by E E Everly
“How do you know she didn’t want to do the things she did? I don’t believe a person is without agency. Even when tied in chains, there’s always a choice.”
“I believe you’re right. I didn’t see her true nature at first. I felt compassion for her plight. One day I barged in on the empress having a conversation with someone I assumed was her dragon. She was arguing. As I listened, I realized she was begging, pleading for mercy. She was weeping on the floor. I couldn’t bear it. I swept into the room and knelt beside her. Desperate to be consoled, she threw herself into my arms because she trusted me.
“She told me she was the Vessel, that she did things for her master. Sometimes she regretted them. If she failed, he punished her. During her confession, she stiffened and pulled away. She became her hardened self again. But I knew. I was privy to her lapse.”
“Sounds like a hormonal malfunction.”
Caedryn’s eyebrows quirked. “Are you belittling your sex?”
“I’m a woman. I know how we are. Sometimes we feel as though the world’s ending when our turmoil is inescapable. Come on, Caedryn, you saw me when I arrived. I would have bared my soul to you. I was desperate for relief.”
He laughed. “You don’t remember half the things you said to me, do you?”
I shook my head.
“Emotions are dangerous. You don’t need to be a woman to be overwhelmed by them. As an emrys, as a half-emrys, we’re particularly swayed. They’re stronger to us. We feel more deeply than mortals. We hate with greater intensity. We love more completely. We’re ever confused by each and every inkling that surges inside us.” Caedryn locked eyes with me, as if reminding me of the meltdown that blew apart his study and of his internal scars that caused him to quiver in terror.
I shut my mouth. No, he was reminding me of my impulse to climb into his bed. He thought I did it because I had feelings for him. I most certainly did not have the inklings he spoke of.
He continued. “Ever since the day I consoled her, the empress looked at me differently. I looked at her differently. In my heart, I vowed to free her. After some digging, I learned that becoming the Vessel was the only way.”
“The Vessel? What is that?”
“The Dark Master’s vessel. Whoever is the Vessel becomes the Dark Master’s hands on Bryn. The physical hands to do what he cannot in his eternal prison.”
I didn’t understand. I thought back to the story of the Creator and his brother. “This Dark Master, this is what we call Cysgod?”
“Yes. His power is in the empress.”
“Oh.” The horror. She’d be indestructible.
“When I tried to take her power, she exiled me.”
“You? You tried to take it? Why would you do that?”
“I had grown close enough to the empress that I knew the secrets of the chamber where the Dark Master dwelt. She caught me in the passage. Captured me. She thought I was taking the power for myself. She couldn’t understand, or rather, she refused to understand my motives. And power was more important than what I offered her.”
What he offered her? “But you’d become the Vessel. You’d be filled with evil. Why would you want to become this?” I narrowed my eyes. “You’re leaving something out.”
Caedryn turned and stared out the window. “That’s all you need to know.”
I scoffed. “This sounds like another pity story, the prequel to the exile story you told me.”
He rounded on me, ablaze with anger. “Does my pathetic tale make you pity me? Is that where your compassion came from? I don’t need you mopping my forehead!”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Caedryn’s eyes darkened. “That’s exactly what you meant. I’m baring my soul, and you believe I want pity. That’s how the emrys are, aren’t they? Full of empathy.”
“No.” I held my hands up as I backed away from his penetrating gaze. Somewhere inside, his accusation stung. I tried not to choke as Aneirin’s face swam in my mind, as I thought of how I’d reacted to his pity.
“I don’t want your pity. This has never been about pity! Don’t you hear the warning in my voice! Don’t you understand that I’m trying to protect you from danger?”
His warning? He was absurd. “Danger? DANGER! I’m not in danger from you. You can’t hurt me. You don’t have to push me away.”
“It’s inevitable.”
He was insane—prodding, poking, niggling for a reaction from me so he had an excuse for becoming defensive and lashing out.
I yelled in his face. “You can be left to your own devices! Rage through the night for all I care. Throw up walls like before. I don’t want to see your torments.”
“I offered you a place to start over. That’s all. But you unearthed a hole in my heart-center that you feel the sudden desire to fill. There’s nothing but a black pit. Blackness, Niawen! I won’t relinquish my darkness. It’s too much of a part of me.”
“You don’t have to suffer.”
“I’ve suffered for centuries.”
“So this talk of a clean slate is rubbish. You don’t believe you can change, so why would you think I could heal?”
“I don’t want your light to be dimmed. That’s why I gave you purpose. Your light is healing, but for a while, we were the same. I thought the darkness would give you perspective so you’d understand me.”
I scoffed.
“I want you to heal,” he said. “Despite my inability to do so, I swear it! I believe you can.”
“How could we ever be the same? I have a smudge on my heart-center; you carry a cauldron of dark matter!”
