by Kenna Bardot
Whether it was Hydra's or Mireyah's, I couldn't say, but I knew if we found one, the other would be close.
Mireyah would never have left Hydra, and the same could be said of her mischievous dragon. I'd never seen a pair more tightly bonded so quickly. Ryle sprinted forward, leading the way as the rest of us followed as quickly as we could in the dark. We had to make sure we didn't lose the path. We used our bond to find her, that link between all our souls calling to us.
I had a feeling we would only have one chance to save our wife. I just hoped we hadn't wasted too much time when we hadn't even known she was missing.
If she survived, I'd never let the woman out of my fucking sight again.
Thirty-Two
Mireyah
Awareness came slowly.
I felt the throbbing of my head first. Like someone had beaten me over the head with an elderberry tree trunk. After that was the distracting tickle of fingers on my scalp, massaging gently and every so often probing a spot that sent blinding pain through me.
Then came the warmth. I was too hot, with something weighted on top of me and something cushioned underneath me. Something else pressed against my front, giving contact from my chest to my toes. Desire to flinch away from the touch rolled through me, but I couldn't force my limbs to move.
Not with the way those wandering fingers pressed into the searing part of my skull. "Kald and Majele really are durable, a combination better than a Karfi even. You can heal just about anything I do to you. Even now, your skin stitches back together where I cracked your head open. Do you know how many pathetic, weak toys have died just like that?" Ashric murmured, gripping my hair at the back of my head to tug me to look at him.
I could barely process the words beyond the pulsating in my head. I knew they felt significant, knew they bore the weight of a confession that would horrify me once I regained the ability to think.
To even remember my own name.
His other hand trailed feather light touches over my arm, but something blocked the contact from touching my skin. The black of my uniform was a stark reminder of who I was. Of what I'd become.
Of what Ashric had done.
Turning my head as soon as I felt able, I looked away from him. A few feet from the bed, where we'd stood before everything faded away, a deep smear of red marred the wall. Ashric chuckled behind me, dangling his fingers in front of my face. With his entire hand stained red, the coppery scent of blood finally reached my nose as my skin stretched and burned at the back of my head.
Repairing itself. I knew Majele were resilient, and that they had the ability to heal, but I'd never heard of it happening on its own. That was typically a Karfi trait, the trait of my Ryle, who I yearned for even then. I needed them.
I couldn’t do it alone.
I pushed myself to my feet. Stumbling over my own legs, I worked to stand up straight despite the pain. I fought through it, because Hydra was caged. With my reanimated sister holding a knife over her.
If it came to it, I would have to go through my sister to get to my dragon. Because nobody would touch my fucking dragon if it was the last thing I did.
But for everything I had to do to my sister, I vowed to do the same to Ashric. Only ten times worse. Because everything began and ended with him and his obsession.
Ashric stood, stepping into my path and blocking me from reaching her. His face was intent on mine, watching me as if fascinated because I stood at all. I knew I'd always been a fixation for him, an oddity in a world where people never surprised him.
“What does she have that I don’t?” he asked as he stared at my Hydra, hate so clear in his eyes I worried he would hurt her more.
“Are you seriously comparing yourself to my dragon?” The fog cleared bit by bit, but I endeavored to hide it. I kept my eyes half closed, my jaw clenched as if to stem off the pain that faded more with every passing second.
“I’m so much better, Mireyah.” Fingers trailing over my thigh. “I should have been enough for you and we’d have lived together for all eternity.”
The touch, even feather light, was worse than a thousand spiders creeping all over me. “Being Bonded with you would not have been a life, Ashric. Not when you court death and darkness so closely.”
He took my hand, kissing the top of it. “We would have ruled over death and darkness together, and I would have been complete.” He looked at me, those eyes dark with a broken kind of love, a twisted kind of devotion.
“We wouldn’t have been happy, Ashric.” I tried to reason with him, even as I tried to call out to Hydra. Prodding her through our bond. She was alive, but I needed to feel her.
