Panic snapped through my nerves. Below me, draugr were clambering over the fire escape like deranged kids on a jungle gym.
Freaking out, I gripped the door handle, jamming it up and down. “Let me in!”
This was pointless. No one would answer.
Then, with a tremendous crack, the entire staircase ripped from the wall of the building.
My stomach lurched, and I clung on tight to the door handle, dangling three stories above the ground. “Help!”
My breath froze in my lungs, and I looked out at the sea of draugr. Nowhere to throw my stone…
I closed my eyes, hands slipping on the steel handle. “This will make a great story for Barthol,” I whispered to reassure myself, but it was starting to feel like I might not be around to tell it.
The undead churned beneath me in a maelstrom. My frozen feet were blocks of ice against the brick wall. I turned my head the other way, desperately searching for draugr-free snow where I could toss the vergr crystal.
But I saw something perhaps even better—a light shining in the darkness, and a figure sprinting toward me. A tall, broad-shouldered silhouette, dark hair caught in the wind.
Above his head, Marroc held a torch, and he used it to sweep a clear path through the dead.
Chapter 14
Marroc
The elf was hanging on to a door handle on the third floor of Sanders Theatre when I reached her. As I looked up at her, a strange feeling pierced my heart, like someone was driving a nail through it. It was an overwhelming urge to get her to safety—an unusual feeling for one of my kind.
Standing below her, I tried to call out to her, to urge her to jump into my arms. But my lack of speech made that a bit difficult.
In the end, it wasn’t clear if she dropped into my arms because she trusted me, or because she had lost her grip and had no other choice. Either way, I exhaled with relief as I caught her. Dropping her to the ground, I curled an arm around her shoulders and pulled her tight to me.
With my free arm, I swept the reverend’s burning femur through the air. The flames were an arc of light, keeping the dead at bay.
Holding her close, I turned to face the draugr. The beasts had surrounded us, watching my torch with dead eyes. They were afraid of the fire—the only thing that could destroy them. And yet their desire for flesh and blood might be stronger than their fear of burning.
We didn’t have much time.
I swung my torch, keeping the monsters at bay. I had the key on me, which meant that all I needed to do was to say the magic word: Finnask.
Except—the curse, of course, robbed me of speech.
The draugr moved closer, and I swung the torch to keep them at bay. The Night Elf clung to my side, warm against me. Sunlight flickered in my mind, another memory of rowan trees against a blue sky. A room of stones and vines…
Clutching my mate, I backed against the brick wall of Sanders Theatre.
My instinct was to hold her to me, but she slid away, out of my embrace. I stepped in front of her.
“What’s the plan?” she asked in a breathy whisper.
All I needed was for her to speak the magic word for me, to say it out loud, and we’d be free. I glanced behind me, looking for something I could use to write. I didn’t have much time, and I couldn’t leave her. If the draugr reached her, they’d rip her to pieces and gorge themselves on her flesh. But I had nothing with which to write with…
The draugr must have sensed me hesitating, because one charged, leaping for her throat. I slammed the flaming torch into it so hard that I took off its head. Another draugr lunged, grabbing for my torch, but it missed. If this flame went out, we were fucked.
The Night Elf stayed behind me, pressed tight against the wall. I could feel my own soul radiating from her body. “Marroc!” she shouted.
A draugr’s fingers raked along the burning femur, but I was faster. I grabbed the creature by the neck, then threw it into the air. To my surprise, as it arced through the night sky, sparks trailed behind it like the tail of comet.
The draugr landed in a mass of his kind nearly a hundred feet away. For a moment, the dead stilled.
Then the body detonated, like I’d just thrown a bomb.
There it was again—that unfamiliar fear sliding along my bones as the flames spread through the crowd of corpses. All around us, the draugr bodies were igniting. Seemed they were extremely flammable, and the fire was raging closer, putting her in danger.
