Chapter 30
30
Kiaran
I settle Kameron onto the dark sand. Fury and betrayal twist her features, even in unconsciousness.
My fingers hover above her cheek, aching to ease the hurt I caused. To take back the violation and give her the vengeance she craves.
There’ll be a reckoning for this. And when Kameron comes to collect her due, I’ll gladly pay in blood.
I stand and turn back to the loch. Sorcha tracks my approach my approach, her eyes narrowed in pain. Nothing escapes my notice—the tension in her posture, her pallor beneath the starlight. The rapid flutter of her pulse in her throat. The blade struck deep before I intervened.
I’m using my power to hold that dagger inside her, keeping it buried to the hilt. A pointed reminder for her.
Suffer a while longer.
I stop at the edge of the loch. To breach that dark surface would mean certain death for me now. My domain ends here. The mists coil tighter, grasping at my legs with hungry tendrils, eager to drag me under and feast. I can taste the heady tang of ancient magic on my tongue, bitter as ashes. A stark reminder of this world’s slow demise. The waning of our power, the decay I’ve witnessed firsthand across too many centuries.
All that remains here are bones. And soon, not even memories.
Sorcha’s lips twist. “That human is rabid. You ought to put it down.”
“Like a dog?” I ask, too softly. “I remember when they used to say that about you.”
Sorcha’s glare sharpens, residual agony forgotten at the memory. In the end, the response had been the same.
“Now look at you,” I continue. “Bleeding in a dead realm where no one can help you.”
Her chin lifts. “No one but you.”
“I helped you once before.” I summon the shadows with a crook of my fingers. They flock eagerly, writhing up my legs, hungry for the blood I promised them. A living tide waiting to drown our enemies. “You lost the right to expect anything of me long ago.”
She sounds the same, then as now, when she wore her master’s collar around her throat. After that day, our battles blurred into endless slaughter as we cut across kingdoms that would fall.
“We were friends,” she whispers. “More than that.”
“You mistake necessity for sentiment.” I tilt my head, watching the loch’s strange luminescence play over her skin.
Perhaps she saw a kindred spirit lurking beneath the mask I wore. Monsters recognise their own. When she looks at me, perhaps she sees herself staring back.
But I wasn’t built for questions.
Only killing.
Sorcha sways, shuddering as if she might collapse. “Take out the dagger, Kadamach. I know you want to. I know it’s hurting you.”
My gaze drops to the blade gleaming wet against her dress. I feel the phantom twist of it in my own gut. I could tear that dagger free and open her throat. Watch her blood spill out to stain the loch. My shadows would relish rending Sorcha apart until she was unrecognisable. Every vicious, feral impulse roars for violence. To make it hurt before she dies. I want to break my fist against her flesh until she’s a ruin. Unmake that beauty and arrogance.
But her life is still bound to mine by laws older than hate. And so she lives.
For now.
“You forget that pain has never much bothered me.”
That familiar rage simmers beneath my skin. Needing an outlet. Aching to unleash the wolf inside, to tear and rend until this fury finds peace again. But even ancient creatures learn caution.
Using my power, I drag Sorcha forward until she stands before me on the shore. The luminosity bleeding through her skin does nothing to diminish the anguish tightening her expression. The pearls of sweat beading her brow. The pulse fluttering in her throat.
She’s afraid, despite herself. She should be.
Sorcha swallows hard. “I said, take this dagger out.”
Ah, pride. Her oldest weakness.
I step closer until we’re almost touching. Until her soft breaths mingle with my own. Fear perfumes the air between us. “When I’m ready to stop our pain, I’ll take it out.”
I twine my fingers through her dark hair, exposing the vulnerable line of her throat. Sorcha shudders as I nuzzle against her skin. Seeking out that treacherous wanting she’s never been able to claim from me.
That she never earned the right to have.
“You’ve threatened what’s mine twice in your petty bids for my attention. So let it twist inside you for a while. Let yourself bleed,” I say, using my power to wrench the knife deeper, letting it tear bone and flesh. I feel the echo of it. I grasp her chin hard enough to leave bruises, forcing her gaze up. “Be grateful her aim was off.”
Sorcha’s pulse flutters. Prey sensing the beast she once dared think she commanded.
Perhaps she hoped to find me tamed and changed in this strange new world without courts or crowns. But the wolf remembers its nature.