“How do you know? We can try now.” His touch came down on my shoulders, putting weight on me as if to test my resolve. I stumbled, but didn't crumple. Turning my attention back to him, I watched a faint smile ghost over his lips as I glared at him and clenched my teeth.
"It doesn't have to be this way. Sex will be rough, but that's just how you like it, isn't it?" He smirked. It seemed so clear that the longer he spent in my presence, the more himself he seemed to become. His cold cruelty returned. The manic in his eyes fading with each moment that his hands remained on me.
I let him capture my face between his hands, staring down at me, and returned that stare as his lips drew closer. He moved slowly, like he didn't want to kiss me but couldn't resist the pull he found in me. I already knew his fixation on me was unwilling, something he didn't want but couldn't seem to rid himself of.
I said nothing as he pushed in even closer. “I’ll even let you keep your sister here with us.”
My nostrils flared at his suggestion. I would rather destroy my sister than have him defile and desecrate her further. Without taking my eyes off him, I used my sense of Hydra, and my sense of myself, to determine where Tali stood.
The memories of her flashed through my head. The times she would pick me up when I was small and cried. The way she looked deflated after coming home from a Collection Day. Her anger for the fact I didn’t care to strive for the dreams she had for me. Her joy on the day of her wedding.
Whatever I did, however she might end at my hands, it was all Ashric. Her death, her end, were in Ashric’s hands and no one else’s.
All I wanted was to free her.
From him, from her connection to me that brought his attention onto her.
“I’m so sorry, Tali,” I barely whispered and Ashric’s eyes came up to meet mine. I smiled. My left hand came up, pulsed as I felt the marks of my Five tingling on my skin.
Were they already looking for me?
I parted my lips to capture Ashric’s attention. To demand it. Trying to make myself enticing, desperate to distract him. Even as my stomach threatened to empty in his face, my resolve strengthened. I'd do whatever it took to save Hydra and the baby.
When I finally struck shards of ice into Tali’s body, Ashric's lips were only a breath from mine. Her pained shriek erupted behind him, jolting him from his stupor only a second before he made contact. He spun to look over his shoulder frantically. Tali struggled against the shards piercing her flesh, massive icicles that pinned her to the wall. “You don’t know me at all if you think I would let you hurt her for another second,” I hissed at Ashric.
He growled at me, and I stepped back, moving to the side to be closer to Hydra. Tali’s face, a face so like mine and so familiar, twisted in anguish. I could only imagine what she’d suffered in her months of torture under Ashric.
I just had to free her.
Tears blurred my vision as I watched her fight against the binds at Ashric's command, wailing as I willed the ice to spread and cage her in. With another thought, my ice filled with blue venom and her skin sizzled where it touched her. It burned, melting her into nothing until all that remained of her was a puddle of what had once been a human being.
What had once been my sister.
There was nothing left to send back to our home in Wintercairn. Nothing but a memory to bury. I swore
in that moment that by the time I was done with him, there would be nothing more remaining of Ashric Tovenaar. Nothing for his Uncle to grieve over. I would take from him what he'd taken from so many others.
The ability to rest in peace.
He stared at me in horror, seeming to realize the very thing I'd tried to tell him all along.
"The greatest mistake you've ever made was underestimating me," I whispered, a cruel smile taking over my face. I should have seen it coming, should have expected just how much of a coward Ashric was. He'd always toyed with those he perceived as weaker than him.
I was no longer the weaker God.
Turning, he sprinted for the door and out of the house. I paused, glancing at Hydra. But the welcome feeling of concern and love pressed in on me. Being around Ashric and the darkness he generated, the anger he brought out in me, had completely smothered the love until they were there.
"Mireyah!" They called as a unit. Their voices were frantic, worry infused in each and every one of them. I couldn't see them, not with the way fog rose from between the cracks in the ground around the abandoned home. Not with the way the sky was black, and the hillsides were disguised in tree lines. But my marks called to them. Pulsed for them.
