Chapter 10 #2
“Really?” I jerked back, my brows rising in faux surprise. “Because from where I was looking, the krekenns were about to pick your bones clean.”
“Fuck you!” She shoved at my chest, and I retreated a step, not because of the force she’d used, but trying a different tactic.
I pushed that unbridled anger deep down, willing myself to be calm.
Running my fingers through my hair, I tugged at the sweat-damp locks, letting go to brace my hand upon my hip.
I faced her and urged quietly, “Just talk to me.”
Mela angled herself closer and hissed, “There’s nothing to talk about.”
Anger erupted. “Bullshit!” She’d been in love with Elyse Estlore for most of her life, and finally they’d shared their feelings for one another.
Their love was a struck match, lit and burning bright.
And less than an hour later, everything new between them had been extinguished.
Being at the temple on the Wychthorn estate was too much for Elyse’s otherness.
I shuddered at the memory of that tomb, all that ancient stone that had leached sacrificial death over the centuries, and the malevolent remnants of our Gods’ power strumming through the cold, rank air like a sinister melody.
“You need to talk about Elyse.” She’d shown herself as other, a fire-torch, exploding like a bonfire to score the temple with infernal flames and sent people fleeing.
Sirro had laid claim to Elyse for whatever it was the Horned Gods were working on alongside the Pellans.
There was something ominous brewing within their laboratories, and they were after others, as many as they could find.
“Get out of my face, Gray!”
I threw my hands up in the air. “There’s nothing at all to say about the girl you’ve loved since forever being stolen by the Horned Gods?”
“SHE’S DEAD!” Mela roared, her fingers bunched into fists.
My reply was on the tip of my tongue when Mela retaliated. “What’s your problem, Gray?” She popped a shoulder out, widening her stance. Her features tightened with loathing and disgust. “Nelle Wychthorn, is it? She get under your skin?”
I blinked.
She tipped her head back and barked a bitter laugh.
“The great manwhore couldn’t get it up to fuck for months on end, and sure, it was okay for you to be dismissive toward the Wychthorn Princess, but damned if you’d let anyone else utter a word against her.
You’re an idiot if you believed I wouldn’t see through you,” she sneered, her soft round nose scrunching.
“So, go on, tell me what’s been eating you, huh?
She doesn’t want you, Gray? Are you too much of a jerk?
A cold-hearted bastard? A giant manwhore for her to fall in love with?
Or is the lovely princess sitting at home, all made-up and pretty and starry-eyed, anxiously waiting for you to return from this hunt? ”
It was far from the truth and yet so horribly close that it was a white-hot branding iron pressed upon my flesh.
“FUCK YOU!” I punched the wall beside her head because I was a fucking asshole with a gaping wound in my heart and I wanted to lash out.
Chunks of debris exploded everywhere as I smashed a hole right through it.
Pain ripped across my knuckles, shredding skin and crunching bone.
Mela lunged, her mouth parting to snarl when an awful cracking noise tore through the passageway.
We both froze.
I watched with dread in the yellow glow of Mela’s headlamp, a fissure slicing down the wall right behind her. Rock split apart, the fault line splintering down to the tunnel floor.
The uneven, rocky terrain quaked, tossing us about.
“Oh, shit.” My footing stumbled.
A thunderous yawning sound…
…and the ground gave way.
Fuuuck!
We plummeted—cool air brushing past.
I grabbed hold of Mela’s arm, flung her around, twisting us both.
And took the brunt of the fall.
I slammed onto hard, jagged stone, the impact driving the breath from me, as Mela’s body bounced on top of mine. Dizzying, blinding-white agony hazed out my vision.
It might have been hours, minutes, seconds later when I came too, I had no idea, but my mother’s legacy had already knitted together torn flesh and fractured bone.
Mela groaned, pushing off me to rise. She twisted her torso from side to side, rotated her shoulder, and winced.
Slowly unfolding, I stretched my limbs and shook the dust out of my hair.
There was fire in Mela’s gaze as it landed on me.
I arched a brow. “You can’t keep this bottled in, Mela.” I should know. My guilt and self-loathing and misplaced hate had consumed me.
She scowled as she shifted away. I got it—I’d been there too, lashing out at whoever was closest. Her heavy boots scuffed through debris, and the headlamp’s beam glanced over the edge of something long and lean and mottled.
Mela flexed a hand, rubbing her blood-crusted knuckles.
She gave me a sly look as she spoke with mock compassion.
