Chapter 36
Carwyn’s mind came to reluctantly, even when her body heaved as she was pulled from her seated position.
Consciousness jolted into her when she was hoisted over someone’s shoulder, only for it to fade momentarily from the swimming dizziness.
Strong incense clogged her senses – sweet, pleasant, comforting, and familiar.
When she cracked open her eyes, multiple candles pushed back against the dimness with a warm amber glow, the midday sun no longer shining within this small, homey cottage. A window glittered with stars and pale, waning moonlight.
Her groan was lost to the sound of boots thumping against old, worn timber.
A tanned, limp hand came into view as she was carted away, then the back of Kier’s black hair as it pooled against the ground like spilled ink. The red hair of the glamour he wore was gone as he lay unmoving. She frowned at first, disorientated, then her eyes shot open with alertness.
Something’s wrong.
“Two witches?” a man asked, crouching next to Kier to press two fingers to his pulse. “We were only interested in the empath you told us of, but we’re pleased with this turn of events, Harietta.”
“Yes, well... I do so try to please you lot.”
Carwyn lifted her head, the motion sending a nauseating wave through her, to find the woman standing at the back of her home. With her hands clasped in front of her, her expression was blank and empty.
“Mind telling us why he’s naked, though?”
She shrugged, indifferent and unbothered. “How am I supposed to know?”
Rage boiled inside Carwyn. “Harietta, you lying cow!”
With her wrists tied behind her back, the rough rope chafing her sensitive skin as she tugged, she could do little more than drive her knees into the chest of the man who held her. His grip faltered for a satisfying moment before tightening until fingers dug so deep they bruised.
“Carwyn.” She smiled, then a flicker of something that might’ve been regret flashed over her face. “I’m truly sorry about this, and about your little friend. Then again, I meant for him to get tangled up in all this, so I suppose I’m not all that sorry.”
Two men worked together to bind Kier’s wrists behind his back, yanking the knots tight with a creak before rolling him over. Her insides recoiled when her stomach bounced on her captor’s shoulder as he trudged down a single porch step, punching the air from her lungs with a wheeze.
Trampled grass and wildflowers blurred beneath her as the chilly night air surround her. A whinny in the background had terror climbing her throat when she was taken towards a group of horses who stamped nervously.
Her eyes darted around the clearing, noting the half-dozen men. Horror crawled down her spine like an icy droplet before it clutched her chest with a set of ravenous claws.
A coven of dark witches.
Another man helped to throw her on the back of a horse like a saddlebag. She managed to kick him in the chest with full force, and he grunted as he stumbled back. When the other tried to still her, she bit into his arm and her tongue slipped across bare skin.
All manner of horrible emotions detonated through her.
Anger – seething and cancerous. Pain that mirrored hers when he fisted the back of her hair and tugged with all his might.
Despicable intentions twisting with hunger for power.
Lust. She released him, the taste of copper rancid upon her tongue as all she’d perceived imbedded into her heart like razor-sharp fibres.
Oh gods. Don’t touch them.
Such vileness, such intent, had to be contagious. His greed whispered that power was there for the taking, insisting mercy was weakness. Could they force her to turn by touch alone, overcoming her until she felt their corruption as her own?
She shuddered so violently her teeth chattered.
The man she bit came forward with a sneer and grabbed her face, calloused fingers digging into the hollows of her cheeks, forcing those same emotions back into her.
“You can bite and scream as much as you want, empath. It won’t be long before we gut you for all you’re worth.
” He yanked her forward, stretching her neck as he closed the space between them until they were nose to nose.
“We have many plans for you first, though, and we don’t care if you’re in pain for them. ”
Her breath choked out of her as her eyes watered.
She couldn’t read his mind, but his emotions were evil – self-serving and absolute. When he released her, she immediately wiggled to get down.
“Someone help us! This guy weighs a fucking tonne.”
“Kier!” she screamed when she saw them carting him outside.
His eyes flashed open. There was no grogginess – one moment he was limp, and the next his gaze burned with awareness.
His head tilted toward the man carting his feet, and he pulled his knee back to kick him in the face.
