Page 6

I kept my silence as Dragor stepped closer, his arm banding around my waist as he yanked me to him. It was no embrace. More like a mark of restraint. I didn’t resist and within a heartbeat we were spearing into the air, shooting through the sky and away from Wrathborn Palace.

We shot across the sleeping city, the clouds thick above us, blotting out the stars and sending fat flakes of snow tumbling all around.

We headed for the mountains beyond the city limit, the closest peak one I knew well from my time training in the art of ether with my Sage, Moya. Though the last time I had visited the rocky outcrop, I had walked the treacherous mountain path to reach her quarters near the summit.

A patch of deeper darkness slowly revealed itself; a stone tower jutting from the mountainside like a defiant warrior making a final stand, alone on a barren battlefield.

We landed at the top of the tower within the ring of turrets and Dragor released me before letting the concealment spells fall from us too.

Snow made the landscape clearer than it should have been so late at night, the glow of it offering me a view out over the sprawling valley and city below us with the palace at its heart like a Dragon crouching over a pile of precious jewels.

I followed Dragor through a wooden door and down a short stairway into a room which took up the entire top floor of the tower, its curved, grey brick walls illuminated by the flickering glow of a fire.

There was a bed, a desk and a copper tub filled with water before the flames.

“Clean yourself up and cover your hair with this.” Dragor took a bottle of shimmering potion from the desk, tossing it to me.

I caught it in one hand, my numb fingers almost fumbling it but my reflexes had been honed in battle and wouldn’t fail me so easily. I turned the bottle in my hand, eyeing the small label which simply read ‘Onyx Dream’.

I didn’t bother to tell my prince that this potion wouldn’t last on my hair.

I doubted he wanted to hear the pathetic sob stories from my youth.

Back when I had wanted to blend into the crowd and had stolen countless bottles of vanity potions such as this from the wealthy women of the court who transformed their hair colours from blonde to brunette to red to black for nothing more than petty vanity.

My hair had been almost as pale as Dragor’s once.

But when my Order emerged, that had changed, the pale pink staining it from root to tip, marking me out and drawing attention at every turn.

As if my face and figure weren’t more than capable of that alone.

But despite the many and varied pathetic attempts I had made to cover the colour with potions such as this, they never lasted more than a week.

The magic in me eventually forced them away, revealing the pink once more.

Still, if my prince commanded me to dye my hair, then I wouldn’t deny him.

To the left of the room, a wide bookshelf was stacked with countless supplies and provisions.

I moved to it, taking a small glass vial from one of the shelves and lifting it to my chest where the blood of my sisters stained my skin the darkest. I wouldn’t simply wash their sacrifice away.

There was power in what they had given for me.

A dark and hellish power, far greater than any I had wielded before.

All sacrifice was potent, but a life given out of love…

The burn in my eyes grew so fierce that I had to close them firmly to force it away.

Dalia.

Moraine.

I counted to ten, exhaling all the while before opening my eyes again and meticulously collecting the blood they had spilled for me into the little vial, whispering words laced with ether to urge it to do my bidding.

Dragor sat at the desk and watched me, silent in his fury, though the scent of his rage tainted the air.

I could feel every desire in him as if it were weaving itself around my body and dressing me in a suit of it.

He wanted to hurt me, to bend me to his will and make me suffer.

He wanted to roar and rage and bellow and throw his fists into the wall, but he didn’t move.

I drank in his anger and married it to my own, his magic trickling into me, filling my reserves.

I was no more willing to utter a word than he, so instead, I stoppered my bottle and placed it carefully back on the shelf before stripping out of the stained, tattered tunic and trousers which had seen me through my interrogation and torture in the bowels of Wrathbane.

I kept my back to Dragor as I moved to the tub.

I didn’t care about my nakedness and the contempt with which he surveyed me made it clear that he held no interest in it either.

The lust I had tasted on the air between us in his presence before was buried far beneath his desire to punish me - if it even still existed at all.

