CHAPTER 10
There was a ghost standing before him. Come to haunt him. Torment him.
His ki’ara.
His sweet Shaia.
Fuery knelt on the stone floor of the guild reception room staring at her as she stared at him, her violet eyes as bright and beautiful as he remembered, and her sleek fall of wavy blue-black hair warmed by the oil lamps that lit the expansive space. Those lamps warmed her skin too, giving it a golden hint that reminded him of when they had met that summer over four thousand years ago.
Before he had killed her.
Had he passed out and this was nothing but another dream of her? She haunted his sleep, so it was possible. Whenever he closed his eyes, he didn’t find rest—he found her.
There were the twisted, torturous dreams where he saw himself destroying her, completely ruining her—killing her—and then there were the more wicked dreams of her. In those dreams, he was the male he had used to be, the one before the darkness had engulfed him. Sometimes, those dreams pained him more than the ones of killing her.
Dreaming of what might have been, and what had been, killed him.
He stared at her.
She wasn’t real. He wanted her to be, but she wasn’t. It wasn’t Shaia stood there staring at him with tears shimmering on her lashes. She was gone, had departed this world and it was darker for it. He was darker for it.
His breathing quickened, heart accelerating as his throat closed. Tears stung his eyes and he clawed at the black stone beneath him, aching to rip through it and bury his hands in the earth, to sink deep into it and somehow restore his connection to nature. He needed the comfort, but she would reject him, as she always did.
She loathed the darkness inside him.
That made two of them.
He hated it too, but he couldn’t shake it. He wasn’t strong enough. Gods, he wanted to be strong again, but it was hard to overpower the darkness crawling and slithering inside him, infecting his mind and his body, and destroying his soul little by little.
It was easier to give in to it.
He looked down at his hands, at his body.
At all the blood on him.
Not only his.
He lifted his hands from the floor and turned them palm up before him and stared at them. It was the fae female’s blood too. He chuckled mirthlessly, a hollow bitter sound in the strained silence. He had killed her.
That was the only reason he was seeing Shaia now.
He had killed another female and the darkness had conjured her to torment him.
It wanted to break him.
He hesitated, fear washing through him, battering his strength. The desire that ran through him was stronger than fear though, and he found the courage to lift his eyes from his hands.
He settled them on the vision beyond Hartt.
Gods, she was beautiful.
He had forgotten how beautiful she had been.
Every instinct he had as her mate burst to life inside his battered body and screamed at him to rise back onto his feet, cross the short span of stone tiles to her, and gather her into his arms. He needed to hold her again. He needed to feel her nestled close to him, her warmth seeping into his skin, and her scent swirling in his lungs, comforting him. He needed it more than anything. More than life in his veins. Air in his lungs.
A beat in his chest.
He needed her.
Tears blurred his vision as he stared at her and he blinked them away, desperate to keep her in focus, afraid she would disappear on him if he didn’t.
“I never wanted to hurt you,” he whispered to himself in the elf tongue, to her, even though he was sure she was only a figment of his imagination and he was aware everyone in the room with him, Hartt included, would think he had completely lost his mind. “I am sorry… I am sorry…”
Gods, he had lost his mind.
Who was he kidding?
He was seeing ghosts of his past, and the torture of it was too much. The urge to stagger onto his feet drove through him again, pushing him to obey it. He tried, but his broken body ached so fiercely that it sent him back to his knees, the pain stealing his breath and sending his limbs trembling. He could only kneel and gaze up at her. His love. His everything.
His Shaia.
“I missed you so much,” he murmured, voice strained as his throat closed tighter. “I am sorry… so sorry… that I killed you.”
Hartt moved, coming to him and easing into a crouch before him. The ghost stayed where she was, her steady violet gaze locked on him, looking right into his eyes and holding him captive.
He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her, even as guilt and shame ate away at him, stealing more pieces of his soul and feeding it to the darkness. He wanted to look into those eyes forever, because she was looking at him as she had used to, back in those halcyon days, when all of her love for him had shone in her eyes and bathed him in warmth and light.
He lowered his head and growled through his clenched fangs, his lips peeling back off them in a grimace.
He couldn’t take it.
He didn’t deserve her looking at him now. He was a monster. A fiend. He had failed as her mate.
Hartt pulled him onto his feet and Fuery couldn’t stop himself from reaching for her as fear of being parted from her again crashed over him, battering him.
Shock swept through him when she reached for him too, stretching out a slender hand towards him.
A clean, perfect little hand.
A stark contrast to his bloodied black claws.
Fuery snatched his hand away, afraid she might touch it and he might taint her.
“Do not move,” Hartt said, and at first Fuery thought he was speaking to him, but when he looked at the male, he was looking in the direction of the ghost that hovered before him.
A beautiful phantom and a terrible nightmare.
She shrank back a step, as if she had heard Hartt, and lowered her head.
