Secret of Dehlyn (The Unclaimed Book 2)

by Kathrin Hutson

  That was the only time the violet essence moved about him. Each time he died and did not die, the mist seemed to bring him back as if he’d just arrived. But he knew he had not; he remembered everything, and he had no idea how to make it stop. He’d tried to fight the black-skinned demon, learning with each new encounter how to stay alive just a little longer—to dodge from beneath the monstrous, clawed feet, to lash out clumsily with the amarach weapon, to avoid the curdling, deadly fluids dripping from the rows of jagged teeth within the demon’s gaping mouth. He’d learned the beast’s skin was as hard as steel itself, armoring the thing in glistening patches, and the dullest parts—almost indistinguishable on the massive form and amidst Kherron’s horror—could be penetrated with his dagger. Despite this, nothing he gained from being extinguished over and over again showed him how to defeat his reoccurring foe or how to escape the endless cycle of his torment. That ghastly monstrosity was far too large, each one of its decaying yellow claws the size of Kherron himself, and while he had inflicted some semblance of damage upon it once or twice before meeting his next demise, he could not bring it to the ground.

  He’d tried to channel what little of his abilities he understood. Countless times, he’d nearly begged the Sky Metal dagger in his hand to do something for him, to protect him; each attempt failed miserably. The weapon did not respond to him here, as if whatever had made him unique—whatever had existed in him that Dehlyn herself had chosen—had vanished in this place. He would have tried to commune with any other objects around him if there had been any, but only violet light, the motionless fog, and the loathsome demon surrounded him. This realization had filled him with a stricken panic, nearly crushing him with the weight of anxiety and the pull of his vow to the amarach vessel—the ancient woman with green eyes. Each time he recognized his own death looming just seconds away, his heart nearly stopped at the thought of never being able to find her, never fulfilling his unbreakable promise to protect her at all costs. That alone was nearly as horrifying, time after time, as breathing his last before he took his next first breath. Almost.

  It had occurred to him, after his tenth impermanent death, that the demon itself had some role to play in this, some connection to Kherron’s inability to escape the violet realm, either in returning to his own world or through eternal destruction without resurrection. Each time he returned to his own very living flesh, he’d had a moment’s peace before the massive beast loomed toward him through the violet fog, covering an immense distance in an impossibly short expanse of time. So he’d thought to turn around where he stood and run in the opposite direction; this tactic, too, had proven futile. He’d nearly collided with the demon’s monstrous feet, the ground tilting and shaking beneath him with the disorienting nature of moving in this realm, the heart-stopping wail rising into a horrifying chuckle from the demon’s throat. The creature seemed to be everywhere at once, coming from any direction he turned.

  Kherron himself found nothing to distinguish his own location amidst the endless expanse of violet and grey, and he did not know how the creature pursuing him to countless deaths always found him there. But now, as he watched the sickening violet mists swirling about his unmoving feet once more, he knew in the very core of his being that he could not do this again. A deep, throbbing certainty pulsed through his bones—if he died a forty-eighth time, it would break whatever parts of himself and his sanity he still possessed.

  With a trembling hand—its sensation and his ability to move it fully restored—he reached across his belt to draw the Sky Metal blade. The weapon returned to its sheath upon each of his resurrections, as if that were its natural, intended state. This he could not believe; how was he to end this vicious, torturous cycle if he could not use a weapon? How else was he to defend himself—albeit fruitlessly—without his ability to commune with lifeless objects? Kherron had blundered every attempt to save himself from the agonizing memories of further deaths, but he had not managed to accept the fact that it could not be done. Not until now. Drawing his weapon had become an instinct, ingrained in him with the expectation of another repeated attack. But sweat had formed on his brow—sticky and warm and feeling more like blood in this timeless plane—and his throat ached with each rapid beat of his terrified heart.

