Chapter 26 #2
My soul and my wolf knew it. One day Kaeleron would keep his promise to make Lucas suffer eternally for what he had done to me, and his soul would be chained in this tower, held captive for him to exact his punishment upon until he was finally satisfied my mate had paid for his crimes.
And that was why my instincts were so confused, spinning in circles between Lucas and Braxton, muddling the two.
Gods, I was never setting foot near this place when Kaeleron was holding his soul here.
When I killed him, he would be dead to me, and I wouldn’t waste any more of my life on him. Not a single thought. Not a single breath. That part of my life would be severed with his death, and it would be as if he never existed. I would be reborn, free of his chains.
“Saphi.” Kaeleron extended his right hand to me, a flicker of concern in his silver gaze as his eyebrows pitched low.
“He smells like Lucas. It’s messing with my head.
” That confession tumbled from my lips, even as I hated how weak I felt as I admitted it.
I glanced at the tower. “He hates me. He never did like me. I don’t think that’s going to change in death.
He’s probably going to hate me even more now I killed him. ”
I reached for Kaeleron’s hand as he stepped away from the tower, moving towards me, and the moment we made contact the tight band around my chest loosened a little.
He severed it as he said, “If it becomes too much, order the lich to end it. They will do as you command.”
“But his soul…”
Kael shook his head. “Will remain captive. It will only be released when I am satisfied he has given us all the answers we need.”
The cold twist of his lips said that it wouldn’t be released even then.
Now that he knew Braxton had been cruel to me too, the wolf would be tormented over and over again until Kael was satisfied he had suffered enough, until he begged for his final death.
I wasn’t going to stick around to watch that, and while my wolf side snarled with satisfaction at the thought he would suffer and be punished for his brutal actions—that my mate would soon suffer the same fate—the human half of my soul couldn’t condone it, and wanted nothing to do with it.
But the thought that I could silence Braxton if it all became too much gave me the confidence I needed to walk towards the tower.
Kaeleron moved ahead of me to the salt-stained door and pushed it open again. The strong smell of herbs and something acidic that wafted from the tower grew stronger still, making it hard to breathe.
“You get used to it.” Kaeleron leaned back as I reached him, making way for me to enter ahead of him.
“How often do you come here? How many dead people do you question?” I glanced up at him.
There was no trace of feeling in his expression as he grinned down at me. “It is easier than questioning the living.”
I didn’t doubt that, but it also felt cruel to raise the dead when they had found peace and had thought they would be free of their pain and their suffering.
It felt cruel to make them suffer more, chaining their soul to this plane, refusing to release it until answers were given.
A soul needed no nourishment. It couldn’t die from blood loss or injury.
It could be held indefinitely, tormented eternally.
The only escape was telling the one who held your soul everything they wanted to hear and even that wouldn’t guarantee your final death and the release from your suffering.
I stepped into the main room of the tower, where the smell was somehow even stronger and motes of magic hung in the air, glowing and driving back the darkness.
I was thankful for that potent acidic scent that drowned out everything else as I lifted my gaze from the worn flagstones to the black stone dais before me.
Braxton.
He was bare, dirty from the fight still, and his skin had a greyish hue to it.
A dark mark on his chest caught my eye and held me captive, and an ember of guilt flared to life in my veins as I saw myself plunging my dagger through his black heart.
I shut it down, because Braxton had deserved to die for the things he had done.
I had no pity to give him, and no regret to spare.
Candlelight flickered over him from several sconces on the sections of stone wall between heavily ladened bookshelves packed with tomes, piles of papers, and bottles and jars of various sizes, shapes and colours. That warm light did nothing to chase the shade of death from his skin.
He was so still.
I wasn’t sure what I had expected.
He was dead after all.
Maybe it was just the fact I still hadn’t quite come to terms with that.
Just as I struggled to come to terms with the fact my parents were gone. Some part of me was convinced they were still alive. All of them.
But they were dead.
I would never see them again. Never hear their voice again. Never smell them again. Or feel their arms around me.
Tears welled and I pushed them back as Kaeleron looked at me.
