Chapter 32 #2
“I don’t want anyone but you.” I huffed a breath, my body temperature rising to an uncomfortable level.
His mouth fell to my neck, his breath sending shivers across my skin. “Maeve, you know I’m just teasing you, right? I’m much too possessive to share when it comes to you. You’re mine, and only mine.”
I let him cradle me, then decided to try a little teasing of my own.
Spinning in his arms, I dropped my voice to a low whisper and ran a finger down the midline of his abdomen. “I know you’re joking. But it’s too bad, because actually, the more I think about it, maybe we could ask Sawyer to join us tonight?”
His face fell flat as a piece of parchment.
Immediately after the words left my lips, I ripped away from him, covering my mouth to hide the smirk that I couldn’t fight off.
Sebastian caught on quickly, pointing an accusatory finger at me. “So not funny.”
I shrugged with one shoulder, imitating him once more. “You started it. Now go shower and put a damn shirt on before Kade actually walks into something.” The way his muscles flexed with every movement he made was making me absolutely fucking feral.
Sebastian’s comment was enough to keep Kade from barging into our room when we surpassed his timeline. The funny thing is, we didn’t even do what he thought we were. We just spent some time talking and I helped him wrap his shoulder back up after he showered.
“Remind me to get you a watch for your birthday,” Kade sneered when we finally made it to the common room.
Sebastian just winked at him, the gesture enough to make Kade’s jaw clamp shut.
Sebastian winced as he took a seat on the sofa. I sat on the floor between his knees, resting my head against one of them.
Sawyer granted him a scowl, but hidden within it was a subtle look of concern. The two of them would be fine—I had faith in that. They just needed time.
After a quick search of the room, I noticed how Archer didn’t join us. He’d been tucked away in his office for days since he found out the truth about Venay. I made a mental note to visit and fill him in, maybe after breakfast tomorrow.
“I’m sure Seb has a story to share, considering he is in a sling. Speaking of which—” Kohen gave Pia a questionable glance, to which she took a seat by Sebastian and began unwrapping his arm. “But Leighton, you go first. What did you find out?”
“You can heal a dislocated shoulder but not a broken arm?” I whispered to Pia.
“I was feeling under the weather the day of your arm. Plus I just didn’t want to,” she hushed back.
My scowl vanished as Sebastian carefully pulled his arm free of his sleeve, putting his bicep on display for me to ogle at.
Gods. I couldn't wait to be alone with him later.
Leighton looked a tad nervous as she leisurely maneuvered herself in front of the fireplace, where she reached into her pocket, pulling out a handful of crumpled papers. She sucked in a hearty breath then flattened them out, passing them to Kohen to look over first.
“I didn’t see Beaumont at all while I was there.
I don’t know if he was off castle grounds or what, but regardless, that made breaking into his study fairly easy once I got my hands on the master key.
I’m not sure if they are the exact notes Venay had written down for him, but I did find information about the creatures he's been creating. Finding them in the mess of his desk was probably the most challenging part of the job,” Leighton explained, her attention focused on watching Kohen read.
“Woah.” Kohen's amazement interrupted her explanation. “Is this for real?” His eyes widened and stayed that way as he passed the papers to Kade.
Leighton nodded. “I found out his process for creating the creatures and their true name. I also found out why he’s really wanted Maeve so bad this entire time.”
I shuffled uncomfortably and straightened my posture, removing my cheek from Sebastian’s leg, who cursed from behind me as Pia worked on his arm.
“Please, before you go any further, tell me what they are called. Because if I have to keep referring to them as his children, I might never reproduce,” Sawyer begged, his palms pressed together in a prayer.
“Hykahs,” Kade said, looking up from the papers. “They are called Hykahs.”
“Ew,” Delani spat, accepting the parchment from Kade. “A gross name for a gross creature.”
“Well what the hell did you expect them to be called, Willawood two?” Sawyer snorted. “Daphne? Elizabeth?”
Delani’s tongue shot out of her mouth as she knitted her brows.
“Anyways, according to what I read, the Hykahs are created when too much power is given to mortals.” Leighton looked at Kade.
“Remember how the one we saw had a fistful of jewels? That much power stuffed into one body affects their entire physiology. The mortal body in its natural form can’t withstand that much godly power. It causes them to…change.”
What happens when too much godly power is forced into one body? Cicily had written that in the first journal.
“If a mortal body can’t physically hold that much power, then wouldn’t the things just die?” Sawyer asked.
“That’s what I thought, too, but there's another piece of this, which is how Venay came into play.” Leighton clamped her hands together behind her back and began pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace.
“If you keep reading, there's something that looks like a spell, or an enchantment. I think Venay was doing something to the mortals before embedding the jewels into them. Something to preserve their bodies throughout the entire process.”
“Like what?” I asked, standing up and sitting next to Sebastian now that Pia had finished healing his shoulder. He tested the arm out by performing a deep stretch before putting his shirt back on.
“I’m pretty confident that she was removing their souls,” Leighton answered.
“What?” Kohen blurted, his shock evident.
Sebastian put an arm around my shaking body, pulling me back into his chest.
“Think about it. The power from one stone is harsh enough on our bodies, let alone the number the Hykahs have. Maeve, for example, has stronger power than all of us, and she had a hard time controlling it without draining herself until the markings that is. Right?” Leighton looked to me for approval.
