After they have been captured again, Tiyan wasn’t taken anymore to perform in the cruel court games. Wasn’t dragged to any feasting chamber or throne room. But he could be taken. Lorian didn’t visit him during last three days and the possibility of it was digging into his mind with black claws. His body still pulsed with half-pleasure half-pain of their encounters, like the shadow power stayed within him and slipped deeper into his flesh, comfortably spreading through his muscles.
But Tiyan knew they will come, one day or another. His body sometimes caught by the shiver, when he curled on the too comfortable bed. When the fairy lights, attracted to his suffering, latched to his skin. They felt his pain and they liked it.
It was worse than if he was taken dungeons. Here, he was a well-maintained toy – similar to wooden dolls he carved and cared for, putting them on a shelf. Exposed to show beauty – and dread. He was like these dolls now – uncanny, scary, with bruised body and bloodshot eyes. A nightmare in silk. A food for a sick heart.
Mina…
She was dancing in a bloodstained gown in his dreams. Her feet swirling on the polished stones, until she started to collapse. Her skin cracking, flesh coming off from crevices, like a minced pulp. Gaps becoming wider, meat pouring from them, splashing on the floor, making bloody puddles, but her feet still were carrying her in a wild dance. Her smile wide, just like the gaps in her skin, until meat wouldn’t pour from them as well…
When he was waking up, the vision stuck to him like an parasite. It was not a vision. For the merciful goddess, it couldn’t be truth.
“Mina…” he murmured into the pillow. It was clean pillow, changed everyday by lower fae servants… but Tiyan still was seeing blood on it. His own blood, spilled amidst passion, when Lorian was taking all what was making him human. Tiyan hated that his body was betraying his mind. No, not hated. He was afraid of that, because when it was happening – he longed for it.
He will destroy you, Tiyan Markon. He already is doing it.
He wanted his life back. When he wasn’t dreaming of Mina, he remembered the summer in Vennklan Valley. How he fished with Noyd. How they both laughed, how easy the child’s small existence was. And his first hunt, with his father, when he was ten, a year after the war. How he feared the wild fungi boar, but had to learn how to be a hunter. Otherwise, if something happened to father, the family would be lost. He wasn’t dreaming about war itself – like it was erased from his mind. And when he was entering the house with his father, a wild boar or anglor on his back… there was no Mina. Alina greeted them, Noyd visited them, this sad, but confident smile on her face. But in place of Mina was an empty shadow. Like she never existed.
Like she was erased.
He didn’t lose his hope. Or he did. But he was fooling himself he didn’t.
When he was dragged to the throne room, he wasn’t even opposing. No talk back. His mouth pressed in a line, teeth clenched.
He won’t give them pleasure.
He won’t.
He won’t.
‘If you return. Promise me.’ Noyd’s words somehow rang in his mind, like they just left her mouth. Noyd waited for him. For bad and for good. And no fae could take her memory from his mind.
Lorian waited for him, splayed on the throne, in a pose that was obvious – he will once again enjoy and bathe in him. Tiyan almost screamed at him. At his kind and beautiful smile. At his relaxed body. At his shadows that curled behind him. Almost. If he screamed, it would be like turning back.
And if he turned back, there would be monsters.
The fairy guards tossed him to Lorian’s feet. He wasn’t chained, but chains seemed to glow in his mind. Not by Lorian’s power – by his own resignation.
One thing still bloomed with flowers in his chest though. A rose with fearful thorns and delicate petals. His heart would stop beating, if that rose was torn from his heart. He feared that day by day, night by night, it haunted his dreams and drilled his perseverance.
“My beautiful mortal” Lorian patted the hand of the throne with his long fingers. Tiyan saw that behind him, a lesser folk swarms, a intricate pattern of wings of various shapes, colors and texture. Their eyes, first time in Tiyan’s whole life, weren’t empty. They were full. Of terrors.
Tiyan didn’t try to lift up or respond to Lorian. His hair were sticky, and his limbs covered with bruises, which were created among screams of pleasure during these dreadful nights. The sweated locks falling into his view.
“You are long enough in Dal’coler” c0ntinued Lorian, still patting the throne. His fingers tapped a rhythm, steady and slow. The court around them observed Tiyan with sick interest. Where is the shapeshifter? Was he dead? It didn’t matter. He was not his friend. “But you only brushed the real heart of it. The sensuality of suffering.”
Tiyan couldn’t not snort. This was sick. This place was sick. More than he imagined. They truly considered pain, blood and torment as sensual. They were wrong in their heads, destroyed by the years lived. And Lorian was most deranged of them all.
Lorian’s smile was not coming from his mouth, like it was glued there.
“The real delicacy awaits when your pain becomes a song. Your pain will become a symphony of senses, and your disgust – a poetry of most stunning metaphors. You will be full of wonders soon, blood will mix with blood and flesh will become one.”
“Sing it to yourself on your own funeral” barked Tiyan. Silently, but loud enough so Lorian could hear it.