The impact was wet and crunching as his head snapped back, and the other man collapsed beneath the sudden weight.
Kier rolled off him and was on his knees within the next breath, wrists straining against the rope. The man he’d booted in the face stepped on his back with blood streaming from his shattered nose.
“Try casting your witchcraft with your hands bound like that,” he stated around a deep chuckle – only to choke when Kier snapped the rope with ease.
Before he could rise, the witch raised his hands over Kier’s muscled back, and thick, thorny brown vines erupted from the ground to wrap around his torso.
“Olender, bring me the enchanted rope. He’s stronger than he looks. ”
Olender neared her, his hair black, his eyes a deep brown, and he appeared bored as he reached into a different horse’s saddlebag to obtain it.
“Looks like Harietta has given us two powerful witches,” the caster declared, blue-and-green magic continuing to glow from his palms as vines cracked and snapped against Kier’s struggling. His lips thinned before twisting as he grunted, fighting against the dragon’s strength.
He called him a witch. Her gaze flicked to Harietta standing just beyond her doorway, calmly listening to the commotion. She doesn’t know what he is. The woman would’ve told them otherwise.
They would’ve lost interest in Carwyn. Would’ve done more to control him.
I don’t understand why she would betray me like this. She’s known my mother for nearly a century. Why would she turn on us now?
Her heart pounded wildly, slamming against her ribcage so hard that every breath was torturous.
When the spellcaster kept struggling to contain a snarling Kier, another came to assist him, red magic glowing from his outstretched palms. Together, they held him as they waited for Olender to finish sprinting over.
Then Kier stopped fighting. Stopped moving.
A wisp of darkness breached the vines like a black limb unfurling.
A deep, resonating chuckle fluttered over the wind – low, rich, reverberating like the first tremor before an earthquake.
Olender hesitated. The man holding the reins of her horse to keep it still stepped forward hesitantly. Another looked up from holding his own mount, awaiting instruction while the one beside Harietta turned to look at the source.
At Kier, whose chuckle slowly morphed into an outright barking cackle, like something ancient and evil finding genuine delight.
Coldness flooded her entire being, racing outwards until her fingers tingled with primal terror when he began to melt.
Skin blistered first, then muscle and sinew bubbled and sagged like wax dripping down the side of a candle, exposing the back of his skull and bones.
Thousands of brown-and-grey spiders poured out from him, their squirming bodies and legs glinting in the waning moonlight.
One spellcaster screamed as spiders swarmed up his body, severing the magic as he slapped at himself. The other backed up in horror as they scuttled towards him.
The cackle never ceased. It grew louder, echoey, layering upon itself and filling the entire clearing until it was impossible to pinpoint where it came from.
His corpse never moved, the vines never snapped, yet the screaming in the background stopped when a sword was shoved through the vocal spellcaster’s back.
The blade emerged from his chest in a spray of blood, silver gleaming with glistening crimson before being yanked free.
To her eye, there was no one behind him.
The spiders pulled away from the corpse and flowed together, clinging and climbing over each other as they took shape – Kier in human form.
Yet his skin shifted into a swirl of red and black, like charcoal and lava, as a set of curved, daunting horns grew from his forehead.
Black wings erupted from his back, ripping apart his skin in a grotesque spray of blood and tissue, as if called from within his very body.
They spread out, impossibly large and bat-like, before a whoosh sounded as he rose into the air with one mere flap.
All eyes, stark and horrified, were fixed upon the demonic monster.
“Run, if you dare.”
The guttural voice came from everywhere.
The witch beside Harietta reached his hand out to cast a spike of ice, and the demon slapped at it, shattering it into fragments, and a tree far behind him shuddered as if it’d been hit by an invisible force.
Another witch sent a wave of fire, and the demon took it freely in the chest, absorbing it.
The man leading her horse scrambled to climb into its saddle and kicked his heels into its abdomen to flee.
It reared slightly, and Carwyn screamed as she rolled off it.
She clenched her eyes, awaiting the oncoming pain of slamming into the ground, only for softness to greet her in the form of a pillow of lush moss.