Chapter 8
~Winter~
It was happening again.
I managed to prevent the shudder from my sudden use of my necromantic side from being externally apparent.
That really wouldn’t assist during this face-off I now found myself in the midst of.
It wasn’t just that uncomfortable sensation this time, though. An unsavory tar-like taste filled my mouth.
Excellent, it was now escalating.
As Keuric stood there in a whole lot of shock, it bought me a few seconds to do what needed to be done, and I forced my necromantic power to the surface again, calling my amber magic to my fingertips and drawing the shuddering sensation and the tarry taste into a physical manifestation.
I watched as it formed a levitating two-inch amber prism that glinted in the midday light.
Thanks to Vaxan’s suggestion that my issue could actually be a result of some sort of external interference, rather than internal instability as I’d feared, this had come to mind.
Capturing the essence of the issue so I could study it when it wasn’t actually happening to me in real-time, which was a near-impossible feat.
“What the hell is that?” Keuric asked, trying to come off as demanding, but really making his nervousness known.
My presence generated that reaction a lot.
Oftentimes, though, it wasn’t really my presence so much as it was the image of Sylas Morgrave’s son appearing before them in a flare of power when wrongdoing had been committed.
Instead of seeing that as me stuck in his shadow, I took a more positive approach—it had provided many assists over the years. In fact, just the threat that opponents saw in that was enough, preventing things from actually having to escalate to violence.
“Nothing for you,” I responded, as I stowed the prism away magically, then called my necromantic power back. “Now walk away.”
Calling my power back served to embolden him and he made the mistake of taking an aggressive step forward instead. “How about you walk away? You’re getting in the way of the delivering of justice, death boy.”
“What justice?”
Truth be told, I hadn’t had time to determine what I’d intervened in.
Yes, my savior complex had been known to put me in precarious situations.
I’d been conducting a Ruminat—a form of re-centering and meditation for magic-wielders—a quarter acre away just inside the tree line when I’d heard Zayn’s scream, then seen Keuric flying furiously above campus grounds.
Even witnessing those two things separately, given their altercation in The Caverns the other night, it hadn’t taken much to piece together that they’d been in the midst of another.
I just didn’t know what this particular bout of violence was all about.
It was also strange that Zayn had been the one trounced.
His command of his Ifrit abilities could certainly stand against the likes of Keuric.
He must have been caught off guard.
Or Keuric had upset him.
When Zayn was saddened, unlike with his rage, it could weaken him.
“He messed with something belonging to me!” Keuric yelled fiercely, gesturing around me to Zayn, who I could hear panting from the ice water dripping off him.
I sent a rush of my Wraith shadows behind me, twisting my hand so they swirled around him in a gentle funnel that would serve to dry him off and wick the water away. It should be enough for him to then invoke his flame and heat himself. Right now, that was clearly proving impossible for him to do.
“Messed with what?”
“I scented it! He tasted her!” He screwed up his face. “And she tasted him!”
Her. His something belonging to him was a person.
That was highly disturbing.
Especially when I knew it could only be one being.
Evira.
Zayn had been with Evira.
Well, that was… unprecedented.
I shot a look over my shoulder at Zayn and he flinched.
Of course, he hid his true reaction quickly and threw out a load of bravado instead as he yelled over at Keuric, “And I’d do it again and again and fucking again, motherfucker!”
Keuric snarled and bolted forward.
But he stopped short of actually colliding with me, gritting his teeth as he made sure he stilled a foot out.
That was about right.
“Evira isn’t yours,” I spoke calmly to Keuric.
Said calm wasn’t without effort, though, truth be told.
“She’s meant to be. And she will be. But him getting in between us is complicating all that and slowing down my progress in getting her back.”
“You need to cease this pursuit of her.” My eyes flamed with my amber fire, almost unbidden. Oops.
“The hell I will.”
“You’re a real creepy motherfucker,” Zayn growled. “I can’t even overstate it, that’s how fucked in the head you are. She’s a person, not property, you damned maniac!”
Jeez.
“Zayn,” I spoke over my shoulder. “Calm.”
I waited with bated breath, because I absolutely needed him to settle down with what I was about to say. If he remained at this level of anger, after he heard my words I had for Keuric, that would escalate to unrestrained and highly destructive rage.
