Chapter 22 Ketheron #2
“That motherfucker healed him, preserved his body so that it didn’t rot, that he didn’t come back as Animated Fleshwork.
As for the actual resurrection… Ambrose would know.
He is deeply tapped into mammoth surges of black magic, which is exactly what it would take to resurrect my father.
Those surges can go undetected by pure magic users, which explains how the Guardian Movement wouldn’t have registered it.
” He stilled, eyes widening. “It was him in the Veil.”
“You are referring to when Velra was trapped there?” I asked, my voice coming out unsteady.
“Yes. Something was passed from somebody inside the Veil to somebody on the outside. The outside being, given what we know now, matches Morien. And as for something being passed and the comment said person made about Morien owing him, then even threatening him… combined with the blue magic… it all points to that being Corvin.”
“And what do you believe he passed?”
“The one thing Morien would care about—power.”
I frowned, my mind now awhirl because of the awful Corvin mentions.
“Mine,” Sylas told me. “The item that was passed through to Morien was my necromantic core—the portion that Corvin stole from me.”
“And this bargain they made… Corvin could be returned to life also.”
I heard Sylas say something, but I could not register it.
I staggered back into a wall, covering my face with my hands as a memory I had managed to bury from my conscious thought clawed its way to the surface.
I could not stop it.
Even with all my might.
It took me.
Blue light encompassed me as I was forcibly teleported.
I saw a dome of the same magic—Corvin’s magic—trapping me within. Or keeping somebody out, perhaps.
Because I was already restrained.
Brutally so.
The surroundings of another lab came into view.
So many labs.
I’d seen the inside of too many.
Chimera Circle and their deplorable hybrid experiments.
“Ketheron.”
It was her.
My kindred.
Ariana Martel.
I strained to look up from the position I found myself in on my stomach, bound by white glowing chains, my arms and legs stretched out either side of me.
I roared, struggling against the restrictiveness.
Struggling to reach her.
“Be still and look upon the one who is causing you so much grief!” that awful voice, far too familiar, commanded me.
Corvin.
My eyes settled on the golden-haired kind one. “Kindred,” I rasped. Something was wrong with her. She was ailing. I smelled it then. No. No! “My blood… I scent it… it’s hurting you? Before… I fed it to you… you were damaged? Because of me?”
“You didn’t know what would happen. You reacted to save and help. That’s what matters.”
I fought to crane my neck to look up at Corvin. “You’re hurting her… stop. My blood… it’s toxic to her… I see it. She can’t heal. She’s in pain.”
“Something you should not care about. Something you should actually relish.”
“Never!” I roared.
Corvin snickered and crouched outside the dome.
“You do realize she’s the reason you’re suffering, don’t you?
” He tilted his head. “You imprinted on her and now it’s weakening the leash I have on you.
” He jerked up his right sleeve, revealing a shimmering black and gold circle—the leash he’d afflicted me with.
“This is compromised because of her. Because she made you feel. Made you question your mission—what you were fucking created for in the first place. And those manacles? They’ll keep tearing into you… for as long as you keep defying me.”
“Stop!” Ariana cried, struggling to her feet. “This is madness! He doesn’t deserve this!”
“He was made for this! And you complicated it! You elicited humanity and a depth of sentience in him that was never supposed to be! Years of work and now I’ve had to go to great lengths to find workarounds to the damage that you’ve done.
” He stormed toward her, making me snarl at the aggression in it directed at her.
“I’ll end his pain immediately if you reject his imprint on you. ”
“What are you talking about?”
“You tell him you don’t care about him, that he’s nothing but a thing to you, a monster, that he’s a broken god only worthy of being enslaved by me—somebody who knows well how to wield power, how to rewrite the supernatural world using said power.”
She looked at me, grimacing, hating my pain.
She cared.
She really wanted to help me.
Emotion swam in my eyes, threatening to take me over.
“No,” she told Corvin, resolutely. “I won’t forsake him. He deserves better than that.”
I smiled and managed to eke out, “Thank you… Ariana.”
But then Corvin laughed in that cold, sadistic way of his, telling her, “Did you really think I’d put that decision in your hands? The abomination? The weak little cunt who ran from her own power? The fool who refused to act unilaterally and squandered her abilities and greatness instead?”
I snarled at his awful words to her.
Corvin held the sword up—Valkrith—and spoke, “This is now imbued with your blood and your power, mixed with Dark Fae magic that violates free will in the way that the spellcaster can determine very specifically. Seeing as though Ketheron is being held back by the bond he’s formed with you, this will work to sever that forcibly. ”
“No. Do not fucking touch him with that thing!”
I roared and fought against the manacles.
But Corvin breached the dome and approached me with the sword.
I saw Ariana struggling against her predicament, trying to overcome the Hellfire confining her as well as the weakness he’d levied upon her.
I started as I saw her manage it, her manacles shattering.
She looked out at me and winked.
I returned it.
She thrust her hands out and breached the Hellfire itself. Her power swirled and she actually managed to not just push it back, but to destroy it.
Corvin felt the high-level magic she was invoking. “No! Not possible!”
He lunged at me and drove Valkrith into my gut.
“Stop!” was the last thing I heard, Ariana’s scream echoing off the walls.
And then all that existed was pain.
“Ketheron?”
I blinked back to the immediate moment to see Sylas standing before me, his hands on my shoulders, as he gazed at me with great concern.
My lip trembled.
His care bled into me.
It clashed against what I’d experienced all over again from that memory.
And then I buried my head in his shoulder.
His arms wrapped around me, holding me tightly as he stroked my back. “Shh. You’re okay. You’re here with us. He won’t hurt you ever again. If I have to decimate the entire fucking Veil to see to it, I will. Corvin will never lay a hand on you again.”
“Okay,” I murmured, sinking into him.
He wouldn’t.
Corvin Morvain was dead. And he would remain that way.
He had to.