  He wanted to run. If there had been any terrain in this place, any cliff or rise or structure tall enough, he thought he would have flung himself from it willingly if that would end his torment. If any other soul existed here, he would have begged them to end him before facing the monstrous black demon one more time. Before his last death—before the beast’s claws had shredded the flesh from his collarbone to his hip as if it were old, frayed linen—he’d even thought to turn his own blade on himself. With everything in him, he’d tried to perform such an act of cowardice, knowing it for what it was and turning to it then in shameless desperation. But some unknown thing had stopped him. It had felt as if a cool, tense hand had gripped him by the wrist with enough inexplicable strength to stay his hand. Groaning and gritting his teeth, he’d tried to pull the dagger’s tip toward his heart, adding the force of his other hand until his shoulders shook and a wave of dizziness overpowered him. The pull he’d felt within him since he’d given Dehlyn his word—the foreign weight in his heart that had drawn him ever eastward by an unseen tether he could not cut—had swelled with an agonizing vigor, bearing down on him with ceaseless contempt. He’d thought that was what had stopped him from taking his own life, and he’d had no more time to fight it before the demon was upon him. This unbearable grey and purple prison without walls had stripped him of even that last spineless option.

  The stagnant, unmoving air around him filled with the monstrous creature’s bone-shattering shriek, followed swiftly by the black shadow of its massive, nauseous form in the distance. Kherron could only see its silhouette shrouded by the mists, its many limbs reappearing and disappearing at different angles. The crown of spiked horns growing from the thing’s head parted the mist like a black sun shining through drifting clouds, and while it was not visible now, the image of the thing’s putrid black blood oozing from such un-healing wounds had already burned itself into Kherron’s mind.

  He could not swallow, his tongue too dry and thick in his mouth, and he could not bring himself to move more than tightening his grip on his blade with unyielding despair. The beast’s wail rose again, and then it towered before him, naked and glistening black, its exposed flesh a desecrating abomination of both the human sexes. The unseen ground trembled beneath him, each of the demon’s steps sending a resounding, thunderous echo fit to puncture eardrums and incite madness. If they had been anywhere else, these things would have happened—but not here.

  Kherron found himself finally unable to imagine the horrible things that might be done to him; it seemed every variation of his goring, evisceration, and dismemberment had already occurred. He did not think there remained to him a new way to die—only a new way to face such certainty. Even that thought granted him no courage, no spark of hope. His existence had been whittled away to agony, fear, and doomed repetition.

  “Stop.” It seemed impossible that the word came from his own constricted throat, but it left his mouth without his knowledge, ringing briefly through the nothingness before being swallowed by it. Kherron blinked, the sound of his own voice in this place jolting him as if he’d never heard it before. Even more surprising, his approaching assailant complied.

  For a moment, he truly thought he’d stumbled upon the answer; it hadn’t occurred to him to speak to the cursed beast so intent on his eternal destruction. A shudder passed through the demon’s body, followed by the rising echo of the thing’s growling voice. To Kherron, it sounded as if the earth were shattering and falling in on itself, then he realized the monstrous thing was laughing at him.

  ‘You wish to incite reason and discourse here, in this place?’ The awful voice blasted through the purple mist, barreling into Kherron’s head and rattling his senses. But the demon’s mouth—open per
petually in a vengeful gape, the jagged, spiked teeth dripping with something unbearably putrid—never moved. ‘Words are useless, Despairing One. I know what you are. Your loathing calls to me, even as you fight to deny it. Only your pitiful affliction feeds the heart beating within your breast. I know what you want.’

  “I want this to end.” Again, the words left Kherron’s mouth without his consent, shocking him with the strength and surety he heard but did not feel.

  A bitter cackle arose from the demon. ‘Then end it. Until then, I will do what you have summoned me here to do.’

  Even as the black thing stepped nearer, its many limbs careening forward, Kherron did not move. And he had time for nothing more when the tips of razor claws sliced through the air toward his throat.

  Chapter 18

  Kherron stood again within the grey, unbreathing and eyes closed. The demon’s words echoed in his mind, and it seemed they alone would prevent him from starting this cycle anew; his forty-eighth death had come and gone.

