Chapter 21 #2
The world was a throbbing blur, and Draven no longer knew how to make sense of it.
He always thought he was someone of action—someone who would take up armor and sword to protect those he loved without a moment’s hesitation.
Yet as he gazed down at his mother sprawled on a table like nothing more than scorched meat, he was frozen—incapable of movements, thoughts, or words.
“Dra…ven…” she tried again, head languidly rolling in his direction.
“I’m here,” he croaked, voice cracking sharply. “Mother, I’m here.”
She blinked, a thin fog fading from her gaze as she looked at him. Consciousness fled her only a heartbeat after she saw him.
A hand pressed down on his shoulder again, but this time, he was so far gone he didn’t even flinch. As if his body had lost its will to display even the remotest sense of survival instinct.
He couldn’t even reach for his mother’s hand. It was tied above her head, conjoined with her other wrist. So, he reached out with his fingertips as if to touch her stomach, only to jerk them away.
“What has he done to you?” Draven breathed, hands shaking violently.
“What was well within my right to do in the name of the gods and man’s law, both.”
He had forgotten his father was standing behind him. He had already forgotten his hand was on his shoulder. His body was numb. And it was growing more numb by the second.
He shrugged him off and finally whirled around, a flare of hot magic bursting beneath his skin. “Your right?” he snarled. “What evil sense of delusion are you blinded by, you sick…bastard.” His words came out breathless and staggered and sharp.
His father looked entirely unfazed by anything Draven had just said.
“She is my wife, who swore to always do right by me, her husband. She is also the Lady I chose for House Dalmar, which means she had duties to uphold to this Great House, as well. Both of which she abandoned and spat on when she chose deluded fantasies of love over upholding her vows.” His father smiled at him—or perhaps it was better to say at what he saw overtaking him.
“Your eyes are turning black again. Do you think you will lose control over your magic? I’d rather like to observe what that looks like. ”
“I don’t care about my magic or what it does to me. I care about my mother, who you’ve strapped and branded as though she were nothing more than one of your livestock.”
Draven’s father made a show of sighing, raking a hand over his face. “Someday you’ll understand, boy. A husband does not take kindly to another man spoiling his property.”
“You did the same thing to her!” Draven was shouting now, and he slammed a hand to his chest. “I am the product of it. Me. How was what you did any different?” A pause. Then, Draven added, “And she is not your property.”
His father watched him for a long, silent moment. “I fear I allowed her to spend too much time with you. She’s warped your sense of where a man and woman belong in this world. I will take care to correct that.”
Draven jerked his chin away, tears welling in his eyes despite how desperately he tried to restrain them.
A mistake.
His gaze landed on another body on the opposite wall across the room he hadn’t noticed yet.
Small, feminine hands were splayed and impaled just like Atlas’s.
Caramel hair fell in waves over a slumped face.
Though unlike Atlas, her head was not forward, but instead lolled to the side, showcasing the crimson seam splitting the skin of her throat.
Suzumi gazed at him through glazed over chestnut eyes. Draven threaded his fingers through his hair, pulling at the root of them in a bout of insanity. He shook his head as he stared at Suzumi’s lifeless body, a guttural sob tearing from his throat. “No,” he cried. “No. No. No. No. No.”
He hunched over, bracing a hand on one of the chairs, and vomited. Once his body was finished, he merely stared absolutely at the stain on the marble floor. Not able to rise, but not letting himself fall, either.
It was sad—how quickly Draven’s brain tried to rationalize what he just saw.
How quick it was to tell him that perhaps the only consolation was that her death must have been quick.
The slice appeared to be clean, severing her carotid artery.
Which means she was dead before she was ever pinned to that wall, and somebody had wiped the blood that would have been sure to smear in thick pools across her neck.
Why?
Draven jerked up, his scornful glare finding his father—who was merely watching him with a quiet curiosity lining his otherwise perfectly placid features. “Why?” Draven pleaded. “Why do any of this?”
“The girl attacked one of my personal guards. She bit off his ear, actually. The guard reacted and slit her throat, I’m sorry to say.”
