Lodestone

by Katherine Forrister

  The heat reminded her of the Overlord’s touch and how a single glance from him could make her entire body warm. Why couldn’t she get his gentle smile and comforting touch out of her head? She had once glorified him as an idol who would uplift her to new heights of power and status. But now, his presence was an anchor in deeper places of her psyche, her heart a sinking ship.

  The bedroom door creaked. Was that an imagined step? Melaine frowned and darted her fingers to the nightstand candle. She sparked a bit of magic to light the wick. She pushed herself up on her elbows and gasped.

  The Overlord stood at her bedside.

  “My lord,” she said, her breath resuming. “You scared me.”

  The Overlord was silent. His shadowed eyes roved over her body, and she was reminded of her nearly undressed state. Goosebumps ran up and down her arms while warmth pooled in her belly and made her quiver.

  “My lord,” she said again, this time with indignation as she blushed under his forward inspection. He still said nothing, but he raised his pale hand and brushed his finger down her cheek.

  Melaine didn’t move. She couldn’t. Danger warnings flared, but so did a rising sense of yearning. Her lips parted, and her chest ached as she searched the Overlord’s face with wide eyes. His gaze was intense and sharp, as if possessed by a hunger only she could satisfy.

  Her lack of response seemed to encourage him. He cupped her cheek in his skeletal hand. His cold touch contrasted against the blooming heat in her face with tantalizing sensuality. Her breath caught in her throat as the Overlord leaned over her and brought his lips to hers.

  Melaine had been kissed once, before she ever came to Highstrong. It had been a rough, raw kiss by a man she didn’t know and didn’t want. It hadn’t gone further than that—Melaine had made sure it never would, not with him nor any other man in Stakeside.

  But this kiss…. The Overlord’s lips were firm, but his kiss was soft, and when he slipped his tongue into her mouth, she whimpered in a sound she had never made before. Her heart throbbed, her body coursing with the familiar rush of adrenaline, bringing magic to the surface of her skin. But she didn’t use that magic to push him off of her.

  She kissed him back.

  The Overlord ran his hand through her hair and climbed onto the bed and over her body in one motion.

  She allowed him to pour himself into her, dragging her nails down his shoulders as she pulled him closer. Her hips raised before she knew what she was doing, and she startled when she felt something warm and hard railing against her within his trousers.

  She snatched a fistful of the Overlord’s hair and jerked his face away from hers. She flicked her eyes to his own, trying to understand his motives, fighting against her own scattering thoughts and physical desperation to try to make a conscious decision of what she wanted.

  The Overlord ran one hand down her waist and squeezed her hip in a fierce grip while his knee pinned one of her hands to her side. He grabbed her other wrist and held her arm down on the pillow above her head.

  “Wait,” she said.

  The Overlord’s eyes flashed red in the flaring light of the candle. Then his sallow face cracked in a broad smile. His smile widened farther, as if strings were tied to the corners of his mouth to yank his skin and muscles up. His blue eyes were wholly red now, and they sharpened with a monstrous glint as he tightened his hold over her helpless body.

  Melaine screamed as he locked his chapped lips on hers. His kiss was no longer soft and passionate. Now, he pushed his tongue into her mouth to force it open and inhaled the air from her lungs. And then something else emerged from the Overlord’s mouth, something far more invasive. It felt like a long snake was trying to shove its way down her throat. Her gag reflex tried to cough it out, but it kept pushing, opening her throat so that she felt the Overlord’s next inhale through the long, snake-like tube, stealing more than just her ability to breathe.

  Her magic started to crawl from her marrow like insects from a rotting log. It wriggled out and surrounded her bones, then shot through her veins from her toes upward, straight to her throat. The Overlord was inhaling magic from her mouth and into his body as if she were a lodestone.

  She jerked against his hold on her, but he was stronger than he looked. Her head swirled as her body succumbed to suffocation. But through her muddled mind and draining magic, she focused on the glow of the candle on her bedside table.

  Light it with the intent to burn.