  Never in his life, sequestered behind toil and drudgery, had he imagined such a creature could exist. And if he had, he certainly would never dream to summon the monstrous thing. But that was what it had said, the accusation ringing clearly around them in this place of undying stagnation, and the beast had had no reason to lie to him. Finally, his lungs worked against his wishes, and he took a new, life-affirming breath. One hand went to his throat, delivering the sharp memory of the first stinging pressure, the first splitting of his flesh before the demon no doubt had removed his head from his body.

  A small tremor passed through him at this vivid sensation adding itself to his repertoire of torture, but he did not reach for the Sky Metal blade. He did not tremble or feel the familiar prick of sweat beading at his brow, the weight of his multiplying agony somehow abandoned now. This was it, he knew—this was the end. He would endure this ceaseless torment for eternity, because a black demon who thought it carried out its duty at Kherron’s own request could never be battled or conversed into reason. It would not stop, because he truly had no idea how to end his shame and the pressing tug of his duty yet to be performed. The only option left to him was to abandon any notion of escape, of changing his fate. But he had not expected that compliance to be so incredibly, unfailingly easy.

  He did not open his eyes and search for his attacker’s eventual approach. Instead, feeling as light as if the countless pieces of his being had been crumbled to dust and scattered into nothing, Kherron lowered himself to the mist-covered ground and crossed his legs. He’d spent each moment between his next first breath and his next unstoppable death in terror and desperation, and it seemed his capacity for both had finally expired. If he would remain in this place, ending and beginning again for eternity, so be it. But he would do so as a shell of the man he’d tried to be. Nothing else of him remained—the struggle for survival, the hope of saving himself, the fear of pain and failure. Not even the heightened pull of his vow to Dehlyn, the fulfillment of which had once seemed more imperative than his own well-being or the need for rest and nourishment.

  The image of Dehlyn’s face pushed itself into his awareness, her green eyes glowing with ancient wisdom and ferocious certainty beneath her head of golden hair. But it was fleeting; his heart did not have the strength to maintain such a fragile, precarious hold on what he would surely never see again. They do not have what you have. Those had been her words, repeated to him by the fae who had saved his life in return for their own demise, by the amarach Mirahl before she’d risked the retribution of her own kind to bring Dehlyn to him in the night. And he’d squandered every opportunity given by others’ sacrifices to do what the green-eyed amarach vessel had demanded of him.

  What did he have? What thing existed within him to reinvigorate Dehlyn’s hold on him, time and again? He’d thought it had been his love for her, and then he’d imagined it had to do with his connection to lifeless objects that acted in his presence at the worst of times. Even before he’d met the woman in the river—who had revealed to him his own conception by his human mother and a creature who only looked like a man, made instead of water and air and some ethereal spirit he would never understand—Kherron had begun to hear the echoes around him. Sometimes, he’d heard the whispering among the trees, in the falling rain, in the creaking groans of the forest and the earth. Sometimes, these things had responded to him, answering his unintentional requests for protection or guidance. But the gift of his inhuman, undying ancestors had been only a curse, bringing wrath and destruction on him and everyone in his presence, and they had no power here.

  Perhaps Dehlyn had referred, what seemed like eons ago, to whatever hidden part of him had apparently conjured the sickening black beast in this realm. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if she’d meant him to unleash such a horror on the men hunting her for her secrets—men like Torrahs. Whether or not that unlikely scenario were true, it no longer mattered. Whatever he had that they did not, he had to remove it. He had to remove from himself whatever made him Kherron, because his existence would now forever remain amidst this violet and grey wasteland, doomed to repeat an agony he could not disrupt.

