Chapter 46 #2
“I’m giving your death meaning,” Eldrik whispered, pressing a small crystal deeper into the hole he had carved into her skin. “You’ll be part of something greater than yourself. You’ll be a part of … me.”
Alora gasped, the entire room tilting. Her head fell back as her vision spun.
Eldrik continued chanting the infernal spell as he cut glyphs into her skin. The blade skillfully curved over her shoulders with a sharp swipe and Alora choked on a cry. His filthy hands stroked the most intimate parts of her with vile worship.
This was nothing like the moment she’d absorbed Rune’s power.
This was defilement. An intrusion.
Violation.
Alora stifled her sobs and shut her eyes tight, not wanting to see what he did to her body.
She could feel Rune on the edge of her mind. She held on to that presence, grounding herself on it like an anchor. He will come—
Then Eldrik pressed a palm to her chest with a final word and pain exploded through her. Alora’s eyes widened, her breath stolen, all of her body arcing with a scream. It was molten iron scoring through her bones. Through the fiber of what made her.
White-hot.
Blinding.
Like her veins were being scraped from the inside out.
A torturous, burning tug pulled at her wrists. From an incision of a glyph he had carved, Eldrik pulled out a glowing white thread like a coil of flame. Alora’s body shook violently. Her magic wailed through the air and through her.
A soundless scream that shredded her from the inside out.
Her mind flashed with a memory of her mother’s song, but it vanished as though snipped away when Eldrik plucked the strand fully out of her body.
Alora wailed.
Her memory was gone.
Eldrik laughed in awe as he held up the flaming strand. “Oh, what wonders you hold in your veins.”
With delicate care, he placed it within a glass jar embellished with gold glyphs.
Anger and desperation raged through Alora’s mind, but she couldn’t move. She couldn’t escape. She couldn’t stop the horrors happening to her body against her will.
As Eldrik continued to siphon her magic, he continued to rip pieces from her memories.
Her father’s embrace.
Her mother’s lullaby.
Rune’s kiss in the dark.
No—stop! Those are mine! She cried the words in her head but only screams fell from her mouth. Her back arched. Her nails tore into her palms.
She clawed at the tendrils of her memories, but it slid away like smoke.
Her wretched cries tore through her raw throat, filling the chamber.
Her bones cracked from pressure.
From divine incompatibility.
The light magic inside her fractured as it was forcibly separated from her body. The pain nearly killed her. It would kill her. She was made of magic, and she was being unmade, split into light and dark, ash and flame.
She would unravel here.
A tear rolled down Alora’s temple, and she faintly called Rune’s name.
Eldrik smirked as he inspected a strand he’d taken from her stomach. He added it to his jar like a collection of glowing ribbons. “No gods can help you now, Alora.”
A distant roar carried on the wind and the land shook with a dark seething rage. The keep shook violently, and dust rained down from the ceiling.
He could not save her.
He wasn’t coming.
The last of Alora’s tears rolled down her temple.
Her sight darkened and her hearing dulled.
“No, you cannot perish yet,” Eldrik tsked in annoyance as her eyes rolled. “I am not quite finished.”
But the solidity of her own body was slipping from her. Everything dimmed to white, too bright and pure. The sound dulled, drawing away on wave that came after nothing remains.
Alora thought she saw him beyond the glow. A shadow reaching for her through the light—
The door burst open and a Calveron soldier rushed in. “Sire!”
Eldrik turned, scowling. “I said I do not want to be disturbed!”
“Soldiers of Argyle have stormed the Keep.”
The din of clashing swords and the cries of battle echoed somewhere outside the hall. Help had come… but she had no more strength left to even feel relief.
Eldrik growled a curse. He tucked the jar of her magic within a satchel on his hip and grabbed his sword resting against the wall, storming outside with his men.
The door slammed shut behind him.
Alora’s fingers twitched. She tried to move, but she had lost too much blood. Her eyes rolled, darkness bleeding into her vision.
A cold trickle of water touched her lips.
Alora gasped weakly. A waterskin pressed against her mouth carefully and she drank a deep gulp before it was pulled away.
She blinked up at a small face staring down at her.
Golden brown hair. Wide gray eyes. A boy.
Eleven, maybe twelve. He was a stranger, yet he looked so much like Laurent it made her ache.
“Hello,” he whispered. “Don’t scream.”
She stared at him feebly, her dry lips parting. “Rihan…?”
The boy nodded.
Her brother.
Her dead brother.
He reached for her bindings, and the aching pressure on her limbs lift. Then the crystals clattered on the floor when he tossed them aside.
“You’re alive…” she rasped.
“My mother faked my death,” Rihan said as he quickly tapped her enchanted bindings with a pale blue stone.
The bindings flickered and fell apart from her body like crumpled reeds, their magic snuffed out.
“Once she learned that Eldrik came for our bloodline she feared for me and hid me away. To protect me.”
Alora now realized the laughter in the dark halls had never been a phantom. “You’ve been hiding in the walls…”
“Shhh,” Rihan whispered, glancing at the door. The fighting was growing closer. “I have to get you out of here before he returns. Can you stand?”
She spotted the secret doorway in the wall where he had slipped through.
“Mother said everything will be all right once Calveron leaves, but…” Rihan’s eyes returned to her and her injuries, full of remorse. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your doing…”
She tried to get up, but the pain made her whimper. Her limbs wouldn’t lift. Rihan helped her off the stone slab, but she was too heavy. She couldn’t feel her legs. It’s no use. She was already dying.
“Leave me…” Alora panted, head lolling against the table.
Rihan’s brows furrowed. “We can still escape.”
“No.” She tried to reach for his hand but barely mustered to brush his sleeve. “You must run and hide…”
He shook his head. Alora’s heart warmed. He was a sweet boy, but she had to protect him, too.
He was Argyle’s future.
“Rihan—”
“I won’t let them torture my sister,” he said, voice trembling. “What do I do? How do I save you?”
Alora looked up at the glyphs.
She had forgotten his name and his face. But not the importance of that possessive presence roiling in her mind. It was dark and so full of rage, and so desperate to reach her. Such a terrifying presence and yet she knew he was the one place she was safe.
And exactly what he needed.
“My … husband …is outside…” Alora mumbled faintly, and her heart weakly leaped. “But the spell impedes him from entering…”
The glyphs above her hummed, glowing so bright they made her vision water. The blinding light thwarted the shadows, but only if she let them.
Her fingers trembled on Rihan’s wrist where he had painted the glyph for invisibility. “What is the… first rule of spell casting?”
He took a shaky breath, focusing.
“The spell must be confined to an object or an area,” Rihan said, looking down at the blue pale blue stone in his palm. The surface was carved with a dissipation rune, used for spell breaking. “But my Tanzanite no longer works. It had one use.”
She nodded. “And the … second rule?”
“Every glyph must be perfectly in place, or the spell will break.”
“Yes … precisely…”
His gaze lifted to the glyphs carved into the walls.
Alora smiled weakly. “Douse the light.”