Page 44 of Maneater

Raithe. Yellow eyes, bright as canaries.

Raithe. Golden eyes, molten, burning, endless.

I had met Raithe when I was young, though I didn’t understand what he was at the time.

Each encounter, I tried to forget, to lock that part of my life away as if it had never happened.

But memory, like fate, has a way of returning.

I found it ironic that the very beings I had feared as a child were the ones I later revered.

Demons. Devils. Gods. Whatever name they wore, it was all the same.

They shifted roles: kind in one breath, cruel in the next, indifferent soon after.

There was no true good or evil, only action and consequence.

I learned that lesson early, with Raithe.

He found me when I was twelve, in the woods of Brier Len.

He claimed I had summoned him, though I hadn’t meant to.

That night, I ran into the forest, terrified that my mother had been killed by my father.

Fear, panic, and adrenaline crashed through me in tandem.

I was just a child, and so was he. Raithe looked no older than me, maybe a year at most. He watched from the shadows as I wept, my body trembling from the trauma I’d just endured .

He told me he had heard my cry. That my fury had reached all the way to Torhiel.

He said the wrath in my soul was so potent, he couldn’t ignore it even if he tried.

But he hadn’t come to strike a bargain. He offered me a gift, his power, raw and divine, with nothing asked in return.

No price. No pact. He only said that no deal could ever be made between us, and that one day, I’d understand why. He wouldn’t tell me more.

“If Torhiel wills it,” he said, “you will come to know.”

I suppose this was what he meant.

The threads of fate fall where they may, and somehow, I followed them here.

The second time Raithe found me was at Rustwood Mill.

Another cry for vengeance. He said the wrath I’d carried then was the same as before, only tempered by time, sharpened in fury and deepened by darkness.

But something in me had changed. He sensed that Torhiel had already begun to call.

I had already tasted a fragment of the power she offered.

He asked why I hadn’t answered, why I’d turned away from her summons, why I ignored the pull to return to her. But I had something stronger than Torhiel’s call.

I had love.

And it tethered me, anchoring me to that place. What I felt was unshakable. Nothing could have pulled me from Caz. No god, no devil, no divine force could have undone what we had.

But when Caz left, when he broke me and shattered me into pieces, Torhiel found the cracks. And in those fractures, she sank her claws.

But the armor I’d built around myself didn’t let her in easily.

Torhiel pressed, insistent, but I resisted, holding her at bay as I bided my time.

Then I was taken, locked away in Hyrall.

It was a place so distant it may as well have been another world.

There, the darkness inside me dimmed to almost nothing.

Gadriel extinguished every flicker of emotion, leaving behind only apathy.

Even my wrath, so innate and integral, couldn’t reach me in that place.

But Torhiel had planted her seed in me long before, by birthright and by time. And eventually, I escaped. Freedom was the force that drove me forward, but now I knew there was something else guiding me.

The third time Raithe answered my call was in Falhurst. He felt it again, the bottomless well of rage, the cry for vengeance so raw it echoed like a battle hymn. And he came. This time, we were no longer children. We had grown, and the power within us had grown too.

Still, he asked nothing in return.

He gave, and I took. Greedily. I drank in his power and unleashed it like a storm. Chaos followed in my wake. I slaughtered, destroyed, and maimed anyone who dared to threaten me. Wrath flowed through me like breath, like blood, like life itself.

In the aftermath of that destruction was when I finally answered Torhiel’s call.

Her song could no longer be ignored. So, I went west. Farther than I’d ever been, farther than I’d ever seen, across shifting terrain, only to end up here.

Even in Falhurst, Torhiel’s power reached me.

It wrapped around me, staving off hunger, thirst, and sleep, driving me back to her.

Raithe had known all along that I belonged here.

For nearly a decade and a half, I should have returned to Torhiel. But something had always held me back.

Now my life was fractured, scattered into too many pieces, with too many unanswered questions. I was more afraid, more confused, and more lost than I had ever been.

Suddenly, I heard footsteps crunch against the moss that broke my thoughts. I squeezed my eyes shut, body tensing, then went limp. I slowed my breathing until it was quiet and shallow.

“Odessa,” Raithe’s low voice curled around my ears. “I know you’re awake. ”

I sighed, then began gathering the nerve to face him. My body shifted slightly on the moss, and there he was, in all his brilliance. He stood over me, as striking as ever, with a steel vial extended in his hand like an offering.

“Drink. It’s freshly tapped,” he said, crouching beside me and bringing it closer. “The pain will be back soon.”