Our gazes clashed briefly and he actually gave a nod. No biting back at me, or telling me he had this handled, to let this fight continue on. No posturing.
None of that.
Reason actually won out.
I didn’t doubt for a moment that this development between him and Evira had something to do with that. Whatever they’d just shared had most definitely soothed him. The fact he hadn’t already burst around me even in his current state and gone at Keuric said a lot where that was concerned.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
Wow.
I blinked, then took a step closer to Keuric.
An odd, perhaps perverse, sense of satisfaction rolled through me as he inched back.
“I know what you did to her. So, end this pursuit immediately or that will be made public knowledge.”
“You… what? No. You would have already revealed it if you knew. This is some psychological manipulation like Sylas and your other daddy, Cassius, are known for.”
Because of course it couldn’t simply be attributed to me.
“She asked me not to make it known to anyone else. And I made her that promise. But if you continue with this insanity, I’ll break my promise.”
I wouldn’t.
But Keuric didn’t respect other people’s wants and agency, especially not that of women, so it was believable from his warped worldview.
When he still didn’t back down, what I hadn’t wanted to have to do proved necessary—the reason I’d needed Zayn calmer in case I had to go there.
So, I spelled it out plainly to Keuric. “You used your family’s favorable political relationship with House Vortimer to draw close to her.
You played the nice guy role to a T, preying on her inexperience and the inevitable vulnerability that went along with it.
You decided to take advantage of your relationship with Evira and use her as a shortcut to power.
A sprinkling of gaslighting here and casual emotional abuse there and you tried to tamper down her rebellious and free nature, to control her.
It failed. She was stronger than that, stronger than you.
You went further. You tried to use an illicit spell on her that you infused into her drink the night the two of you had planned to sleep together for the first time.
The spell aimed to disintegrate the magical birth control she had in place and forcibly impregnate her with your child.
It was imperceptible—except to Torvek. He stopped you that night. ”
“Fucking shit,” Zayn seethed. “Sick piece of shit!”
I pushed past his reaction and focused on Keuric’s stunned one. “So, yes, I know.”
His eyes flashed. “You’re not dragon. You don’t understand the intricacies of our culture or—”
“It’s got fuck all to do with culture, you psychopath!” Zayn yelled from behind me.
It was actually him somewhat calm. Yelling but not physically reacting was a far cry from his usual approach when he was antagonized. He really was trying.
And I hadn’t seen this from him in a long time.
Keuric slammed a glowing hand to my chest with a snarl.
The physical impact jarred me, but the magical aspect did no damage.
He frowned. “No. That shouldn’t—how?”
“Complex physiology? What can I say?”
“Subvolo,” Zayn called to me.
I started.
It was from our made-up language. It essentially meant “the one below will fly”, basically a signal for a low-to-high attack.
The immediate threat Keuric was trying to keep my attention on was his live magic trying to tear into my chest, something me calling on my Wraith frost quietly was countering, but something I had to sustain with focus.
I could of course with my death-aligned nature take hits of this sort without actively calling on that, but it was harder to do when it was this potent and with sustained effort on an opponent’s part.
I went to employ my shadows to wrap around his wrist and yank his fist out of range, so it didn’t connect.
But then a violent wind ripped through the air, frost and a sudden snow squall generating, and it had Keuric stilling.
Evira tore into the fray, sweeping one of her dragon wings at Keuric and ripping him from me.
He hit the ground, rolled, then came up in a primed crouch, snarling at her.
“Snarl at me all you want,” she spat at him, hissing through her teeth, even gnashing them. “It’s all just urging me on to make this as fucking painful as possible.”
“How dare you even—”
She bolted forward and thrust her fist into his gut. He choked at the brutal impact and doubled over, and she followed through with an uppercut to his chin that had his head snapping back, and him stumbling.
“Oh, my bad. It’s whore, right? That’s what you called me up in my dorm moments ago.”
He had said what?
Zayn came up on my side, and I called my shadows back when I saw he was now dried.
He looked on far too eagerly at the violent confrontation taking place a few feet from us.
Evira leapt up with her animal agility, smashed her knee into Keuric’s face, then touched down and spun into a back kick that sent him crashing to the ground and skidding across the grass.