Reforging Onyx (Breaking Onyx #2)

1. Onyx

Onyx

Images crashed through his mind, one after another, each ricocheting into the next.

He was seven years old, and it was his birthday; he was blowing out the candles on a cake, his parents were taking pictures nearby—

He was barely eleven and able to summon fire, which had been unfortunate when he’d nearly set a classmate on fire on accident; he was pulled quickly out of school after that until his control could get better—

Except his control had never had time to be taught, because then there was the Takeover and—

There was so much screaming, so much crying, and he didn’t know where to go or what to do—

Rough voices welcomed him into their fold, except not really, because they didn’t trust him—

He woke up with hard dirt and rocks beneath his back after another uneasy night, unable to get comfortable no matter how hard he’d tried—

He was taking his first punch to the face—

There was fighting, so much fighting, one event melding into the next—

Years and years passed of more of the same—

He was roasting those fuckers alive, the stench of burning flesh on the air, and he was lashing out with his fists, until everything…

Went…

Black.

Onyx came awake all at once, gasping for breath. He went to sit up, only to find that he couldn’t move because… because…

Strong arms held him, arms he didn’t want to recognize but somehow did from all the times he’d smelled that soap, and Onyx froze. What were the options? Fight or flight?

Except he could do neither because how could he fight Dominic Bancroft when he was caged in his arms?

He tried to hunch in on himself, his shoulders drawing inward.

He went to wrap his arms around himself, but he couldn’t move his hands.

They were bound together strangely, palms pressed against each other.

He tried to part them, but the bonds wouldn’t yield, and his breathing instantly quickened as fear slammed into him.

Because he’d survived.

Onyx had wanted to die.

He hadn’t.

And now he was here, and he couldn’t make sense of it at all. Why wasn’t he tied at the foot of Dominic’s bed or trapped in the crate? Why was he bound so simply; why was he being held? He didn’t understand it, and he didn’t know that he wanted to.

Even though Dominic would know he’d woken, Onyx remained still, barely daring to breathe for fear of drawing attention to himself.

His brain worked furiously, trying to make heads or tails of the situation. He tasted blood on his tongue, and given that he wasn’t in any pain, he had to assume he’d been dosed with vampire blood again.

Fuck. That reset the clock on when he could try again.

Dominic’s arm tightened around him. “You’ve tested me enough for a twenty-four hour period. You might reconsider if you’re thinking of doing it again,” he murmured against Onyx’s hair.

Onyx shook his head, not sure whether he was trying to indicate that he wasn’t going to test Dominic again or that he didn’t want to talk to him or some other thing entirely. All he knew was that he didn’t want to be there.

He didn’t want to be alive.

He wasn’t relieved that his attempt had failed; he wasn’t happy to wake again. No, he knew there would be consequences for what he’d tried to do, both for him and potentially Shane.

Did he care about Shane? The thought of the wolf made white hot anger threaten to surge up within him. If the wolf hadn’t interrupted him, he could’ve been free.

Or a vampire.

He said nothing.

Dominic’s thumb brushed lightly over the bare skin of Onyx’s chest, making his skin prickle. “In light of your… choices yesterday, I’m making a modification to our agreement. You can’t try to kill me or yourself.”

It didn’t matter.

The agreement wasn’t going to continue anyway, not after what Onyx had done.

Dominic would punish him, and they’d return to how things had been.

Onyx would try to kill Dominic, and fail, and Dominic would rape and torture him and make those splintering cracks spread and spread until there was nothing left of him.

Dominic sighed softly, continuing when Onyx remained silent, “I thought things were better, Onyx. Weren’t they?”

The words caught him off guard, and he let out a choked, bitter half-laugh, half-sob. Dominic was so wrong. Things weren’t better. Onyx no longer had a reason to fight; he no longer had a reason to survive except to face day after day of… whatever this was going to become.

“Of course you thought so.” Onyx's body started to tremble in anticipation of everything going horribly wrong. This conversation was the precursor to Dominic further amending their agreement in a way that would hurt him.

Fuck, he wished he had been faster, that he’d cut deeper, that Shane had just left him to bleed out. If only something had gone differently, he wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Dominic made a soft sound of agreement. “I did think so. Books, games, music, free time. Weren’t these better? You’d been adjusting so well. What happened?”

