Chapter 16 #2
“I am…sorry you went through that,” I said, repeating what he’d taught me about expressing myself in such a way.
It didn’t quite sound like myself though.
As if the line was rehearsed rather than natural.
What I actually wanted to say didn’t make a lot of sense but North had urged me to trust my instincts, so I blurted it out anyway.
“I will cut ribbons from the flesh of any Fae who tries to place a mark on your heart in such a way again.”
North’s eyebrows raised then he grinned widely. “There’s the psychotic truth in your words I’ve been waiting for. You’ve been on your best behaviour lately but it’s growing rather dull. I don’t think you’re a sweetheart kind of guy, freyin.”
“Then what would you call me?” I asked, wondering if there might be some clue in the label he gave me. Something that might fit me better.
“Just keep following those feelings and you’ll find out. Be unapologetic. Be real. That’s all you have to be, Kai.”
My mind immediately darted to Everest Arcadia. Be real? Fuck, if I was real with him over her, North would not be so encouraging.
I shut my eyes, connecting my mind to Calcifiend’s and finding her in her bedchamber on the White Mare ship dressed in nothing but a dark green slip that hugged her body as close as a second skin.
She was speaking to Calcifiend, letting her thoughts out and exposing her inner truths to me unknowingly.
My cock stirred to attention at the way her mouth moved around the words, how her nipples pressed to the silken material and her bare legs shifted against the sheet beneath her.
She was a temptation I couldn’t help but indulge in. All I had to do was close my eyes and there she was. When she’d spoken to Calcifiend about me, I’d listened with rapt attention.
“Sometimes I feel strange about it. Not regret exactly but…I don’t know.
He was so broken. There are things about him I didn’t understand, but I wish I could now.
My mind can’t put it to rest if I’m honest. Sometimes I dream of him.
Sometimes he feels so close I can almost smell the cinders on his skin.
Sometimes I wish I could smell that scent again for real. But that’s just for you to know.”
Those words had haunted me since I’d heard them uttered from her lips. She thought of me and not entirely with the ripe hatred she’d always felt. There was some deeper meaning behind her words. Something close to regret. Perhaps I’d understand it better if I only knew my own emotions well enough.
It ripped me apart inside to be in the dark like this, always confused, on the cusp of grasping understanding only to miss the mark. North’s teachings weren’t simple. It seemed I could feel more than one emotion at once, even ones that contradicted the first.
How was I meant to figure myself out when nothing was clear cut?
Especially when it came to Everest. She was the root of the most complex confusion I was afflicted with.
My riddle to solve. But I never seemed to get closer to comprehension when it came to her.
When I looked at her, sometimes all I wanted to do was slide my fingers around her throat and make her pay for her father’s crimes.
Other times, like now, I wanted to rip that thin slip from her body and rake my tongue over her tempting flesh.
She spoke to Calcifiend and my ears pricked up as her full lips moved around the words.
“What would happen if I really did join forces with the Sky Witch? Would we actually get very far in a ‘free life’ hunting monsters? We’d be caught eventually.
Tortured slowly, executed even more slowly.
What’s the point in risking everything just to be chopped up into itty bitty pieces beside my enemy? ”
Calcifiend clicked his tongue in answer and I mulled over Everest’s musings.
I’d witnessed her interaction with the Sky Witch during the battle at Pomair.
I’d watched through Calcifiend’s eyes and seen the truth.
I knew the secrets they shared. And I was starting to form a plan that was a risky kind of madness.
It might just be the second most brazen act Mirelle could make.
And it might return me to silka la vin’s company.
A thing I craved in a way that was dangerous to my own people.
But the desire for the Void was sharp enough.
The Flamebringers wanted her back in our possession.
I wanted her back in my possession. So were our two desires really that unaligned?
I thought of the dagger she’d stuck in me.
I kept it in my chambers, often eyeing my name where it was etched on the hilt, thinking of the rage she must have poured into the forging of that blade.
It really was a fine thing. I’d never seen a dagger as well-made as that and I felt a strange kind of attachment to it.
Perhaps because of how close it had come to causing my death.