The Night Elf screamed again, the sound like glass shards in my heart. A strange thought bloomed in my head, a desire to turn into a powerful oak tree that could protect her.
What to write with? How to speak to her?
Fire stained the air with light.
That could be used to write in the air. All I needed was for her to say the word out loud, just once. The pressure to get out of this situation was like a thousand rocks on my chest.
I turned to the Night Elf and pressed my key into her hand. She frowned at it, but wrapped her fingers around it.
I touched her cheek lightly to get her attention. Meeting my gaze, her silver eyes gleamed in the darkness. Her breath was coming in fast bursts. While her gaze was locked on me, I pointed to the torch, trying to signal that she needed to watch it closely.
In the air, I spelled FINNASK with the blazing end of the femur.
“Finnask?” she asked.
And that was all we needed to disappear.
Chapter 15
Ali
Light flashed, and the grotesque world around me faded away. No longer surrounded by hungry draugr, I was now standing in the center of a beautiful hall. I blinked, hardly daring to believe what I was seeing.
An ivory ceiling arched high above us, with vaults that looked like petals fanning out. The muddy snow had been replaced with a clean marble floor, and the draugr had become towering, peaked windows with moonlight streaming in.
Marroc crouched before a marble fireplace and traced a fire rune in the air. Flames ignited, casting a warm glow over the place. Rising, he gestured to the hearth. Didn’t have to ask me twice.
As I warmed my hands, I wanted to ask where we were, but I knew he couldn’t answer. Whatever the case, I’d never before been in a place of such opulence. Instead of death, I could smell wood smoke, feel the warmth of fire. Wood chairs with worn embroidery stood before it, but I ignored them, sitting on the hearth to warm my hands and toes.
I stole a glance at Marroc, who stared back at me with an unnerving intensity. Smoky shadows swirled about him like a murmuration of starlings, but I could see his face clearly in here. Shockingly beautiful, he had a sensual mouth, cheekbones sharp enough to cut steel, and eyes the color of pale sapphires. His dark hair draped over his shoulders. Well over six feet tall, he looked like a Greek statue.
He dropped himself into an embroidered armchair before the hearth, looking like he owned the place. And he maybe did. This looked like it could have once been the home of a wealthy human. When he looked at me, the firelight danced in his eyes, and he seemed to soak me in with his gaze.
I still had no idea what he was, or why he was interested in me.
“I’d ask you what the Helheim was going on, but you can’t tell me,” I said.
His lips quirked for a moment, then he lowered himself to the floor by my side. I frowned at a deep gash on his forearm where a draugr had clawed it, and he touched it with his finger.
“You’re hurt.” I felt like an idiot for stating the obvious, except as I looked closer, I saw that it wasn’t blood. Instead of a normal red, it was a dark blue, and it smoked slightly.
He’d found an old, yellowed piece of paper and a pen. I’m fine, he wrote in beautiful, curling script.
“You don’t look fine. You look… What are you?”
I can’t die. Again.
A chill crawled up my spine. “What do you mean?”
I’m a dark sorcerer. A lich.
My heart skipped a beat, and I leapt to my feet.
“Skalei.” The blade was in my hand in an instant, though I clearly couldn’t make him more dead than he already was.
Now I knew why the High Elves were so scared of him, and why they’d imprisoned him.
Truth be told, I’d thought liches were mere legends. I hadn’t known they were possible. But apparently, they were. And this was bad, bad news, because liches were more dangerous than draugr. They started out alive, but transformed themselves into undead beasts using dark magic. They became immortal.
Like in the human stories of vampires, a lich fed from the living. Constantly hungry, they bit into your skin, drinking your soul through your blood. And also like vampires, they were seductive and cunning, with astounding strength and speed.
Except it wasn’t just blood the liches were after. It was souls. Through blood, liches were drawn to life they no longer possessed. To be drained by a lich was to be turned into an empty, walking husk.
“You’re a lich?” I repeated, hoping I’d misheard him somehow.
