Fractured Souls (Soul of a Dragon Book 3)

by Clara Hartley

  “Oh, believe me—I can.” She snapped her fingers and muttered something inaudible.

  A burning pain blinded his right eye, and he almost collapsed to the ground. The torment ended as soon as it came, and he stopped himself from falling just in time.

  Fear and awe filled him as he watched Catrina stride away. His dragon purred from the sight of her soft curves and the sway of her inviting hips, and mentally, he had to push it down.

  4

  Was her soul evil? Constance couldn’t decide.

  Perhaps only someone truly evil deserved such pain. Her wounds felt like they were peeling off her flesh.

  “Look at me,” the Dragon Mother said.

  Constance clenched her jaw so tightly it hurt. She coughed. Saliva built up in her throat. Her body was rebelling against the torture, which only made it worse.

  She watched with silent horror as the Dragon Mother lit flames in her hands. Tendrils held Constance down, not allowing her to fight back.

  Searing heat dug its way into her feet. She screamed. “Stop, please.”

  “You never stopped when I asked you to.”

  “I’m… I’m not Adriana.” Constance forced her gaze up, trying to look at the Dragon Mother. Her vision had blurred. She was stuck in a haze; the trauma was so much that it was beginning to turn into numbness.

  A slap flew across her cheek, throwing her head sideways. “Shut up,” the Mother said.

  Constance wanted to beg and grovel, but she knew it would be pointless. She started resigning herself to this fate of anguish and endless bitterness.

  “When Edrienne sees you like this,” Aesryn said, “he’ll realize who the real you is.”

  “I have never hidden who I am.”

  “Oh? Can you say that with confidence? Don’t you feel that darkness in you? You’ve always had it. Regardless of what name you wear.”

  Constance darted her blurry gaze away from the goddess, knowing the truth.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  The Dragon Mother spun away and strutted off. Light flickered through the hallways as the entrance opened. Constance listened as the door to the dungeons slid closed, and the place was cast into blackness once more.

  She was left alone with the cries and whimpers of the prisoners. Was she responsible for their suffering? The goddess was, after all, a consequence of what she’d done, or at least her soul’s previous actions.

  She waited awhile for the pain to dull, and for her vision to clear. The lingering moments of clarity were simultaneously peace and suffering. On one hand, she was thankful for not having to go through agonizing physical pain, but the guilt that strained her was just as bad.

  “Make it stop…”

  The demented woman next to her wouldn’t stop repeating her mutterings. Her ravings bombarded Constance in a raspy, desperate tune. “Make it stop. Make. It. Stop.”

  Constance wanted to shake the captive to sensibility. The prisoner’s murmurings did little to ease the turmoil in her mind.

  She glanced down at her legs. A scaly, oozing pattern of warts and burns blemished her skin there. She didn’t want to think about how badly she’d scar. She tried to shift her leg. A burning, stinging sensation shot from her ankle to her knees. More burns would come once the Mother visited her again. She shuddered at that prospect.

  “Make it stop… please… stop…”

  “Make what stop?” Constance asked for the umpteenth time.

  The prisoner, as always, ignored her, and continued rambling into the darkness.

  “I don’t even know why you try to talk to her,” Jaerhel said. The man was locked in the cell opposite. Constance could hardly make out his features, but his voice was low and coarse. She could vaguely see a thick beard around his chin.

  “Maybe if I figure out what she wants,” Constance replied, “I’ll be able to make her stop.”

  Jaerhel snorted. “Good luck with that.”

  A scream of cutting sorrow echoed through the dungeon. Another one. Those wails seemed to be coming more frequently, or perhaps they were a concoction of her imagination.

  “I suppose it’s about time for the Honoring,” Jaerhel said.

  “The Honoring?”

  “The Mother likes to harvest her souls from couples. Keeps her soul beads filled with the best of magic. They say harvesting from or breaking a bond really sweetens up the strength of the dark art.”

  She’d learned as much, from the couple killings in her village.

