Chapter Twenty-Four- Suffer Me
Time is a funny thing. I have spent days suffering in the past, and yet those horrors passed quicker than the mere hour I’ve watched Thorne continue to whisper foreign words as he writhes in pain.
I’ve moved him against a wall, watching in intrigue and horror as the magic in the Kyanite reacts to him.
I feel utterly useless in the dead silence of the antechamber.
Even Fable is perplexed, silently weaving her magic over his skin in an attempt to snap him out of this.
I sigh and glance at Crowley, who I think would shrug at me if he could.
Suddenly, Thorne screams and then lurches forward onto his hands and knees. As he does, his eyes ignite silver, his irises swallowed by black. Fable and Crowley flap around him, alarmed.
He screams a spell in the ancient language and flings his hand towards the Kyanite.
“Are we doing this?!” I frantically run over towards him.
He howls again and sends another wave of power towards the stone, suppressed rage in this scream.
He is digging deep within himself, drawing on every time he’s ever suffered.
He shakes violently, his mind demanding a reaction from his body that seems to want to just surrender to the pain.
I watch helplessly as Thorne forces himself to call on every memory of the horrendous things done to him.
I watch as his skin pales, his body threatening to give out under the weight of it all.
But he is destined and determined to arise victorious over those who would see him destroyed.
Magic detonates against the Kyanite, sending me backward into the stone floor behind him.
The room fills with the acrid smell of burning, smoke swallowing the space until sight becomes guesswork.
Oh, we’re doing this.
I’ve never seen magic like this, but this is his magical bind to break, so I let him. I trust him not to let this kill him. Not because of me, but because of his need for revenge.
Then he grabs me, his fingers searing into my skin.
I wince, his hand so cold it burns. But I don’t stop him when I feel him pulling magic from me, draining my near infinite well far too quickly.
I want to ask him how. But I can’t and truthfully, I don’t care.
He needs to do this. He mouths more words, his body convulsing, and I smile as I let him take from me.
I sink to my knees beside him and wrap one arm around his leg as his right arm remains outstretched towards the massive obsidian pillar.
My black hair falls wild in my face as I gasp for breath but his white locks remain immaculate as energy radiates off of him.
It’s like he’s made for this. Handcrafted by the Titans for this very task.
He could kill me right now, I can feel it.Snakes pour from my hands unwarranted as my magic goes haywire but I don’t stop him.
I stifle a cry at the way pain overtakes my body in the absence of my magic and I realize that I would die for him.
I would die for this. For the way that magic is flowing into him and making him glow, making him whole and angelic as the Titans once were.
I don’t know what’s going to happen when that Kyanite shatters, where that power will go, what it will do to him. But he releases me and collapses again just as the Titan’s Kyanite begins to crack at the base, causing the antechamber to quake. I crawl to him and pull him to his knees before me.
“Thorne,” my voice is hollow and weak.
He blinks up at me, unable to believe that I’m alive.
“Suff—” he trails off. His eyelids flutter closed and then open again.
I rest my forehead on his.
“Say something, tell me you’re all right,” I plead. Because this may be the last moment in which he is all right.
“Suffer me…” he begs. His lip trembles and he looks up at me through long lashes and bloodshot blue eyes.
They’re blue again.
“I don’t understand…” I cup his face and kiss his mouth, thankful that he’s talking. Even if it’s nonsense.
But then I see the tears, the busted capillaries. I know that whatever he saw while doing that spell has irrevocably changed him. A sinking dread in my stomach mirrors the sorrow he carries, and the regret he feels floods through me. He never wanted to be this. He never wanted to hurt anyone.
“Suffer me, Serpent…” He coughs on the smoke in the room. Distantly I am aware of the rebels infiltrating the palace, I can feel the influx of magic above us. I squeeze the sides of his face harder and listen. He is nothing to suffer, he is a privilege to behold.
“Endure me. Outlast me, please,” he lays his head on my shoulder as we kneel before each other. The Titan’s Kyanite is fissuring behind us but I can only listen to his breathing.
“Thorne, I…” He kisses me then. “Suffer me as you have so far,” he whispers. “Look through my treachery and find a way to endure me. Suffer through the storm that I am, the messy and the vile. Suffer me for my love of you…” he kisses me frantically as he speaks. Love.
“Thorne…” He quiets me with more kisses, desperate. If the Kyanite kills him, he wants to say this. No, he needs to say this.
“Choose to suffer me, because everyone else has chosen not to.” A tear falls down his cheek and I let him rest his head on my shoulder a moment before I drag his head up so he meets my eyes.
“I choose you; there is no suffering.” It’s a promise and I seal it with a kiss. “My love,” I declare in a whisper and we rest our foreheads together again.
I’m still listening to the chaos above, to the faint cracking sound behind me when footsteps thunder down the stairs, startling me to standing.
My knees are weak and shaking but Thorne remains on his knees, nearly immobile from the power excretion of whatever spell the Book of Binding told him to execute.
“Elm?” I say as he enters the chamber. His eyes are wide, he’s frantic, his sword held tightly in his hand. “What’s going on?”
“You…I…” He can’t talk. He’s undoubtedly shocked about Reese and the Black Lanterns storming the palace. I see the dismay in his face as he registers that everything he has sworn to protect was a lie.
“Elmerov…” I try to reason with him.
The warring of his loyalties is evident in his gaze. The King has clearly gotten to him. He will no longer side with his brother in knighthood. What was the threat? His mother? His sister?
I’m trying to think of the best way to explain it all to him when he moves—using a speed spell that I wasn’t expecting. One second he’s in the doorway, the next his sword is being dragged across Thorne’s throat, his gorgeous silver locks twisted in Elm’s traitorous hand.
Slitting Thorne’s throat is instantaneous; it happens far quicker than I have the capacity to process. Thorne’s torso is coated in blood as he slumps forward, wide-eyed, to the floor. I lunge for Elmerov Blaine.