Chapter 21 #3
“Her,” he answered with a jerk of his chin in Rhea’s direction.
“And your mother. I’m afraid we can have neither any longer.
Not if you are to rise to the full potential of what I have planned for you.
Planned for us.” He pressed two fingers together and lifted them into the air.
A spear of dark and crimson magic appeared.
“Normally, I’d use a blade. But truthfully?
I’m exhausted and simply don’t feel like it. ”
It all happened so quickly. Within the span of a blink. Draven thought he was prepared. He thought he knew what was going to happen within that passing heartbeat. He thought he was going to protect the person he loved so fiercely.
He was wrong. He chose wrong.
When he dropped the obsidian wall surrounding him and Rhea, his eyes instantly found his father’s spear of magic.
It was pierced directly through his mother’s heart.
“I will do anything to preserve the integrity and power of House Dalmar,” his father declared in a frigid voice that tore through Draven. “Anything.”
The world fractured apart at its ugly seams.
It became something entirely unfamiliar to Draven as he stared blinking at the stream of blood spouting from his mother’s chest. Her heart was still trying to beat.
He could still save her.
He rushed to her, eyes frantically scanning the wound.
The bandages wrapped over her cleavage were slowly seeping crimson, and Draven decided he needed to put pressure on the wound.
He molded his fingers around the obsidian shard protruding from her chest, knowing if the healers were going to have any chance at helping her, it was better to leave it in than take it out.
He pressed down as firmly as he could, whispering prayers under his breath to any god who would listen.
A glimmer of hope appeared.
His mother’s eyes fluttered open, finding him. “Draven,” she rasped, a terrible rattling sound accompanying her words. “My sweet boy.”
“Hold on, mother,” Draven pleaded. “I’m going to help you. Healers will come, and they will save you. You just have to hold on, okay? I know you can do it—you’re the strongest person I know.”
“I’m tired,” she murmured like a confession.
“I’m so tired.” Her eyes roved up to the ceiling, and her chin trembled as fiercely as Draven’s working fingers.
“He’s gone,” she breathed. “He made me watch, after making him watch me be branded first. He screamed. I could tell he tried not to, but he screamed and screamed.”
Tears strolled down her cheeks, and when Draven glanced back up at her, he found her eyes hazy—like she wasn’t truly seeing anything at all. They were growing emptier by the second, accompanied by more and more hiccuped words.
That’s when Draven realized she was going into shock.
“Mother,” he said with as much calm as he could muster. “Please, I need you to take a steadying breath. Listen to my voice. Focus only on the sound of my voice.”
Her eyes wandered toward him, then. They softened, coming to. “You are my greatest accomplishment.”
The momentary bittersweet feeling passed through him like a flashing light. Temporarily blinding, and gone within a second.
His mother’s head rolled to the side, limp and unmoving. Her open eyes were as empty as Draven felt. There was absolutely no shred of mortality left behind them.
He panicked, releasing pressure from the wound to move forward and grip her cheeks.
He stained them stark red, blood covering his hands like a glove.
“No,” he cried. “Please wake up. Please.” But he knew.
Even as he held her face in his hands, begging for a miracle—he knew she was already gone.
That she would not be waking up this time.
He didn’t even get to say goodbye.
No more than a few seconds after his mother was stolen from him in an unspeakable display of abysmal cruelty did Draven hear Rhea’s cracking voice call out for him.
“Draven,” she squeaked, sounding terrified.
As he tore his eyes away from his mother to find Rhea, a fleeting thought passed through him: how much could one person physically take before they just broke?
How much pain and hurt and grief could one teenage boy’s body hold before it just…
imploded? Before it simply gave up, refusing to move any longer, run too ragged and hit one too many times to function further.
Tynan had Rhea clutched to his chest, a dagger held to her throat.
“Give her back to me,” Draven demanded, his flat tone so cold and empty. As his words echoed off the befouled walls, a terrifying realization echoed through him.
He sounded just like him.
“I do not tolerate liabilities to House Dalmar,” Tynan said in answer. “And this girl? Though interesting her magic may be, she is a liability.”
Draven glanced down at his mother, some final, vital part of him shredding and tearing, dying alongside her. He didn’t even realize there was anything still left to break. But there was. He felt it withering, like a shriveling petal plucked from its stem, crushed in the palm of a rough hand.
He leaned down to press a gentle kiss to her forehead. It cracked his ribs and hollowed his chest to pry himself away from her. To leave her on that table with that vile brand burned into her chest.
When he looked back up, his eyes found Tynan in an instant. He hated him. He wanted to see his skin flayed and burnt with a brand ten times that of what he pressed into his mother’s chest.
He wanted justice for his family.
For his mother. For Atlas.
For Suzumi.
He pried himself away from his mother’s dead body and strode directly to where Tynan stood. “Give. Her. Back,” he growled through bared teeth.
He felt a rush of heat beneath his skin and pressure in his eyes. His magic was building—growing hungry. And though tempted he was to let it explode in some uncontrollable, rage-fueled display of power, that would be giving Tynan exactly what he wanted.
Draven did not want to feed that man a scrap. Not when it came to his magic. But he would do what he must to keep Rhea safe. At any cost, he would not let anything else happen to her.
Tynan studied him, calculating. Draven could see it in his eyes and the subtle, micro-tilt of his head. What he wasn’t sure of was if Tynan was recalibrating based on his sudden display of control over his surging magic, or his near tangible resolve to not let anything happen to Rhea.
“What will you give me if I give her back to you alive?” he asked.
“Me,” Draven said without hesitation. “You can have me.”
“Meaning?”
Draven’s upper lip curled. “Don’t insult me. You know what I mean.”