With my nod, she continued. “For the Hykahs to control the power of that many gods, they need to not feel. If they don’t have a soul, then they can’t feel pain or emotion, and their bodies are essentially just carcasses full of magic.”
“So why do they looked so fucked up?” Sawyer asked. “From what you and Kade told us, they’re taller than a normal person and have the weird, open-jaw distended-ribcage thing going on.”
“I don’t have a definite answer to that,” Leighton admitted. “The only thing I can think of is that the body needs to stretch and shift to accommodate the magnitude of power it's holding.”
“Can they hold more than five jewels?” Pia wondered aloud.
Leighton gulped and nodded. “The one we saw in the dungeon only had five but, if you read further through the notes, it appears Beaumont has been successful embedding seven jewels into one soulless vessel. And at the bottom of that page is a number. One hundred and forty.”
“What about it?” Sawyer replied.
“I think that is how many Hykahs he has created so far maybe,” she answered, unsure. “Though I could be wrong. Could be completely unrelated, but maybe not.”
My anxiety wrapped around me and squeezed. I pulled out of Sebastian’s arms to lean forward on the sofa, my hands clasped together. “Wait. You said you found out why Beaumont has wanted me so bad this whole time…why?”
My peach fuzz prickled as I felt Sebastian's sigh on the back of my neck while he brushed my hair behind my ear.
Leighton reached back into her pocket, pulling out another paper and crossing the threshold of the room to pass it to me.
As I read, my weak stomach made its timely appearance. My blood steamed to an unbearable heat, and my hand shook uncontrollably when I handed her back the parchment.
“He…He wants to turn me into one of them?” I shook my head, my hair falling into my eyes. “What good would I be without a soul?”
“You're the most powerful mortal on our continent, and probably the entire world,” Leighton replied softly. “If you were soulless, you would be the definition of unstoppable. As long as he learned to control you, that is. Without a soul, you wouldn't be you anymore.”
My mouth went dry.
“And, if he adds the seven powers of the other gods to your soulless vessel, you would carry the power of all the gods,” she added, twisting the knife in my throat.
No, no, no. Seven lives—eight if you counted the loss of my soul—just for Beaumont to turn me into a shell full of raw power to use to claim the empire.
“We obviously won’t let that happen, Maeve,” Kohen added, no doubt noticing how my skin had lost every bit of its color.
“I think his original plan was to reproduce with you in the hopes of having offspring who were also gifted by Blythe, but now that the prophecy has been fulfilled, there's less hope in that, and it also would have taken too long.
He wouldn't have known if it worked until the child became of age,” Leighton stated, nodding her head in the direction of the notes Pia now held.
As if I swallowed my damn tongue, I couldn't speak.
“Any idea how long he has been creating the Hykahs?” Kohen asked, plopping onto the floor.
“I don’t know,” Leighton answered solemnly.
“I was inches away from him just weeks ago,” I whispered the realization to mostly myself. “If things had gone wrong, I would already be one of those things.”
I thought him killing me was the worst case scenario, but turning into a soulless monster took the damn cake.
Sawyer jumped to his feet. “Okay, so how do we kill them? And how are we going to kill him? Because we've been saying for what, two months now, that we are gonna kill the bastard? Yet he is still breathing. And I’ll curse every one of the damn gods before we let that happen to Maeve.” His eyes shot to mine for a brief moment before returning to the entire group.
“I don’t know how to kill them,” Leighton sighed, stealing Sawyer’s chair.
“But now that Venay is dead, Beaumont needs a new enchanter to make more of them, and from some reading I’ve done in the past, I believe enchanters are hard to come by.
If I had a guess, that would be why he wasn’t there when I was in Draemor.
He’s probably on the search for a new assistant so he can continue creating his Hykah army. ”
“Okay maybe, but how would he even know Venay is dead?” Pia questioned.
We all pondered for a moment, stumped.
“They must have had some sort of arrangement worked out. Or, we all know that Venay used dark magic, maybe that has something to do with it,” Kohen stated.
“More than likely,” Leighton added.
“That definitely has something to do with it.” Sawyer’s eyes shot around the room.
“I’ve been reading her grimoire. There are twenty different ways they could have been in contact by the means of dark magic.
I’m sure Beaumont has caught on to her lack of effort by now.
If he hasn’t realized that it's because she’s dead, then he’s an even bigger moron than we thought. ”
A silent moment of pondering followed.
“So basically all you found out is that we are even more fucked than we thought?” Kade snapped, rolling his eyes towards the veil. “So fucking typical,” he murmured.
“How do you kill something that has a portion of power from multiple gods?” Delani raised the question. “I’d imagine a sword or blasting it with fire wouldn’t do the trick.”
“How do you kill something without a soul?” I whispered.
“You kill it with a god?” Kohen shrugged through the question as if the answer was even possibly that simple.
“Oh my fucking gods,” I garbled, my eyes falling to my outstretched arms. “If only gods can kill them, what if they can't be destroyed…like…ever.”
If he somehow managed to turn me into one of those things, and they couldn’t be killed, would I just walk the continent as an empty shell for the rest of the world's existence?
Sebastian shook his head as my pure denial sank in. “No. No, that can't be right. I’m sure there are other ways to kill them. This is just a theory.” I noticed how his eyes shot over to Kohen in a glare that told him not to speak anymore.
My knees were weak, but I forced myself to my feet. “I’m going to puke,” I gargled and clasped a hand against my mouth, then sped out of the common room, praying I made it back to my room in time.