Chapter 10 Winter
~Winter~
The place was colossal.
Not even just a magical construct, really.
An entire realm.
It sprawled across a mammoth cloudy blue-gray abyss, the realm suspended over a void rather than any true ground. The sky was basically a cosmic spiral of magic.
The jagged black palace dominated the landscape, rising high into the strange, eerie sky.
Around it, the place was studded with countless needle-towers, smaller, and stretching into the distance, pushing up through the fog.
I’d found out that those were the residences of the necromancers.
It turned out that only Ruxnoth—and now me—lived inside the dark stone palace.
In the foreground, a long, elevated obsidian rock bridge cut across the immediate area, connecting isolated platforms and leading straight toward the palace in an insidiously intentional way that drove all the realm’s architecture toward him.
We’d already known his construct was bigger than a Rifted Cradle, based on the number of necromancers he needed just to conceal it.
But this was another thing entirely. From what Father had told me about the Celestial Plane, this seemed just as immense as that—but created and maintained mostly by Ruxnoth, not an entire legion of angels.
It was honestly as awe-inspiring as it was disturbing.
And deeply fucking worrying for that matter.
To decimate this?
I’d thought I could see to it, but this was even more than we’d all anticipated. It wasn’t only magical, it was material. And from what I’d observed, the material aspect hadn’t been created with magical infusion. It was actual solid matter.
With that being the case, I didn’t—
“Winter?”
I blinked and turned to Ruxnoth walking beside me, his ornate gold and navy cloak sweeping behind him, and drawing attention to his bare chest. Well, for me, it was the blue veins all over his skin there—many more than before.
“Hmm?” I murmured, sparing him a single glance, then returning my attention to our surroundings.
“Are you experiencing cognitive impairment again? Descending into a state of mental lethargy?”
He’d obviously seen me staring. A lot. I’d lingered unnecessarily with a wide-eyed expression so it hadn’t looked like I was studying everything with a strategic eye, just that I was awed and exhibiting interest. And, yeah, appearing like I was also a little out of it.
All effective ways to divert his suspicion.
No. “Maybe a little.”
He reached out and stroked my cheek, and to say it took a lot not to react negatively—or violently—didn’t really cover it. “All will be well. It’s almost time for another curative immersion.”
“Sounds good.”
He nodded and his hand thankfully left me.
The truth was I’d already recovered myself in that aspect—I was sharp mentally.
Emotionally, though, I was weary.
Because I missed my loves. Missed Zayn’s brash and adorable chaos. Missed Evira’s sweet softness that melded with that badass warrior sexiness. Missed Vax’s steadiness and animal passion, possession—always in a healthy way with him—and staunch protectiveness.
And before I’d left, I hadn’t told Zayn those three monumental words that I’d already managed to give to Vax and Evira.
I hadn’t told him that I loved him. I’d hesitated—again.
And now it stood as… unfinished. I didn’t like it, I didn’t like any of it, and I just hoped he knew.
Because I did love him. I loved them all.
So very deeply. In a way that went beyond bone-deep.
They were in my veins, my cells, my everything.
They were an intrinsic, irrevocable part of me now.
I tugged at the drawstrings of my hoodie—yes, finally I was back in my regular, preferred clothing.
But I couldn’t shut that hurt down right away.
Because there was more.
I missed my family.
I missed… my dad was gone. He was—stop! Bury it. Bury it now.
I focused on the building we’d just left, zeroing in on it intensely and forcing myself to take in unnecessary intricate details, even the way it was carved.
It was no secret that the more grotesque aspects involved in Necromancy didn’t really sit well with me, and the structure gave off that same unsettling feeling just at the sight of its skull form with deep eye hollows glowing with blue light, a gaping mouth that served as the entrance.
Ruxnoth referred to it as a “revel hall” for the necromancers to relax and have fun.
It was a mixture of a bar and an entertainment hub.
Opposite, across the bottomless abyss of midnight cloud and necromantic fog, was another building that had been supposedly created for the benefit of the necromancers—another thing to do when they weren’t working for him, doing his bidding.
That had been named the Center of Sealed Knowledge.