  “During the Honoring, each district in the city has to give up two unfortunate fools for her harvesting. Bummer for them.”

  “It’s terrible,” she said.

  “Sure is.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “About?”

  “Your mate.”

  Dark laughter sprang from him. “Dragons, no. I don’t have one. What makes you think otherwise?”

  “Well… you sounded like you were offered through the Honoring.”

  “I’m afraid not. Unlike many of the poor souls in here, I actually deserve to be in this hellhole.”

  He didn’t elaborate. She was curious, but refrained from pressing further. Jaerhel seemed to want to keep his past a secret. She wouldn’t strip that right from him—this place had taken away enough.

  She directed her gaze to the ceiling. She avoided looking at her aching legs. They were a stark reminder of the torture that was to come.

  She forced her tears back into the steel vaults of her heart. To survive in this cursed dungeon, she had to harden herself. If not, she’d break apart.

  Perhaps she might as well. Insanity could be salvation. She was almost jealous of the muttering woman next to her. If Constance lost her mind, maybe the pain and fear wouldn’t bother her anymore.

  Maybe her conscience would stop digging into her.

  “So, where are you from?” Jaerhel asked, jarring Constance from her brooding thoughts.

  The simple question surprised her. Everything since entering this place had been either a threat or a complicating burden.

  His small talk brought her mind back to Dragon Keep. She closed her eyes, recalling the beauty of the place. The breadth of the mountains… the free winds… and the comfort of Rayse’s scales as she ran her fingers across them. It almost took her anguish away…

  Almost—until she opened her eyes and found the darkness of her cell again.

  “A blissful place,” she finally replied.

  “Huh, makes this a whole lot harder, then. Where I’m from, the scenery is just a notch better than here. Makes this shithole easier to deal with. I don’t think I know what I’m missing.”

  “Sounds… interesting.”

  “That’s one way to put it.” She could hear the cynicism in his reply.

  “Make it stop!”

  A gasp hitched in Constance’s throat from the sudden outburst. The madwoman gripped her wrist through the bars of her cell. Constance turned her head. Bloodshot eyes greeted her.

  “Kill me, pleassseee,” the woman said.

  Constance tore her wrist away. She had been gripped so hard by the crazy captive that an ache lingered on her skin. She circled her index finger and thumb around the sore spot and massaged it.

  “Kill me. Kill me. Kill me…”

  “That’s dark,” Jaerhel said. “I’d just give her what she wants. Put an end to her misery.”

  “That’s horrible.” But who was Constance to judge?

  “You’re a witch, right?”

  She frowned. “How did you know?”

  “Just a guess.” Jaerhel sounded pleased with himself for conjuring the right theory. “Plus, your conversations with the Dragon Mother gave some of it away.”

  “So what if I’m a witch?”

  “It’s only an idea. Think about what you could do with that woman’s soul. She wants to die anyway. If you have the right magic, maybe we can get out of here.”

  Her stomach churned. Harvest the soul of another? “That’s forbidden.�
��

  “Desperate times.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “The greater good, ma’am. She’s lost, but half the prisoners here aren’t. Few of us have magic to go against Aesryn. Maybe with this, we’ll have a chance.”

  “I can’t.” She shook her head.

  “You could save a lot of us. Just one chance at freedom. Most of us would kill for that.”

  “Yes, but then I’d really have to murder someone.”

  “Is it truly murder, however?” Jaerhel said. “It’s more of a mercy killing. You’ll be doing the woman a favor.”

  She shook her head again, but the idea had already implanted itself in her mind. She gazed at the unkempt, psychotic prisoner huddled next to her, and was disgusted when she realized she saw the woman more as a source of magic than a living person.

  Constance couldn’t fall into that darkness. She couldn’t kill. She remembered how much she had despised Adriana in the visions the Dragon Mother showed her. She hated to think that she shared her soul with that vicious witch.

  Sometimes, however, she felt that viciousness lingering in her. Maybe torturing someone could be fun… maybe that was why she liked seeing the animals she stole souls from fall limp.

