Chapter 2
~Winter~
“No! No! No!”
“Dad! Dad!”
Ice flooded through my veins.
A rumbling voice I couldn’t stand the sound of said something I couldn’t make out.
Flares of power that weren’t mine surged, making me recoil and want to shove my hand down my own throat and force myself to vomit up all over the fucking place. All over him.
The one who’d done this.
The one who’d destroyed everything.
The one who’d shattered my entire family.
Taken me from my loves.
Made me into everyone’s enemy.
And murdered my dad.
Murdered my dad!
I was roaring then, over and over.
“Get the fuck off me!”
“I hate you! I hate the sight of you! Don’t touch me! Don’t speak to me!”
A sudden weakness took me over, and I didn’t even get the chance to fight it.
It was so strong, so… overwhelming.
Blackness took me.
I floated back to consciousness.
There was no sign of his magic surging nearby.
I strained to make out more.
He wasn’t standing in the doorway either.
Good.
Fucking good.
I didn’t want to see his fucking face.
I’d kill him! I’d fucking kill him!
I sucked in a harsh breath—or several.
I couldn’t… I needed to figure out where I was, what was happening.
Then… then the rest would come after.
It took a few moments of struggling and blinking, but my vision cleared sufficiently, then I scanned my surroundings.
I was bound against a dark stone wall, those white glowing bands all over my body, and my feet had been forced into that black gooey substance that tethered the restraints—Nihilumbra.
Fuck. I couldn’t call my magic while I was trapped in this nightmare substance.
Trapped and bound, yet in some sort of luxurious room?
I remembered him stripping and binding me when we’d first arrived because I’d been in a hysterical state. But because I’d been in that state, I hadn’t taken anything else in, and he’d intensified the Nihilumbra to such an extreme degree that I’d passed out.
What was—what was this room down here in his revered Sanctus?
Why all the luxury? For a prisoner like me?
It was all severe angles and towering arches. Thin veins of midnight-blue light traveled through the walls and pillars, pulsing softly. More like eerily.
There was a sunken pool at the center of the polished black floor, a spiral of that familiar shade of blue rising from the water.
Deep purple drapes framed the alcoves, trimmed with gold tassels.
Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling.
A large bed was covered in quilted blankets, velvet throws, and tons of pillows in blues and charcoal.
Luxurious rugs in deep reds and glossy golds covered areas of the floor, offering a softness to the black stone.
There was even a seating area all lush and cozy too.
Or meant to be. There was nothing positive about it to me. It was just like an illusion.
Worse, because I could see Ruxnoth’s intention behind it all.
More fucking manipulation.
More false comfort.
As if I wasn’t bound amid all of it and being tortured by that Temperance creation, my body shuddering, me fucking panting.
And that was nothing, fucking nothing, compared to the mental and emotional torment threatening to shatter me to pieces.
Because of what he’d done.
I felt a wisp of his power and swung my head—the only part of my body that I could actually fucking move—to see his shadow had fallen over the open door of this bedroom.
Somewhere inside Sanctus.
Rage surged without my full conscious control. All I could see was the memory of him driving the Spiral Thorn into my dad’s chest.
I bucked and roared, cursing him, laying down threat after threat.
I felt the binds tightening.
More were added to the nightmare.
And then that harsh pull—unnatural, sudden exhaustion.
It latched onto me.
He was intensifying the Nihilumbra, yanking me in and out of consciousness over and over again, trying to break my rage and upset.
Forcibly.
Like the way he did fucking everything.
“I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you!”
My screams echoed off the walls before sleep pulled me under once more.
My eyes snapped open.
Awake again.
The disorientation was real.
I was grunting within moments as stabbing spikes of that ice from that nasty substance started to assault me everywhere, all over my body, driving agony into me that collided with the emotional anguish already wrecking me from the inside out.
It was another aspect of the Nihilumbra. And it was also similar to what he’d done to me in the pool dreamscape.
“Ah! Ah! Stop! Fucking stop!”
“You will not kill me,” Ruxnoth spoke, his voice rolling all around me almost hypnotically. “You’re not capable of that, gentle one.”
A hand snapped to my throat, and I blinked to see the monster right there before me.
What was… he hadn’t appeared to me for ages. Or what had seemed like ages in this half-conscious state I’d been trapped in for… I didn’t know how long.
His black hair cascaded down over the shoulders of his gold and navy ornate coat, and I noticed more blue veins and fissures than ever infecting his bare chest, his face.
I seethed up at him. “You’ve changed the rules of the game. After what you did, all bets are off. You don’t know this version of me.”
He tried to hide his unease at my threat behind a snarl, but I saw it. I saw it had unnerved him, that it had gotten to him. Good. He was questioning whether he really knew what he was dealing with any longer.
“Do you know what he did to you, why I had to neutralize your father to whom you gave far too much credit?”
“Shut up. Just shut up.”
“He employed a Death Seal to ensure no one could perform a Blood Trace on him to get to you, and said Death Seal was linked to the essence of Morien Morgrave. Given the generational necromantic link that was forged as a result, it also functioned as a fail-safe. That fail-safe was the means to strip you of your necromantic power, to unmake you.”
Past tense.
He kept talking about him in the past tense.
“Stop,” I demanded. “Stop it.”
“He had the means to strip you of your power, the very power we require to soothe Sanctus.”