He was right. I could feel the fog creeping through my mind, threatening to pull me under. Still, the pain scared me more than he did. I shot him a glare, part gratitude, part resentment, and swallowed the sap in one gulp.

Almost at once, the fog began to lift. The silvery light of the forest brightened, blooming into a gentle glow. My senses sharpened, clearer than they’d ever been, even on my best days in Hyrall, wrapped in silk sheets and spoon-fed lavish meals.

“I need to check your shoulder wound.”

I looked to my shoulder. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

“You almost died, Odessa,” Raithe said. “I need to check how it’s healing.”

“It feels fine,” I replied, still wary of him.

Raithe had always belonged to a part of my life I kept buried, hidden deep.

Seeing him here now felt surreal. I had spent so long avoiding this truth.

Spent so long pretending it didn’t exist. I always believed I was strong, that I had resolve.

So why did I feel so small now? Why did I feel so weak?

“Odessa,” he said again, and there was something in his expression, something caught between fear and fury. “I’m only going to ask once more.”

“Fine,” I snapped, yanking the shoulder of my dress down. I instantly regretted it. Pain shot through me as the fabric scraped over the wound.

When Raithe saw it, his eyes turned dark.

“No,” he murmured, a deep frown settling across his brow. “You should be getting better. The poultice…” He crouched lower, face just inches from mine, inspecting the wound more closely. “It should be healing.”

The sap had cleared the fog from my mind, it dulled the pain, sharpened my thoughts, but my body was still failing.

The wound had begun to fester again. More pus oozed from the raw, inflamed flesh, and I winced at the sight.

It looked worse than before. The infection had spread, dead flesh blanketing my chest, crawling toward my neck and heart.

I shouldn’t have survived this. Whatever Raithe had done, it hadn’t cured me, it had only delayed what was coming.

Raithe jerked back, his face twisted in something nightmarish. “Get up,” he ordered. “We need to go. Now.”

Fury surged in me. “No.”

“This won’t heal on its own, Odessa. There’s only one way to put an end to it.”

I met his eyes with a glare. “I have no idea why you feel this constant need to protect me, Raithe, but whatever story you’ve built about us, it’s all in your head. This talk about us belonging to each other, about some twisted connection, it’s delusion.”

“Odessa,” Raithe’s eyes darkened with warning as he said my name.

I rose, despite the pain. “Each time you’ve come to me, you’ve made it clear that no bargain could be made.

That your power came with no cost, no obligation.

And yet here you are, staking claim over me.

Whether it was the first time, the second, or the third, all we’ve ever been were fleeting moments in each other’s lives.

A means to an end. You’ve used me as much as I’ve used you, and there has never been anything more. ”

“Don’t say another word,” his voice shook, low and dangerous.

“Don’t say another word?” I snapped, my voice rising. “I could’ve lived my entire life in Brier Len without ever knowing you. I could have stayed there. I never wanted this. So why did you come looking for me? ”

“Do you hear yourself?” he scoffed. “You knew Torhiel would finally come for you. It was only a matter of time.”

“And still, I never asked for you.”

“You know that’s not true,” Raithe seethed. “You called for me every time. You screamed for Vengeance, and I came. You wanted retribution, and I gave you the power to wield it. Who else has done that for you? Tell me, Odessa. Who? No one has loved you the way I have.”

“That doesn’t mean I needed it or wanted it.”

“Then why did you reach for me?” Raithe demanded. “Why did you kiss me? Why do you keep calling for me, again and again?”

“I was sick! Fevered. My body was rotting from the inside. It meant nothing. And you know why I called for you, Raithe. It was not for love. You are a demigod of Vengeance, and I’ve only ever used you for that.”

Raithe’s golden eyes burned. “And you are a demigoddess of Wrath. How long have you run from that truth? You cling to your human life, you nurture your lesser half. And what has it brought you? You’ve ignored Torhiel’s call. You’ve denied your birthright. And now, you’ve run out of time.”

He stepped closer, voice furious, “So tell me, Odessa, how does it feel to be torn in two? To have your mind pulled between the divine and the mundane? Which will it be, will you die as a mortal or finally live as a god?”

I shook my head violently, refusing to hear the words spilling from Raithe’s mouth.

“No more running, Odessa. There is no world, no realm, where you and I exist apart. Vengeance cannot exist without Wrath, and the purest Wrath is born from a thirst for Vengeance. We are two halves of the same twisted whole.”

He lifted his hands, caressing my face. “You are mine, and I am yours.”