Page 28 of Dark Desire (Dark Souls Spin-off Short Story)

Not only had I mated, but I’d drunk from her too. I’d just solidified our bond.

Letting go of her hands, I shifted myself off her onto the mattress and pressed my hands to my face.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Zoran, you fucking idiot.

Shooting up from the bed with a burst of nervous energy, I grabbed my ripped top and pulled my arms through it before I realised Darcelle hadn’t moved.

Her eyes were closed, but I could see she was breathing shallowly as if in a deep sleep.

The realisation that she must have passed out made me pause.

In a sudden act of sheer desperation and adrenaline, I grabbed Ilaria’s dagger from the holster around my chest and moved towards the bed, my fists clenched around the leather handle. My gaze was fixed on her neck. One slit. That’s all it would take. She’d be gone from my life.

I couldn’t do it before. I couldn’t kill her with those honey eyes staring up at me, pleading with me. But could I do it while she was passed out?

My hand shook as the unbearable pain of losing her tore through my chest and made my blood boil. I’d cemented our bond. The mere thought of causing her harm made me want to take the dagger and stab myself with it. I threw my hands up to my face and dropped to my knees with a painful groan.

‘Perhaps she’s truly sorry.’ Ambroz’s voice was quieter, weaker than normal, as if he was unsure he should even be speaking yet.

I’d felt him through that whole experience; he'd been the one to encourage me to drink her, but I was thankful he didn’t make himself known to her.

‘She said she was and she seemed to genuinely mean it.’

I shook my head as I tried to gather my thoughts.

Just as I rose to my feet, a wobbly floorboard beneath me caught my attention.

It wasn’t screwed down like the other boards.

Bending down, I lifted it away and found a box hidden beneath it.

My gaze snapped back to the witch lying unconscious on the bed, and I pulled it out slowly, making sure I didn’t wake her.

Taking it over to the leather armchair in the corner of the room, I lifted the dusty lid and tilted my head at the strange contents.

There were mainly photographs, each one very unusual.

I narrowed my eyes at what seemed to be random people from all walks of life.

But what was extremely odd was how some of them were of people dressed in clothes or buildings that dated back centuries, perhaps even longer.

Picking up the top one from the pile, I studied the five women sitting around a fire, wearing white cotton dresses and holding hands.

Turning it over, Darcelle’s handwritten note read, St Wythren’s Cove, Night of Winter Solstice, 16th century.

’That can’t be possible, ’ Ambroz said in my mind what I was already thinking. Cameras hadn’t been invented in the 16th century. And this image was so clear. How did she get this? Was it just a reenactment like the one the village had the other night?

I picked out another one and turned it over. Paris, Society of witches meeting, 1782.

And another. London Tower, Beheading of Galadice Turner, 1408

I paused when I saw one with her in the frame.

I picked it up, my heart hammering. I recognised it immediately.

The ruins of my family cottage were behind her, thick black smoke rising into the air.

My hand was trembling as I turned it over.

Coven attack on a cottage somewhere in Europe. 18th century. Night of the raven.

I dropped the photograph as if it had burned me, the phantom lashes of hell’s fire causing all my scars to heat on my skin.

It was proof she was there. That she did turn me into the raven.

I’d known it, but now I had evidence. But how…

how did she take this photograph? How did she document all of these places before cameras were even invented?

Something silver caught my eye below the pile of pictures.

I reached into the box and lifted a heavy silver chain.

My heart thundered and unexpected emotion broke through the dam I’d built around the pain of my past at the sight of it.

I’d know it anywhere. At the end of the chain was a gothic, black demon encased by silver detail.

It was the medallion of my grandfather, the firstborn Demonski Upir.

He had given it to my father on his deathbed and my father had never taken it off his neck ever since.

He was wearing it the night he was murdered.

And here it was in a box hidden under floorboards by a witch who’d taken it after watching him die. I sat in the armchair and glared at her, necklace in one hand and knife in the other.

Red-hot lava exploded within as I jumped up from the chair and stormed towards Darcelle, flipping her over and pressing the knife against her neck.

I grabbed her jaw angrily, trying to coax her awake but she was too out of it.

The knife trembled in my hands, blood pooling at the point of the blade.

But I couldn’t do it. The box had raised too many questions.