“No. He wouldn’t have done that. Wouldn’t… hurt me.”
I tried to bolt forward, but I was trapped by the Nihilumbra.
“You killed him for nothing! Killed him!” I screamed and screamed, thrashing, or trying to, even gnashing my teeth at him. “You murdered my dad! Took him from me! You took him!”
He uttered with a calm, but deeply sinister edge, “Something that cannot be undone. What you are experiencing now can be. Your circumstances can be improved.” His hand tightened around my throat.
“Just not while you’re like this. Fighting and threatening me, raging and throwing a tantrum—something, for your information, that you have been at for hours on end now. ”
“It’s called grief.” Among other things. “Can you even comprehend that? On any fucking level of your demented psyche?”
He snarled. “Mind yourself. This grief will be the least of it if you continue in this manner. I showed mercy solely for your benefit. I had the capability to eliminate all those seeking to contain me. Do you understand what a slight it was for them to attempt, not only containment, but eradication? Upon me, of all beings? For me to allow that to go unpunished and to only terminate one target out of the utmost necessity was me showing incredible restraint.” He stroked my jaw with his free hand as he rumbled at my ear, “All for you, my deathborn darling.”
I hissed. “Get your hands off me.”
“You need to focus on the goodness here, the mercy I gifted your father.”
“What?” I gritted out.
“I bequeathed him the gift of peace. Absolute peace. No more burden put upon him by the endless needs of the supernatural world. No more struggle. No more pain. No more trauma haunting him relentlessly. And no suffocating worry concerning you. He may now rest.”
Rest.
Haunting.
“I’ll pull him from the Valley.”
“You know very well that you are not equipped to do that.”
“Part of the reason you wanted me to come here now, not wait until my training had delved deeper into the Valley of the Dead spellwork and mechanics?”
“Indeed.”
“Doesn’t matter, because I will be able to do it anyway—when I bring your necromancers with me.”
His lips quirked. “Mmm, this has certainly given birth to a ruthlessness in you.” He stepped back and folded his arms across his chest. “Alas, that will not be possible. Do you not wonder why you only just thought of it now? When it has been hours and attempting a salvage spell to pull your father back was a very obvious notion? Yet in all this time since I took his life, you have been only screaming, crying and melting down—not problem-solving one little bit.”
“It’s called shock. Not to mention, you fucking binding me with Nihilumbra.”
“The pain is too great? To the point that it’s impacting your cognitive processing? Hmm, we’ll have to see to that. It requires recalibration.”
“Release me entirely.”
“I can’t do that until you’ve stabilized.”
“What you did is why I’m not ‘stable’.” I hated that term.
It was what everyone had been watching for all my life—the wider supernatural world, those in governance, Temperance.
All waiting for—no, expecting—me to fail to control what I was, where they’d then employ their brutal contingencies.
Just like Ruxnoth had manipulated Temperance and Clan Languim into doing.
“But part of that will shift once I pull my dad back.”
“You are missing the point I am making.”
“Then make it clearly,” I seethed.
“I told you that Sylas is finally able to rest, that he is at peace. He is a necromancer, Winter. The Almighty Necromancer at that. The Valley of the Dead would not be a source of peace for him. You didn’t consider doing this immediately, even though normally it would be the most obvious step, because deep down you already know it’s not possible.
You understood what transpired when I struck him with the Spiral Thorn, how I did it, what it was infused with at the time. ”
I swallowed thickly. “No.”
“He has been wiped from existence. His body will rot like any other, but his spirit, it has—”
“No! No!”
“Shh,” he said, stroking my bare chest with his palm.
All of me was bare—fucking naked. He’d stripped me with his magic the moment we’d arrived here and also bound me with Nihilumbra in a failed attempt to calm me down.
This shit on bare skin obviously left no barrier, making it all the more painfully intense.
But I knew the way Ruxnoth operated too well now to believe that had been the extent of stripping me.
He’d wanted to cause vulnerability in me, thinking that would tame me.
And, of course, it was also an intimidation move and a power trip to him.
“Don’t you see, miraculous boy? The only peace available to Sylas Morgrave was nothingness, the absence of everything. Akin to a dreamless sleep.”
I bucked against the restraints. “You’re lying!”
“You know that I am not. You feel it. Your connection to him would have ensured it, sensed his erasure.”
“No! No!”
My power tried to surge against my will.
But with the binds, not only wasn’t it possible, but it had them pushing painfully into my flesh.
I didn’t care.
I kept pulling, screaming and screaming in anguished rage.
Even as I felt them tear into my skin, ripping my flesh apart all over the place, everywhere they touched, I didn’t stop.
“Dad! Dad! No!”
I heard Ruxnoth cursing. Then, in my mind’s eye, I was aware of chaos erupting.
I couldn’t even fucking see, my vision blurring, my attention only on the grief of losing my dad. My dad!
I thought I saw faces obscured by magic, people rushing in.
Frantic surges of power.
Ruxnoth’s disgusting hands on me again.
Others holding me, restraining my bucking.
And then something sharp pierced my throat.
Things started to slip away all too quickly.
I wasn’t given the chance to get a handle on it.
Dad’s voice rolled through me, and I saw him there in a beautiful memory, him grasping my shoulder on that mountaintop and telling me earnestly, “Don’t you see, my sweet and gentle son? You are our peace.”
I held onto that as forced sleep took me.