Perhaps I might have cared about that before, but now the thought of any man laying his hands on my body again only filled me with the sickening memories of Cayde and what he had taken from me. What I had so stupidly given him.

The water was by no means hot, but the tepid warmth felt scalding to my frozen feet.

I bit back a hiss of pain, forcing myself to lower into the water fully, and the clear liquid fast turned red from both the stains on my flesh and the ever-bleeding wound to my side.

I took up the washcloth and scrubbed at my skin, ignoring the stings of pain which came from countless injuries. When I was as clean as I could manage in the now filthy water, I dumped the potion over my hair and worked it through the pink strands, staining them black – at least for now.

I rinsed my hair through with a pitcher of water and then stood, claiming the towel which had been left on the edge of the tub and wrapping it around myself.

Dragor still watched me, his eyes calculating as he leaned back in his chair, fingers stacked on the desk before him.

“Will stitching suffice or should I warm an iron to cauterise it?” he asked, and it took me a moment to realise he was referring to the cut along my side.

I finished drying myself, ignoring the stain which blossomed on the towel as I pressed it to the wound before pulling it back to inspect it.

“A stitch should hold it,” I discerned, though I could tell Dragor would gladly take the option of sealing it with fire given the chance.

He nodded, opening a drawer in the desk and taking a tin of salve from it alongside a needle and thread. He didn’t offer to stitch it for me and I didn’t ask.

Dragor flicked his fingers at the door and a cloak was whipped from the hook on the back of it with his air magic, the dark woollen fabric shooting towards me so fast that I only just managed to catch it before it could collide with my face.

I tugged it around my naked body, then moved to the bed, taking the medical supplies with me as I went. I touched my fingers to the Vampire bite on my neck, but the wound wasn’t bleeding, and though it was sore, it wasn’t deep enough to require stitching either.

I perched on the edge of the plush mattress, pushing the folds of the cloak aside before smearing the salve over my wound. The burning pain lessened instantly, the magical concoction working to numb the pain and slow the blood loss, making it possible for me to inspect the injury.

It wasn’t too deep – no sign of my guts spilling free or organs leaking blood. Simply a nasty cut through fat and muscle. The type of wound I had survived countless times before.

I started stitching, the numbness in my skin leaving little more than a dull tugging sensation to mark the passage of the needle and thread through my skin.

“You will set out at once,” Dragor said, and I could feel his gaze on me though I kept my own eyes on my work.

“The trail may be fading but it is fresh enough. I want no others to know about this, do you understand? You are dead until I see fit to change my mind on the fact. And believe me, I’m far more inclined to bury you for good than return you to the ranks of my army. ”

“I don’t want to keep my life,” I told him, my voice cold, hollow, vacant of all I’d once held dear. “I told you plainly, my only goal is vengeance. If I survive my task, then I’ll gladly slit my own throat while kneeling before you and every member of this kingdom in penance for my failings.”

Dragor scoffed dismissively and I looked up at him in surprise, the black strands of hair which divided us seeming strange in place of the pink.

“As you have already pointed out, my dear, death is too easy for you. Suffering is what you seek and it is what you shall receive but not on your terms. On mine. Are you clear on that? Or do you plan to betray your kingdom and element again?”

“I am yours,” I said, though the words tasted far more sour than the last time I had spoken them to him. Perhaps because I knew they had been a lie before, even if I hadn’t meant them as one, and now I couldn’t easily trust myself to pledge any kind of truth. My weak blood had been outed at last.

“Yes, you are. And you would be wise to never forget it again.”

I said nothing, instead focusing on stitching my wound.

Not because I wanted to be healed but because I needed to be if I were to stand any hope of catching up to Cayde and reaping vengeance on him for what he had done.

Nothing about the death I would offer him would be swift, no part of it merciful.

I would cut him apart over days and weeks, months and years if I got the chance.

I would burrow into the essence of him with my dark magic and bring every nightmare he had ever had into force against him while carving him apart in slow and precise measures.

“It would not be prudent to return him here in his current form. I want his existence to be a better secret than even yours. You will have to force him back into his Fae flesh and drag him home to me.”