A Toiling Darkness

by Jaliza Burwell

  Paige bent over and went to caress my skin. When she got close enough, I snapped my teeth, nearly getting her fingertips. Damn, I missed by a mere hair width. The net came alive and burned briefly at the movement but the look on her face was worth it. Her smile faltered as I rained down on her parade.

  I'm good like that.

  “I’m going to ask again. What do you want? I thought you weren’t into revenge.”

  She glanced to the side and I refused to look at what had her attention. Anyone else here were just grunts.

  “Our master got tired of waiting for the slauve to stop fumbling around. Really, I told him Kalen wouldn’t be the best choice. That man is all about life. But then again, so is my master.” As she spoke, her face lit up with adoration for her master. It was raw enough that I wanted to look away from it.

  Me, embarrassed? Yeah, just a little.

  That kind of look was proof of a bond stronger than just a master and his lackey. She may go to the end of the world for him, probably already well on her way if he’s the reason for her becoming a dark witch.

  “Does this infamous master have a name?” I asked.

  She ignored the question as unfamiliar hands grabbed me—along with the net—and brought me to my feet. I looked up at the man to find a complete stranger. He was large, similar to a body builder, with a square face, dark beady eyes and a clean-shaven head. All brawns and no brains—the perfect thug. His meaty hands stayed on my shoulders, just as strong and heavy. When I tried to move, all he did was flex his fingers, squeezing my small shoulders and keeping me still.

  Paige simply smiled and walked into the one room in the apartment. One of the walls were now cleared, the bookshelf pulled away. Scratched into the plaster of the walls were strange markings I couldn’t recognize, but somehow felt so familiar, like a fleeting dream. If I have seen them before it was too long ago to be sure. That thought alone was scary. If this was ancient magic, then that wasn’t good for anyone. Not for Paige, Kalen, and especially not for me.

  The witch walked over, placed her hand in the middle of all the circles and said an incantation. The magic whirled from around the room and into the wall, creating a sort of portal. It was like looking down a dark grey tornado. The witch turned to me, pleased with herself.

  “You’re messing with magic beyond you. It’s only going to come back and bite you in the ass. All the black magic in the world won’t be able to save you by then.”

  “Shut up,” she said. “Time to go meet your end.”

  The thug shoved me through. Pain whipped at my skin and I screamed as I grew weightless and everything went black.

  When I came back to myself, I was in a pure white room with lights all around. On the ceiling, the floor, the walls, and leaving not even a shadow to exist. I couldn’t open my eyes without burning them, so I left them closed. I tried to move my limbs, only to be restricted by shackles.

  Okay then.

  I was definitely a prisoner. I inhaled and smelled nothing but cleaning products. I tried to cast out my powers and it only bounced back weak and useless. All these lights were making me useless.

  Don’t worry, no one is going to miss you. You can stay down here and rot for the rest of your abominable life. I’ll be back later on for some fun games.

  How many times have I been shackled? Locked up to rot in some basement or dungeon? How many times have I been tortured, experimented on? Too many. Way too many.

  I don’t know how long I stayed shackled to the wall. It could have been minutes, hours, or days. Who knows? Living for so long, years can pass by in what would feel like seconds. In this moment, it felt like decades. I couldn’t keep my eyes open longer than a few seconds, my sight unwilling to adjust to all the light. I swear, the longer I stayed here, the more my skin roasted. Is this what they wanted to do to me? Roast me like a Thanksgiving chicken? Or was that turkey?

  From what I could see, the room was the size of a master bedroom and other than me, there was only a large steel door. Nothing else. Well, magic was there too. It hummed through the air constantly. There was so much of it that my skin grew sensitive.

  Magic is always in the air, waiting for someone to come along and use it. Normally it stayed in the background, acting more like wisp than anything else. It wasn’t like that in here. The magic was so condensed in the air that I could probably choke on it. It existed as a blanketed reminder to the danger that has yet shown itself.

