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It laughs, and Parker shifts. “You said you were just goin’ to scare him.”
The Varkhyn’s claw drags lightly along the edge of the mark, and I can’t stop the shudder that tears through me. “Did I?”
Parker’s voice goes higher. “You said you just needed him gone,” Parker says, and fear enters his voice now, late and useless. “You said you’d take him and then we’d leave. You said he wouldn’t suffer much—”
The creature turns its skull toward him at last, and he stops talking.
“No,” Parker gasps. “No, wait, you said—”
The Varkhyn’s hand moves so fast I barely see it. One moment Parker is standing there with his mouth open, confused and horrified, and the next the creature’s claws are buried in his chest. Parker makes a small sound, not a scream, more like he has been surprised by cold water.
His eyes drop to the place where the monster’s arm enters him, and then lift again, searching that skull face for mercy he has spent years helping deny other people. Parker chokes. “But I’m—”
The Varkhyn leans close. “Useful.”
Then it tears sideways.
My stomach heaves, and I turn my face away, but I can’t turn far enough. The creature drops him to the ground with no more care than discarded rope. Parker lands in the dirt a few feet from me, eyes open, neck bent at an angle no living person can hold.
He was never its mate; he was bait. A tool. A lonely man who wanted to be chosen so badly he mistook being used for being loved. I hate him. I hate him so much I can barely breathe around it. But watching him crumpled there, staring at nothing, I also feel the awful waste of it.
Then the monster turns back to me, and all pity dies under the weight of survival. It steps over Parker’s body and comes closer.
The mine seems to shrink around us. My arms shake so badly that the ropes tremble above me, but I force my head up. I won’t die looking away. I won’t give it that.
It leans in until its skull fills my vision. “You smell like him,” it says.
I spit blood at its feet. “Good.”
Its eyes brighten. “Brave,” it says, almost fondly. “I will make that last.” It lifts one claw and presses the tip against my stomach, not breaking skin yet. “Slow first. Pain teaches the bond to scream. He will hear some of it. Not enough to find, but enough to know.”
The cold in me becomes absolute.
“Then I open you,” it continues, voice soft with pleasure, “and leave enough life that he smells you dying before he reaches you. I’ll tell him you begged, and how his little ember went out calling for him.”
“No,” I whisper, and it isn’t fear this time. It’s fury.
The claw presses harder, skin parts, and pain blooms hot and bright. I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from making the sound it wants.
The monster hums. “There. Already learning.”
The bond strains, distant and wild. Onyx is out there. I know he is. He felt something—he has to have felt something. But the false Labrador tea is thick in the air, layered over stone and old roots and mine-damp wood. The creature planned this. It knows how to hide me from him.
I try to send one clear thing through the bond. Not fear, pain, or even the image of this place, because I can’t hold it steady enough. I send one last apology.
I’m sorry, Wildheart.
Sorry for leaving angry. Sorry for making him think the last thing between us would be that doorway, that argument, my voice telling him to move. Sorry for not listening better. Sorry for every time I thought his fear was only suffocation and not also a map of all the things that could reach me when he couldn’t.
Sorry that he will feel this. Sorry that I may become another hollow place inside him.
The bond answers with something too far away to understand.
A roar, maybe.
The monster smiles beneath its skull as if it feels the attempt. “Oh,” it says. “He heard that.”
My throat tightens as it trails its claw upward, tearing shallow fire through my shirt and skin.
