I know he does it to tease me, get back at me for not being the ideal vessel he wants.
The kraken pulls the dagger out of the wolf’s side and drops it to the ground. The alpha lets out a short howl before it turns and limps off and the other wolves follow along behind it. I’m glad to see them walk away. It’s why I pulled the dagger from the wolf, giving him the best chance of survival.
I turn to the woman who fortunately doesn’t seem to have noticed the little kraken that came out of nowhere and then disappeared into the wind.
She flips her short black hair as she turns. “That was quite a throw,” she says, her tone sounding impressed.
I’m about to make some smart remark about how saving damsels used to be my day job—when really hauling damsels to the Spice Isles and then being murdered by said damselswas actually my day job—but then I find myself looking into her eyes. They are black like a night before the stars come out. They seem to pierce my very soul, and I find all logical thought driven from my mind.
Which is my only explanation for why I find myself saying. “Hello, my name is Victor. Will you marry me?”
Well, at least I know that I wasn’t the sorcerer. After all, I can hardly expect that I flung glass into myself, now, can I?
“Actually, now that you mention it…”Likho begins, deciding to rear his ugly head. I was hoping that he would stay in whatever place demigods go when they’re dead. It had been so quiet in my head for a while. It is respites like these that make me think maybe it wasn’t so bad to bargain with this entity for a second chance at life.
After all, Likho is a busy demigod, and without a physical form. His powers are finite. He actually has people who worship him, who he has to help when they pray to him and such.
So, he isn’talwaystormenting me.
He just does that most of the time.
What is it, Likho?I think as I look over my father, sister, and cousin assuring myself that they’re all right.
“Don’t you think that it is perfectly in my chaotic right to throw those shards to you. Especially since I know that you’d survive it?”
The demigod has a point. After all, with him inside of me and his power coursing through my every sinew, I cannot sustain an injury, at least not one that lasts very long. He keeps me alive in the same way he healed me and brought me back, with some sort of dark power that only a demigod could control, and in doing so, ensures that he doesn’t need to find a new vessel anytime soon.
And it would be like Likho to attack me and then heal me. It’s the very chaos that he adores.
I don’t acknowledge that because I’m still almost certain that I wasn’t the sorcerer who has been killing these people.
Likho can’t be so powerful that he could channel his power through me without me even feeling it. Sure, he could channel it outside of my control, but in a manner that I don’t even notice?
That’s never happened.
“That you know of.”
Thanks for the lovely thoughts, Likho.
I could swear that Likho smiles at this. If an undead spirit of an evil demigod can indeed smile, which I don’t think it can. But I can still sense his smugness.
I give my head a sharp shake. I won’t be getting anywhere with him, so I turn my attention back to my father.
“What are we going to do, lad? People are dead, our wine is all over the floor, and there will be one Skyhold of a mess to clean up in the morning.”
“If any of us make it that far,” Estelle says folding her arms. Awfully pessimistic words for a woman who was not skewered by glass today. I may have healed from it, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t feel it when that glass sliced through me as if I was paper. And I have the bloody tears in my favorite coat to show for it.
But I need to stay focused. I can mourn my coat, and my father can mourn that wine when the sorcerer has been stopped.
I reach into the inside pocket of my coat and pull out the spellbook. “This is our key to finding the sorcerer.”
“Valentine’s book?” Talyria asks, frowning.
I wave the book, the pages fluttering slightly. “This is not just any book, it’s a spellbook.”
“Victor spent a year at the academy,” my father states proudly as if that bit of information is necessary right now. Still, I guess it’s nice to know that he’s proud of my academy days. I remember him saying that innkeepers didn’t have any need of magic, but I guess deep down he thought well of it.
Only for me to find out that I had no magical inclination whatsoever and wind up as a guardsman who had to make a deal with a demigod to avoid being a kraken’s lunch.
