Then…nothingness.
Azriel pushed away from the wet, scratchy ground, his body heavy and slow as his core strained to bring him to a seated position where he could make out the silhouettes of people moving to and fro. They spoke amongst themselves, hardly pausing to pay him heed. Swallowing hard, his throat bobbed against something there, and he lifted a hand through the mental fogginess to wrap his fingers around warm metal.
In an instant, he recalled the sand. The sun. The screams.
Herdecapitated head falling apart in his hands no matter how hard he tried to hold the pieces together. Too-soft skin peeled away from sinew and bone. Dark hair tangled through his fingers. And that voice. That horrible voice saying those words as she forced him to look at those empty blue eyes.
This isyourdoing.This isyourfault.This is what youdeserve.
All at once, people surrounded him. Yanking on the collar, a scream split through the air. Who was screaming? Why?
His throat burned, and he inhaled deep, letting the air go in a wail that rocked his body, and someone nearby laughed. A deep, cruel jeering that made his blood curdle. He knew that laugh but could not place the name.
“Rholki!” The frantic word accompanied a pair of wide, marbled eyes and brown hair. “You’re hurting yourself. Please, Azriel, you have to stop!”
Pain erupted from his neck, accompanied by a trickle of something warm. Someone grabbed his hands, prying his fingers free of the metal there.
“Hold him still.” Another, more elegant voice. Soft in tone, yet firm with the commands.
Large arms wrapped around his body, and Azriel thrashed, spitting curses at them all. A hand caught his jaw. Forced it open.
Blood. It tastedwrong.
Then…nothing.
Chapter 2
Emillie’s entire world had turned upside down over the nights following Ariadne’s departure with the soldiers of Valenul. After Azriel left the tomb, they followed, afraid he would get himself killed amidst the soldiers sent to put an end to him. Instead, she stood beside the fae and lycans on the hillside and watched as he cut down one after another with vicious precision, Madan and Whelan watching his back and taking on any who attempted to attack him from behind. Never in the nearly one hundred and fifty years of her life had Emillie witnessed such a brutal slaughter by the hand of a single man.
When Madan and Whelan had tried to bring him back, he put a knife to his brother’s throat. They lost track of him after that. The only way anyone knew in which direction he went was the trail of blood he left behind. Even his dragon—gods, hisdragon—Razer, had a difficult time locating him with how firmly he had shut himself off from their…what was it called? Vinculum.
Despite insisting the others could carry on their journey without her, Edira refused. After all, the task had been to get to the Dhemon King. Now the task merely shifted to helping the Dhemon King regain himself in whatever way they could assist.
What that meant, however, was force-feeding him blood-based potions enriched with illusions that sent him into a stupor. Zeke, the elder lycan with a vast knowledge of history, pulled from the depths of his supplies an old fae collar used to imprison criminals in L’Oden by suppressing their magic. In the case of her brother-in-law, it depleted his impressive dhemon strength and allowed them to control his movements through the key that locked it. Emillie hated that she had seen Azriel bound by the same kind of item once before: when Loren revealed his dhemon lineage in her family’s foyer.
Now she watched in abject horror as Azriel clawed at his own throat in a desperate attempt to free himself of the metal collar. She could see the memories of his previous experience with it resurfacing. Panic filled his eyes, and those screams… Gods, those screams tore at her heart. In those few moments before Madan pried his mouth open and had Whelan tipping another bottle of potion down his throat, Emillie was certain that Azriel believed himself to be back in Algorath, where he had no hope of finding Ariadne ever again.
After delivering the potion, Madan stepped back from his brother. Emillie watched, her stomach knotting as Azriel sank back onto the grass, red eyes glazed and distant before closing. His chest heaved, and he brought an arm up to sling over his face. Curling in on himself, he looked like a huge child attempting to self-soothe.
“How long can we keep this up?” Emillie asked when Madan turned around.
Madan’s face fell. As much as it tormented her to see it happen, she could only imagine what it felt like for him to doit to his brother. He did not respond for several long heartbeats before meeting her gaze. “As long as we have to.”
“That is from the new batch.” The mage, Phulan, had arrived at nightfall with a handful of dhemons that Whelan summoned by flying Oria over Lake Cypher to connect via their dragon bondhearts. He had been scouting for their next campsite location, as close to Laeton as possible without entering Eastwood Province, and took the opportunity to gather more forces to them. “It’s stronger this time.”
Emillie’s world had grown unbelievably surreal in such a short span of time. Dragons. Dhemons. Mages. Fae. Lycans. How had she gone from attending balls and dodging Caersan suitors mere months ago to living as a traitor of her kingdom in camps amongst people from across all of northern Myridia? If anyone had asked her where she envisioned she would be a year ago, she would have told them the parlor of her family estate.
“I’m worried it’ll be too much,” Madan admitted, turning his attention to the beautiful desert woman. He scrubbed at his face with his hand.
Behind him, Whelan stood from where he crouched beside Azriel and slunk an arm around Madan’s waist, bringing him closer. “You’ve seen what happens when he’s left without it. I hate it, too, but we can’t control him with the collar alone.”
A dark laugh dragged all their gazes towards a dhemon that made Emillie’s skin crawl. When she first saw the man, bound and gagged on the floor near the tomb entrance, his eyes had sparked with a vicious interest. He watched her like a ravenous cur, desperate for a scrap of meat.
Now he sat against a tree, another fae collar around his neck and a length of cloth still tied tight around his mouth to keep him as stifled as possible. If not for the wicked aura and constant sneer, Emillie imagined he would have been relatively handsome. As it were, after learning about who he was and whathe had done to Ariadne, nothing could make her consider him to be either an ally or attractive—as attractive as men could be for her.
In fact, she hated Ehrun so much that she did not stop Luce from kicking him in the gut the first time he had tried to speak to her.
“The collar alone works for him,” Madan pointed out, glaring at Ehrun.
