Chapter 37 #2
“She kept you tethered to her,” he said.
“She doesn’t even know. She saved your life.
No one survives the stripping. But her soul called out to yours, and it was a far stronger pull than the cries your soul made to mine, to yourself, to your original form.
In the end, it was sealed in blood, in kashonim.
But without that connection—that alone wouldn’t have been enough. ”
I blinked, back on the dais, and suddenly, miraculously, my pain began to lessen. I looked up and found Lyr crouching before me. Beautiful. Strong. Amazing. A true Goddess in human flesh.
“Are you …” I couldn’t finish. I’d started coughing up blood. “You’re really here?” I finally managed.
“I’m really here, Rhyan,” she said. “I’ve got you. It’s all right. It’s over now. It’s going to be okay. I’m going to protect you.”
But all I could think was no. No. Leave me. I’m done. I’m dying. Get away from my father, away from the men who want to hurt you. But she stayed. And lifted me up into her arms.
And then the akadim came.
I wrapped my arms around my chest, shaking my head.“This part is worse,” I said.
Auriel didn’t speak. He only nodded.
I was laying on the ground, hidden in the stadium seats, barely able to move while Lyr fought the beasts. The beasts who could attack in the daytime. They’d evolved. Aemon’s work. Moriel’s evil.
Lyr had left to defend me, to fight them off. To stop the threat. But there were too many.
I lost track of time and space. The next thing I knew, I was being dragged over the rough stone of the benches, and …
I’d wondered if this was what Garrett had felt.
Or Haleika. Countless victims over thousands of years.
Was this what it was like? This desperate crazed need to try and hold onto your life, your heart and mind, the inner fight that commenced when you felt your soul being stolen from you?
The painful desperate clinging to all you were, all you knew, because it was you, it was yours.
And now it was being taken. Everything was being taken.
I thought of Lyr. Over and over. Until the end. Until I didn’t think of anything at all.
I awoke in the woods after dark. Akadim. A monster. Starving. Every bodily desire on edge. I was thirsty, and hungry, and horny, and itching for a fight.
Until I wasn’t. Until … Morgana found me. Collared me.
Made me her soldier. Her Arkturion.
Morning came, and the sun.
“You remembered who you were,” Auriel said.
I shook my head. “Much good it did me.”
“It did. You weren’t here. You were gone. But what you left behind was powerful. Your discipline, your strength.”
I somehow was in my akadim body, but I was also me, outside of myself, and watching.
“You’re hungry, Rhyan? Aren’t you?” Morgana asked, her dark eyes dipping down my body, to the loincloth I’d found in the night and used to cover myself.
I knew what she was asking of me, what she wanted. And I was hungry. So very hungry.
My cock twitched and my arms flexed, my mouth salivating. I wanted it all. Food, sex, violence. A soul to eat.
“Very hungry,” she said with approval. A grin spread across her cold, beautiful face.
“Maraaka,” I said and licked my lips, taking a step forward, taking in the sight of Parthenay’s slight body. I noted how thin she was, how weak she appeared. It would be so easy to slam her down, to take off her dress, to drink her blood.
No. No. No.
I tried to look away, to hide from the scene. I didn’t want to be here again. I didn’t want to remember this. But all I did was end up inside my akadim body, looking out through those eyes.
“Take her,” she commanded. “Take her however you want. Feast on her, fuck her, drink her blood.”
Yes. Yes!
Morgana shoved the girl forward as she screamed, calling out desperately to Aemon for help.
I remembered her—remembered my disdain. Remembered my hatred for Aemon.
I loved that I could hurt this girl, for what she’d done to me, done to Lyr, and I loved that I was doing this in front of Aemon.
She was his servant and I could touch her.
Hurt her the way he’d hurt Lyr. Hurt her while he watched.
I pounced, my nostrils flaring, as I crushed her body beneath mine.
But it wasn’t her beneath me. It was Lyr. We were in the cave, in the Wall of the Prince.
“I’m afraid,” she cried. “I’m afraid you’re going to hurt me.”
I jumped back, shaking my head. No. No. What have I done?
What have I done?
“Rhyan, please,” Lyr begged, her eyes filling with tears.
“Lyr?” I asked. “Lyr? LYR! ”
A black box rattled before me, blue light exploding from within.
Lyr screamed.
I woke with a jolt, my heart slamming into my chest, my stomach roiling, sweat coating my brow. I was alive. I was alive again. And mortal. My soul returned. But my power was still gone.
I gasped for breath, my chest heaving painfully.
“Rhyan,” Lyr said softly, stirring from sleep. “Rhyan, you’re okay. You were just dreaming. I’m right here.”
I was still laying on top of her, partially on my side, my head against her breast, her hand on my back. I shifted and turned onto my belly, burying my face in her heart, just as I burst into tears.
I felt her fingers in my hair, then her arms wrapped around me, pulling me closer, holding me.
“Shhh,” she said. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
But I couldn’t stop crying. I calmed down a little while later, shifting back beside her. She took my hand in hers, squeezing tight.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
I shook my head noncommittally. My face damp from all the tears. “I was back there. The night I died.”
She pulled me closer then, like she needed the contact and reminder I was alive as much as I did.
“You were remembering?” she asked, her voice breaking.
“Reliving it,” I said, managing barely more than a hushed whisper. “Auriel was there, too.” She stiffened.
“I think it was more of the connection forming between us. I don’t know. But after I … I died, I saw my first morning as an akadim again. Lyr, I—Fuck. I did something awful.”
She took a deep breath, paling, and even without my magic or my heightened senses, I could hear her heart thundering, feel her nerves on edge.
“Did you—?” She closed her eyes, like she was too afraid to ask the question.