Just as my heart and soul called to them. I raced for the lever Tali had used, shoving it forward so it connected the two sides for them to pass.
"Hydra is in the house!" I shouted back, sprinting to the rear where I'd seen Ashric heading.
"Let him go!" They called back, getting closer as I made my way around. Ashric glanced over his shoulder briefly before he grabbed a massive carved pole and vaulted himself across the gap. There wasn't a second, but it didn't matter for me.
I never stopped running, shoving my hands out and sending a torrent of ice in front of me to create my own bridge. I hit it at full speed, sliding over the surface until I hit the other side. All my years of playing on the ice came down to that moment. I paused, watching as dead humans rose from the ground between Ashric and I.
Eight of them. Eight Northern women.
Eight blonds with unseeing gray eyes.
As Ashric turned his back on me again, hurrying up the hillside, I swallowed down my hesitation and grabbed the daggers from the straps on my thighs. A true testament to the fact that Ashric never saw me as a threat, he’d never disarmed me. A tendril of blue spread through one of the daggers, going all the way to the tip of the blade as the other glowed bronze.
As I strode forward, the first of the women lunged for me, and I reached a hand forward to jab my frozen dagger into her heart. She paused, collapsing as the ice spread from the wound and her body locked solid.
I had to free them too.
The next two got my toxin to their chests, blue tendrils spreading just under their skin until she melted away.
"Mireyah! Stop!" Shephard yelled, and I glanced back to find him and Char engaging the other five. With complete faith in my husbands’ ability to put down Ashric's bodies, I surged after their master.
He still hadn't made it all the way over the hillside. This part was steeper, more harsh to traverse. My hands bled when I stumbled and held them out to keep my face from crashing onto the harsh ground.
I rose to my feet to chase after him as he struggled, a cruel joy on my face. No longer was I the weak one. No longer was I bound by the proprieties of society.
No longer was he the predator and I the prey.
He struggled, and I threw my frozen dagger at his leg. Catching him in the calf, he fell forward and then rolled down the hill until he stopped at the base just in front of me. Touching the ground at my feet, I willed the vines to slither out of the forest. Willed the toxic plants of Demiorgo to come to my command, and they crawled through the grass as Ashric fought to yank my dagger of ice out of his leg.
When they reached him, I already stalked forward and approached as they slithered over his legs. Wrapping him tight and pinning him to the ground.
“Hello, Little Northerner,” I whispered, cocking my head to the side as I studied him. The significance wasn't lost on him, and he swallowed down his own panic as I bent down and touched a finger to his cheek.
His eyes widened in panic. “Mireyah, I love you.” His voice was a ragged whisper as he reached out for me.
“You’ll never understand love, Ashric.” His torso was next, though he fought against the binds more with every one that wrapped him up. He tore at them, struggling to free himself, but his bare skin sizzled beneath the poisonous vine, and he flinched back. He finally settled onto his back, staring up at me as I stood over him. "You'd look so good frozen solid." A bite of frost made him flinch, his skin flaking under the intense cold.
Behind me, I knew the moment Shep and Char appeared. I knew the moment they saw me bent over the man who'd thought to use me. Abuse me.
"He'll never stop," I said, keeping my focus on Ashric as I spoke.
Char's voice was soft when he answered. "Mireyah, this isn't you." The words had truth to them, but they were also a lie. The day before, this hadn't been me. The day before, Ashric hadn't threatened to harm everything I loved. The day before, I hadn’t known that he’d violated even my human family in Wintercairn.
And in the end, we were all just a product of our lives, shifting and changing with every event that drove us closer and closer to the person we were always meant to be.
"It is now," I said back. I didn't move, didn't betray what I would do.
I didn't need to.
