ALARYK
The intoxicating problem with rage was that sometimes I could sink into it so deep and never want to surface. For me, rage was like pain. And pain centered me. It gave me something to focus on when I felt like I was out of control of a circumstance.
Pain was my oldest and most reliable companion. And rage fed it.
So, while I felt the fury whipping through me, manifesting my magic quickly, I also felt in control. A calm in the maelstrom of my anger. I wasn’t like others. I didn’t yell or grow violent when I was angered.
I punished quietly, feeling a swell of malicious pleasure in its wake.
“What did you do?” I asked again, my voice low. I felt a touch in the back of my mind. Samryn. Trying to break my attention…but once I latched onto something, it was difficult to let go, and so I ignored him, shutting off the bond with a firm rejection.
“N-Nothing,” the Dakkari girl gasped out, struggling in the grip of my own magic, while her own eyes glowed with the remnants of hers. “He…he fell. I saw him. I?—”
She gasped when I delved deeper. Thoughts were not always clear. They were more like impressions, like footsteps in the earth after it rained, but I’d learned to read them. To fill in the gaps, to bend the mind to my own will. Sometimes I took it upon myself to fill in those empty places with my own wants and desires. Like filling a mold.
And I did it right then, urging the truth to fall from her lips.
“He fell,” she whispered again, staring up at me with pretty, glassy eyes that reflected a withering moon behind the clouds. “He’s hurt. I can feel it. Like rot.”
My stomach clenched. She was telling the truth.
I released her from my power, wrenching it away, and she fell to the earth, struggling to breathe.
I whipped around to look at Samryn. I could still feel the touch of her magic along his jaw, the crawling warmth of it. He’dallowedher to touch him?
Opening the connection, I felt how weak he was. I felt the surge of my own guilt mingle with it. He’d hid this from me until he couldn’t any longer?
I’d pushed him too hard, I knew. We’d been on patrol for days in Harta, and then we’d come to the Arsadia. He’d done so willingly. He’d never given me any indication of his growing weakness.
And yet…I should have known better. I knew from last time how quickly the curse spread once it gathered its strength. Exponentially. Just this morning, we’d flown over the Arsadia.
And by nightfall, Samryn could hardly raise his head from the earth.
I’d been roused from a restless sleep, fueled partially by my lust but mostly by my dissatisfaction from my encounter with Rivenna. I took her as my lover in Grymia because she shared certain proclivities when it came to sex. But even still, I was growing more and more restless, the anger coming quick andhard and merciless. And when I spent it inside her body, I didn’t feel the relief I usually did.
I’d stumbled from Rivenna’s home, leaving her sprawled on her bed where I hadn’t meant to fall asleep, lacing up my trews as I’d sprinted toward Samryn’s call. I’d left my tunic behind in my haste.
Rot,the Dakkari girl had said. A peculiar word that had me rounding back on her, stalking to where she was sprawled.
“What did you feel?” I asked, crouching down to meet her eyes, only feeling marginally guilty for unleashing the full force of my magic on her. It must have been…shocking.
“Don’t,” she whispered, having the audacity to glare up at me, her finger pointing in accusation, even though it trembled. “Don’t do that again.”
“I will do whatever I please,” I hissed softly, “if I think my Elthika is being threatened.”
I thought my eyes might’ve flickered with heartstone energy because hers went wide. “I’m telling you the truth. I would never hurt him! I was trying to help him, you bastard.”
My nostrils flared.
“What did youfeel?” I growled, repeating the question, feeling my frustration finally snap. A rare moment of lost patience.
“Rot,” she growled right back, making me still. “Sickness. Disease. Pain and waste. He’sdying.”
The forest floor met my backside when I fell, untrusting of my own legs to keep me steady. The words weren’t anything I didn’t already know.
But…hearing them spoken from another’s lips…it felt final. It felt certain.
And I felt thegrief.Riding me hard, sitting on my chest until I felt like my lungs had collapsed and I couldn’t find the air.