He nodded, blue eyes still fixed on me. Was it just me, or did he have a faint smile on his face, like he found my horror fucking funny?
I pointed the knife at him. “So, you feed on the souls of the living. You want to bite into my neck or some weird shit and drink my soul. Right?”
Marroc merely shrugged, like my words were immaterial. But then his gaze drifted down from my face to my severed finger, and something like anger flashed in his eyes.
“I’m not done with my questions,” I said. “I thought liches were driven by an insatiable lust to kill and consume.”
He picked up his pen. That was not a question.
“Are you going to eat my soul?” I snapped. “Obviously, that’s my concern. That’s my fucking question.”
I’m not hungry. I feel nothing. Then, after a considered pause, he wrote, Usually.
“Great. Okay.” I lowered my knife. “That’s not a ringing endorsement of yourself.”
He almost looked perplexed as he wrote, I won’t hurt you.
So far, he didn’t seem as though he wanted to consume my soul. Since I’d encountered him, he’d kept me safe.
As I sheathed my blade, pain shot up my arm, and I winced. The heat of the fire was thawing the stump of my finger, which meant I felt the pain again.
You’re still hurt, he wrote.
I looked down at the remains of my ring finger. I felt nauseated every time I looked at it. “Yeah. It’s not ideal.”
Marroc stood, towering over me, and beckoned me to the door at the end of the hall.
I slipped Skalei into my coat pocket, then followed him into a long hallway of dark wood. We crossed into a room with a large marble table in the center, and I let out a low whistle. I’d read about places like this. Kitchens, they’d been called.
I draped my coat over a chair, making myself comfortable.
Back before Ragnarok, when humans had ruled Midgard, they’d devised extraordinary technology that didn’t require magic: stoves that heated without fire, insulated cabinets that kept food from rotting, even machines whose sole purpose was to prepare cold drinks. It had always sounded like paradise to me.
And it seemed Marroc, as a former human, had lived in the most luxurious conditions. I wanted to ask him everything about Midgard before the floods and war, about how the humans had once lived. But his lack of speech made that hard.
I was holding my hand at the wrist, as though the pressure would somehow make my finger regenerate. If anything could take my mind off trauma, it was this.
On a counter, I spotted one of these human devices—a sort of plastic vase with blades on the bottom that rotated. I hopped up to get a closer look, hoping to push all the disturbing thoughts about undead and severed fingers out of my mind. “I’ve read about these. Is this a blen-door? Gods, Barthol would love this. It crushes up fruit, doesn’t it? Mashes it up to make a delicious drink. A smoothie. How did you happen across these ancient human contraptions?”
Marroc nodded, that amusement dancing in his eyes again. He slid a piece of paper across the table and wrote, Wait here, I’ll be right back.
While he was gone, I explored the room, trying to put my mutilated hand out of my mind. I opened the drawers, poked around in the cabinets. I turned on the stove. Just like in the old books, the coils glowed red without fire when I twisted a knob.
When I turned around, I found Marroc writing on the paper, and he handed it to me. We need to take care of that finger.
Then he opened a small red bag labeled with a white cross, which I recognized as a medical kit. He unzipped it and removed a syringe along with a clear vial labeled LIDOCAINE.
“Oh, human medicine! I love human medicine.” It was what they’d used to heal themselves instead of magic, but most of it had disappeared long ago.
He nodded, then wrote, This will hurt. But it will help you heal.
For some reason, I trusted him. Undead or not, he’d clearly been looking out for me so far. It was like something was whispering in the back of my mind that he’d keep me safe, that we had to look out for each other. Although I couldn’t explain that at all, given what he was.
Reluctantly, I extended my injured hand to him.
I held my breath as he slowly drew a small quantity of fluid into the syringe, then grabbed the wrist of my injured hand. Before I could say anything, he drove the end of the syringe into the stump of my severed finger.
Something cold and painful slid up my arm, and I clenched my jaw, trying not to scream. I didn’t like seeming weak in front of others.
