Page 18 of Bite Sized Bride

KAEL

D arkness.

Not the familiar, hollow darkness of my cell. Not the quiet, watchful darkness of the forest night. This is a new darkness. A thick, syrupy void that has a weight and a sound. The sound is a high, thin scream that I vaguely recognize as my own.

I am floating in an ocean of fire. The wound in my side, a gift from the sorcerer Vexia, is a sun of pure agony, its heat radiating through every part of my cursed body.

The black magic of her spell is a poison, a living, writhing thing that coils around the tattered remnants of my soul and squeezes.

The red storm is back, a hurricane of pain and rage, and I am drowning in it.

This is the end. The beast has finally broken, and the darkness will swallow what is left.

Suddenly, there's light.

It is not the harsh, sterile light of magic torches or the cold, distant light of the moon. It is a soft, gentle warmth that presses against my cheek. A touch.

Her touch.

“Kael.”

Her voice is a thread of silver in the roaring darkness. A single, steady note in the cacophony of my pain. I cling to it. It is the only real thing in this burning hell.

“Don’t you dare leave me,” she whispers, her voice raw, desperate. “Don’t you dare.”

I try to open my eyes, but my body is no longer my own. It is a vessel of agony, a ship being torn apart in a storm. I am a ghost, trapped inside, watching the destruction.

I feel her hands on me, small and surprisingly strong. She is pressing a cloth to the wound in my side. The pain intensifies, a fresh wave of fire that makes the darkness behind my eyes flash with white-hot light. I roar, or I think I do. The sound is lost in the storm.

She presses harder, her voice a low, fierce chant. “Stay with me, Kael. Stay with me.”

Something shifts. The fire in the wound changes. The raw, agonizing heat is met by a new sensation. A coolness. A gentle, spreading warmth that is not the heat of the curse. It is the warmth of a hearth fire on a cold night. It is the warmth of the sun on my skin.

I feel it emanating from her hands. A soft, silvery light begins to glow behind my closed eyelids. It is her. She is doing this.

The darkness recedes slightly, enough for the dreams to begin.

They are not the usual, fragmented nightmares of the hunt. They are memories, sharp and clear, pulled from the depths by the strange, soothing power of her touch.

I am a boy. Not Kael, the warrior. Just Kael.

I am chasing my brother, Grak, through the snows of the Stonefang valley.

Our laughter is a cloud of white in the crisp mountain air.

My father, the chieftain before Grommash, watches us from the entrance to our longhouse, his face one of stern pride.

He is a mountain of an orc, his beard thick with frost. He is alive. He is whole.

The memory is so beautiful it is a fresh agony. The grief is a physical blow that threatens to send me back into the drowning darkness.

But her voice is there, a steady anchor. “It’s all right. I’m here.”

And the cool, silver light from her hands intensifies, pushing back the grief, holding the darkness at bay. It allows me to see, to remember, without being consumed.

The dreams shift.

I am a warrior. I stand before my clan, my hand bound to the hand of another. An orc woman. My mate. Her name is… her name is gone. Lost in the red storm. But I remember her face. Her fierce, loving eyes. The way she smiled when I brought her the pelt of a snow iypin. We are happy. We are complete.

The pain of this lost memory is a blade that twists in my soul. I feel a guttural sob tear itself from my throat.

Her hand moves from my wound to my face. Her small, soft palm rests against my scarred cheek. The cool, silver light flows into me, a river of peace that washes over the burning shores of my grief.

“It’s okay,” she whispers. “You’re not alone.”

The dream changes again. The memory I have tried so hard to outrun. The ambush.

The scent of dark elf magic, a foul, metallic stench that chokes the clean mountain air.

The screams of my clan. The clash of steel.

Grommash, my chieftain, my brother in all but blood, falling with a dozen arrows in his chest. The face of Vexia, her violet eyes burning with a cold, clinical curiosity as she chants the words that unmake me.

The pain. The fire. The breaking of bone and the tearing of flesh.

The red storm descending, burning away my name, my mate, my clan, my soul.

This time, I do not fight it. I let the memory wash over me, the agony of it absolute.

But her touch is there, a constant, steady presence.

The silver light is a shield, not against the pain, but against the oblivion that follows.

It allows me to see the horror for what it is—a memory. A part of me. Not the whole of me.

I feel her begin to tremble. The flow of her strange, healing magic falters. I can feel her fatigue through our connection, a deep, bone-weary exhaustion. She is pushing herself to her very limit. She is pouring her own life force into me to keep the darkness at bay.

How is Mikana doing this? She has purna blood?

No, a part of me screams. Not for me. I am not worth it.

But she does not stop. I feel a final, desperate surge of her power, a brilliant flare of silver light that is so intense it feels like it is physically knitting my torn flesh back together. It is an act of pure, selfless sacrifice.

And then, the darkness breaks.

I wake.

The first thing I am aware of is the silence. The red storm is gone. The screaming in my head has stopped. The fire in my side has been banked to a dull, throbbing ache.

The second thing is her.

She is slumped over my chest, her head resting on my shoulder, her body limp with exhaustion. Her face is pale as bone, her breathing shallow. The skin of her hand, still resting on my cheek, is cold. She has given everything.

I look at the wound in my side. It is still a horrific, gaping hole, but the edges are no longer black and festering.

The flesh is a clean, healthy red, already beginning to knit itself together.

The poison of Vexia’s spell is gone. She did this.

The small, fragile human with the fire of a Purna in her blood.

A feeling, vast and overwhelming, rises in my chest. It is not the possessiveness of the beast, or the pride of the warrior. It is a profound, aching tenderness. It is a feeling so powerful it threatens to break me all over again.

I do not move for a long time. I just lie there, breathing in the scent of her, feeling the light weight of her hand on my face. When the light of morning finally filters into our hiding place, her eyelids flutter open.

Her dark eyes, hazy with exhaustion, find mine. A flicker of fear, then relief.

“You’re awake,” she whispers, her voice a dry rasp.

I open my mouth to speak, and for the first time, the words are not a struggle. They are not rough stones I have to force from my throat. They are clear. They are mine.

“You saved me, Mikana,” I say. My voice is a low, gravelly rumble, the voice of a creature who has not truly spoken in an age, but it is steady.

Tears well in her eyes, spilling down her pale cheeks. “I thought I’d lost you. You can speak.”

I reach up, my hand clumsy, and wipe a tear from her cheek with my thumb. My touch, which should be monstrous, is surprisingly steady.

“Yes,” I say. “You found me.”

I need her to know. I need to say it, to make it real, before the fog can return, before the curse can try to reclaim me.

I push myself to a sitting position, the movement sending a fresh wave of pain through my side, but I ignore it. I look her in the eyes, pouring all of my newfound clarity, all of my desperate, fragile hope, into my words.

“My name is Kael,” I say, my words a sacred vow. “I am Kael. Of the Stonefang Clan.”

I say it again, the syllables a comfort, a shield. “My name is Kael. I am a warrior of the Stonefang.”

I keep my gaze locked on hers, my voice low and steady, repeating the words over and over, a litany against the darkness. I am introducing myself. I am reminding myself. I am a monster. I am a beast. I am a broken thing.

But I have a name. And Mikana is the one who gave it back to me.