My thumb caresses the delicate line of her jaw, deceptively tender. I wonder if she’ll feel it slice her open later in nightmares. I hope so. “Never go near her again. The next time we meet, I’ll carve pieces off. Our kind can take so much damage before we die. But you know that intimately, don’t you?”
Her jaw tightens. “If you lose control and kill me, your life is forfeit too.”
My answering laugh is raw, near feral. It echoes across the lifeless waters. This place we once called home.
“Do you think my life has any worth beyond what I choose to give it?” I ask. “When your brother tried to take over the kingdoms, what did I do?” I grasp her slender throat. “Remind me, Sorcha.”
Her lips peel back, fangs glinting. “You left me to burn.”
I smile coldly. “Yes. And when Lonnrach was left to rot beneath the city, what did I do?”
“You walked away,” she hisses.
My fingers tighten just shy of crushing her windpipe. I want her breathless. Aching for my mercy. For the tenderness I once showed her in the dark, even when I felt nothing.
“That’s right. Because I made a vow to you but never marked you as mine.” I can’t resist grazing my lips along her cheek, relishing her shudder. “Imagine what I would do for her. Imagine what agony I’d inflict and let myself feel for the woman I chose. You were so eager for my claiming mark before. I think you would’ve done anything I asked to wear it. And now that prize will never be yours.”
Sorcha trembles, but defiance still burns fierce in her eyes. “Our vow—”
“Means nothing.” My breath ghosts over her ear. “We have no masters now except those we choose for ourselves. No courts left to punish traitors and oathbreakers. No kings and no queens.”
I grasp the dagger hilt, steeling myself against the phantom pain as I slowly withdraw it from her flesh. Sorcha arches with a thin, helpless cry. The scent of her blood spills thicker into the air between us.
I bring the blade to my mouth and slowly lick her blood away. Watching her watch me. “In this barren place, you’re nothing.” I pause, holding her gaze as I savour the last drops on my tongue. “And neither am I.”
The shadows surge, frantic as starving beasts. I loose them on Sorcha, serpents eager to rend and tear. They twine around her wrists and ankles, wrenching her onto her knees.
I crouch beside her, grasping her chin. “You’re going to wait here patiently until I retrieve you. Because these shadows are so ravenous. But don’t worry, they know to feed slowly.” I keep my tone gentle, the command saturating each word. My thumb caresses her cheek. “When I return, I’ll remind you how much I enjoy pain.”
Sorcha’s lips peel back, fangs bared.
“Stay.” I pat her cheek and rise.
A thin keen escapes Sorcha’s throat as the shadows slither tighter, forcing her down. But she doesn’t fight their hold. My hands curl into fists, aching for the tender throat I can’t tear out. The still-warm heart I can’t crush. Laws that bind when all vows turn to ash.
Some prisons only death can unlock.
I kneel beside Kameron’s unconscious form, gathering her into my arms. Her mark flares at the contact, our bond igniting within me. That whisper-soft pulse and pull, the need to seal it. A need I’ve ignored for months.
I carry her back through the veil between worlds, navigating the blurred spaces between. Her realm reshapes around us. The verdant of the forest, sunlight filtering through the canopy overhead. Clean air, untainted by ancient wars.
I lay Kameron on her bed, and she nuzzles into the softness without waking. Some colour already returns to her cheeks in this realm more hospitable to human flesh. Mortal lives blaze so bright and swift. A fire given only moments to ignite the world. Sorcha called her rabid. Perhaps she is.
I know the wildness that thrums in Kameron’s veins, the savagery that rivals my own.
I prefer the monster in her to any goodness left in me. We are beasts cut from the same vicious cloth. Kin in our savagery.
And for such a brief time, she’s mine.
Too much and never enough. I turn away, boots silent on the floorboards as I descend the stairs.
Outside, the stars shine remote and pitiless. They marked the violent trajectory of my life once. Now, they are only distant points of light, having witnessed the rise and fall of better creatures than me.
The loam gives beneath my steps as I return to the portal. It shimmers between gnarled trunks, a wound slicing through reality. The way back to ruined shores.
I step through onto the frigid beach, senses stretched taut for any sign of Sorcha.
But the dark shore lies empty. My shadows returned to their corners.
Sorcha is gone.