  Melaine struggled to summon the first spell the Overlord had taught her. She dragged an ounce of magic back from his draining current and shot a pulse at the candlewick. The flame turned red and exploded into sparks that landed on the Overlord’s robe. The black silk and silver threads caught fire as fast and violent as if she’d doused him with oil first.

  He snarled in an animalistic sound and sucked the long tube from her throat. She coughed and watched in horror as a long, black protrusion slithered back into the Overlord’s mouth, like a proboscis of some giant insect. He unclamped his harsh grip, threw his robe to the floor, and fled to the door like the shadow of a stolen carriage. Melaine gasped for air and pushed herself up just in time to see him disappear down the hall as if he’d never been there.

  Melaine scrambled to the other side of the bed and grabbed her wand from the drawer of her nightstand. She stood on shaking legs, keeping her wand aimed at the open door. The Overlord’s robe burned on the floor, surrounded by stone. It was consumed within a few, tense minutes as Melaine waited for the Overlord to come back.

  There was no sign of him. Her entire body trembled, both from fear and weakness. She swallowed with sharp pain and managed to step around the bed. She edged to the door and peered out into the hall.

  She threw her gaze to the guard statue, but it was dormant. She walked past and aimed her wand in sharp jerks around the hearth room, casting a beam of purple-white light from its tip that only served to deepen the surrounding shadows. The light dimmed as she paced into the sitting room but not because she wished it. Her magic flickered with her trembling body, depleted as if she’d created a host of lodestones in one sitting.

  She hadn’t consented to part with her magic as she did when making lodestones. This time, the Overlord had stolen it.

  Her thoughts started to weave together. The Overlord had never displayed the degree of strength he had used to pin her into bed. She’d only ever seen him remain silent in such a haunting way when she’d caught him sleepwalking in the halls. He had seemed off, and she remembered a red flash in his eyes that she had assumed she imagined. He’d had no recollection whatsoever of those nightly encounters the following mornings.

  His blood-red eyes and wide smile tonight were ghastlier a sight than she had ever seen, and that long, disgusting tube he used to suck out her magic…that wasn’t him. It couldn’t be.

  Melaine felt a stab in her heart as she realized the kiss may not have been real, but her raw disappointment was usurped within seconds by a rush of worry. If that wasn’t the Overlord, then where was the real one?

  She followed the same direction in which the Overlord had fled the night when Serj’s ravings had interrupted their first intimate moment—a moment that might have turned out like tonight’s horrors if she had let him kiss her. Melaine shuddered and forced her feet to run faster.

  She wasn’t sure where she was going, but she let go of reason and followed her gut. She had trusted her instincts countless times growing up in Stakeside. When she’d needed to steal food as a child or escape a threatening client or thief, she’d allowed her feet to lead the way to a safe hiding place. She had often wondered if her innate certainty was a physical sense of direction and subconscious awareness of her surroundings or if her magic was somehow involved in guiding her. Whatever the reason, she trusted it as she turned left and right through the maze of the castle with one thought in mind—reaching the Overlord.

  She paused when she passed a narrow slit of a window that overlooked the outer courtyard. She was nea
ring the tower south from the library. She had guessed that the Overlord’s chambers might be in that tower. Now was a good time to find out.

  She kept going down the halls, following the hexagonal string of rooms that were a symmetrical reflection of her quarters. But unlike hers, a tower lay at the end of this set. She reached a tall, wooden door and stopped.

  A sound infiltrated the pressing silence of the dark stone around her, coming from the opposite side of the solid door. It was a thick, disturbing sound, slick with slurps and clicking teeth and muffled grunts and snarls.

  It was an animal gorging on a carcass—she had heard the disgusting noise often enough in the city alleyways. Her stomach turned as she also remembered hearing it in the Hole, where people had been feasting on some kind of raw flesh.

  She swallowed down her disgust and took slow steps to the door, holding her wand out straight. The door was as ornate as the library’s, carved with soaring eagles and graceful trees, and she could feel similar magic emanating from the wood.

  The magic was a protective spell, but the spell was in tatters.

