13. First Touch #2
“Be still,” he said, voice low. “Watch.”
She ripped her arm out of his grasp. “I don’t want to—”
“Then why haven’t you looked away?”
Because I want him to take me like that.
Unrestrained.
Wild.
All of him.
Not just his gentleness, but this…this…
And then she saw his eyes.
Not blue.
Not her bottomless azure.
Red.
Like fresh blood, spilled while the heart still beat inside the body.
The pupils thin slits.
Something monstrous.
Something else.
Her heart stuttered, not from pain—
But from recognition.
The moment her Manasight flared, everything was clear. This was neither a hunger ritual nor a brutal rite of mana exchange.
It was him.
The bloodlust.
The madness.
The one rune that would never let her Weave it.
Vargrún.
Her gaze locked on the base of Kailorien’s neck. The rune there—twisting, pulsing, ravenous—shone with a sick red light as it devoured the mana of the women around him. Not drank, devoured, with nothing left behind but silence and empty eyes.
The sound of the Companion’s pleasure warped—too loud, too sharp, no longer euphoric but discordant. Echoing.
This wasn’t Kailorien.
Not her Kail.
This was enslavement.
Purposeful.
Ritual.
A way to feed the monster.
Auryn’s body burned. Not with humiliation—not anymore—but with a fury so bright her veins might as well have bled gold.
This wasn’t him.
It had never been him.
Every time he’d come back from the Estar empty-eyed, every time he’d flinched at her touch afterward, every time he’d looked away without explaining why—
She understood now.
He was being devoured too.
From the inside out.
And the Council called this sacred?
Sacred?
No.
It was desecration. Of him. Of them.
She straightened, breathing hard.
A hand touched her arm.
Cool. Delicate. Controlled.
Shu’Khan.
The moment his skin touched hers, something sparked. Like a flash of magic unbidden. As though she’d seared him.
Shu’Khan jerked away, his eyes growing wide. His mouth parted in a silent gasp. Not pain. Not surprise. Euphoria. Sweet, discordant agony. It melted through his bones —lifewater reviving rotten flesh one piece at a time. Mana giving life to dead roots and branches that had dried up centuries ago.
Her fire ripped through him. Flames of passion, love, grief, fury.
The emotions poured into his core—raw, unfiltered—and they cracked the husk he’d been trapped in for so long.
She turned her head to meet his gaze.
A primal power burned in her eyes now.
Not fear.
Not reverence.
Defiance.
For one heartbeat, the ancient god-king of Krystopolis was silent. Uncomprehending.
Then—
“…So that’s what you are,” he whispered. His voice dropped low. Soft. Devotional. “How did We not see it sooner…”
The Sokar said nothing, her focus on the scene before her. She shook from head to toe.
The drums were beating in the chamber.
Beating.
Beating.
Beating.
In time with Vargrún's form undulating above his Companions.
In time with moans of bliss and voices begging him for pain and dominance.
He arched, his head tilting back, the glow in his red eyes intensifying.
And the girl before Shu’Khan felt it all.
Her body twisted, head falling back, throat tightening.
A sound escaped her.
Pleasured, broken, agonized.
He touched her arm. Felt the pleasure. The shame. The ruination.
And he waited.
For the snap. The break. The crack.
Surely this would shatter her.
Instead, fire blazed forth again.
Righteous, divine.
She swayed, her face flushed, her skin aflame, her eyes dull and exhausted. When she nearly fell, he caught her up against him. Again, her pain surged through his very core. But she was not broken by it. Instead, she rose.
Stronger.
Harder.
More focused.
Her fury was glorious, and he wanted nothing more than to take her from here. From this pain. From this wound. Regretting that he’d shown her this truth. Wanting to spare her from it.
“It’s alright now, child. Close your eyes. See nothing more of this.”
“I’ll stop it…” she whispered as tremors shook her body. "I swear."
He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and led her into the adjacent sitting room.
“In millennia, We have felt nothing like we did today. In millennia, we have not seen a thing like you. Now rest. Rest. We will protect you. This rarity. This treasure.”
Kailorien’s awareness returned slowly. His mind shed Vargrún’s influence with the reluctance of dunes shedding grains of sand on a windless day.
First, he saw the Companions littering the divans. Unconscious, their skin sheened with sweat, their clothes ripped or missing entirely. He checked for breath. They were alive. Barely. Breathing hard. Spent. Yet their faces were twisted into smiles of bliss.
He stood, looking down at himself. At his nakedness, at the drying, cracking paint on his skin, at the sticky evidence of lust unrestrained. Sick to his stomach, he walked to the adjoining chamber and sank into the bathing pool.
Not to rest—just long enough to wash away the filth. The immediate evidence of their touch. As he wiped himself clean, he thought of her.
His Auryn.
And immediately banished her from his mind.
He had no right to conjure the comfort of her face. No right to allow her memory to walk the stained hallways of his mind and body.
For now, he would bathe. Sleep, if he could. After he returned to his quarters—after he’d had a few days to cleanse the scent of this rite from his body—then, perhaps, he would see her. Would risk touching her. Calling her name.
The more he thought of it, the emptier he felt until all that remained was a throbbing hollow at his center. The back of his neck burned. Vargrún wasn’t done. Wasn’t nearly satisfied. But, for now, Kailorien had enough mana and strength to suppress him.
He went to a nearby dresser and pulled out a spare black and gold robe and pants reserved specifically for the Estar. Tugging on the clothes and running his fingers through his damp hair, he took a deep breath before stepping out of the chamber and into the adjoining hall.
Immediately, he sensed something was amiss. The air thickened, tainted with the cloying perfume of ritual Sahtra and something fouler—burning mana, the sting of misused pleasure, the rot of ancient power cloaked in silk.
Kailorien stepped forward until he heard a voice. Familiar, yet not. Lilting, soothing, crooning in a way he’d never heard before.
A few more steps.
An Attendant rushed out to meet him, bowing and raising his arms to sign, 'Your Quintessence, Arm of the Void. Is assistance needed?'
The drummer boy, charged with keeping the rhythm of the ritual. He wore thick red robes and a harness to keep the drum in place.
“Be gone,” Kailorien ground out, and as the youth rushed to obey, he kept walking forward.
The voice came again.
Softer now.
And then another—sweet and airy.
A knot of dread settled in his gut.
He passed through the doorway to the antechamber and froze.
There she was.
Auryn.
Shu’Khan held her in his arms, and for a moment the sight was so foreign, so strange, so wrong, that Kailorien stumbled back a step. He gripped the wall. The marble cracked beneath his hand with the force.
Auryn.
Here.
In the Companions’ wing.
What is she doing here?
How did she gain entry?
She doesn’t have the key sigil to access it.
Why?
Why is she here?
Did she…
No.
No.