  The heavy metal doors clanged open. And the danger finally showed itself.

  I peeked long enough from under my red-hazed eyelids to sear my retinas and find Paige standing there. Not a lot of time passed if she was still wearing the red dress. I was starting to think they forgot about me and days were passing by. Then again, maybe days have passed by and she was just wearing the dress again. Doubt it. She seemed like the type to only wear something once and then forget about it in the back of her closet.

  There was a fizzle and then the pink haze behind my eyelids lessened. I opened my eyes slowly, weary. The lights on the walls were off.

  “So now that I’m here, what’s next?” I asked, tired of being in this situation time and time again. I was familiar with imprisonment enough to know that I could only wait and see to know what they wanted to do. I was well captured and at the mercy of their hands; at least until there was an opening for me to escape.

  She smiled. “We wait for my master to come back with his little pet and then kill you. Fortunate for you, only Kalen has power enough to kill you.”

  That’s interesting, I thought. They were betting everything on Kalen.

  I sighed. “Simple plan.”

  Paige frowned when she didn’t get the reaction she wanted.

  I guess in a way, this will work out perfectly. I just agreed to help Kalen kill me and now here I was, all wrapped up in a magic tight packaging and powerless. Whatever magic they were using kept me weak.

  “You act as if being chained to the wall and waiting for your death means nothing to you.”

  I shook my head. “Not nothing. It means a lot to kill me. I hope you’re prepared for what happens though.”

  She let out a small laugh that gave her nervousness away. Was my aloofness getting to her? I could stay aloof. I was a master at it. “We have considered everything.”

  “Everything?” I cocked my eyebrows and tilted my head to the side. How much did they know about me?

  “Yes, everything, Akhlys.” My name was a purr on her lips and I pictured her choking on it the next time she used that name.

  “Good luck with that.”

  She scowled, her beautiful face twisting with anger. “You’re cocky. Why are you cocky?”

  I was expecting a foot stomp to go with the question, but instead she waved her hands in a weird fashion and the lights blared to life, making my skin grow even hotter. I tried to coil away but there was no place to cower to. It was like being in the middle of the sun, surrounded by solar flares. The light stayed strong until I whimpered, then it was like a flick of a light switch as the room went back to its normal brightness.

  “Not so cocky now, are you?” she said with a satisfied smirk. I tried to smile, pulling the muscles around my mouth taunt. My skin was tight enough to split open. She burned me to a crisp. I could only stare at her, wide-eyed, as a new kind of fear blossomed in my stomach.

  No being was truly immortal—just really hard to kill. All anyone had to do was find that one way that could do them in and looking at Paige, I could only believe that she found the way to kill me.

  That wasn’t what really scared me though. I could accept death, maybe even welcome it. But if Kalen was the only who could kill me, then all Paige could do was torture me. I tried to draw comfort from that thought except being barbequed made that a little hard.

  There was no darkness to draw power from and by hurting me constantly; my body was too busy healing itself and keeping me weak. If they were careful enough, they could keep me locked up for a very long time and
that was what scared me.

  She can’t kill me but she can make it hurt. She can make me wish I were dead

  No. No way.

  My power tried to flare to life as my instincts screamed in denial. For once, my instincts agreed with me. We would rather die than be stuck here forever at the hands of beings who hated me with every cell of their existence. My power stretched against my small skin, trying to find release and finding none. Not in this tiny body. It lashed out at my skin, wanting to break free and I screamed out in a furious frustration. I wanted the witch dead. I wanted her to suffer in the very depths of purgatory for hurting me. I snarled, my eyes filled with power and my being lessened to nothing but an animalistic need to survive. I was dangling there, holding onto my sanity with a pinkie.

  “I don’t care who your master is, but I will promise you this,” my voice was deeper, closer to my real voice, except deformed by the growl in it. “Both of you will be so deeply buried into the pits of the night that all your senses will be nonexistent and you’ll never know when true death will come for you or how. When I’m done with you, you will beg me to end it and I will gladly do it, but not before turning you into nothing but a whimpering husk of dark misery.”

