Chapter 66
Like a puppet steered by invisible strings, my head spun around.
No collar.
No dark mark.
Gone.
No. No. No.
A primal roar reached my ears, and only belatedly did I discern that the noise had been my own rage I’d allowed to escape.
An icy hand of dread wrapped around my throat, threatening to steal my air as a picture slowly formed, sinking into my brain and hooking its ugly claws into my consciousness. “What have you done?”
For a quick moment, triumph set Cantarlann’s eyes ablaze, and when he spoke, all covers of pretense fell away.
“The severance is complete. The Graigh finished their ritual long before you arrived. And the best is, there’s nothing you can do about what transpired and the results thereof, Drochthuar Granna an Leirscriosta. ”
“What ritual?” Still in denial against better judgment, I growled in anger.
“The one cutting the Wielder-Amplifier binding between the two of you.”
Impossible.
My chest rumbled with another growl so ferocious the detonation rattled my insides. The red film covering my vision intensified.
The binding.
Emptiness instead of warmth.
Not suppressed.
Gone.
Cut.
No.
I was done listening to the fucking bullshit—the binding, a result of divine energy, was unbreakable—tumbling from Cantarlann’s mouth. Even though Antas had warned me earlier as well.
The urge to act was almost impossible to ignore, and I directed the magic shackling him to alter his position.
Strands of inky substance lifted him up, hauled him closer to the couch on which I’d settled Nayana, and forced his uncooperative form onto his knees in front of her.
Serving repentance was the only appropriate position for him, cowering at her feet while he could only witness how I destroyed his entire existence.
The magical restraints secured him to the ground, kept him in his position, and I made sure he was out of reach of my female, no matter how hard he’d pursue to touch her.
“Do something!” Cantarlann, like the preposterous fool he was, had the audacity to plead with Nayana, and another primal and feral growl built deep inside my chest.
Nayana’s answer, though too weak and silent, was like a balm to my tortured soul.
“No, Cantarlann. I can’t, and I won’t. For once, I won’t be reasoning with him. You provoked him, pushed him too far, and there’s no coming back from the accursed place he’s currently inhabiting. Hopefully, today will serve as a reminder of why not to cross Dion.”
Staring at her, pride had my breast swelling and my pulse speeding up despite the horrible circumstances.
That the darker side of my nature made my woman uneasy wasn’t a secret—yet, with those few uttered words, she’d expressed her acceptance for all I was.
Sinking to my knees in front of her, I grabbed her hands, leaned forward, and pressed a soft kiss to her clammy forehead.
My skin was vibrating with the demand for revenge, to retaliate, to maim, to kill.
The thin thread of my patience was pulled taut, and each fiber snapped in a chain reaction the longer I remained inactive.
Only the touch of her hands held me back; the innate need to ensure her safety overpowered the compulsion to let go and unleash my fury.
Antas had asked me for moderation and thoughtfulness.
As if.
No mercy.
No consideration.
Only destruction.
Let them behold the monster.
The Graigh on the dais were likely the last of their tribe, but I couldn’t bring myself to care about a potential genocide at my hands, no matter how much I respected the ancients and our roots.
They deserved to die for hurting what was mine, with no regard for whether my actions would deliver their extinction or not.
Their fault.
I was retribution.
The time had come.
“Who harmed you, Nayana? Hurt you?”
My female stayed silent. She didn’t just appear exhausted. No, she was drained, and the horror of watching her flame dimming before my eyes spurred me into a frantic loop. Something wasn’t right with her, and I reached out to caress her cheek. “Tell me, Nayana.”
“The Graigh. Cantarlann.”
Power leaked out of me, feeding the magic that kept the entire Cuirt at my mercy.
For the last time, I gently stroked Nayana’s soft skin before I rose to full height and stalked to the center of the hall. As much as I yearned to take my time with torturing each condemned creature, my female’s state wouldn’t allow such indulgences.
So, I’d settle for maximum pain.
Gripping the connecting cords to the fae around me tighter, I opened my soul and attuned myself to the group as a whole.
Without any warning, more tendrils, darker than midnight, shot out of me.
Like a puppet master, I directed my magic to approach every fae apart from the Graigh and Cantarlann, and as soon as each unfortunate spirit had a razor-sharp tip hovering in front of them, I ordered the constructs to lunge as one.