  The noise of a devouring creature grew louder. She grimaced and took a final step to reach the door. Though the wood had appeared solid, she now saw a narrow crack scarring its surface. She gathered her courage and peered into the room. Moonlight shone down from a high window. The tower was as large as the library, but instead of shelves, the lowest level was divided into sections by arrangements of furniture. Chairs and tables were littered with loose parchment, scrolls, scattered Insights, and other shadowed objects Melaine couldn’t identify. She didn’t look around for long. Her eyes were quickly drawn to a bed on one side, half-hidden by a gold-filigree, folding divider.

  Her eyes widened, and she nearly gave herself away by gasping, but she clapped a hand over her mouth before she could be heard. A creature scavenged the room as she had suspected, but it was unlike any animal she had ever seen. No fur covered its leathery gray skin, and it hunched over the bed like a hulking gargoyle, its spine protruding in sharp knobs. Its four limbs looked human enough, but one beastly hand with long fingers and knobby knuckles dug wicked claws into the side of the mattress. A long, black tube extended from its throat past glinting, razor-sharp teeth and open jaws. More tubes extended from its sides, latching onto something lying upon the bed. They undulated like swallowing gullets.

  Melaine lowered her eyes, forcing herself to look at what the beast was feasting upon with such disgusting relish.

  It was the Overlord. He was lying motionless in his bed, pinned beneath the gorging monster. Its black proboscis was invading his mouth and throat while the creature scraped its sharp teeth against his mouth.

  “No,” she mouthed. She gathered her magic with difficulty then sent a pulse of energy through her veins and into her wand and shot it at the door. Luckily, the protection spell was already weak, and the barrier dissipated like mist. She thrust the door open.

  The monster jerked its teeth from the Overlord’s mouth. It turned its head and looked at Melaine, but its revolting proboscis stayed inside the Overlord’s throat, sucking out his magic in heavy swallows. The edges of the creature’s mouth spread in the same ghastly smile that the Overlord had worn in her bedroom. This time, it didn’t have the restrictions of the man’s human face to contain its evil delight. The smile spread to the beast’s ragged, pointed ears, and two rows of sharp teeth glinted in the moonlight.

  The creature’s proboscis wriggled from the Overlord’s throat, and the tubes at its sides detached from his ribs with a sucking sound. It placed one hand on the Overlord’s chest and coiled its muscles, ready to leap straight at Melaine.

  She sent another burst of magic through her wand and fired the battle spell she’d learned from the rathmor’s tooth Insight, aiming it straight at the creature.

  Its smile dropped. The spell hit with explosive impact, with such power that Melaine worried she might have hit the Overlord as well. The creature shot off of his body and slammed into the wall. It hissed its way into a ghastly screech and fled. It crawled up the wall with a spider’s gait and smashed through a glazed window. It leapt into the night, leaving the room silent and empty except for Melaine and the Overlord.

  She rushed to the bed and searched his body for signs of life. Her frantic inspection found that his flesh was intact. His bones hadn’t been broken nor the marrow sucked out.

  She opened the Overlord’s slack mouth and looked down his throat but saw no sign of an invading proboscis. His glazed eyes were blue with no hint of red whatsoever. The creature was gone, but how long had it been feasting on the Overlord’s magic? How long had it been weakening him since before Melaine had ever entered his life?

  Rage surged through her blood, and a powerful, consuming need to cradle this man and never let him go pierced her heart and brought tears to her eyes. She stared at the Overlord’s chest and saw the smallest of movement, the shallow rise and fall of breaths. She pressed her finger on his neck and felt the faint pulse of blood pumping.

  “My lord,” she said, her throat sore from the creature’s invasion. Somehow, it must have usurped the Overlord’s appearance, perhaps his very body, so it could invade hers with ease.

  She placed her hand on his cheek and nudged his arm. “My lord. Wake up. My lord, it’s gone. That beast is gone.”

  The Overlord took a deeper breath, but it rattled dangerously. His lips were so cracked they were bleeding. His skin was tinged yellow, aside from the deep purple hollows beneath his open but dim eyes. His skin was stretched so thin upon his frame that he looked like every bit of muscle and blood he had was drained and only the empty skeletal husk remained.