  Paige swallowed. She believed me. Good, at least she wasn’t completely dumb. I tried to hold onto whatever existence I had left, refusing to give in completely to the raging beast of my instincts.

  “You’re in no position to make threats,” she replied, her face pale. I gave her a feral smile, letting her know I was no one’s victim.

  I pushed out as much power as my little body would allow. My brand even flared to life, only a dim pain compared to how much it could really dish out. I was hurt, scared and absolutely frustrated with everyone. I traded in all those emotions for rage, something I was familiar with. I still came out short, my power only inches away from her. My body was too damn weak.

  I slumped back down, all the tension leaving me feeling like Jell-O. Page seemed to understand I was exhausted. She smirked and left the room briefly. I closed my eyes.

  So tired.

  A sharp pain flared on my arm and began spreading through my body. I grunted and Paige laughed as she stood over me with a whip in her hand. It was like a cat o’ nine tails, with multiple ends. What made them worse than the normal whips were the tiny little spikes on the rope that bit into my skin and tore it open.

  She hit me again and I could feel each spike go into my skin and then when the whip retracted, the spikes tore at my skin, taking with it a scream.

  “I thought you said you couldn’t kill me,” I managed to say through clenched teeth.

  “Oh, I know I can’t.”

  “So you’re just going to torture me?”

  She laughed manically. “Yeah. I’m going to make you feel the same pain my family has felt for hundreds of years.”

  She whipped me again, hitting my shoulder. I withdrew inside myself as best as I could. It was the only thing I could do.

  Chapter 24:

  “Why does she look half dead?”

  I pulled myself out of my self-induced oblivion and slowly opened my eyes to notice that some of the lights were off.

  “I think she’s too tired to heal properly.” Paige’s voice.

  “Good, that’s really good.” That voice was familiar.

  My left eye was sealed shut and my right one blurry. I could make out the shape of a really tall man. Swirls of colors made it hard to distinguish his features, but I got an impression of brown on top of blue. “Wouldn’t want her to be strong enough to fight back.” The voice was so damn familiar, but who? Who was it?

  Cold hands grabbed my face and tilted it up. I ended up looking into big pale blue eyes on the cusp of an ice storm. I kept seeing blue then brown, my vision too fucked up to differentiate anything else. A cold hand went to my temple and after a jolting stab of pain, my eyesight cleared right up.

  Oh.

  I blinked a couple of times, thinking the magic was giving me hallucinations now. Frey stood, towering over me with complete satisfaction on his pale face. We had one of those everlasting moments as I stared at him and him at me while my brain jetlagged through the revelation.

  “‘An angry man held down by morals and fears retribution by his own master,’” I whispered, quoting Seeker the night I first went to see him. My voice was more of a screech, my vocal cords still damaged and unable to work properly.

  Frey’s smile faltered, the gleam in his eyes dimming down. Good. “I knew Lord Kay was friends with you. That’s why I kissed his ass for three months.”

  “And he admits it!” I acted astonished when really I just wanted to curse him.

  He frowned at my enthusiasm.

  “So, kiss Kay’s ass to get to me. Why?” It made no sense. I was a hundred and ten percent sure that I’ve never met the man until a couple of days ago. I would remember a descendant of a frost giant. They were rare enough.

  I looked Frey over again, trying to figure it out. When he first met me, he feared me and showed that through an act of bravado. He still feared me now—I could taste it like a sweet addictive elixir.

  Frey kneeled in front of me and wrapped his hands around my small neck. He squeezed, barely allowing me to breath. The movement was to make me realize he had a lot of strength and he was willing to break my neck. I already knew this though. It was evident in every cell of his body. His mind screamed out with his rage. There was no reason to prove it to me.

  I stared at him, my face completely empty of any emotions. It was the kind of stillness only those who have lived long enough could do. It showed that his gesture failed to scare me. I could heal from a broken neck.