Tynan smiled. “I want to hear you say it.”
Draven opened his mouth to answer, but Tynan interrupted before he could utter a word.
“I want to hear you say it on your knees.”
Draven silently glared at him; Tynan pressed the tip of his dagger deeper into Rhea’s throat. She squirmed against the blade, a small whimper escaping her lips.
“Knees,” he demanded again.
Draven had never felt as weak and powerless as he did in that moment.
“Fine,” he spat, slowly lowering himself down on one knee, then the next. “Happy now?”
Tynan’s eyes flashed at the bitterness punctuating his every word. Yet just as quickly as the anger filled his expression, he let it pass. “Go on,” was all he said.
“Spare her life, and I will do whatever you want. You will own me. You will have the collar you’ve always wanted around my neck, and you will control the length of the leash.
I will submit to you. I will obey you. I will do whatever you say, train however you want—you will have me exactly how you’ve always wanted me.
But the only version of reality where that will happen—where I will comply with everything you want—is the version where you let Rhea go.
Where you swear to let her reside at Tylderon and treat her the same way as Finlay and Kiran have been treated here.
Where you swear her safety, swear to keep her protected at all times.
Swear to never harm her. Do that, and my magic, my body, my fealty, and all my power are yours. ”
Tynan pretended to take a moment to consider, but Draven knew it was all for show.
It was a fool’s bargain, but it was his only card to play.
He would not let Rhea suffer the same fate as everyone else they loved.
His shackles were only but a small price to pay for her to have a life.
Tylderon was not The Polished Bookery, but at least, this way, she would be well educated, well fed and trained—taken care of at a base level.
She would be alive.
If only he could make a bargain to erase time. To erase the gaping hole that would forever be left in his and Rhea’s hearts.
“I won’t lie to you—I find myself rather intrigued by this proposition.
By all that I can do with it.” He looked down to observe Rhea with newly awakened interest. “A Nullifier and my son’s loyalty,” he mused under his breath, his tone carrying an unnerving quality that made the hair on Draven’s arms stand at attention.
Tynan dropped the dagger from Rhea’s throat and pulled out a small key from beneath his tunic.
He released her shackles, then he shoved her at Draven—who sprung up from the floor, embracing the force of her as she collided with him. “You’ve got a deal.”
As Draven glimpsed the immense satisfaction in his eyes—saw the future unwinding in his mind like an unraveling spool of thread—he wondered, just for a heartbeat, if he had made a grave mistake. If Rhea would have been better off dead than bound to House Dalmar.
He glanced down at her, wrapping his arms around her as if they could shield her from Tynan now.
She was trembling—from her ankles all the way up to her shoulders, every part of her was shaking violently.
As he checked her over, he saw her trousers had patches of darkened fabric staining the length of them. She had soiled herself.
If Draven had anything left to be broken, some objective part of him knew it would have shattered at that.
He glared at Tynan with as much loathing and repulsion a human body could manage. But Tynan just chuckled at the sight of him holding Rhea in his arms. Chuckled at the hatred burning in his gaze. It was a soft, fluttering sound.
His sea-blue eyes held Draven’s, leveling him with his own look of reproach. “I’d like to seal this agreement, if that’s alright with you?”
He felt a crease appear between his eyes. “We don’t have a Sealer here.”
Tynan’s smirk broadened. “Let us seal it the old fashioned way, then, shall we?” He waltzed over to the burning hearth, removing a narrow iron Draven hadn’t even noticed resting within the flames. He returned to him, a freshly awakened brightness in his gaze. “On your knees, boy.”
Draven glared at him. He did not want to be so weak to be on his knees at Tynan’s command a second time. Even worse, Tynan glimpsed that defiant heat in Draven’s gaze, and it brought him all the more satisfaction.
“I’ll take the iron to her instead,” he warned in a melodic coo, like he was offering something fun and appealing as he tipped the glowing metal in her direction.
Begrudgingly, Draven let go of Rhea and dropped down to his knees for a second time.
“Oh,” Tynan breathed, shifting his eyes between them. “The future is bright.” He tilted his head at Draven with new interest. “Remove your shirt.”
Draven scowled, but he obeyed.
Tynan grinned like a cat. Then, he approached.
“I’ll be sealing our agreement with the brand of House Dalmar.
That way, whenever you feel the glimmers of phantom pain or glimpse your reflection in a mirror—whenever you consider seeking revenge on me or going against the deal we made—you will remember the brand.
You will feel it embedded into your skin, as a part of you as your own blood vessels.
Then you will be forced to remember who you are, what you belong to, and who owns you. ”
He pressed the hot iron into his skin, and Draven screamed.
He didn’t want to scream. He didn’t want to afford his father the reaction nor terrify Rhea further.
Yet he couldn’t help it. The pain was debilitating.
So much so, he soon realized he was flirting with the bounds of unconsciousness as his vision flickered and his body seemed to shut down, unsure how to fully process his every nerve-ending catching fire.
When Tynan removed the scorching iron from his skin, Draven was nearly delirious from pain.
“I will send orders first thing tomorrow morning,” he said.
“I expect them to be followed without any resistance nor contrition.” A pause.
“Fail to uphold your end of the bargain, and I will fail to uphold mine.” A warning glance in Rhea’s direction. “Are we clear?”
Wobbling and momentarily unsure of where he was, Draven somehow found the resolve to set his features and allow the lifeless rot he felt growing inside him to unfurl across his face. He knew Tynan would not leave without his answer. “Crystal,” Draven muttered, his voice rough like sand.
Tynan regarded him for a long, blood-leeching moment, something vile and damning gleaming in his otherwise perfectly polished expression. “Never forget, boy—I own you now.”