North’s elbow jabbed me, bringing me back to where we were.
We’d entered the banquet hall, the oval room decorated with black and white drapes and a feast laid out fit for royalty.
Musicians played their stringed instruments and the Vampires thronged on one side of the room while our people kept to the other once more.
“Holy shit, my star-damned eyes!” North exclaimed, clapping a hand over his face and it only took me half a second to realise what he’d seen.
Mirelle and Lazarus were on a raised stone stage at the centre of the hall, fucking each other with wild abandon.
Mirelle’s dress had been ripped to shreds, still clinging to her body in pieces, but her breasts were exposed as Lazarus sucked one of her nipples while she straddled him and he thrust his cock into her from below.
A strange and uncomfortable knot formed in my gut and my features twisted at the sight before me. I felt…sad? No that wasn’t quite it. Despondent? No…not that.
Mirelle gasped with pleasure, her fingers drawing blood on Lazarus’s neck before he flipped her over with a burst of Vampire speed, pinning her beneath him with a palm on the back of her neck and sinking his cock into her once more.
The sounds that left them were pure animal, like beasts mating without care of whose eyes fell on them.
But I knew they did care. They wanted everyone to see that this marriage was no farce.
This would leave no room for rumour or muttered words about who had tricked who into this wedding.
As plain as day, they wanted one another.
Or at least that was what they wanted everyone to believe.
The truth in it, I didn’t know. But I did know Mirelle had no qualms about doing what needed to be done to ensure Pyros fell into line.
Still, I couldn’t quite name my emotion around witnessing this. There was an itch in my skin which I didn’t like. Perhaps this was dejection?
Mirelle yanked Lazarus’s hand from the back of her neck and arched her spine, raising onto her knees and pushing back her hips to meet every thrust he offered her.
She touched a hand to her throat and words poured from her lips that were amplified around the room with magic. “We are in union. Vampires and Flamebringers alike. Dance, talk, join hands. We are one!”
Mirelle cried out as Lazarus forced her into an orgasm that everyone in the room witnessed. Their queen coming apart at the seams for a man who went against everything Pyros had once stood for. But perhaps that was the point in this; to demand a change from our people.
Lazarus followed her into his own release, cursing through his teeth and groaning with pleasure. He smiled a wicked smile, leaned down to whisper something in her ear, then scooped her up and shot from the hall in a blur of speed that left everyone turning to look for them.
The door banged shut with finality and I tugged North’s hand away from his face.
“It’s over,” I grunted.
“Thank Aries for that,” North growled.
“North… what emotion am I feeling? It’s like ants in my skin.”
“That’s disgust, freyin,” he said, dry retching a little. “You should have looked away.”
“Oh,” I said in realisation, wishing I had.
“I need a drink.” He made a beeline for the banquet table where a sparkling wine fountain was waiting, but I only had eyes for the Vampires and Flamebringers.
Because they were moving toward one another, hesitantly at first, but as hands were offered for dances, drinks were passed out and laughter lit the air, I realised Mirelle had played this game perfectly.
The party grew increasingly wild and when North headed for the dancefloor to grind against a Vampire woman, I decided it was time to call it a night.
He’d been refusing to talk to them all evening, calling them bloodsucking leeches and sneering whenever they came close.
But after he’d polished off a bottle of sparkling wine, his tune had started to change.
‘They can dance well though, can’t they?
’, ‘I suppose it will make us stronger against our enemies’, ‘Do you think it feels good when they bite you?’, ‘That one’s giving me the eye’, ‘I think I like it’.
I’d refrained from drinking a single drop.
I hadn’t indulged in any alcohol since my newfound emotions had awakened.
North was concerned that I might lose a grip on myself if I did and as I frequently found myself slipping into rages and breaking things without ale or wine in my system, I’d decided to follow his advice.
With North enjoying himself on the dancefloor, even letting the Vampire woman lick his neck and – shit, now she was biting him.
Yes, he was definitely drunk. Maybe I should have extracted him from the situation, but when he let out a keen Wolf howl, I remembered he only did that when he was enjoying himself or running into battle. And as he wasn’t doing the latter…
As I made it to the exit, Mirelle darted from her seat at the circular table where the other gang leaders were sat talking with Lazarus and his coven mates.