It rose from its own isolated platform. Ribbed bands wrapped around its tower in a spiral, like a stone helix.
Between the bands, that same blue-core light pulsed from within.
It contained a library vault of clandestine Celestial knowledge that only a handful across the entire supernatural world were privy to—knowledge he’d stolen apparently on his way out during the Severance.
He framed it as him gifting his necromancers with something unique and highly valuable, him doing them a great service.
Urgh. It also contained a large lab for them to conduct their own experiments and research into whatever they desired.
It was a common trait among magic-wielders of all sorts that they liked to experiment with spellwork, seek further knowledge, or oftentimes just play with their magic for fun.
While he’d been showing me all of that earlier, I’d heard pained screams coming from a smaller, sphere-like structure a couple of platforms behind the Center, thick blue mist covering half of it.
I’d teleported in there, but crashed to my knees the second I’d rematerialized because I was still physically damaged.
Then the bastard himself, who’d fucking done this to me in the first place had needed to help me back to my feet.
As he had, I’d taken in the dark cave-like space.
Literally just a creepy space and no other defining features or furniture.
And one of his necromancers—I’d met them all now and I’d recognized the willowy guy with the mousy brown hair as Wesley Bramwell—bound naked against the rough rock wall in chains glimmering with Ruxnoth’s magic.
He’d had his eyes closed, just screaming, screaming, and screaming awfully.
Ruxnoth had informed me that he’d spelled Wesley to experience his worst nightmares for a full day, making him live inside them in his head.
One of his ‘lessons’ because Wesley had made some objections and given some advice to Ruxnoth that had come close to labeling him as a detractor.
Even if he’d been fully proven to be, Ruxnoth couldn’t get rid of him, couldn’t kill him, because necromancers were essential to his plans, to Sanctus.
At least for right now. So he took to these ‘lessons’ of his instead.
I’d made him release the guy, telling him that I couldn’t be focused here or comfortable knowing he was making somebody suffer like that.
He’d actually done it, let the guy go free before his punishment had been complete.
I figured it was because he really didn’t want to go back to my uncooperative disposition toward him.
Wesley wasn’t his only detractor.
Fiona Kent and Philip Land—two of the necromancers that Ruxnoth had thought wanted to fuck around with me—had used that as an excuse, intending to get close to me in private, away from his supervision. Because they were detractors as well.
More so than Rex was.
These three had never wanted to help Ruxnoth with Sanctus, but he’d dragged them here during Morien’s culling.
He’d thought he’d mentally broken them, but they’d put a complex spell in place that had shielded them from it.
For the last twenty years, they’d been playing the game.
And they saw me as the one who could overturn all of it, this indentured servitude they were ensnared in, being bound to this place, trapped.
“When you return to your chamber, those storybooks and your food request for tonight’s dinner will be set up accordingly for you to indulge in,” Ruxnoth told me.
“You won’t have to only sit in the pool’s warmth for several hours with nothing to do.
Not now that you’ve made it known how much that unsettled you and impacted this impressive compartmentalization you are performing so very well. ”
“Thanks,” I said, as we made a turn onto the bridge, heading back to the palace that loomed in the near distance.
“If you wish, I can remain with you while you soak.”
I only just managed to suppress a shudder at that suggestion.
“As a winning conversationalist?”
He frowned and stared at me for a moment, clearly not sure whether I’d meant that as an insult, or good-natured ribbing.
Obviously the first one.
But his uncertainty was what I’d intended above all.
I was causing it here and there, in bits and pieces.
“I can certainly hold up my end of a conversation, however, I predominantly meant as company, so you aren’t alone.”
“If you were really concerned about me being alone, why barely allow me any interaction with the necromancers down here—just brief moments here and there?”
Because he was picking up on issues, on dissent in his ranks, and he didn’t want that infecting me.
“The bond between us is already established. I don’t want you overwhelmed by forming others too quickly. All in good time—just like you, yourself, said, in regard to letting go of your grief over cut ties to your old life.”
Piece of—
I sucked in a breath and forced a smile. “Well, then, that’s actually very considerate.”
“I am working hard to be precisely that for you. To make you feel welcome.”
Yeah, to make me easier to use.