Chapter 35
They’re real, she said
The voices in her head
~Lilly Henry
The voices. The screaming. It was so loud, I was beginning to forget what silence sounded like. The absence of noise and the peace of nothingness was a distant memory. Suffering cries greeted me at every turn, reminding me how fragile bonds were. How death could always sever them.
Standing in the captain’s quarters in nothing but a shirt with my bone dagger at my side, I recalled the darkness and the stifling agony that found me no matter where I went.
The slimy touch of Akareth’s presence lingered on my skin from a dream that was never real.
I tried to feel the cool air from the window licking my skin.
I tried to smell the ocean. I did everything to remind myself that I was awake and that the link between us had broken, but no matter what I did, the shards remained, embedded in my flesh like thorns.
My grip tightened on my dagger. The grooves of the carved handle aggravated my palm, but I welcomed the pain. That pain was real. It was not imagined. It was not a dream or a trick.
The echoes of dying cries continued, vivid and distant all at once.
I had been staring at the window, but now I could not even see the glass.
All I saw were visions from that hellish prison Akareth had locked me in.
I wished never to go back there, but if I could not escape it when I was awake, how was I to escape it when I slept?
Dahlia, a voice said. I blinked, unsure whether it was real or imagined.
“Dahlia.”
A hand cupped my shoulder. The world cracked down the middle, shocking me awake from a what wasn’t really sleep.
I spun around to see Vidar standing before me, lit up by the lantern on the desk, eyes wide like I’d slapped him across the face.
His gaze slowly lowered toward his bare chest and as I followed, I saw the edge of my dagger pressed against his pectoral.
Calmly, he looked back up at me from beneath his brows, the shock on his face turning to that warning look he so often gave to men who angered him.
“You going to do something with that, love?” he said.
“Perhaps… I should not sleep beside you tonight,” I quivered.
“No,” he snarled, reaching up and grabbing my wrist. I tensed as he pulled it to the side, leaving a shallow ribbon of blood across his chest. The scent of it filled the room.
His jaw ticked, but he made no sound to indicate he was in pain.
“You’ll be sleeping next to me, as you always do, if I have to bind you to me and lock our weapons away. ”
I loosed the knife, letting it drop to the floor, and squeezed my eyes shut, the sting of shame making my head pound.
“The dreams are mere dust,” I said. “But so many times, I thought it was real when it was not. Now that I am no longer sleeping, I can hardly tell.” He released me and I pressed both hands to my face.
“How is it that he warped my thoughts so much in just three days? What could he do to someone with far more time?”
“Someone like Lyla.”
“Or my mother. Or any of us.”
I felt his hands on mine, gently peeling them from my face.
“It doesn’t matter because he will not get more time.
” He cupped my cheeks in his palms, forcing me to look at him.
“Alone, you could fight him. I know you could because you’re strong.
But you’re not alone. You have me. I am a furious man and you are mine.
You are mine, Dahlia. God or no, he cannot have you. ”
“Vidar, he was inside me,” I whispered, my heart weeping at the thought. “He took everything from me over and over again. And now, here you are, alive. But I lost you so many times and that hurt is lingering even as you stand before me.”
“Do not bend for him.” He gripped my chin with one hand as his other slid back into my hair, grabbing locks of it and tugging my head back.
“You need us. You’ve said as much. But we need you, too.
We need you to be here. I need you to be here.
You are everything a god who seeks control fears because you cannot be controlled. You are a storm.”
My muscles grew taut under his touch, the sound of his words making my body yearn for relief.
“Now, a god who hides in his trenches cannot have touched you from afar. He could only have pretended.” He began pushing me back toward his bed, his hand sliding from my chin, down my neck, to the middle of my chest. “But you are awake now, Dahlia, and the waking world is very much in your control.”
My knees hit the bed and I fell back onto my elbows, staring up at Vidar’s broad form in the orange lantern light, small drips of blood weeping down the left side of his chest. He began to unbuckle his belt and instantly, my core ignited with need.