Burrowing through skin and bones, destroying tissue, and bathing in blood, my creatures eased deeper into chests, aiming for ultimate agony. Listening to each body’s life signs, I twisted my powers in a way so no one could black out or perish before I decided the time for their demise had come.
A cacophony of screams awakened the creativity I’d buried so deep within myself a lifetime ago, and instead of continuing to order every tendril to proceed at the same pace, I sorted the noises after their pitch and varied the levels of pain for each of my victims.
The result was beautiful and stole my breath away.
Conducting this giant orchestra of roughly ten dozen fae, each being their own instrument producing whimpers, wails, shrieks, pleas, and screams, I composed my own symphony of suffering, each note singing an ode to the downfall of a toxic cult that had dared to touch what was mine.
An indescribable emotion filled my heart. For centuries, I hadn’t bothered with music anymore, apart from the few opportunities I’d sung, and creating an anthem so grand, so perfect, soothed and maybe even healed a part of my broken soul.
Losing myself in my masterpiece, this supreme rhapsody of torment, I accelerated my composition, played with the dynamics, diversified the tempo, until the conclusion of my monumental requiem dawned much too soon.
Right now, I was an avenging angel, unstoppable in my thirst for violence and death.
During the finale, I controlled the tendrils to add a polyphonic element, ordered my strings to encase every single heart of each instrument, cherished the thundering staccato of each sequence, and morphed my magic to drain their energetic essences.
I felt every single beat inside of me, how the cocooned organs went from hammering erratically to a slower rhythm.
Skin turned ashen, but the pain only magnified under my ministrations.
White robes gained blooming patterns as they stained with blood.
Screams mutated into whimpers, and pleas faded to a decrescendo, but there wasn’t an ounce of mercy within me, only burning wrath and a crazed obsession for the hymn I composed.
Heartbeats converted to a mere vibrato, and the coda was imminent.
Instead of draining the last drops of energy, though, I pulled at all dark tendrils at once.
The iron smell in the heavy air intensified as dozens of still-pulsing organs were ripped from their owners’ chests, finishing the elegy with an abrupt conclusion.
My chest heaved, and I felt alive as rarely before. Even though I couldn’t access Nayana’s Potential, power like never before saturated me to the brim.
Like one giant creature, the dark tendrils jerked at my command, hauling the hearts away from their former hosts. Blood splattered in rivulets as my magic strands withdrew from their victims.
One after the other, my constructs piled their trophies on the ground at Nayana’s feet as an offering to their goddess. She was pale and had closed her eyes, appearing more frail than I could cope with.
But at least the mountain of her enemy’s hearts sacrificed to her filled my chest with satisfaction and pride, just as much as the symphony I’d composed only for her.
Still, this wasn’t enough.
Nothing would ever be enough.
More.
I needed more.
More blood, more agony.
More music.
My attention snapped to the Graigh on the dais, still trapped by my darkness. They battled, but no matter how much they opposed me, their struggles were in vain. One corner of my mouth lifted as I appraised my opponents.
But no.
First—
Without detaching my gaze from the ancients, I transformed my writhing tendrils and wove them together until only four massive interlocked entities remained, strengthened by their former tributes’ life force and eager for more violence.
Masterfully, I directed them to Cantarlann, and each grabbed one of the fae male’s limbs, raising him high into the air. Since nothing could be as beautiful as my earlier composition, and I wasn’t in the mood for the turncoat’s voice, I gagged him with a fresh piece of shadow rope.
When he was in place, at around ten feet in the air, I tore my awareness away from the dais and regarded the instigator of Nayana’s torment. His face was signed with wet trails, and I resisted the temptation to dip my finger into the liquid and taste his salty anguish.
Barely.
Instead, I canted my head, tapping my index finger against my chin.
How could I reach my goal without his ligaments giving out first?
Fuck. If Ireas were here, he would be able to answer my anatomy questions.
After a minute of pondering, I directed the four tendrils to wrap around each arm and leg completely and latch their grip onto his shoulders and hips.
And then I ordered them into movement. Slow at first, each one toward a different cardinal direction, stretching Cantarlann from slight discomfort to growing pain.
Studying the process with fascination—after all, I’d never done this before—the agony that gradually appeared on the male’s face was gratifying.