“I see the pain you’re in. I know you well enough to read you, Graysen Crowther.
So don’t make out like a shrink and expect me to break down and pour my heart out when you can’t do the same. ”
Her vitriol had me taking an abrupt step back. I knew I’d been closed off too… Gods, we were a right pair.
But this wasn’t about me. It was about her obsession with self-destruction. I tried once more. “It’ll end up destroying you. Just talk to me.”
She flung her arms open wide. Her loud voice, honed with fury, crashed against the hewn walls. “There’s nothing to talk about. Elyse is dead!”
“She’s not—”
“Don’t you get it? Elyse…”— and she suddenly choked on her name—“is dead!” Her bottom lip wobbled, and her eyes shimmered with tears as her expression collapsed into heartache. A sob clawed its way from her throat.
Her knees buckled.
I grabbed hold of Mela before she hit rock, and I drew her down gently to the cold floor, holding her as she cried, her fingers tightly fisting my vest. “She’s dead, Gray.”
She sobbed against my chest, and her heartache soaked into my armor. “I didn’t know…” she whispered, her voice breaking, “I didn’t know she was a fire-torch. I couldn’t get to her in time.”
I quietly sighed. “No one knew. There was nothing you could have done.”
We sat in the darkness, while I held her trembling body in my arms as she sobbed and sniffled and clung to me. Both of us adrift with no one but each other. And, as always, my thoughts returned to Nelle.
Fear, as chilling and murky as mist-shrouded moors, seeped into my gut.
The longer I’d been gone, digging around here in the labyrinth of tunnels, the more those filaments of magic connecting us both frayed.
Nelle was drawing away, becoming distant—I could barely feel her.
I didn’t know if it was because of what I’d done, how I’d ruined what had existed between us, or if it was due to being so far underground.
She was all I could think of down here in endless gloom.
The days were mixed up with the nights, and time itself had ceased to exist. I kept being reminded of what Nelle had shared with me outside the tithe prison, what it would have been like for a terrified seven-year-old trapped within pitch-black darkness.
Besides Nelle, there was only one other person who had taken up residence in my mind—Sirro. It was Sirro’s last words he’d imparted, almost like a challenge.
So, what will you do, Graysen Crowther? What choice will you make?
Yet again, it was another strange occurrence.
Sirro had given me a name, Yezekael, and nothing further.
The first person I naturally asked was my father.
And the name shifted something in his violet eyes and made them darken to almost black.
He’d grown silent and still as death. The mention of Yezekael had shattered his composure and left behind conflict and confusion.
What is Sirro up to?
My father explained Yezekael was a name he’d not heard in a long time.
A lesser creature that haunted the ancient Hemmlok Forest that the Deniaud, Szarvas, and Lyon estates shared between them.
When my father first met our mother, she worked as a servant for the Deniauds.
He described Yezekael as a winged creature that liked to steal things and dealt in secrets and information, bartering on behalf of other creatures with the Horned Gods.
He’d gone quiet in reflection, not sharing much about those earlier days, but he’d given me enough to go on.
What it had done to offend Sirro, I had no fucking idea.
After finishing up with Sirro, we went our separate ways.
Jett, Caidan, and Kenton had gone to deal with the Widowmakers who distributed our magic-laced drugs on the eastern side of America, while my father traveled abroad to hunt down a beast. The timing of the kill was critical.
The beast elusive. Once we possessed Brangwene’s Hjarte, my father would end the savage creature, and then we would transport the last pieces of what we had been collecting over the years to the Blacksmith.
Mela’s hoarse voice jolted me out of my thoughts. Her fingers relaxed their death grip on my vest. “I might not be right or okay. But I recognize it in you too. What’s going on?”
My mouth went bone dry. It was a long, drawn-out moment before I could confess quietly, “I’ve done something wrong for the right reason.”
Mela eased herself back, just enough to sit up and look at me. She cupped the side of my face. Her hand was warm against my ice-cold cheek. “That’s easy to fix.”
I huffed a humorless laugh, my lips thinning as I shook my head, no.
The whites of her eyes were bloodshot and rimmed in red. “Do something right for the right reason. Fix it.”
It was too hard even to look at my friend as I spoke, my voice cracking. “I-I had to make a choice.”
Now it was her to huff a humorless laugh. “I’m sick of choosing. I’m sick of one or the other. Why can’t you have both?”
“Because there are two choices. Only two.”