Caedryn raked both his hands through his hair, pulling the strands back slowly, as if buying time, considering his next sentence. When he spoke, his words were forced—harsh—but purposeful. “I might have done horrible things.” His eyes flashed. His chest rose. “I might use my darkness and relish the strength the energy gives me, a strength you could never understand”—his final words fell out of a mouth contorted from the darkness inside him—“but even in all my deceit, I didn’t kill one hundred and eighty-nine people.”
I just stared at his cruel mouth as the meaning of his words became clear. One hundred and eighty-nine people? My heart exploded in my chest. I had killed one hundred and eighty-nine people.
In my rage, and horror, I didn’t hesitate. I lifted my arms and blasted Caedryn across the room. He smashed into a table and slammed his head on the top edge. My body throbbed. My face felt hardened and distorted with ferocity. I heard laughter. A masochistic, rasping cackle. The cad was laughing!
He rolled onto his side while clutching it. “You broke my bottom two ribs.”
I didn’t care. One hundred and eighty-nine people. My breathing became shallow. I stared at my hands. No. No. No. “How do you know how many?” I whispered as I sank to my knees. So much for a blank slate. Why did he throw this in my face? Hysterics overwhelmed me. I was no better than Caedryn. So many lives gone because of me. I dug my fingers into my chest, curling over my knees, as sobs overtook my shaking body.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have said any of it,” Caedryn said near my ear.
I choked. I gasped because of his nearness, but I didn’t look at him. “Why did you?”
“You’ve triggered something in me I can’t explain. This didn’t go well. This is not how I wanted our conversation to go. I can’t give words to what I’m feeling.”
I sniffed as I rubbed the tears from my cheeks with my palms. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to say either. “I told you to let me in.”
“I’m sorry. By the light, I’m sorry. I’m an idiot. And I give you permission to blast me whenever you want. It’ll help you heal.”
I laughed through my sniffles. I glanced to the side between a crack in the fingers covering my face. Caedryn must have crawled over to me because he was lying on his stomach, with his hand extended, palm up. He’d buried his face in the carpet, with his other arm around his head.
I w
as as unbalanced as Caedryn. I should have gotten up and called out to Seren. Just ran to her and flown away. I had no idea where. My brain screamed all sorts of things I should have done.
But I huddled in my ball, with Caedryn waiting, reaching out to me.
I couldn’t help but think he was strategizing some perverse game. He’d ripped the reaction right from me, as if I’d played into his hand, although I didn’t know why.
This fiasco all started because I’d unearthed a hole in his heart-center.
Blackness that needed to be filled with light.
My blackness shrouded my heart.
His was a mass in a hole in his chest.
My hand twitched. One gesture would change everything. With one decision, I could forgive him. I was not bound by chains. I had free will.
He was hurting just as much as I was.
He deserved compassion.
Decide.
He’s waiting.
I clasped Caedryn’s hand.
He gripped mine in return.
In this moment, he’d won. But I let him.
“By the way,” he muttered as he looked up, smiling. “I do believe my head’s bleeding.”
FIFTY
I didn’t think I’d go to Caedryn’s room that night, but I also didn’t want to wait for him to howl, leaving me to run halfway across the keep in the dark. I hesitated. I could go to him. Stay with him. Like the other scandalous night.
What would Caedryn do if I walked into his room and slid into bed with him again? I wiggled my nose. Had we come to a conclusion with this afternoon’s argument? I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t tell if he wanted me around or if he wanted me gone.
I wanted to pull my hair out.
I stood in the corridor, debating which turn to make.
Right, and I would be safe in my chamber. I’d hear Caedryn scream his anguished cries, and I’d rush down the halls to his rescue and snap him out of his scourge. Or would I leave him to suffer?
Left, and I’d lie beside him, tucked around my pillow with my hand outstretched, waiting anxiously for him to touch it.
Where had that thought come from? My insides decompressed. The notion made sense as every part of my body sank into calm. I wanted him to touch me.
My thoughts were irrational.
One brush from his pinkie, and I knew it’d do me in.
For some reason, I couldn’t pass that up. I wanted to be undone by Caedryn. I wanted him to torment me. Reach out just enough to send electricity through the rest of my body. Shock my system until it rewired. Oh please. Yes. His maddening touch was what I needed. What I craved.
It might not be the best thing for me.
I wasn’t healed. Opening myself up for Caedryn to tease wasn’t doing me or Caedryn any favors.
It was destructive.
I looked at the hand that had grasped his earlier. One touch conveyed so much.
So much desperation.
So much need—on both our ends.
I turned left.
Caedryn didn’t open the door for me. I slipped into the room in the dark. I knew he lay there, on his stomach, huddled over his pillows. I coiled around the one conveniently left on my side of the bed, and my hand fell into the space between us.
His hand was not there.
But I heard his breathing. He was awake, waiting for me. I tried not to imagine the gloating on his face.
He had been expecting me.
Victory two for Caedryn.
No matter. I knew we’d be touching by morning.
I smiled. A victory for me.
