Page 198 of The Chains You Defy

As if.

No mercy.

No consideration.

Only destruction.

Let them behold the monster.

The Graigh on the dais were likely the last of their tribe, but I couldn’t bring myself to care about a potential genocide at my hands, no matter how much I respected the ancients and our roots. They deserved to die for hurting what was mine, with no regard for whether my actions would deliver their extinction or not.

Their fault.

I was retribution.

The time had come.

“Who harmed you, Nayana? Hurt you?”

My female stayed silent. She didn’t just appear exhausted. No, she was drained, and the horror of watching her flame dimming before my eyes spurred me into a frantic loop. Something wasn’t right with her, and I reached out to caress her cheek. “Tell me, Nayana.”

“The Graigh. Cantarlann.”

Power leaked out of me, feeding the magic that kept the entire Cuirt at my mercy.

For the last time, I gently stroked Nayana’s soft skin before I rose to full height and stalked to the center of the hall. As much as I yearned to take my time with torturing each condemned creature, my female’s state wouldn’t allow such indulgences.

So, I’d settle for maximum pain.

Gripping the connecting cords to the fae around me tighter, I opened my soul and attuned myself to the group as a whole.

Without any warning, more tendrils, darker than midnight, shot out of me. Like a puppet master, I directed my magic to approach every fae apart from the Graigh and Cantarlann, and as soon as each unfortunate spirit had a razor-sharp tip hovering in front of them, I ordered the constructs to lunge as one.

Burrowing through skin and bones, destroying tissue, and bathing in blood, my creatures eased deeper into chests, aiming for ultimate agony. Listening to each body’s life signs, I twisted my powers in a way so no one could black out or perish before I decided the time for their demise had come.

A cacophony of screams awakened the creativity I’d buried so deep within myself a lifetime ago, and instead of continuing to order every tendril to proceed at the same pace, I sorted the noises after their pitch and varied the levels of pain for each of my victims.

The result was beautiful and stole my breath away.

Conducting this giant orchestra of roughly ten dozen fae, each being their own instrument producing whimpers, wails, shrieks, pleas, and screams, I composed my own symphony of suffering, each note singing an ode to the downfall of a toxic cult that had dared to touch what was mine.

An indescribable emotion filled my heart. For centuries, I hadn’t bothered with music anymore, apart from the few opportunities I’d sung, and creating an anthem so grand, so perfect, soothed and maybe even healed a part of my broken soul.

Losing myself in my masterpiece, this supreme rhapsody of torment, I accelerated my composition, played with the dynamics, diversified the tempo, until theconclusion of my monumental requiem dawned much too soon.

Right now, I was an avenging angel, unstoppable in my thirst for violence and death. During the finale, I controlled the tendrils to add a polyphonic element, ordered my strings to encase every single heart of each instrument, cherished the thundering staccato of each sequence, and morphed my magic to drain their energetic essences.

I felt every single beat inside of me, how the cocooned organs went from hammering erratically to a slower rhythm. Skin turned ashen, but the pain only magnified under my ministrations. White robes gained blooming patterns as they stained with blood. Screams mutated into whimpers, and pleas faded to a decrescendo, but there wasn’t an ounce of mercy within me, only burning wrath and a crazed obsession for the hymn I composed.

Heartbeats converted to a mere vibrato, and the coda was imminent. Instead of draining the last drops of energy, though, I pulled at all dark tendrils at once. The iron smell in the heavy air intensified as dozens of still-pulsing organs were ripped from their owners’ chests, finishing the elegy with an abrupt conclusion.

My chest heaved, and I felt alive as rarely before. Even though I couldn’t access Nayana’s Potential, power like never before saturated me to the brim.

Like one giant creature, the dark tendrils jerked at my command, hauling the hearts away from their former hosts. Blood splattered in rivulets as my magic strands withdrew from their victims.

One after the other, my constructs piled their trophies on the ground at Nayana’s feet as an offering to theirgoddess. She was pale and had closed her eyes, appearing more frail than I could cope with.

But at least the mountain of her enemy’s hearts sacrificed to her filled my chest with satisfaction and pride, just as much as the symphony I’d composed only for her.