Suzumi… His Suzumi, who had just experienced her first kiss.
Had shared her secrets with him, and him with her.
Had laughed and been brave and attempted to be there like a mother would for her younger sister.
Who stared at the stars with wonderment in her eyes and ate rabbit stew across from him at a wooden kitchen table. She was dead now.
Draven killed her.
It might not have been by his hand directly, but it was by his indirect action. His wishful, foolish dream he convinced himself of. One of a home. Of a family.
Of love.
Her demise was knowing him. Perhaps it was even allowing herself to care for him.
He pressed the heel of his palms against his eyes, curling his fingertips inward until the nails bit into his skin. “Why is she up there?”
“As a reminder to you,” his father replied, smooth as sea glass.
Footsteps clacked against the floor as he approached him, and Draven lifted a warning hand.
A plume of vapor-like smoke erupted from his palm, shooting toward his father.
With barely more than a blink, his father raised an obsidian wall encrusted by crimson seams, absorbing the shot of magic into his own.
Draven lowered his palm just below his chin and blinked at it.
He had never released magic like that before.
“As I was saying,” his father carried on, like nothing had happened at all.
“She is there to remind you that love is a weakness. Love is a liability. It is a fool’s dream that will only ever expose you and make you weak.
And it will hurt you in the end.” He adjusted the cuff of his lavish, silken sleeve.
“I want you to remember this pain. I want you to let it fuel you. Motivate you. Strip any desire from you to ever carry such useless affections for another again.”
Draven slowly curled his fingers back into his palms and dropped them down to his sides. “If love is a weakness, it is because you and you alone make it one.”
“Oh, come now, Draven,” his father retorted. “You’ll someday encounter far worse monsters than me.”
“I—” Draven snapped his mouth shut before he could even finish his countering thought.
“Wait,” he said instead, eyes wild as he looked around the room.
He searched all the walls, all the corners, grimacing and nearly vomiting each time his eyes glided over Suzumi or Atlas’s dead bodies.
Still, he only saw them and his mother. No one else.
He didn’t know if he was relieved or horrified by that.
“You’re looking for the other one. The young girl with the peculiar hair.”
Draven whipped his eyes to him. “What have you done with her?”
His father rubbed at his chin. “Now she was rather interesting. A Nullifier, of all things. Though I know you’re already aware of that fact, seeing as you started to train her.”
Draven’s mouth fell open as shock paralyzed him.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I noticed. Matris’s teachings don’t just find their way to your average commoner.”
“Where is she?” Draven tried again. “I—I want to see her.” He didn’t dare voice the question he was really asking.
Is she alive?
Gods…please be alive. Please. He knew he could not survive the knowledge of yet another member of his family’s death.
“Very well,” his father hummed.
As if communicated through some unseen mechanism, the onyx double doors opened, and a guard escorted Rhea in.
Her left eye was swollen and bruised, and her right eye was red-rimmed and punctuated by a deep purple smudge beneath.
Her head was hung as she strode in, manzat manacles at her wrists, preventing her from wielding any magic.
“Rhea.” His voice broke on her name, and he rushed for her.
“Draven,” she whimpered, her voice so low and broken, he could barely recognize it. “They’re gone. My father and… Zumi. They’re dead. I…I’m alone.”
He threw his arms around her and held her so tightly as grief clutched his throat with its blood-soaked claws. “I’m here, Rhea,” he choked out. “You are not alone. I am with you.”
At the contact, Rhea sobbed into Draven’s torso, and he let her.
As he held her, tears slipped silently down his own eyes.
As they did, he vowed to himself he would never—ever—let anything happen to Rhea.
He would protect her. Love her. Care for her.
He would not let a single further tragedy befall her. He just… wouldn’t.
“A touching display,” his father mused. “It is also a transparent one. Another weakness for any enemy to exploit.” He strolled toward them, hands clasped behind his back.
Draven shoved Rhea behind him, setting his features and shielding her with his body. His resolve was steel, and it would not yield. Not in this.
“That makes two clear liabilities remaining,” his father said, stopping directly in front of them.
“Two?” Draven questioned.