FIFTY-ONE
Caedryn was stuck in my head. He wasn’t getting out. All day, during patient care, between patient visits, and while trekking through the snow and down the halls. To my infirmary and back. Caedryn stayed in the citadel, but he remained busy. His men came and went. Reports were given. Riders arrived and left. I passed Caedryn in the halls in the evenings. We ate dinner together and talked quietly. He read to me before a roaring fire in the main library.
We went to bed, his bed. Every single night.
In the morning our hands touched.
The same every day.
He was torturing me, I was sure of it.
The slow, gnawing torture of the damned because this was what I was sure I had become.
He no longer cried out in the night. That was the only reason, the only justification, I gave for continuing my torture.
Because he slept.
Yes, your presence might be all I require.
I was the key. How could his relief be so simple?
The knowledge unhinged me.
His relief was dependent on my light, the little light we shared as he reached out every night.
He always did the reaching, but I left my hand there for him to touch.
Because I wanted the punishment and the intimacy with him.
It felt so wrong.
And it also felt incomplete.
The day Caedryn destroyed his study, I touched him. I caressed his face and brushed back his hair. He hadn’t flinched. I never touched him more than I did then, but I believed he was so distraught he didn’t notice. The regression, to the skimming of our littlest fingers, was the madness that tore through me.
As we roamed about Gorlassar, Aneirin had touched me on many occasions. Even though emrys didn’t express emotion through everyday touch, we didn’t shun it. When in training, I crashed into opponents, grazed them, fell on them, bruised them. Touch was natural. Especially among mortals, but Caedryn’s lack of touch was a noticeable barrier. Unnatural. As if he went out of his way to not touch me.
All except my finger.
The image of the horror on his face, when I shoved him over in bed that first night, led me to believe Caedryn was seriously impaired—deprived. Neglected. Did his mother not touch him as a child? Was he afraid to touch me more because the sensation was peculiar to him?
My conjectures really disturbed me because I sensed an unspoken, uncomfortable vibe between us.
It was part of the torture.
I expected too much. I kept thinking of how Kelyn would hug me or fiddle with my hair. How Owein constantly slipped his arm around my waist or took my arm. Kenrik fought with me. I could still feel his body connecting with mine during training and feel the way his strong hands brushed mine as we scooped feathers up to throw.
This awareness of their lingering sensations was the humanity thing again. I had adopted their desire—their want for touch.
I was the one who was deprived, and Caedryn was provoking me with what I couldn’t get—with only a slight taste. A tingle of vibration in that rankling appendage!
I needed to stop sleeping in his room. An emrys wouldn’t do such an immoral thing.
The blackness in my heart persuaded me to participate in unconscionable conduct I wouldn’t normally consider.
That was another excuse. And I knew it.
But deep inside, the dark secret that hummed through every fiber of my being was that I loved the abuse Caedryn and I were enacting on each other.
How could I stop?
I wondered what his man and my maid thought. They must have been relieved Caedryn wasn’t wailing through the night. On the other hand, were the servants whispering?
“Lowri?” I asked, as she squeezed me into a dress. I don’t know why I let her put me in one on occasion, but she always beamed and remarked at what a fine figure I had. We were in my rooms, and she was helping me dress for the day after I came from Caedryn’s room in my nightdress and robe.
She never remarked.
“My lady?” she asked.
“Are you bothered by my improper behavior? You know I’ve been sleeping in his bed.”
“That’s none of my business.”
“We don’t… touch really. We haven’t… you know.”
“The master’s happy. That’s all that matters.” Lowri finished with the back of my dress and smiled at me.
“He is?”
>
“Aye, my lady. He is.”
FIFTY-TWO
I beat Caedryn to his room and paced before the fire. I wanted more—more than the single touch by the edge of his pinkie. Did I have a right to demand more?
When did I come to this conclusion? After a few more days of boggling, suppressed, intolerable itching for contact, I almost broke. I almost throttled Caedryn at dinner when he passed me the salt. Our fingers brushed, and he curled his to his chest, clutching them as if I’d burned him.
I left the table and disappeared for the rest of the evening. I found the armory and melted half a dozen shields into a molten lump.
What was wrong with me?
Emrys—I was emrys. I told myself this. Certain feelings were ingrained, like the consuming drive to find a life mate.
I couldn’t outrun it.
This urge was the reason I craved physical contact.
Why didn’t I stay in Gorlassar? I plagued myself with this question—would plague myself with this question until the world died, and I with it.
Was I considering Caedryn as a life mate? The thought made my spine prickle. I was beyond reason.
Why was I considering him? Did I want romance?
Don’t be idiotic.
“You’re anxious,” Caedryn said as he entered his bedchamber.
I stopped pacing. “What are we doing?”
“I’m going to bed. You’re pacing.” He disappeared into an adjoining room to change.
“That’s not what I meant. I’m tired—”
He straightened the hem of his shirt as he emerged. “I thought you’d been sleeping rather well. I know I have been.”
I squeezed my fists by my side. Only because of me. “Are you toying with me?”
He paused, ready to grab his comforter. The serious expression in his eyes stroked the base of my neck. “I never toy.”