Fuery laughed at himself and the ridiculous hope building inside him.
She wasn’t real.
She only responded because she was a figment of his tired mind, under his control, and he had heard Hartt’s words.
She had reacted because he had ached for her to do so.
Her lips parted, soft pink and tempting, and gods, he wanted to take those lips with his, to taste her and drown in her as he used to, spending hours worshipping them and stealing every kiss she would give him.
“Fuery,” she whispered.
Too much.
He growled and struggled against Hartt, the agonised sound echoing around the room to mock him. Hartt’s grip on him tightened, the pain of it a strange sort of comfort that he clung to, desperate to ground himself again.
The bond between them grew in intensity, offering more comfort to his weary soul, easing some of the pain in his heart.
Stripping away his defences.
What he had done came rushing back in to swamp him and the darkness seized it like a weapon, used it to weaken him as he fought to wrest control from it again.
“I woke in a village,” he whispered in the elf tongue as Hartt dragged him towards the corridor, his eyes locked on the ghost of Shaia. Desperation edged his words as he tried to purge the darkness growing inside him by spilling his sin as quickly as he could manage, confessing all to Hartt in the hope it would help as it had many times before. “I had killed many… I killed another female just as I killed you.”
Gods, he wasn’t confessing to Hartt.
He was confessing to her.
“Do not talk any more, Fuery,” Hartt murmured. “Save your strength.”
They reached the corridor and Fuery lost sight of his ghost, but he could still see the horrified expression that had settled on her beautiful face as he had confessed his sins.
“I am sorry.” Fuery stumbled along behind Hartt, his voice hitching as tears filled his eyes and his heart blazed, each step agony as his wounds stretched and felt as if they would burst open, and his bones burned and grated beneath his skin.
“Do not worry about it.” Hartt pulled him closer, turning him to face forwards and wrapping an arm around his side beneath his arms to support his weight. “I will go to the village. I am sure there is an explanation and that you did not kill a female.”
“Again,” Fuery said. “I did not kill a female again.”
Hartt muttered, “If you did, it would be the first female you have killed.”
Which made no sense to Fuery.
Hartt knew his black past, knew his sins and what he had done to the beautiful apparition they had left behind in the guild entrance hall.
They reached Fuery’s quarters and Hartt opened the door and led him inside. Light flickered to life in the oil lamp on the small table on the right of the room near the window, chasing back the darkness as Hartt moved forwards towards the double bed.
Fuery eased down onto the dark covers, his eyes not leaving Hartt as he tried to make sense of everything that had happened.
Hartt’s deep voice was soft, laced with affection and concern. “There is blood in the cooler. Drink some. You need it to heal. Swear you will remain in the room while I deal with a few things.”
Fuery nodded.
“Rest,” Hartt said softly.
He caught Hartt’s wrist when the male turned to leave, and Hartt looked back at him, the concern that had been in his voice shining in his violet eyes.
“I cannot,” Fuery whispered and clutched Hartt’s arm, unwilling to let him leave when there was more he needed to tell him. He needed to unburden his heart before he could rest. He needed to hear Hartt tell him that there was nothing wrong with him. Nothing more than usual anyway. “There was a light in me, Hartt. A flash of sunshine… and it blinded me. I keep seeing it wink in the darkness… an echo… but it is still there. I can feel it, Hartt. Someone put a light inside me.”
Hartt leaned over and smoothed his hair back with his free hand. “You are just tired. You need to rest.”
“I will try.” Even though he knew it was impossible because if he focused, that odd light was still there, casting shadows in his heart.
Hartt slipped out of his grip and headed for the door, and Fuery tracked him, part of him wishing his friend would stay and the rest needing him gone so he could have silence in which to think. To feel. He wanted to nurture that light that lingered inside him, needed to come to understand it somehow and learn where it had come from.
“Where are you going?” he rasped, his thoughts flitting between the strange light and the demons he had slaughtered, the two blurring together and rousing the darkness that now slumbered inside him, the pain echoing through his body keeping it at bay, rendering him too weak to fight as it always wanted him to.
It would leave him be now until he was healed, stronger, able to do its vile bidding. He had starved himself the first time he had realised it lost interest when he was weak. It had been a mistake, and one he had never repeated. When he had passed out from hunger, he had come around surrounded by a bloody scene and with his belly full.
Hartt looked back at him from the door, stopping halfway through closing it, and smiled at him. “I am going to look into some business for you, remember?”
Yes, he remembered.
He nodded. “The other female I killed.”
It had slipped his mind for a moment, but it came back in a flash, a brutal blast that tore at him and had him trembling again, sick to his stomach. The light that echoed inside him seemed to grow a little stronger in response, pulsing brighter, but still faintly.
It comforted him.
Even as it drove the darkness wild, made it bash against the cage he tried to keep it locked in and push to break free.
Hartt muttered something as he closed the door, but Fuery caught the words.
“The only female you killed.”