  She was a disgusting person.

  “I can’t,” she said, more to herself than Jaerhel. “I can’t go off that deep end.”

  5

  Rayse stared up at the white ceiling. His mind felt like it was rotting from boredom.

  He shouldn’t be lying on a bed, staring numbly at nothing in particular. He should be out, in Ayesrial, looking for Constance. The city was in sight. He’d have to leave Shen behind, but Catrina would take care of him.

  Rayse slid off the bed and strode down the stairs, toward the exit. The mansion was huge. It housed hundreds of individuals, dragons and humans alike. It wasn’t designed with the best architecture. Most of it was function over form. Magic, however, lingered in the air. A lot of the nurses he strode past were witches, and used a mixture of souls and herbs to heal the patients. He wondered if all of them were as strong as Catrina and Emilia, or if those two were anomalies.

  “Where are you going?” a nurse asked, as he reached the main entrance.

  “Out,” he replied. “Back to the city. You call it Ayesrial?”

  “Ayesrial is the city, yes. Nobody ever comes out here. We call this place the outlands, but that’s just a term Catrina and us coined. And you can try getting to Ayesrial. Good luck with that.”

  He wrinkled his brow at her comment, then decided to ignore it. He summoned his wings from his back. The sky was red, as usual. It seemed like it was in a perpetual state of a hazy dawn, as if the whole of Ayesrial lingered in a state of half asleep, half awake. His feet crunched on the dying grass as he stepped out. He extended his wings and batted them, lifting his boots off the ground and toward the city in the horizon.

  He couldn’t fly as smoothly as he did back in the mountains. The air was staler here. The mansion was getting smaller behind him, and soon it disappeared into nothing at all. The city, however, still lay in front of him as a foggy strip, with the spire of what he’d found out was the Dragon Mother’s palace protruding from it. How far away was Catrina’s encampment from the epicenter? And how large was this new realm? Rayse couldn’t help but be amazed at how little he’d seen in his five hundred and sixty years. Before knowing Constance, he couldn’t even fathom how much magic was capable of.

  He’d prefer it if Shen accompanied him, but perhaps it was better if his friend stayed behind. He didn’t want to be responsible for Shen’s death should anything go awry again. He considered transforming into dragon form. He thought it might be too obtrusive, but he wasn’t getting anywhere with his tiny human wings.

  And then he crashed.

  A barrier of some kind threw him backward. He fell onto his back, and a dull ache traveled from his bum to his kneecap. He hissed at the sudden pain and stood up. He strode closer to the barrier and put a hand out. A dark, smoky glow simmered around his fingers, readying to strike again should he step any further.

  He growled out frustration. Catrina was keeping him prisoner? He turned around and glided back toward the mansion, preparing his complaint.

  “Welcome back,” the same nurse said, smirking, when he thudded back through the entrance.

  He grunted and walked past her, ignoring her amusement.

  “Catrina says you’re not going anywhere for a week,” the nurse said. “She’ll create a portal for you to get back to Gaia once she gathers enough magic.”

  He climbed up the stairs. “I don’t want to leave.”

  “You should be grateful. Lots of people would jump at the opportunity.”

  “I’m not here for the same reasons they are.”

  He strode up to Catrina’s quarters, resolved to give her a piece of his mind and make his intentions clear as glass. He reached her open doorway and was about to knock on the entrance when he spotted Emilia getting reprimanded by Catrina.

  He paused, letting his eyes wander around Catrina’s study. It had a strange familiarity that beckoned to him. It was almost like he’d been in this place before. A small, homely room, with stacks of books and scrolls littering the ground, and filled with the chirping of critters from small cages. The image struck him too hard, and he wavered.

  “What do you mean you might have been followed?” Catrina said, wearing a dark scowl. “And they heard you?”

  Emilia had her arms straightened at her sides. “I’m sorry. I was getting chased, and you know how sharp dragon hearing is.”

