Chapter 27 Arwyn
ARWYN
The back of my head had only just stopped bleeding, but the ache across my skull seemed permanent. I kept lifting fingers to my skull when my father wasn’t glowering at me, just to check the damage. And every time my fingers dusted over the split and bruised skin I thought of Hector.
If Tomin noticed I was hurt, he didn’t say anything. After all, I wasn’t prepared to explain to him exactly why I had a mild concussion when I wasn’t the one who’d actually hurt themself.
Instead of worrying on something I couldn’t control, I put that energy into my hate for the man I was stuck with.
I’d killed my father in so many ways. Too many to count.
The list was long. From shooting him, holding his head under the water until the breath left his lungs, to helping tie a noose around his neck and watching as the life was strangled from him.
Every one of those deaths had been under his own request. Every single one was because he was testing the limits of his curse—using me, traumatising me, all for the same result.
He would live, and it would be my fault.
Arwyn Hopkin, the failure. Arwyn Hopkin, the useless son who couldn’t even do one thing right for his own dad. At least, that was what he’d tell me. Over and over.
There was a time I would’ve melted at the mere thought of him asking me to kill him again.
Now, however, as I watched him walk down the line of gravestones, I wanted to try again.
I fisted my hands at my sides, trying to ignore the large stones scattered across the path.
My mouth salivated at the thought of driving one of those very stones into his skull until it popped like a grape.
I imagined what it would feel like to smash his head into a gravestone, or push his face into the dirt to suffocate him.
My mind whirled with all the possibilities, teasing me to just try.
My hands were still coated in the Hunter I’d killed, but that wasn’t enough to satiate my unending need for more.
I had no doubt he knew what was going through my mind. Every time he glanced over his shoulder at me, a knowing smirk played across his mouth. He knew, as well as I did, that I couldn’t harm him without failing the trial.
Failing meant dying, most likely. Failing meant being taken by a demon from the man I loved.
I had to exercise control… for now.
In our little pairing, that threat only really meant something to me.
If I laid a finger on Tomin, Bahmet would destroy me.
Whereas the demon couldn’t hurt him. There was no killing the unkillable.
If Tomin decided to turn on me now, harm me, he would face punishment only for him to resurrect over and over.
So, for Hector’s sake, I had to stay alive. Which meant trying my fucking hardest not to provoke Tomin.
That didn’t mean I needed to help him though.
“Are you just going to sulk back there, or are you going to make yourself useful for once, and do something?”
There would’ve been a time the underlying jibe in his words would’ve hurt me. Now, I couldn’t find a fuck to give. “I think we both know the answer to that, don’t we?”
“Smart mouth for a boy who wet the bed until he was in his twenties.”
My gut twisted into knots at the comment. The reaction played across my face, making Tomin’s smile grow larger. I bit down on my tongue just to stop myself from continuing the back-and-forth.
To my pleasant surprise, Tomin didn’t add another comment in.
Yes, sure, I wet the bed until I was an adult.
But it was the man walking ahead of me that was the root cause of that.
He haunted me in my waking hours, and during those few hours I could sleep.
His demands, his disappointments in me, lingered even in my dreams. I understood that now.
I wasn’t about to start being embarrassed for the way his mistreatment affected me.
The further we navigated the strange field of gravestones, we came across no other competitors. Not one.
Tomin studied every gravestone in detail, before moving on to the next. I looked out across the endless horizon in search for signs of Hector. Even Romy and Kai. My worry for their sakes only grew louder with every passing minute.
“Ah!” I sucked in a breath as a sharp and heinous pain lanced across the side of my face.
My vision blurred, my legs giving out from the suddenness. It was as if someone had slammed a fist into my cheek… twice over. The mysterious head wound I’d received earlier throbbed in tandem, twisting my concussion until vomit burned up and out my throat.
I was doubled over, on all fours, emptying my stomach of the food I’d not long ate, when Tomin came to stand above me.
“Get. Up.”
I ignored him, which brought me a lick of joy. “Aren’t you worried about me, Daddy?”
“Not even a bit.” He cringed at the use of the title, as I knew he would. “Whatever you are playing at, it isn’t helping. You can attempt to hold me up, and it still will not have an effect on my success. I suggest you stop fucking around and do as I say.”
