I knew that man.
“You,” Drake snarled, and my gaze snapped to him, finding his entire body rigid with tension, his hands tightening into fists and his lip curling back on a snarl as somehow, he recognised him too. “I killed you.”
“It is hard to kill that which does not draw breath,” the robed man replied, taking another step closer to us, and pushing back the hood of his robe to reveal his face.
My lips parted in a silent scream as I took him in. His bald head and imposing stature were the same as I remembered, the spotless white robe he wore remained unchanged, his features unmistakeable even with my memories little more than scattered dandelion seeds on a breeze.
Inside my head all I could hear were the screams of my own torture, the agony of my fate when he had cast it upon me and stolen all I was and all I ever would be while binding me with the very symbols which covered Drake’s body now, so many, many years later.
Kalir.
The architect of my ruin took another step closer to us and I remained frozen there on the ground as I stared up at him, taking in the scars which now marked his dark flesh in countless places across his hands, throat and face where I could see it beyond the confines of the white robe.
His eyes were opaque with blindness, though they remained riveted on the target of his attention and through my utter panic, it took me several moments to realise that wasn’t me.
He was staring at Drake. His entire focus locked on the man who owned me, not seeming to have noticed I was here too.
“I left you bleeding out on your own filthy floor,” Drake hissed adamantly. “No man could survive those wounds.”
“I am no mere man.”
Kalir moved closer and something snapped inside me, the fear immobilising me turning into something far more powerful as I realised that he wasn’t here for me. He was after the man who had pulled me from the dark and helped me find some small semblance of the scattered pieces of myself.