  “My lord,” Melaine said louder and with more urgency, her voice returning to its normal strength. “My lord, wake up.”

  His eyes flickered, and after darting around for a moment with no sense of focus, his gaze fell upon Melaine and stayed there. Consciousness returned.

  “What,” he started, but paused to take another rattling breath. “What are you doing here?”

  “Saving you,” Melaine said. “I’m not sure if you noticed, but something was eating you.”

  His eyes widened. “Melaine,” he said and attempted to sit up. She helped lift him so he could lean back against the headboard of his bed. “You left. I heard the gate. You were gone.”

  “I came back,” she said. “And it’s a damn good thing I did.”

  “No, Melaine. You shouldn’t have. Leave. Leave Highstrong.”

  She frowned. “No.” Her refusal went against her every instinct for survival, but she had long abandoned that route. “I’m not leaving you like this. I hit that thing, but I don’t know if I killed it.”

  “Not gone,” he whispered. “You have to leave.”

  “No,” Melaine protested. She released his shoulders and focused her attention on her hands. Her body resisted, but she forced her weakened magic to coalesce in her palm and push through her skin into a hardened stone. The lodestone she forged was small, but she pressed it against the Overlord’s lips. With his next ragged breath, he pulled her magic into himself. The stone disappeared into dust. He coughed as if he’d swallowed foul-tasting medicine, but he took a fuller breath and sat straighter. Melaine stroked his hair without thought.

  “What was that thing?” she asked.

  The Overlord stiffened and clenched his jaw. Then he twitched his head and met Melaine’s eyes.

  “It’s called the Sateless,” he said. “A foul creature that wretch, Talem, set loose upon me. It’s been feeding on my magic for months.”

  “What? Why didn’t you say something? You didn’t tell me that’s why you need my lodestones. I would have—”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I stopped wanting to use you after only a day of knowing you. You were so…you weren’t what I expected. But I didn’t know any other way. It doesn’t matter now. It’s through with me. One last feeding, and I’ll be gone. No lodestone can help me.” He raised a single finger to to
uch the back of her hand, as if any larger movement would kill him. “That’s why you have to go, Melaine. Your magic is powerful—you’re powerful. It will find you next.”

  “It already has,” Melaine muttered. “It used you to get to me tonight. It was like it was inside you. Wearing you like a costume, or maybe an illusory spell, a disguise so it could…you…came to my room and…” She looked away but didn’t take her hand from the Overlord’s touch. She felt him shudder.

  “Melaine, please,” he said. “You have to leave. Let me die. Don’t give the Sateless anything else. Starve it out. It’s the only way to stop it.”

  A creak of the door made both of them jump. Karina stood in the doorway. She frowned like a nursemaid who had caught a sick child out of bed, and then she glared at the thin chemise Melaine was still wearing. Melaine tensed and shifted in front of the Overlord.

  Karina ignored Melaine’s protective stance and walked to the Overlord’s side. Her strict frown softened into dismay.

  “Not so soon,” she said. She placed a hand on the Overlord’s head with a mother’s comfort. The soft touch reminded Melaine of Salma, and she felt a pang in her heart.

  “I won’t stand for it, Actaeon,” Karina said.

  Melaine looked up at her in surprise, and then back down at the Overlord. Actaeon.

  The corner of his mouth twitched in a semblance of a smile. “You knew this was coming, Karina.”

  “What? No,” Melaine said. “You can’t give up. You can’t.” She stood and gripped her wand. “Talem did this. His brother must know some way to fix it.”

  “How do you know about Serj?” Karina snapped. She scowled but didn’t waste time pressing further. “You don’t think Actaeon’s interrogated him already? He detected no lies in that boy’s questioning. Not like with Talem.”

  “Your magic is weaker now,” Melaine said to the Overlord, ignoring Karina. “Maybe too weak to know for sure if he was lying. I’m going to try.” Her voice softened. “Will you be all right?”