A need only he could summon. One that no dream could mimic.
“Stop me if you wish,” he said gruffly.
There was a part of me that was in sheer panic knowing what Vidar wanted to do to me.
He could break me far easier than a god, but he could also put me back together stronger every time.
I’d been without that touch for what seemed like weeks and I hungered for it.
Every part of me that Akareth attempted to soil, I wanted Vidar to cleanse.
“Show me,” I said.
“Show you?” he cocked his head, yanking his belt out of the loops.
“Remind me I am awake. Make me feel. Everything.”
He rolled his belt up before tossing it aside, his gaze roaming over me like whisps of fire.
“You have no idea the carnage I would have wrought had you not come back to me,” he said.
“Forgive me for my foolishness. If I had the gall to kill Lyla before—"
He dropped down to his knees on the bed between my legs, bracing his hands on either side of me.
“What’s done is done. You did not kill her and so she hung you like bait for Akareth.
” I could feel his fingers against my side, lightly crawling down my hip and pulling the fabric of my shirt up until he found bare skin.
“But I know too well, Dahlia. You did not spend those days in his prison learning nothing.”
“Every day that passes, it is harder to recall the details of my time with him.”
His fingers trailed over my thigh, settling between my legs where my body still longed for his touch, despite the memories of Akareth’s violations.
“But you do remember,” he whispered, slowly dropping his head so his lips could caress my neck. “Everything has a weakness. He had to have revealed one of his.”
The moment he was out of sight, shadows danced across my eyes like I was no longer there with him. I tensed, pushing him away only so I could see his face. His face and not the one made of shadows and lies.
“I want to look at you,” I said. “I need to see your face.”
His eyes lit up with a sense of excitement as he brushed his fingers through my clefts.
“Then look at me.” He slid two fingers inside, his thumb pressing over my clit. My body shuddered against his touch. I hungered for it. I needed it.
But he was right. I did remember. I remembered enough to still feel Akareth squirming inside me even then.
Logic said it wasn’t real, but as Vidar drove his fingers into me, a crazed part of my torn mind thought if he went deep enough, he’d find how ruined I was inside.
How much of me had been reshaped by all that Akareth had done to me.
One voice screamed how irrational it all was while the other whimpered that nothing was impossible.
That I had physically and mentally changed, all because of a dream, and Vidar would soon find out.
I shoved him off me and rolled off the bed onto my feet, but I was immediately hit with the cold shame of having done so.
“I’m sorry,” I said, leaning on the desk and hanging my head. “I’m sorry.”
I could hear Vidar rising from the bed behind me. When he spun me around to face him, I wanted to scream my frustration, but I bit my tongue, afraid that if I opened those doors, I would not stop at just screaming.
“I said I would forgive you for anything,” he said, cupping my cheeks in his hands.
“That does not mean there will always be something to forgive. Whatever it is that Akareth did and whatever he made you believe, it does not change anything. We are still going to hunt him down like any other monster. We are still going to destroy him. And I still and will always be here for you. He can try to rob you of many things, but he cannot have that.”
My chest burned, my heart swelling far past the confines of my body until it ached like an overworked muscle.
I swallowed the lump forming in my throat, ogling Vidar like he would soon burst into a cloud of smoke and disappear because nothing so perfect lasted.
I took his hand from my cheek and lowered it down to the middle of my chest where my heart was beating maddeningly hard.
He breathed deeply, staring down at my bosom as if to savor the rhythm.
As he did, my thumb moved over the knuckles of his leather-covered fingers.
“I will not let this destroy me,” I promised.
His thumb traced the length of my scar from my mouth to my ear, not with regret, but with a strange sense of pride.
The same way I sometimes looked at his missing fingers.
Like we’d marked each other that day as children only to find each other in the chaos eighteen years later.
We’d each taken a bit of the other. We’d branded each other and perhaps, if all things ended in death, we’d recognize each other in the afterlife because of it.
“I know,” he whispered.