Chapter 81 #2
“Final entry—and it’s a good one.” Arkyn lifts the book, waving it before dropping his gaze to read straight off the page.
“‘I’ve heard from one of his loyal aides that a Bloodlace has arrived on dragonback this rise. If she’s here to test my youngling’s blood once I give birth, the paternal line won’t draw in Tyroth’s direction. It’ll draw north—to Kaan.’”
Another muffled roar.
Another screech as Kaan’s chair grinds against the ground.
“Interesting,” Arkyn muses. “Makes me think Tyroth’s not as blind as you both thought he was.
Now shut up for this last bit. It’s good.
” Another dramatic clear of his throat before he continues: “‘I want to curl up with Slátra—to be with her while I labor—but I struggle to move on my own anymore. All but stuck on this pallet where Mah and Pah died. Where I pretended to conceive a youngling that was already seeded inside me—’”
Kaan’s sounds grow so thunderous he almost drowns out Arkyn’s voice.
Arkyn sighs, his head ticking to the side as he looks at Kaan through eyes lit with the fire of a thousand flames. “Why do you have to ruin everything?”
The question is chased by a hiss of hungry words that snatch a stream of flame from the jungle of candlesticks, tethering to Arkyn’s hand. Then he’s whip, whip, whipping Kaan’s arms, chest, and shoulders, the motions heaving with growing ferocity, slashing with wild vigor.
Kaan’s beautiful skin flays in the wake of each bloodlusting slash, filling the cavern with the smell of burning flesh, his roars morphing into a mangled scream—something in his eyes and the twist of his face making me picture him so much younger.
A child, being ripped apart by the flames of a pah who had no love to give. Only pain.
The sound I make is more beast than fae. An almighty wail gored from the pit of my aching chest, coupled with flickers of something that feels like the flames of an ancient, icy beast.
Arkyn stills, heaving breath as he glares at me from beneath his hood, pupils so blown all the red is almost gone from his eyes. “You never made such sounds for me.”
“You will stop,” I growl—a serrated slice unfamiliar to my ears.
He chuffs. Whips his arm back—
“YOU. WILL. STOP.”
Around us, the mountain trembles. Even the whip of flame in Arkyn’s hand seems to squirm as he stills, watching me with sizzling intensity.
“You will stop hurting him, and I will give you anything.”
Kaan sobs through a groan, somehow more agonized than the sounds he made while the whip flayed his flesh.
I don’t let it sink in.
He’ll always put me first. Though I respect that with my whole heart, it’s my turn to be strong for him.
Arkyn swallows, salivating, his intrigue sharp and scratching deep. “You know there’s only one thing I desire, Fire Lark …”
For me to fight for him.
Burn for him.
“I know.”
“Will you give yourself to me willingly? A show to rival everything else?”
Again, Kaan’s chair grinds against the ground, the muffled sound of my name coming to me over and over. From the corner of my eye, I see him trying to catch my attention. Get me to look at him.
I don’t.
There’s only one way to buy the time to do what needs to be done without Arkyn ripping the male I love apart—beating his bloodlust against him until there’s nothing left—and that’s to keep him entertained. Keep his hands full, mind busy with his other obsession.
Me.
I smooth my face. Poise myself before I dare to speak again.
“Yes, Arkyn. I’m yours.” The words are ash in my mouth, but they have the desired effect:
Arkyn’s eyes widen with salacious glee.
“Take what you need, and then I’ll dance the Pits for you. Give them a show unlike anything they’ve ever seen.”
Kaan roars.
Head tipped, Arkyn savors a hearty breath through that hooked, melted nose poking out from the darkness of his hood, then snaps his chin to his chest. When he looks at me again, all the red has gone from his eyes. “Clear the table!”
I tame the rabid beat of my heart as robed and masked folk rush in from the surrounding darkness, clearing the giant slab of Arkyn’s scavenged bits and the remainder of our uneaten feast. I’m ushered from the chair with all the precautions befitting someone who just half ripped through a contingent of handlers, bound in a bundle of chains before I’m shifted to the table, tilted back, and lowered upon it.
