Page 223 of Dark Souls

I lifted my head and looked into her eyes.Your future is safe.

“My future has never been safe. I have never felt safe. Not since…” I stopped myself, unsure where I was going with this. I could feel a memory niggling in the back of my mind, trying to break free. Had I ever felt safe? Even as a child, we were always on the run. Yet, I knew I had felt it at some point. That sense of safety.

“Not since?” Alina questioned patiently. “Shall we try to go back to that time, Luka? To a moment when you felt safe?”

I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. My stomach twisted itself in knots and I fought every cell in my body telling me to stop this, to stop prying into a place that would only cause me unnecessary pain. But I had to try. “Okay.”

“Allow your mind the freedom to be still. To think of nothing. Just listen to my voice. You are safe here, Luka. You are here in this room with me and no one is going to hurt you here. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“You are safe,” she repeated. I found myself reciting it in my own mind. “Breathe in. You are safe. Breathe out. You are safe.”

My mind cleared and my muscles relaxed. I focused on the one thing I knew how to do. Breathe.

“Tell me, Luka. Tell me about a time when you remember feeling safe.”

My back slammed into the ground as my legs whipped out from underneath me. I groaned, rolling onto my stomach and lifting myself to my hands and knees.

“Get up. Never show hesitation, or it will be the end of you,” my father shouted in Serbian as he paced the edge of the lawn, watching Zoran and me as we took part in our daily combat sessions that he insisted we had.

Zoran stared down at me, his red eyes glaring in challenge. The look was the same as my father had; a determination to make sure I could defend myself. But it wasn’t a fair fight. Zoran had years on me. I was only fifteen. He’s stronger. Faster. And I never fucking won.

He stepped forward, offering me his hand. I took it. In a quick attack, I twisted his arm behind his back and lifted him, putting enough pressure that the bone snapped. Zoran laughed like the maniac he was, and I let him go, staring in alarm.

“Good. That’s more like it, son,” Father praised me. “That’s enough for today.” Father walked away, heading back inside the house.

I marched straight up to Zoran, staring at his unnaturally crooked arm, and immediately apologised.

He grabbed me by the throat and lifted me so my feet were dangling off the floor, choking me as my face turned red. “Never apologise, Luka.” He dropped me, letting me fall into the mud once more. “Next time, break two.”

Once again, he held out his hand (the arm that wasn’t broken) and hauled me to my feet with a wicked smirk on his face. “Come on, let’s hunt. Ambrož is starving.”

He walked off into the forest, and I glanced over my shoulder to see Mama feeding Hana at the table through the kitchen window. Father took a seat beside them and kissed Hana’s head. I ran after Zoran, knowing that I could not leave him to hunt alone. We must always hunt in pairs. Father’s rule.

“Wait. Don’t you think you should wait until you have healed to hunt?” I asked, slowing down to a jog to keep up with his long strides.

“Do you think in a real fight, a slayer would wait for your arm to heal before attacking again?” he responded, not glancing at me but focusing on the dense trees ahead in search of his prey. “Learning to fight when injured is even more important than learning to fight in general.”

We travelled miles, scrambling up the mountains. We came across a deer which we killed and fed from, but it wasn’t enough. We needed at least two more to keep our demons sustained because they weren’t human organs. Suddenly, an arrow zoomed past my head. I spun around and saw a man quickly duck behind a tree.

Zoran grabbed me by the shirt and yanked me down to the ground behind a bush.

“Slayers,” he hissed. He allowed his demon to share control with him, and I quickly did the same. More wooden arrows came flying over our heads. “At least four. I’ll take the left. You take the right.”

I nodded, about to zoom away, when he grabbed me with his good arm again and looked into my eyes. “Don’t hesitate. Never surrender.”

I promised him, and he patted my chest before darting over the bush and ripping the closest slayer to pieces in seconds. This would be my first real fight. The adrenaline pumped through my body and ignited a fire inside me. I shot towards the tree where an arrow came from and tore the man to the ground, pinning his body down with my own. The talons on my wings dug into the ground around us as I leaned down and bit into his neck, ripping his artery open aggressively.

From out of nowhere, a heavy net of chains fell on top of me, trapping me and the dead slayer beneath it. My wings thrashed wildly as I tried to escape it, but with every touch, my wings burned and so did my skin. I screamed in pain.

“Luka!” I heard my brother somewhere in the distance, but I can’t see anything through my blind panic. It felt like an eternity before he reached me, but I knew it was seconds. He grabbed the heavy chain with his bare hands, and I watched as his flesh started to sizzle and burn. He roared, ripping it off me with all his might and I crawled out from under it. Releasing his grip, he fell to his knees, breathing hard as I lay on my back, staring up at the sky.

“What was that?”

“It was silver they had heated with hellfire. Are you okay?” he asked after a few seconds and I sat up, checking my back over my shoulder. There were a few burn marks zig-zagging across it from the chains and a few of my feathers were a little frazzled. I nodded and turned to look at him. My eyes grew.

His broken arm looked even worse. He had cuts all over his body and face. Both his hands were an angry red with burned flesh as bits of skin hung off them. I looked around the area and saw at least eight dead bodies. Eight. I only took out one. I felt like a failure.