Chapter Twenty #2
It should have been me.
A fissure cracks in my chest, cleaving my heart and fracturing the bones protecting it.
Dry, cracked lips press against my ear. “Mmm, I can taste your sorrow.” Those lips split, and a slithering tongue emerges through them, tasting my skin from my jaw up to my temple. The stranger giggles like a child—no, like a mad man. A lunatic. Like someone…someone…
Someone lost to the forbidden magics.
Pure, cold dread replaces the blood draining from my face as I become aware of who— what —this stranger is.
An Abdite.
A corrupted wielder who is lost to the lunacies of the forbidden magics. Wielders who, despite all the warnings, all the Tani laws forbidding anyone from attempting to access such magic, still attempted to barter with their soul for power.
I’ve only ever seen one. He was in King Alastair’s service and was in the early stages of madness.
His very veins began to darken, and his skin turned sickly.
I was there the night King Alastair had sentenced him to Toellor, the stone prison in the Spicere Mountains dedicated to containing Abdites.
The corrupted man had smiled—exposing rotting teeth—and mumbled hysterical ramblings under his breath.
And now, such a dark and twisted wielder clutches me against his chest.
My heart hammers, my pulse pounding against my skin. The Abdite drops his hand from my mouth and glides a rough finger along my jaw. “I have the key that will unlock the door. Master will be pleased with me.”
Before I can speak, he spins me around to face him. Ragged cloths drape over his body, covering his frame and shadowing his face with a fraying hood. I can’t make out a thing about the Abdite prowling before me. Nothing except his eyes.
They glow like a molten flame, even through the shadows.
I dig my nails into my palms to keep myself from shaking.
“You’re looking at me,” the Abdite squeals with delight. “No one ever looks at me. I want to show myself to you. I want you to behold my fire.”
He lets go of me, and my first instinct is to sprint off in the opposite direction. But to my absolute horror, I am frozen in place, as if cemented to the ground, glued to the sky.
“What have you done to me?” I murmur, breathless.
“Bound you,” he answers, his words sounding as if they came through a frown. His fingers rise to the ragged hood, but before he can pull it back, a shrill female voice pierces the air.
“Don’t you dare, Lexamon. Master will not be pleased with you exposing yourself.”
I want to turn, to look behind me where the voice sounds from. But all my limbs are frozen in place. The only things I have control over are my eyes and lips—and I guess my lungs since I can still breathe .
I guess that’s something to be grateful for.
“Dridus, my body sings in her presence. Let me press the melody into my flames.”
“You risk the others,” she replies.
Others? There are more?
Which means Gray isn’t safe. Kiran, Meiji, Griff, hell even Draven… I have to warn them. I have to let them know Abdites are in the valley.
I struggle against the hold locking my body in place, and the display results in the Abdite, Lexamon, giggling some more. “Look, look at her. Tell me she isn’t a riveting creature.”
“Master needs her.”
“Why?” I grit out, finding my voice still works. “Why does he need me? I am no one—nothing of worth.”
“You are the key,” the female Abdite, Dridus, answers. “And the one hunting you will stop at nothing until you are his. That’s why we were sent. To recover the key.”
It’s as if she just spoke another language, because nothing she says is making sense. “The key? The key to what? ”
Dridus begins snickering, her madness snapping into place. “Key to lock, key to lock. What is locked that needs a key?”
Despite my appallingly dire situation, I can’t stop my grumbling retort. “I was hoping you would answer that.”
Dridus and Lexamon both giggle hysterically. Through her grating laughs, Dridus answers in the tune of a child’s song. “I’m not supposed to say, but you mustn't jump to conclusions. A key is many things, and locked is none when possessed by one.”
A blood-curdling scream echoes from the distance, expanding into the sky and rattling my chest.
Meiji.
That definitely sounded like Meiji who screamed.
Fight, determination—call it what the hell ever. But a fire pours into my muscles, and I fight against the magic holding me in place. Still, I don’t budge.
“They’ve started without us,” Lexamon pouts .
Dridus, as if a part of another conversation entirely, starts chanting in hysteric whispers. “Up the rising goes forward. Up the rising goes forward. Up the rising goes forward. Up the rising goes forward.”
Up the rising goes forward.
The words spin in my head, until it clicks into place.
The uprising goes forward.
Lexamon addresses Dridus. “Shh. Shh. You mustn't spill the game.”
Dridus, as if lost in a trance, continues rocking back and forth while chanting in a hypnotic whisper.
“Up the rising goes. One by one, until it unfolds. Forward we forge, just like the land before. Time rewind, magic that binds, brother by brother. My brother, oh brother.” Still not able to turn and see Dridus, I figure something must be happening, because her voice cracks and shrieks as she continues to chant, gasping between words.
“I’m sorry, brother. I’m sorry it had to end like this.
Revenge. Avenge. A purpose to serve. A purpose to die.
Reborn from death. An abomination until the end. ”
Lexamon begins hitting his palm against his forehead.
“She’s said too much. What would Master have me do?
” He starts to reach for me, but quickly reels his hands back to his body as if zapped.
“No— no . I mustn't burn the key. Master says no harm can come to the key.” He hits himself harder.
“But Master also said no one can know of the gathering.”
I see the silhouette of flames rise in the air, and I pray to the gods those are Kiran’s towering flames, not an Abdite’s.
Clanging echoes, and I hear magic clash together.
Help them. I have to help them.
Though, what good am I? What could I do? I can’t even break free from one Abdite’s hold—how could I possibly help against a band of them?
Worst of all, had I led them to us? Is it my fault they discovered our camp?
The smell of burning flesh reappears, and those words float back to me.
My fault. It should have been me.
Lexamon whips his head to me and moans as if aroused.
Like I have just caressed some sensitive part of him.
“Oh, do you see now, Dridus? Her self-loathing is titillating. Her sorrow is delicious. It makes me ache with the desire to touch her.” Lexamon steps toward me, and he leans down, until his molten eyes are parallel with my own.
“I’ve already tasted you. Now, I will touch you how I expect you to touch me next. ”
He slowly stretches his hand out—his fingers twitching as they near my skin—but a slash of glinting steel forces him to jerk back. His hand thumps to the ground, detached from his body.
“You will not lay a single finger on her again.”