“How about you come a little closer and say that again,” I said, practically pleading for Tomin to do so.
His furious gaze flickered from mine, to my mouth. As soon as his eyes landed on my mouth, his expression softened.
I wasn’t about to explain that I’d been walking fine until the phantom smash of fists cracked into my face. But it turned out that didn’t stop Tomin from questioning me when he saw the blood dripping from a cut across my cheek bone.
His sneer broke, teeth flashing, eyes glittered with his usual disappointment. “Hurting yourself isn’t going to have an effect on whether I pass this trial or not. Are you really that desperate to hinder me?”
He truly believed I’d done this to myself. Well, I supposed in a way, I had.
I scowled up at him, throat aching from the acidic bile that coated it. Gathering the soured taste in my mouth, I bundled up the spit, sick and small traces of blood from the cut inside my cheek, and spat it on the ground at his feet.
“Were you always such a hateful cunt, or was that a side effect of your little curse?”
The way Tomin recoiled at my description of his curse warmed my soul. To him, it was anything but small. It was enough to motivate his existence and everything he’d ever done.
“Pick yourself up from the ground and make yourself useful. It’s the last time I’m going to tell you.”
I could see just how hard he was holding himself together. Like I had been, my father was toying with the many ways of hurting me in that moment.
“Now!”
I rolled my eyes like a petulant child. “You could start by telling me what you’re hoping to find in the gravestones you’ve been studying.”
Tomin scoffed, hands on hips, scanning the endless field of death for whether to tell me or not.
Apparently, a couple of hours of searching had whittled down his patience, so the answer came spilling out.
“We are looking for the burial site of a witch. A gravestone that marks where a real witch was buried amongst the rest who died in pursuit of them. If we find the witch’s burial site, we will get the clue of how to get out of the trial. ”
“Wow, aren’t you just a smartie pants.” I exhaled, pushing myself to standing. My left eye was starting to swell, limiting my vision of that side of my body.
“Drop the attitude, boy.”
I unfurled to my final height, shoulders broadening until the man before me was bathed in my shadow. “Call me that again, and I’ll take pleasure in ripping your throat out.”
Tomin waved me off. “I recommend that you don’t waste your time on fancies anymore.”
“Finally, he admits it. I think that is the most honest you’ve ever been with me. Might as well, right? It’s just me and you… alone out in the dark with nothing but all the fucked-up shit you put me through between us.”
“I have been nothing but honest with you my entire life, son.”
I laughed, sharp and loud. “Is that what you tell yourself to make you feel better, or are you truly that disillusioned that you actually believe it?”
“I will allow you to decide on an answer to that.”
“Cunt.”
He studied me as I stood, watching the slight way I swayed. I knew the question was coming before he asked it, just from the scrutiny of his stare. “Do you hurt yourself purposefully so we fail? Because I think we can both agree that such actions would be futile due to my current circumstance.”
I haven’t purposefully done shit.
“I’d sooner die than help you. Ever again.”
The thing about Tomin, he always knew when I lied.
Even now, as adults, opposing one another across the boundaries of belief, he searched the ground for the weapon I’d ‘used on myself’.
Once he couldn’t find a bloodied stone, his eyes traced down to my knuckles to find them unmarked, besides the dried gore from the Hunter I’d killed.
“So you didn’t hurt yourself. Interesting.”
My blood cooled.
Tomin’s head tilted, searching eyes looking for the secret I was keeping from him. “Have I worked it out I wonder?”
“I don’t know what you’re on about.” I cleared the blood-soaked spittle from the corner of my mouth.
His eyes smiled wider, emphasised by his thin lips. There was no proof I’d hurt myself like he’d first accused.
My father was many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them.
“How interesting indeed,” he sneered.
I stiffened, feeling like a bright light had just been raised above me, exposing all the unspoken things I kept from him.
“Indulge me. Does it go both ways, or only one?” he asked, sending my heart plummeting into the pits of my stomach. “I don’t understand the limitations of old magic, but I must say I’m impressed you’ve mastered it so quickly. Then again, you are my blood. You share my intelligence.”