Kaan’s gaze blazes my side, his muffled sounds hurting me so much more than I’ll ever let him know.
It occurs to me that he may think he’s about to watch his brother have me. But to this dae, Arkyn’s taken no sexual liberties from me, even though he’s taken almost everything else.
No. To the Scavenger King, sex isn’t intimacy.
That’s not what he craves.
The guards finish tethering me to the table, shifting back into the shadows as Arkyn flicks the lid on his copper weald, releasing a bulb of fire he gathers into his clawed hand with a few hissing, scalding words.
Another click before he pockets the instrument, cradling a hungry flame that churns in his hand like a ball of molten stone, igniting his face otherwise hidden beneath his hood.
Igniting his savage smile that pulls at all the tightest bits of his smelted cheek.
He rolls his head, breathes long and deep, more fire forging in his eyes. A scalding promise of what’s to come.
I harden my heart before I finally tip my head to the side and meet Kaan’s volcanic stare. Try not to implode beneath it.
“Close your eyes,” I say, heart clenching. Then louder, more insistent, desperate to cut through his roaring thrash. “Kaan, please.”
He stills, making a sound much like a dying dragon before he presses his eyes closed, tears slipping down his cheeks that split my heart in two.
I look to the shadows above; to where I know Arkyn’s beast is roosting, readying to enjoy the show. Darkness I used to hide amidst.
Not this time.
This time, I close my eyes and go within.
I carve a giant hole in the ice crust atop my lake that’s big enough to swallow the mound of bundled fear I refuse to acknowledge, but not before the first smear of flame sweeps down my arm, blistering my flesh in a way that’s supposed to prepare me for the blazing pits I’m to return to.
Battle amidst.
I stiffen, distantly aware of Kaan’s strangled roar as I clench, jerk, and twitch in the wake of the melting trail—the reek of burnt flesh becoming thicker.
More cloying.
All the while, I continue to stuff, stuff, stuff my fear away—
Gone.
I follow it at a distance. Swim quietly down into my deepest, darkest depths—past a swishing silver entity I don’t dare turn toward—and retrieve a frosty memory to hide within. Memory of a small snow hut I dug for me and Fallon not long after we got free of this place.
Except Fallon’s not there.
It’s just me, alone, bearing wounds from my battled escape.
It’s just me, bundled on my side as I try to hug myself to sleep, humming my calming tune over and over again.
And although I imagine talking to someone I promised to save—to free—I’m simply speaking to myself, making a promise that I will live.
Because that’s what Fallon would’ve wanted.
What she would’ve asked of me at this moment, here in this snow hut I built big enough for the both of us …
were she actually here. Had I not been forced to leave her dead and alone beneath a mural of finger-painted moons, draped in the cloak of the guard I slaughtered for an iron key I used to escape.
That’s what she would’ve wanted, had she not died alone in that cell while I beat myself bloody in a battle pit for Arkyn’s selfish gains.
But I can no longer hide from my past; stuff the pain away and pretend things ended differently. That I left an empty cell behind and that Fallon got to see one of the moons she loved a final time before she died.
She didn’t.
I untangle the memory from the stone I bound it around, tethered so tight it would’ve stayed forever drowned had I not swam down to face it. I set it loose, letting it replace the softer one I built for myself. Feel the hurt plunge deep.
The loss.
Then I swim to the spot where I last spotted the stone that looked like a lump of coal, knowing what it is.
What it contains, should I just give it substance to feast from.
Something I believe my Other was protecting me from, waiting until I grew ready to face the Creator who’s spent so much time hurting me via Arkyn’s bidding.
Something I could’ve gone an entire lifetime without.
Except Kaan’s burnt and beaten, chained to a chair, being preyed on by his bloodlusting brother.
Except our daughter’s lying half dead in the same cell that took my Fallon.
They are mine, I am theirs, and they will see the sky again. Or Creators hear me, the world will rupture beneath my fingertips.