She had returned about an hour ago in a dark red dress the colour of blood with bite marks on her arms, and the statement wasn’t lost on me.
Lazarus was marked in return, her fingernails having painted his skin in scratches.
The Vampire nodded to me and I nodded in return.
“Kaiser Brimtheon,” he spoke my name with knowledge behind it. He knew of me. So he likely knew of my importance to Mirelle too. “Come drink with us.”
“I don’t drink,” I declined but Mirelle took my hand, guiding me to the table and giving me a look that told me I was not to leave. A magpie flew down to land on my mother’s shoulder, crooning when she petted it.
It looked like my plans for an early night whilst spying on Everest Arcadia were not going to come to fruition. The feeling I experienced over that left a sinking sensation in my chest.
“We were just speaking of our shared dislike of the Reapers,” Mirelle said openly and my intrigue piqued. I’d not heard her speak so frankly of that truth before.
The gang members nodded, telling of their own feelings on the matter. I’d thought all this time I was one of the few Mirelle had confided in on her suspicions of the Reapers’ manipulation. But it appeared I was very wrong about that and she’d kept them well informed of our findings.
“Do they know of the monster too?” I tested the water, daring Mirelle to shut me down. To see what trust she really laid in the people at this table. Vampires included.
“We do. We have named it the eschaton star as it is a devourer of life – though we do not believe it is truly a kind of star,” Lazarus answered and his coven nodded.
“You have been busy,” I muttered to Mirelle and she smiled that ruler’s smile of hers. She never showed her true hand, it seemed. Not even to me.
“The Reapers will not be easily overthrown,” Lazarus said.
“Surely it’s not even possible?” Gavrin Simmer piped up. “They’re the most powerful Fae in all The Waning Lands. They hold multiple elements to their name.”
Lazarus opened his hands before him, casting fire in one and a twist of air in the other. “As do some of us,” he said darkly, a sinful look on his face.
Two of the five Vampires in his Coven opened their palms and showed they held two Elements as well.
Gasps and mutters broke out among the gang leaders and even I raised an eyebrow.
“Even so…” Lydia Ashworth breathed, looking to Mirelle. “Do you really believe we have a chance at taking down the Reapers? The war I believe we can win. But them…”
“They are just Fae,” Mirelle said sharply. “And they are no warriors. They have no scars from battle. They do not know the inner workings of war. We have the advantage. And the Vampires will provide more to us than just their power. They have allies of their own.”
I looked to my mother with curiosity, that little spark of energy in my chest having become one of the more familiar emotions to me. “What allies?” I asked.
“That is for us to announce,” Lazarus cut in, giving Mirelle a firm look. “As promised.”
She nodded to him. “A promise I will keep.”
“Are we sure the Reapers are as corrupted as you say?” Gavrin asked cautiously.
“I’ve spent many years spying on them,” Mirelle said firmly. “They have lied to us all. They are no more in the stars’ favour than you or I. It was all a ploy for power. The fear of the stars is what they use to control us, don’t you see?”
Gavrin nodded quickly. “Forgive me, I will trust you on this, Mirelle. You have always led us true. But I still believe overthrowing them will be a great challenge.”
“We require the Void,” Mirelle said and my eyes flicked to her, examining her expression though she gave little away.
“How will we get hold of her again?” Lydia asked.
“I will handle that,” I answered firmly. “And I believe I have some other knowledge that may assist us.” All eyes swung to me. “The Void has a tenuous alliance with the Sky Witch.”
A clamour of surprised chatter broke out and Mirelle laid a hand on my arm, drawing my eyes to her.
“This is news indeed.”
“I’ve been gathering intel,” I said. “Calcifiend is watching the Void.”
“Then you know her location,” Mirelle gasped.
“Yes, and I know how we should handle this,” I said and a most naturally wicked smile curled my lips. “I have a plan.”
“Tell us everything,” Mirelle urged and the words slipped from my lips, connecting one dot to the next, until a great and unshakeable plot was formed.