What happened?

Wasn’t it obvious? Obviously not.

“There’s no way out,” Onyx found himself whispering.

“It’s just… one day after another of being your fucking toy, trying to earn treats and shit that doesn’t really matter, with you touching me over and over again and expecting me to just be grateful to you because you were like… even a little decent.”

“If those things don’t matter, what does?” Dominic inquired.

Onyx didn’t even know how to answer the question, not to someone as utterly out of touch as Dominic Bancroft. Couldn’t he see the answer? Could he really be that oblivious?

“Freedom,” he finally choked out.

Not that he’d ever known freedom for himself. Not that he’d ever experience it in the future. But it held an allure to it that he wanted — badly — to experience.

“My magic,” he added, yearning for the feeling he’d had in his dream where he’d used it both so innocently and with such deadly efficiency. “I don’t want any of this. I don’t want you. So yeah. I’d rather die than belong to you.”

“Freedom,” Dominic repeated with a sigh.

“That was never your birthright, Onyx. Not as a witch, not as a Rayne.” His thumb traced a light circle on Onyx’s chest. “Freedom is an illusion, a distant mirage that tempts and taunts and never delivers the fruits of its promises. The most that any might have is their choice of gilded cage or iron. Whether it was mine or another, you were always going to be caged.”

“Easy for you to say when you’re the one who has it,” Onyx said bitterly, pulling against the touch.

He still didn’t understand why they were lying there with Dominic’s arms around him, but he didn’t necessarily want to bring it up and have to really confront it or what it meant.

“And I didn’t have to be caged! I was only a kid when everything happened. I didn’t deserve any of this.”

Dominic’s arms tightened around Onyx, only relaxing once he’d stopped squirming.

“That was a decision that neither you nor I had any hand in,” he stated.

“And as a child, that was undoubtedly true. But after you joined the rebellion? You forged your own pathway there.” He sighed again.

“I offer the gilded cage with as much freedom as I can provide, and that is still not enough.”

“Stop making it sound like I’m some ungrateful brat,” Onyx snapped, trying to sit up again, to put distance between himself and Dominic, only for the other witch’s arms to tighten around him even more.

No matter what he tried, he couldn’t get up or move away.

“You’re not the one who was tortured and…

and…” Onyx couldn’t say the other word even then.

It would make it too real, would send further cracks through his already fractured psyche.

“You’re not the one who keeps having to give everything up.

You’re not the one who has to keep putting up with things that make you uncomfortable, things you hate.

You’re not—” He made a frustrated sound.

“Just… don’t act like you’re some good person, because you aren’t, and we both know that. ”

“I would never claim to be a good person, Onyx. I’m under no illusion of that being the case.

I have no altruism in me, only ulterior motives.

And my ulterior motive right now is to find out what we need to do to bring you back from the edge of the abyss, because it cannot have you.

” Dominic took in a deep breath of Onyx’s hair, making Onyx shudder hard against the sensation of warm breath against his skin.

“Your magic? I believe I know how to allow you that for a short period. I’ve been working on that these past days. ”

Onyx went still, and for a moment, he stopped trying to free himself of Dominic’s grasp. But even the idea of getting access to his magic couldn’t override the pain and agitation. It was probably only a lie anyway, or something Dominic would tell him about only to deny it now.

“Why?” he asked, his voice suddenly fragile as he voiced a question that could have so many different meanings.

“Why do you want me so bad? I’m just some stupid kid who made stupid decisions.

I can’t even be a weapon. I can’t be anything.

What do you want from me that you can’t get so much more easily from someone else? Why me? Why?” He blinked back tears.

So badly, he needed to know. He needed to understand.

Dominic’s arms remained tight around him as he spoke.

“The first and greatest gift of the gods to humanity was fire.

With fire, with the ember of creation, the world came into being.

Civilization arose because of those embers.

Those sparks of creation, of knowledge, of curiosity and the need to know ‘how’ and ‘why.’ From hand to hand, the embers have passed.

Civilization to civilization: by conquer, by trade, by negotiation, they have spread.