  A tiny pulse rose up in him at that thought, and he imagined Dehlyn there with him, falling to her knees in hopeful desperation, her green eyes wide and imploring. He imagined her pleading for him not to do this thing, not to give in, not to willingly break his promise to her. He imagined the forceful tug of such an oath—the one he’d given freely in the moment but had recognized his lack of any choice in the matter—as a tangible thing between them. A golden cord, writhing with power and ancient compulsion, stretched from her heart to his, to the place which had always reminded him of his duty and which had trembled just now when he’d resolved to forsake it.

  From somewhere in the violet mists and the unending sprawl of nothingness, the demon’s shriek hurdled toward him. Kherron did not open his eyes, but in his vision of Dehlyn, kneeling in supplication before him, he saw the terror of doubt behind those green eyes. She had told him to listen, too, as had so many other impossible creatures he never would have believed he’d come to discover. Perhaps she’d truly believed he could have saved her, but there was no doubt he had failed. He was not the person fate had chosen. He was not the subject of prophecy and the end of this amarach madness. She’d told him to listen, and he was listening now.

  Every fiber of his being screamed at him that Dehlyn remained the only obstacle to his freedom. That was all he desired now—to be free of himself, of the life before this unending destruction, of any memory of what he thought he could have been.

  The hidden ground beneath him shook, the cracking boom of the demon’s footsteps drawing ever nearer. This time, he did not care. Everywhere beneath his skin spread a wave of tingling certainty, painfully strong, and he knew this was his final act as himself. Kherron did not move, but in his vision, he lifted both arms to grasp the glowing cord between Dehlyn’s heart and his own. It pulsed and writhed beneath his hands, and somehow, the surprised comprehension behind Dehlyn’s fearful gaze did not move him. He squeezed the cord, the strength of his grip aching in his fingers, and snapped it in two, as if it were no more than a bundle of twigs.

  An instant wave of bitter cold hit him, replaced by a warmth he thought he’d forgotten in this place. The noxious wave of putrescence and decay enveloped him, and he needed nothing more to know his eternal murderer had found him again. The vision of Dehlyn behind his closed eyes dissipated, and the image of his own hands released their grasp on their severed bond. The cord’s glow faded entirely, and when he opened his hands, ready to release the fragments, they too sifted like ash through his fingers.

  A deafening crack shattered the silence of his thoughts, and he steeled himself with surprising detachment for the inevitable anguish of another death and another return. When it seemed too long that he waited for the mortal blow, he slowly opened his eyes.

  The ungodly image before him did not make his blood run cold as it would have
so many lifetimes before. The black demon had hunkered toward the mist-shrouded ground, bringing the jagged, dripping hole of its terrible mouth just inches from him. Its head was the size of a barn, the stretched, eyeless flesh beneath its brow glistening black and still fixing his being with an omniscient gaze. But already, even before Kherron realized the demonic beast neither moved nor rasped its nauseating, rotting breath, the creature’s solidity had faded. A violet hue now tinged the frozen monstrosity’s unusual translucence. Still unwilling to hope, to believe he’d changed a thing, Kherron twisted to look behind him and almost cried out at the unbearable beauty of it.

  A pale orange light punctured the hideous purple veil, and through it rose the faint but undeniable silhouettes of trees and branches, swaying with a breeze he did not feel but knew to be true. Color returned to the view, slowly and still muted by mist and the existence of whatever plane he occupied. But it was color—green, yellow, brown, blue. The sunrise was real, the life within the clearing as vivid and blooming as he’d forgotten it could be. Then he made out the dark drop of the rock face, where the waterfall of the clearing fell into the pool below and fed the stream. Its rushing voice was muted, as if he heard it from within a tightly sealed room, and even still, the sound brought tears to his eyes. The water glowed with the rising light, though it did not shine completely through the mists around him. He was not free. Not yet.

  Glancing quickly at the demon’s monstrous face bent so close to his, fearing this was nothing more than a cruel jest to reawaken his hope, he found the beast unchanged and unmoving still. Kherron scrambled to his feet, unwilling to waste this chance on curiosity, and walked swiftly toward the clearing. He could not let himself fully believe what he saw, not daring to place his hope in such impossibly unexpected fortune.