Page 27 of These Eternal Bones

Snapping of a Great Many Things

Elric

The blizzard rages outside. I rage inside.

Myself and the storm are very much alike in our pursuit of destruction.

My hunger rides me, my mind as foggy and unclear as the borders of my prison.

My claws gouge the lounge seat, with an ominous rip barely heard over the howling winds.

For nearly a millennium, my hatred for that putrid coven has festered.

I have had nearly a thousand years to be angry and bitter, but I feel it most in times like this.

Ones where everything inside me is screaming, bellowing for her.

To go to her, to taste her, to feed…to bond.

My restraint waging war against a soul deep impulse that demands submission.

It was a special agony to lo ve and desire so deeply, to know that your supplication is as surely inevitable as the grief it will cause you.

I will kill her.

In every life, it is I who drives the first stake.

The bellow that leaves me is visceral as footsteps trail along my floor, Tien having gotten in the habit of walking instead of simply appearing.

My ominous growl is a warning, a vow, as he rounds the corner, his odd features taking in the damage around him.

“This has gone on long enough, sir, I must insist you feed.”

The thought alone sends a wave of disgust through me as I pace across the marble floor. My lips curl over my fangs, my bottom lip healing before being gored raw again by them.

“I have brought–”

“Allow that fucking creature near me and I will add it to your already misshapen form,” I warn, nearly too far gone to be affected by the widening of his eyes.

It was a foul thing to say. Tien has been perhaps my only friend throughout the centuries.

He and the selkie have been here for all her lives…

and all of her deaths. Tien was there at the first. They stand waiting and steady as the years bear heavily on my mind.

When my sanity frays and I become more creature than man.

“You will hurt her like this, sir. Perhaps it is time for the bond–”

My tendril snaps out before I can stop it, knocking him roughly in the chest before banding around his wide neck.

He lets out a savage growl, his claws goring the appendage before blipping out behind me this time.

“There are only six hundred and six years left. I fear there will be nothing left of your mind when the borders release us.”

I strike again, narrowly missing his jugular before he blips back in front of me. “I am warning you– ”

“Yes, sir, quite effectively, but I am warning you, the creatures of your estate are fleeing into the storm… fleeing your rage. The Nephilim speaks his discontent–”

“The Nephilim has always spoken of his discontent!”

“He has grown bitter, too much so, I fear. He should be watched.” He offers calmly, always calm.

It only adds to my unraveling as I pace. “Then I will kill him.”

“Are you so far gone you have forgotten why you kept him alive all these years?”

A pang of hurt filters through the anger, slowing me…

just a little. He was the first to find her in her last life.

He’d loved her dearly, and she him. Nearly inseparable, the two of them.

He’d found her, when she died. He’d nearly depleted his soul trying to call her back.

I’d held my breath despite my burgeoning bellows of despair.

It didn’t work.

He has not been the same since that day.

“He does not understand that this is not a choice. Not for her, and not for myself. Our souls are one and the same. We are as tied as the sun and the moon.”

“Then go to her, Elric. Stop this waiting; you are losing yourself. I have spent long years watching you render yourself to madness. I do not wish for her to endure it in what time she has left.”

My body halts, his words sinking into my gut like the bite of a blade. There is no cure for my affliction, there is nothing that can balm a heart so horrifically broken. Even her soft smiles and warm touches only remind me of what’s to come.

“If I can resist the urge to–”

“You cannot!”

“What I cannot do… is endure it again,” I whisper, my words nearly lost in the storm .

The sigh that leaves Tien’s mouth is nearly as wary as I feel. “You say that every time, sir, yet you do.”

“How wonderfully ironic it is…to have done this in pursuit of life, only to want nothing more than for it to end. The head of their coven said a fate worse than death for the unkillable man. I wonder if she is in hell, knowing how right she was.”

“The price of sin was always meant to be steep,” he offers, never one for comfort. Not that it would work, anyway. Tien is one of the few beings alive who knows the entire story. The weight of my guilt. The atrocities I committed were beyond sin. My fate is a fitting one, but hers is not-

I stop breathing, my head snapping toward the windows. It was as faint as a quill dropping, but I heard it all the same. A snap.

A scream.

Dread swallows me whole, and I’m gone before Tien can react.

Agony pierces my heart as the wind barrels into me, snow like blades.

She is fine.

We are not bonded.

She will not die.

She won’t.

Yes, she will.

You’ll lose her.

The cottage comes into view, and my very soul pitches at the sight, at her quiet cries from inside. The backside of the small building caved in. I’m inside my mind, a haze of worry so strong it snuffs out the hunger that had gripped me so terribly moments before.

“Molly!” I roar, my eyes darting over the rubble.

Dirt, old wood, smoke, and lilac .

It’s not her voice but her cough I hear first, carefully removing the wood and brick from around her until a flash of white pulls my attention, panic making my movements blur until her wide, scared eyes meet mine.

I jerk her into my arms as carefully as I can, stepping into the blinding snow once more, a wisp of shadow in the distance.

One of my subjects came to lend a hand or harm?

It doesn’t matter because I can smell it, her blood, her whimpers barrel toward me as I rush us through the woods.

Her soft, delicate skin at the mercy of the storm.

Frustration fills me because I cannot help her, cannot warm her flesh.

My bare, unyielding flesh against hers offers her no comfort until I burst into my estate, only the selkie and Tien there to brave the sight of me.

She offers a soft gasp but knows better than to reach for my mate in my current state.

Having learned the lesson the hard way in several lives.

The golden man stays out of sight, but I can smell him, hear the rapid state of his pulse just down the hall.

Listening.

I pass them all, darting to my chambers, my eyes glued to hers, screwed shut and shivering violently.

From the cold or the shock, I’m not sure.

As soon as we stop, her skin turns pallid.

It’s the way her eyes snap open, wide and urgent, that has me shifting her in front of the toilet.

She hunches, vomiting, her tiny hands streaked with dirt as she grips the toilet.

“Ugh, stop!” she groans as I press into her, looking for signs of damage.

I ignore her weak swatting, taking a deep breath for the first time when I see there is no change in her blood.

No internal bleeding. None at all, save for the cut on her eyebrow.

My mind waivers, my fangs expanding before I whisk it away, bringing my thumb to my fang and pushing hard.

My venom dripping onto my thumb before I smooth it over the tiny wound .

To have it touch her feels like a sin in and of itself.

“It’s the speed. Humans do not handle it well,” I offer as she vomits again. My chest aches with the desire to hold her, to comfort her, to brush her hair from her face, but I do not. I cannot, once I know she’s okay, that need crashes back in, mottling my senses until all I can smell is her.

My tendrils snap out, jerking me from the bathroom, urging me toward her wardrobe. My claws dig into the heavy oak, just as I feel my mind…snap.