From father to son, mother to daughter, generation to generation.

“That ember burned so brightly in your eyes the day I laid eyes on you.

I thought it might come through and burn me, and I relished it.

I wanted to feel it. In an age where fire has been forgotten and lost, it burned in you.

And I thought to forge it, to hone the fire into a blade.

If not the blade of the gods, then certainly the blade of my fate.

“But that almost smothered your fire, almost lost it with the demands that I placed on you, with the things that I did to you. I wish to coax it forth from you again, see that ember glow again and catch fire. And if not what I had originally wanted, I still want to see you burn so brightly, and I am still drawn to that fire.”

As usual, Onyx didn’t understand when Dominic went on his rambles about history or mythology. But he listened, only to end up letting out a choked, despairing little sound. “That fire is gone.”

And it was. He had nearly died, all because that spark had been extinguished, and the fact that he’d lived had only doused those dying embers.

He was broken, empty, devoid of any fire.

“It is not,” Dominic whispered into Onyx’s ear. “It’s there. I know it is. It’s struggling now; only the faintest of flickers are there, and that’s my fault. I’ve miscalculated so many times, but let me coax it forth again. Let me nurture the embers and watch those clipped wings burn again.”

Onyx swallowed hard. “Don’t pretend to give me a choice,” he said hoarsely. “Don’t act like it’s a gift, either, because it’s not. I don’t want it. Anything you want from me, I don’t want from you.”

But he had burned so brightly once, hadn’t he? Before his wings had been clipped and he’d been reduced to ash.

“You can choose to help me, to stop fighting me and let me show you how good they can be,” Dominic murmured into Onyx’s ear.

“What do you want? Your magic? Three days, and I will make it happen. Leave the house, travel? Show me that I can trust you, and these become possible. What would you like to see? Where would you like to go?”

Onyx’s heart skipped a beat. There was no way this was real. It was all a trick. A trap. He knew that.

So why did he want to believe it wasn’t?

“And what do you get out of this?” he asked, his voice shaking. “Don’t try to tell me this bullshit about my fire or whatever. You only do things with ulterior motives. What’s your motive, Dominic Bancroft?”

Dominic chuckled, the sound barely more than a breath. “You, Onyx Rayne. I get you. I offer you the world, and you can have it from within my arms.”

“I don’t want to be in your arms,” Onyx whispered. “If that’s the cost…” He didn’t know if he could pay it. Not knowing what Dominic expected of him then, what he was pretty sure he’d want in the future. He always made sure to say yet and if like he thought Onyx would suddenly start wanting him.

But that would never happen.

“You don’t want to now, but that can change.” Dominic's voice was unbearably soft.

Onyx shook his head. It wouldn’t.

But he wanted the things Dominic could give him — beyond the fancy trinkets and the small freedoms. He wanted his magic, and he wanted to see the world beyond these walls.

He wanted a life. He’d never been anywhere but the city and the bayou.

Could he change himself completely if it meant accepting freedoms from within a cage?

Could he forget the cage existed, given enough time?

Living within its confines, never getting close enough to remember he was trapped?

“You’re never going to give up,” Onyx muttered. “You’ll keep pushing and pushing and I…” He didn’t know if he could withstand the pressure forever. “I still want you dead. You have to know that.”

“I know you do,” Dominic said. “I don’t expect you to stop.” He pressed a kiss to the back of Onyx’s shoulder in an overly intimate, uncomfortable gesture. “You can hate me as much as you want to.”

“Stop treating me like I’m your boyfriend or something." Onyx shuddered away from that kiss. “I’m not.”

Dominic’s arms tightened around Onyx again, ensuring he couldn’t go too far. “It’s still early,” he murmured. “And a lot of things happened in the last twenty-four hours. Go back to sleep. In three days, I’ll take you to have your magic again, and between now and then, you think about it.”

All he would be able to think about was the impending price. But he was drained, and he was tired of fighting. His fire was barely a flicker, it was true; maybe with rest, it could become a flame again.

Or maybe not.

Either way, he wanted to sleep, even if it meant remaining in Dominic’s arms a bit longer. So instead of arguing, he only nodded.

Three days.

They’d see.