A groan and shuffle of clothes and limbs had him peering around the corner. Calavia stood several yards away, touching and attending a female thrall. Astegur narrowed his gaze.Her mother?It was the same thrall from the first day, the one that could have been the hag’s twin, if circumstances had been different. If humanity had remained within the thrall.
It had to be her mother.
But it was Calavia’s worry that kept him hidden in the shadows.
“Why would you do this to yourself?” she cried, gripping the thrall’s arms and exposing them to the light. Blood drenched its arms, leaking from scratches running up and down their length. They were at their thickest upon the thrall’s wrists.
His eyes glazed over as he watched the blood from the thrall stain Calavia’s hands and dress. Ruby on alabaster. It reminded him of the taste of the hag’s innocence all over his tongue. Delectable in an entirely hedonistic andwrongway. It was like feasting on an extinction.
He had not been worthy of taking a pretty female’s cunt, let alone one that had never been touched by male hands.
His prick hardened fast, and he widened his stance to accommodate its thick mass. The front of Calavia’s dress was now soaked with the thrall’s blood. Her worried pawing and hopeless noises made his cock jerk in excitement. He stepped out from the shadows.
The thrall’s hand suddenly snapped out of Calavia’s grasp and slashed across her cheek. Astegur stepped forward with a snarl when something otherworldly and potent hit his nose, rooting him to the spot.
Calavia cried out and wiped her cheek with her free hand without noticing him. “Why have you done this to yourself? Why are you trying to kill yourself?” She let the female thrall go to rip the hem of her dress. “Please, please stop.” She clutched at the thrall again and tried to bind the thrall’s bleeding arms.
Its mouth fell open.
His own mouth parted as he realized that the faint scent he smelled wasn’t just the sudden, thick stench of blood, but ofpureblood.
Pure, citrusy, mouthwatering blood.
Astegur snapped his mouth closed and ignored the various smells on the air but the faint, delectable, pure aroma underneath them all. It was the same smell as the one in his cave, many days prior. The same one that kept Calavia’s ghostly phantom embedded in his skull as he traveled days across the land in torturous pain.
He growled low. “What trickery is this?”
Calavia finally looked his way just as a horrible, bloodcurdling scream filled his ears. Pain surged through his head, and his nose filled with his own blood, deluding the delectable scent further.
He snarled and snapped his teeth at the loss, his skull feeling as if it would split in two.
He saw Calavia drop to her knees, her hands covering her ears as she curled into a fetal position. He reached for his weapon, fighting through the wave of shock as his skull threatened to shatter when the sound grew even louder.
The female thrall—who he now knewhadto be her mother—had a distorted, terrible face, its mouth hanging as if stretched out far past the bones of a human jaw. It turned his way as he fought his way forward, Calavia’s deceit no longer on his mind.
“Don’t hurt her!” Calavia begged, trying to get between him and the thrall, her voice rising over the thrall’s shrill wails. “She’s not right, please.”
He barely heard her, the thrall’s shriek eclipsing rationality. His only thought now was to get Calavia away from the creature.
Astegur pulled his battleaxe out and moved to swing, gritting through the pain of Calavia’s magic against him.
He raised his blade.
“Mother, run!” Calavia screamed.
The creature suddenly twisted away, wailed again shrilly, and tried to twist back around, as if it didn’t want to run from him and his deathblow, as if trying to deny Calavia’s command. But at the last second, with his heavy axe hanging in the space between him, Calavia jumped between him and the thrall.
“No,” she said, eyes narrowed upon him.
He bared his teeth and hesitated.
And with a speed he could not match, the female thrall scurried on all fours out of sight. Astegur grabbed Calavia’s arm and wrenched her to his chest just as it faded in the distance.
He gripped her hair and tilted Calavia’s head back to look at him. “Why?” he roared, furious.
But he wasn’t answered by her. The sound of a horn blared in the distance, followed by hollers and whistling. His head snapped up.
“Astegur?”