The question I knew she had. “Did you rape anyone?” she finally asked, her voice hushed.
I shook my head.
Her relief was all over her face.
“But I wanted to,” I said.
She stilled, slowly shaking her head, her brows furrowed. “No, you didn’t.”
I swallowed roughly. “Not me, but you know what I mean. What happened when my soul was gone—when my body became akadim, I remember it all like it was me. The akadim had my memories. And I have its. And in my mind and in my dreams now, I remember what I wanted to do. What I came close to doing when I had a chance. It was—do you remember that night on Gryphon’s Mount?
When we opened your—Asherah’s—tomb? And that mage captured us, the one who brought us to Aemon? ”
Lyr’s mouth tightened as she sucked in a sharp breath and nodded.
“Her name is Parthenay. She was a chayatim mind reader, now traveling with Morgana—she’s Aemon’s Second.”
Lyr pushed up onto her elbow, her gaze intense. “Really?”
I nodded. “Morgana doesn’t get along with her. And she makes it known.”
“Why?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know if there’s history between them.
But there is one major difference in opinion.
Morgana forbids rape. It was the first thing she told us—commanded.
Except that first morning, I don’t know, she was making some kind of power play.
Proving a point. She called me forward—told me to—commanded that I—well, you know. ”
“What?” Lyr cried, her aura filling with fire and fury. “In front of everyone?”
I looked away, my cheeks heating, my stomach twisting. “I didn’t, in the end. But I came close. Morgana made me stop.”
“Morgana made you start,” she seethed. “I’m going to—Gods! When I fucking see her again—”
“Lyr,” I said, “It doesn’t matter why now. All that matters is that it didn’t happen.”
She nodded slowly, trying to control her breathing. “I know.”
“But when I dreamt it, I remembered having her—” I turned on my back, closing my eyes, too ashamed to look at Lyr now. To admit how twisted my mind had become. “I was on top of her. And I hurt her. Because I wanted to. But in my dream, she was—she was you.”
“It was just a dream.”
‘No,” I said. “I mean, sure, that was. But it’s still real.
Especially to me. I still know what happened to you when I was akadim.
And it’s confusing. Because I half feel like it was me, like I can’t trust myself around you.
And I want to throw up, and get away from you, to keep you safe from me.
And a second later, I want to pull you close and kiss you and protect you.
But I feel like it’s me I need to protect you from. ”
“Rhyan,” Lyr said softly. “Look at me. Look.”
I opened my eyes and turned back to her.
She’d sat up, the blanket we’d slept under falling to her hips.
Her bare breasts peeked out from the long waves of her hair, red in the morning sun.
Her hazel eyes blazed. “What happened to me wasn’t your fault.
And what happened to you, wasn’t yours either.
I know who you are.” She reached for my heart. “Ani janam ra. Rakame.”
“I know you,” I said back. “Mekara.”
Lyr nodded, her eyes softening. “There’s more than one person who needs to pay for what they did to you.
And I think it’s time to extract payment.
Because it’s what’s right, because it’s the justice they fucking deserve for their crimes.
Because it will protect others—save them from their evil, their cruelty.
And, most importantly for you—for you to take back your power. ”
My mind flashed on the box in my dream. In my memory.
“Lyr,” I said, “When you came to the arena and found me, my father was there. Was he holding a black box?”
She gasped, her eyes widening. “Yes. Kunda was putting your magic in there after he stripped it. I remember—your father took it and ran.”
“So he has my magic.” My hands clenched into fists, even as a small burst of hope rose to the surface. “Have you ever heard of it being restored after it was stripped?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No. I haven’t.”
I exhaled shakily. “Auriel in my dream said I should have died when it was over. That you had tethered my soul to yours, you kept me here. You saved my life.”
“He did?” Her voice quaked.
“He did. Maybe there’s a way,” I said. “If I can survive being stripped, if you can bring me back to life, restore my soul after I became akadim, then maybe there’s a way I can take back my power—not symbolically. But actually fucking take it back.”
“Anything is possible,” she said. “If it can be removed, it can be put back in. Just like your soul.”
“Nothing new was ever created. Nothing destroyed.” The words of the Valya. My lips lifted, just for a second. “Maybe with the red shard, and your ability to heal, it truly is possible.”
She gripped the back of my neck, forcing my gaze up to her. “Rhyan, I will find a way. I swear it.”
“We’ll need to remove my father first. Permanently.
He sacrificed me to curry favor with Kormac.
But also I think, I think it was because he could never really control me—or Auriel peeking out.
He wanted my power. Wanted it for himself.
” Despite the fact that I was his son, his flesh and blood.
The one person he was supposed to love. My chest tightened as my gaze locked onto Lyr. “He’s not going to give it up.”
“Not alive, maybe. But dead,” she said simply, “he’ll have no choice.”
My heart thrummed. “He’s let too many innocents suffer my fate.” My hand clenched. “Allowed the enemy to grow too large, allowed the Allurian Pass to go unchecked, allowed akadim to roam free, all so he could keep the North unstable, so he could keep his power. Continue his tyranny. It ends now.”
Lyr’s eyes blazed.
“And not just my father,” I said. “All of them. Kane, Kormac, Aemon—they all need to be removed from this world.”
Lyr squeezed my hand, her aura now filled with a different kind of fire.
Not fury, but a kind of controlled understanding of the need for vengeance, the need to right the wrongs done not just to us—but to all of the Empire.
A fight that was always coming. And it was about fucking time we met it head on.
“Where should we start?” she asked, a dangerous gleam in her eyes.
I swallowed. “My father. We’re going North. It’s time. His reign is finally going to come to an end. I need to remove him from his Seat of Power.”
Lyr nodded. “You will. And I’ll be right beside you.”