How did she take those images? It didn’t make sense.

How did she not look a day older in that photograph than she did right now?

And then I saw it. The raised flesh-coloured markings of a triangle with three eyes in each corner on her shoulder blade. The same flesh mark that fae had. What the fuck was that? Was it some kind of branding?

Leaping off her, I paced the room. I was spiralling.

I needed to talk to someone before I did something impulsive.

Throwing on my clothes, grabbing my rucksack and slinging the box under my arm, I half-shifted into Ambroz and flew out of the smashed window and over the moors.

I landed in a deserted field and rummaged through my bag until I found my phone and the crystal.

I sent Luka a text telling him I needed him urgently and then rubbed the crystal to summon Leif. Leif appeared first, shirtless and in baggy shorts with tousled hair as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

“Demon.” He yawned. “When I said whenever you need me, I meant at reasonable times of the day, not at two am.”

“Can you get Luka. I need him too,” I demanded, opening the box and pulling out the photographs, laying them all out on the grass.

“You woke me up so I could be your errand boy?” Leif grumbled, stretching his arms above his head. “If you are about to make me and Luka do some weird twilight photoshoot out here, I’m strangely into it. You do know your tops ripped, right?”

“My brother. Please,” I growled, too impatient for his bouncy energy.

He sighed and disappeared in a flurry of green hues.

A couple of minutes later, they both reappeared in front of me.

Luka dropped to his knees, grabbing my shoulder as I placed the last photographs down. There were at least thirty.

“Z, what’s happened?” Luka asked, his green eyes scanning the photos with confusion.

“Look at these.”

Leif frowned, blinking rapidly as he kneeled beside us to study them. “What am I looking at?”

“Photographs from centuries ago. Photographs taken from times before cameras were invented. Coloured photographs, Leif. How do you explain that?”

Leif lifted one and frowned, shaking his head. “You sure they are legit? They could be costumes or movie sets.”

I lifted the one of our cottage burning and held it in front of Luka’s face. He visibly paled. “They’re real. That’s our house. The night of the attack. And that’s Darcelle. She took that picture. Turn it over.”

Luka took it from me carefully and read the back. His eyes flicked up to mine with disbelief. “But how? That’s impossible.”

I shook my head. Exhaling deeply, I pulled the necklace out from my trouser pocket, and Luka’s eyes bulged. He grabbed for it, running his fingers over the medallion. “Father’s necklace.”

“She had it. In a box with all these photographs,” I growled, barely able to keep my emotions contained.

Luka fell to the floor on his ass, staring at the medallion in his hands.

His jaw ticked and I saw his own rage come to the surface.

Memories of that night, of the brutality and merciless way they killed our father, would haunt us for the rest of our lives.

“I went back to the cottage so many times over the years searching for this,” Luka whispered, his voice wobbling a little. “And she fucking had it the entire time? She stole it off our father’s dead corpse?”

I swallowed thickly, a range of uncomfortable feelings fighting their way to the surface. Anger, pain, grief but also the want to defend Darcelle because she was my fucking soulmate. But defend her for what? She had taken it. Kept it. It didn’t belong to her. She had no right.

“If you haven’t killed her already, I fucking will,” Luka snarled, jumping to his feet as his eyes turned black with Heathen’s presence. Instinctively, Ambroz surged forward as I stood up and grabbed the front of his T-shirt in my fist.

“You won’t touch her,” I growled. His face morphed into shock and then alarm. I let go of him and ran my hands through my hair, pacing the field.

“She’s your soulmate, isn’t she?” he asked, watching me with a look of horror. “And you’ve claimed her?” he shouted, lifting his hands to his head. “Zoran. What the fuck have you done?”

“I know!” I roared. “I fucked up! And now I can’t fucking undo it! I have to live with this fucking bond for the rest of our miserable lives, knowing she was a slayer to our kind and being so fucking weak that I can’t even get my revenge.”

“Wait!” Leif interrupted us, rising to his feet with a bunch of photographs in his hands. “What makes you so sure she was a slayer?”

We both stared at the warlock with confusion. Wasn’t it obvious? She was there. She was a witch fighting alongside the slayers who attacked. She took our father’s medallion after they beheaded him. She turned me into a raven.