  Paige may be right about me being too weak to heal as quickly as I normally could. But I was still healing. Even now, I could feel my shattered cheek bones knit themselves back together.

  “I’m going to bring you the same kind of pain you forced on my sister.”

  “Your sister?” I flicked through all the female beings who could possibly be his sister and drew a blank. “Who?”

  Frey did not like that response.

  He squeezed my neck and then banged me against the wall with a lot of force. My head snapped back, hitting hard against the wall. Pain seared through my brain and I could feel blood as it dripped through my hair and down my back, warm and sticky. It left a warm trail behind and only made my back itchy. And I couldn’t do anything to make the itchiness go away.

  “How can you not even remember her?” he screamed into my face, spittle flying from his mouth and showering me. His eyes were wide with his rage, and underneath that, his grief. “She worshipped you. Couldn’t even stop talking about you, and then you set her up to die.”

  My eyes widened as it all clicked into place. If my jaw wasn’t in so much pain, it probably would have hit the floor. Holy-fucking-shit.

  “Eithna’s little brother…” It came out as a whisper as a different kind of pain struck my heart. I masked my reaction as best as I could and only hoped he didn’t catch that flicker of weakness. He didn’t. Good.

  “That’s right. I’m her little brother.” He smiled and it was a freezing cold that sent icicles through my body. “And I’m going to make you suffer just as she did.”

  “How?” I asked, it being the only question I could think of. I knew she had a little brother, but how was a fae related to an elemental? They were literally the opposite, fire and ice.

  “Same mother, different fathers.”

  “Oh.”

  I glanced behind him at Paige. She leaned against the wall, her arms crossed and a huge grin on her face. I’m sure she was the one who was going to deal out the pain. And she was very willing.

  “Shouldn’t your anger be for the Consort? They’re the ones who killed her.”

  Frey grabbed my face and forced me to look back at him. His eyes were a full-blown ice storm now. A storm so cold, it could probably make hell freeze over. His fingers were as cold as the ice he could manipula
te. The burning cold of his fingers stung as my cheeks grew numb from his touch. “She got the spell from you.”

  I glared back. “I never showed her that spell. Her using it was her decision.”

  “You gave her that book. You corrupted her.”

  I barked out a surprise laugh. “I corrupted her?” I snarled. “What was she, some kind of angel?” I shook my head. Eithna may have been warm and full of laughter but she was like me too. We both had deep everlasting wounds created by the humans.

  “Eithna breathed life. She was so full of warmth that she loved to share it.”

  “Even to those humans who killed her children?” I asked in a dry voice.

  He flinched and moved away a little, giving me some breathing room.

  I continued, my grief showing in my words. It must have been weird, to see a little girl shackled to a wall and talking as if she were an adult with the most emptiest face ever. I only allowed my emotions to show through my words. They came out angry, with a hint of regret. Probably a dash of warmth. It was hard to tell. There were too many different emotions I was feeling right now. Even I couldn’t shift through them or keep them out of my voice. “Eithna was not an angel, not for anyone. Why do you think we got along so well? We were pretty much the same. We both got our kicks in making humans suffer.”

  Frey shook me, pretty much dislodging my brain. “Lies,” he seethed.

  His voice in that moment was so full of desperation and anger, that something clicked into place. It was the same voice of someone who spoke to me a couple days after Eithna died. A voice seeking retribution against her sister’s killers.

  “‘I’ll destroy her. I’ll bring her the same misery she brought to you, Eithna. I promise this. I will have justice for your death. Akhlys had no right, no need to do this to you.’” I quoted those words I heard back then while staring at Frey.

  His face fell, color leaving his complexion. “H-how—” he sputtered.

  I smiled weakly. “I know I’m not much now, but stop forgetting who I really am. I am Night. So next time, don’t whisper your secrets into the dark. It’s like whispering it right into my little ears.”