  “I told you to put out a distraction spell for the drakin before bringing anyone here.”

  “I know.” Emilia kept her eyes glued to the ground. “I was careless and the situation was sudden. Forgive me.”

  “It’s not about forgiveness.” Catrina let out a heavy breath. Rayse could hear some desperation in her tone as she continued, “Don’t beat yourself up over it. I give you far too much responsibility for your age. Go rest. I’ll think up something.”

  A stranger towered behind Catrina. He wore brown leather, and had weapons strapped around him, like Rayse’s warriors used to in Dragon Keep. He had a slim nose and a broad jaw that showed that he bit his teeth together too damn much. He had a short length of disheveled dirty-blond hair that almost verged on brown, tan skin, and a cool, calculated gaze of mucky green. At the top of his right brow was a scar.

  The stranger exuded the protectiveness of a mate. Catrina was mated to him? Disappointment and hurt shot through Rayse. A brief thought, that he wanted to be Catrina’s mate, flashed through his mind. He brushed it aside. He already had Constance. His feelings weren’t supposed to wander.

  “You,” Catrina said, gesturing to Rayse without peering at him. “Come in.” She turned her attention to the tall man behind her. “Kien, can you leave us for a minute?”

  Kien nodded and did as instructed, but not before leveling a death stare at Rayse. Kien walked out with a puff to his chest.

  She sat down on a long, cushioned stool, finally looking at Rayse. “So, you’re going by the name of Alric around here?”

  “Going by?” He cocked his head, feigning ignorance.

  “We all know that’s not your real name. That’s not information which people give lightly, and you seem to have your senses.”

  Rayse darted his gaze up to the ceiling, then back at her. He cleared his throat. “I need to get out.”

  She nonchalantly bit her lower lip, in the same way Constance used to. Focus. “To?” she asked.

  “Ayesrial, of course.”

  “You should be going back to Gaia.”

  “I need to get past that barrier. Take it down.”

  She slouched back toward the wall behind the stool. “That barrier is what’s protecting the rest of us from the Dragon Mother. It conceals this place from her eyes.”

  “Then summon a portal.”

  “I’m not going to. I don’t want you going ba
ck to that city.”

  “What do you care what happens to me, anyway?”

  She smoothed her hand over her braid, then swung it over her shoulder with her slender fingers. “I don’t want you giving out our information. If the Mother knows we exist, she’ll start prying and be here in no time. I only let those I truly trust back out.”

  “I saw a bunch of patients getting transported out! You can’t trust all of them.”

  “I do.”

  He stared at her, flabbergasted. She was lying, and he knew it. He took in a deep breath and tried to cool himself down. “You could help me.”

  “In what?”

  “Finding my mate. I know you witches have tracking spells. But none of the witches I’ve met since her disappearance have had any that worked. Seeing as you’re quite… talented, you can track her down for me. I’m not leaving until I have her back.”

  “Her name?”

  “Constance Rinehart,” he responded quickly, jumping at Catrina’s possible willingness.

  Unfortunately, Catrina waved her hand across her face. “You’re not going to find her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Constance Rinehart is either dead or nonexistent.”

  “That means the same thing.”

  “Almost. She could very well still be alive, just not the same person. I met her sixty years ago, and she had a plan to fade away. Either way, she’s not around anymore.”

  Catrina had met her? So did that mean Constance had escaped? And the fading away? How could one simply do that? That would explain the disappearance of the mate mark, and his freedom from the bond. “Is that why… I can’t sense the bond anymore?”

  “You were mated with her?” Catrina asked, leaning from the wall with a grave expression.

  “Yes.”

  “Then it is very likely she made her soul cease to exist, somehow. She was very talented in the art. Perhaps even better than me when I met her.”

  “But what does that mean… for me?”

  “It means that you’re never going to see your mate again. Give up, Alric.”

  No. He needed her to fill the void in his chest. Giving up would also mean damning himself. The weight pressing down on him grew heavier each year. “There has to be something you can do.”