“If this is too—”
“I’m staying,” I interjected, not wanting him to think I wasn’t strong enough to do this or I needed to be coddled, or that I was going to run away from what I had done.
I was going to own it, because Braxton had deserved the death I had delivered, and he deserved everything that came after that death too.
“My tears aren’t for him. They’re for my parents. I’m glad he’s dead.”
He dipped his head. “Very well.”
I hung back near the exit and Malachi who loomed like a sentinel beside me, close enough that I could sense him clearly despite the sensation of power that pressed down on me from all sides in the circular room, making me feel as if the ceiling was getting lower by the second, coming to crush me like some bad action-movie trap.
Kaeleron marched right up to the corpse and glared at it, displeasure and menace in the vicious twist of his lips as the black slashes of his eyebrows dipped to narrow his eyes.
“I wish to start.” His voice was loud in the large open room, commanding and filled with the power he possessed.
Three liches emerged from the shadows, their tattered black robes taking form in the air, thorny vines wrapping around their tall slender bodies to pin it in place as their bone-white deer-skull-heads formed and antlers dripping with threads of moss and silver charms grew like small dead trees from their crowns.
A fierce blue glow lit their dark eye sockets as they moved forwards as one, the distance between them shrinking as they neared the stone bench and Braxton.
I suppressed a shudder, not wanting them to see it or notice me. If I kept still enough, perhaps they wouldn’t see me.
A fourth lich I hadn’t noticed turned from the workbench covered in books, bottles and metal tools to my left just beyond Kael, making me jump and ruining my attempt to appear calm and unbothered by their strange appearances or those memories of the great lich we had fought in the Forgotten Wastes.
My hand leaped to my chest, to the point where that lich’s blade of blue light had pierced me and almost claimed my life.
The lich near the work bench looked at me at the same time as Kaeleron.
I lowered my hand and gave a small nod, letting Kaeleron know I was fine, and he motioned to the lich who had stopped to stare at me.
Bony fingers extended from beneath the long sleeves of his robe and closed around a violet jar.
The lich plucked several pinches of dried things from that jar and others, some of which looked like herbs and others I didn’t want to look too closely at, and sprinkled them into a thick stone bowl.
The deer-skull-headed being elegantly lifted a pestle from the bench and turned towards the centre of the room, using it to grind the contents of the bowl as he approached Kaeleron.
The motes of magical light shifted above me, slowly condensing in the centre of the room, gathering like a chandelier above the body to brightly illuminate it while plunging the rest of the room into shadow.
As the lich passed the others, he offered the bowl to each, and each of them added a drop of liquid from a different coloured vial. He stopped near Braxton’s head, the sound of the pestle grinding against the stone the only one in the tense silence.
The lich set the mortar down on the stone slab near Braxton’s head, carefully removed the pestle and gently placed it beside the bowl, nudging it with deft precision until it was perfectly straight. He dipped a bony finger into the mixture and said something in a language I didn’t understand.
Kaeleron translated it for me, his back to me as the lich bent over Braxton and sank a finger into his mouth, opening it and then sliding the black mixture on his other finger across Braxton’s tongue.
“Tan’ith to make him speak truth.”
The air charged as the three other liches began chanting, their eerie voices low enough that I felt the rumble of them more than heard them.
A strange violet glow bloomed across Braxton’s skin.
Something shadowy shifting across the blue light that filled the corner of my vision tugged my gaze there.
I tensed as I spied the beast curled up in front of a worn stone fireplace that flickered with azure flames.
Smooth dark skin stretched too tight over bones and muscle, its mouthful of fangs gleaming in the firelight as it shifted its large head and looked at the necromancer who had put the paste on Braxton’s tongue.
It lumbered onto its feet, a gigantic beast that would easily dwarf Morden in his wolf form, looking large enough to ride if someone was brave enough, and shook its head, making the small spines that rose from its skin in places sway.
Dangerous. Vicious. Instinct whispered those words to me as it approached the lead necromancer.
Yet the lich petted the beast affectionately and murmured something in his strange tongue.