At last, he released my wrist, and I let out a long, slow breath. He snatched the paper and began scribbling on it.
When he flipped the paper around, I read: The medicine takes the pain away. When your finger is numb, I will stitch the wound shut. From now on, you must understand I am trying to help you. If I wanted you dead, I would have let Gorm throw you down the well.
“Good.” I cradled my numbing hand. “And I want to know why you’re so interested in me.”
Chapter 16
Marroc
I stared at her, heat flickering in my chest again. Barthol would love this, she had said.
I found myself wondering who he was. My new rival, perhaps? An icy sort of violence flickered in my veins.
But then—a rival to what? A lich was unable to love. We were driven only by the need to possess. To taste and consume. Even if she was my mate, I’d be an idiot to confuse this with real emotions.
But the drive to taste was real, and it was hard not to stare at her. Under her coat, she’d been wearing black clothes that hugged her delicate curves, and her silver hair draped over her shoulders. Her full lips were pursed a little while she waited for me to speak. But I was used to the silence.
For just a moment, my gaze trailed over her figure, lingering at the curves of her hips. I could almost remember what it was like to have a woman. I would lay her out over the table, slide my hand up her shirt…
Liches were seductive. It was how we got to the blood and souls we desired. For most liches, it came naturally. But I’d been in prison, alone so long that I’d forgotten how to charm someone. Hard to keep sharp on that front with only rats around.
Now, this close to her, the memory of lust gleamed in my mind like a jewel. Even before I’d become a lich, I’d been skilled at seduction. Long ago, if she’d come to my home uninjured, I might have had her on my kitchen table within twenty minutes.
I’d told her that I felt nothing, that I desired nothing. But it seemed that was a lie, because it was rising in me now, a hunger to consume her. I wanted to pull her little body close to mine, to feel our souls mingling. I wanted to hear her gasp as I drank from her.
Already, I knew how I would feel consuming her soul—the pure ecstasy trembling through my body, like light and life warming me from the inside. She was exquisite, and drinking from her would be the greatest pleasure I’d ever experienced. I wanted to press my lips against her neck a
nd rip into her skin. I wanted to taste her, to feel the heat of her body and to soak in her memories.
I could almost feel it now, a thrumming in my chest like a fait heartbeat. Just being near her was making me feel almost alive again.
The lich side of me wanted to possess her completely. To steal her soul and make her mine. And if I weren’t careful, I’d give in to my desires and ruin her completely. And while I was at it, I’d destroy my own soul, too.
But just a taste of her…
With her good hand, she drummed her fingertips on the table. “Marroc? Hello? Why the interest in me?”
Her voice snapped me out of my reverie like a slap to my face. So much talking with this one.
All liches were cursed in different ways. We were all powerful sorcerers who had trapped our souls within objects. Doing so had given me eternal life, but dark magic always came with a cost—a curse. And mine was twofold. I couldn’t speak, and I couldn’t use magic without feeling like I was on fire. Strange that she wasn’t more afraid of me, this cursed monster before her.
I wrote on the paper, I will explain later.
She shook her head. “No. Tell me now.”
Let me suture your finger first.
“After you tell me what’s going on.”
With all due respect, you’re bleeding all over my home.
She paused, looking at the bloody stump of her finger. Then, without a word, she walked to the stove.
I realized too late what she planned to do. Even as I grabbed for her, there was a hiss as she pressed her nub of finger against the glowing burner. The scent of scorched skin filled the room.
“There,” she said. “I’m not bleeding anymore. You seem nice for an undead creature. But please understand that I can take care of myself, and I do what I need to do to survive. And more than that, I do what I have to do to protect my own people. I’ve lived without human medicine. I’ve survived without fancy homes and beautiful six-foot-five knights in shining armor. I don’t need your kindness. Just tell me what’s going on.”
Cursed Prince (Night Elves Trilogy Book 1) Page 6