✽✽✽
Hollis
The twins and I raced across the grass, and I was just so fucking happy Mireyah's bridge held. The weight of Ryle with Hydra seemed like it might push the limits of her abilities, but if there was one thing Mireyah knew how to do, it was to rise to challenges.
Her key skill was survival. No matter what life threw at her, she adapted. She changed. She grew. And yet she remained the same.
The most beautiful woman I had ever seen. In and out.
I watched on in horror as Mireyah stared down at Ashric. Ice spread over his feet, slowly climbing up his legs. Mireyah could have easily frozen him solid with a single thought, but she didn't.
She toyed with him. She'd crept inside his mind like an insidious disease, unintentional as it might have been, and destroyed him from the inside out. In the end, it would be Mireyah who walked away from the part of her life where he haunted her.
Ashric wouldn't be so lucky.
Mireyah's ice crawled up over his torso, freezing him solid while Ashric stared up at her in awe. Pain lingered in his gaze, and I suspected it went far deeper than the numbing pain of her ice. "Mireyah," Ashric whispered, and his voice held every note of betrayal I'd have expected any of us to give her if she stood over us prepared to kill us.
I thought Mireyah might feel sympathy for him, but her face remained hard as the ice teased the base of his neck and crept up. He held her eyes, ceasing his struggles as he realized how pointless it would be. But even from the distance between us, there was no mistaking his complete adoration as his face relaxed. As everything quieted, and the valley went utterly still.
"Thank you," he whispered in the moment just before his lips froze solid. Whatever had made Ashric the way he was, it had broken him so fully he was grateful for the brutal end Mireyah gave him. She watched as the rest of his face froze, and then that ice hardened to make him look like a glowing white sculpture. It would have been easy to forget he'd ever been alive looking at him.
Mireyah stepped back, and Shep moved toward her. Char shook his head, grabbing the other man's arm and tugging him back from her. I followed his gaze to the vines, watching as they tightened around Ashric's frozen body, the ice sizzling under their touch.
The ice groaned under the pressure until it finally exploded in a flurry of ice shards. Thousands of pieces of Ashric Tovenaar spread through the grass. Still, Mireyah stood there, staring at the spot where he'd laid. To my horror, I watched the ice melt away from the pieces, leaving chun
ks of flesh and blood behind and making it look like the gruesome scene it was.
Tate finally stepped up to Mireyah, his eyes welling with tears in his concern as he touched her shoulders. I couldn't imagine what he felt pouring off her. The snippets of emotion I felt trickle through the bond were enough to make me buckle under the weight of them. What Tate felt must have been agonizing.
What Mireyah felt must have been crippling.
She jolted back from his touch, spinning to look at him with wide eyes. "It's okay. Give it to me," Tate whispered, wrapping his arms around her as her face twisted and she broke down into soul-wracking sobs. Her entire frame shook as she collapsed, her body dropping to the messy ground that was covered in pieces of Ashric’s corpse.
Pieces of the man she'd destroyed single handedly.
"She's bleeding," I whispered, my eyes catching on the tangled mass of blood-soaked hair at the back of her head. Tate's fingers prodded it gently, but he shook his head to indicate there was no injury.
"She's okay. She's just never killed someone. Through everything. She's never-"
I watched Ryle's eyes widen as realization dawned for him in the same moment. With all that Mireyah had survived, it was easy to forget that she'd survived it without harming another person. She survived her Challenges at Godsvail on her own skills, not killing off her competition. She survived the final Sire Trial, where she'd nearly been shred to pieces although Sire Trials were supposed to ensure Sylfe safety.
She survived training her Majele and her Kald and joining the Dragon Guard. She survived all the opposition she found in every step of her life for simply being who she was.
And she did it without harming another person.
“Tali.” She rocked back and forth on her heels, eyes still unseeing over the mess she’d created.
Tate whispered to her, “Your sister Tali?”
“Yes, Tali.” She looked up at him and touched her face. “He took her because of me,” she whispered, voice so hollow, so empty that mine cracked at the sound.
