Chapter 40
FORTY
GAVIN SMYTH
I don’t know who or where or how I would be if you hadn’t shown up in Warrich that day. For me.
You weren’t perfect, but you showed me my own strength.
I could thank you for eternity, and it would never be enough.
—UNSENT CORRESPONDENCE FROM QUEEN ARYELLA I TO THE BUTCHER OF NYRIDA
391 Years Ago
Blood oaths were fickle things. I learned far too late that the only binding terms of a blood oath were those spoken and repeated by both parties during the ritual itself. I’d told him no innocent blood, but what I’d unwittingly agreed to was killing any name he gave me.
It was compulsion. I had no choice but to obey.
Some kind of bond had formed because of the blood oath, and it allowed Molochai to speak directly into my mind.
It had been only one name at first. And then he named them all off, one by one.
Often, he made me kill the men first. He forced me to witness the horror in the eyes of mothers and children as I slaughtered their protectors.
Some tried to fight back, but I’d become too consumed and unrelenting, driven by corrupted darkness within my blood, too powerful for them to overcome. I didn’t understand it. All I knew was that evil and bloodlust had always lingered within me. Now my father wielded it at his will.
I stopped hearing their screams quickly. Whatever conscience I still possessed needed to preserve itself, so much that it allowed my awareness to break and recede into the hidden corners of my mind while it happened. Their cries were silenced. The children, especially. It was a small mercy.
Now, standing in the middle of a small, blood-soaked village northwest of Brinnea, hands shaking violently at my sides, the sound of screaming returned, but I couldn’t leave. To leave their bodies felt like abandonment, like I could just forget . I forced myself to memorize what I’d done.
Dead bodies of all ages, shapes, sizes were sprawled across this village. Innocents piled up like slaughtered cattle. If I were to look at my reflection, the only skin visible beneath the blood on my face was carved by the tracks of my tears.
I remembered her smiling and laughing on a castle rooftop and forced the rest away. My body flooded with joy that warmed the black tar off my soul. And I knew, even though I could choose to end my life now, that while Molochai’s magic kept me from aging, not dying, I wouldn’t give in.
No amount of suffering could make me leave her. Perhaps, besides her own.
“What have you done?” someone shuddered beside me. I recognized him the moment I drifted out of my blood-soaked haze. Simeon Whitlock.
How had he found me? How long had I been standing among the dead?
“I did what I had to do,” I answered numbly.
“How?”
“A blood oath.” I stared down at my hands, caked in the dried blood of my victims. “With my father. I kill on his command in exchange for immortality.” I winced. “I told you, Whitlock, that you would not stop me.”
“A blood oath! Gods! ” he choked in horror. “I should have known you would be just like him! Utterly consumed by obsession that masquerades as love.”
I closed my eyes and shed another tear. For these innocent people Molochai treated like game. For all that had and ever would die by my hand.
“ You share his blood and nothing more ,” she’d assured me.
Perhaps it’s not just his blood that I share after all, my love.
“She’ll never love you like this, Smyth,” Simeon’s voice followed me as I retreated from the carnage. “She’ll hate you once she learns what you’ve become.”
He was right. There was no redemption for this. For me . But there could be freedom, strength, and power for her. On her terms, not his.
“I know.” My heart and mind grew numb to my new reality. My time with her had run out. She would never truly be mine again, but I could see her smile. Hear her laugh. Even if from afar. That alone sent warmth flooding into my cold, empty chest. “But I love her.”
“That won’t change anything!”
“No,” I answered, not caring if he heard me as I walked away. “But it’s enough.”