“Perhaps this metaphor is too complicated for a human to understand” chuckled Lorian and bent forth. “Let me show you. Cora, lift the lid from his meal.”
Tiyan only now saw that near the throne stands a table with a covered dish. The tiny fairy flew to it, and completely without effort, even if the lid was ten times heavier than her, pulled it up.
Revealing its gruesome content
Tiyan felt as his world falls down.
No.
NO.
No, please.
A silent gagging scream trapped in his throat. He wanted both kill all the fae, throw himself into the shallow pit, to break all bones and taste the well-deserved pain and disappear from the face of the world, become nothing.
He threw himself in the guards’ grasp and the howl that left him mouth was more of a trapped animal, than a human being. This he was. A trapped insolent animal. And… he was about to get fed.
On the large plate before him, lay the well baked body of his sister. It was Mina, it had to be Mina. She was whole. He would recognize that shape everywhere.
“NO!!” he stretched his hands to Lorian Ain’Dal, ready to strangle him, or give him a reason to be killed by him. Anything… anything than this. The lesser fairy who opened the dish, hung before his nose, and sprinkled the dust into his eyes.
Tiyan felt as his limbs become more rigid, fast, faster than he could embrace.
“You know how to please your king” purred Lorian to the lesser folk swarm behind him, the fairies with hungry, needy eyes. “Do it. Please me.”
“Do not dare!” howled Tiyan, breathing heavily, saliva dripping down his lower lip, fury, fear and despair formed into a painful showcase of impotency. Muscles on his neck tensed, almost bursting with blood, his whole body like a strap, ready to snap under slightest touch. “YOU MONSTER!”
“You must be strong for me” purred Lorian. “You need a lot of filling delights.”
The fae giggled and started to tear the meat with their tiny hands. Tiyan wanted to continue to scream, break his bounds, both mental and physical, but the world slowed down.
It slowed down for him, but not for the surrounding him fairies. His mouth filled with the taste of blood and fried flesh.
“Eat.”
“Tasty. Delicious.”
“A sweet treat for his teeth.”
Mina was laying on the table, dead, so dead, and torn in places, her eye sockets empty, her brown eyes evaporated in heat. Her limbs caked in dry blanket of cooked blood. The fey’s faces were sparkling with enchantment, deep one, which was making him unable to move but painfully aware of what is going on around him. And in him.
“One more.”
“Can’t go on without a good meal.”
His mouth filled with his sister’s flesh. The delicate hands pushed it inside and he had to chew, tears falling from his eyes, his whole body screaming, his throat gagging at the sheer horror of all of this.
“Ah, he was hungry.”
“How eagerly he swallows.”
“Perhaps he needs more.”
“A variety.”
A sharp talons dug into his arms, holding him still. Tearing pain almost overwhelmed him, but nothing was comparable to eating of what was left off. The talons tore Mina’s cheek, revealing a white bone, and a piece of flesh, sticky with blood and meat strings landed in the fairy’s slander hands.
“A variety.”
“Tasty, tasty like a fairy wine.”
“Eat, must be strong.”
“Strong for our king.”
The fairies crawled over his body, looking at him with sickening interest, they dark eyes gleaming like stars on the vast night sky. Beautiful. Oh, how beautiful. And the most beautiful was Lorian Ain’dal, far in distance, the ultimate shadow over his life, which he wanted to bludgeon until he was only a scrap of meat, boiling in his own blood.
His tears smeared on his face, as they forced more of Mina’s flesh in.
“Cry. It’s a relief.”
“So he could go on.”
“Maybe we let him go.”
“But only if he is good.”
The laughter filled the air, ringing in his ears like tiny bells, beautiful, pretty; like colorful birds, and sunny morns, and moonlit nights, a dream, an enchanted dream, while the reality was squeezing him with dark embrace.
Pretty. Beautiful.
So much.
His teeth chewed, relentlessly, blood mixed with tears, a cruel meal for a mortal who thought that he can save his sister from the immortal limbo. Who was stupid enough to go in to the trap, even if he knew it was set and set on him. And that he – of all things – did it to prove himself he is not a evil man. After all he did in the past, after all his thoughts about abandoning Mina, after all doubts and misdeeds… he reached the point where hiss whole life made a circle.
He is in the village. The day is deceptively calm, touched with the scent of impending death. The war has taken another turn – this time, the fair folk unleashed beasts upon those hiding in the woods. They could have hunted themselves, but instead, they fed their hounds fresh meat. Now, after their retreat, Venklann Valley drowns in silence.
Tiyan didn’t lose anyone in the battle, but his stomach churns. He went fishing with his friend Amargas, seeking the only creatures not yet twisted by magic. Amargas, older and hardened, had already killed a fairy – by accident, but it still made him a warrior. Tiyan hadn’t killed any. He feared he might never be considered one. Whenever the fae appeared, his limbs weakened, his breath caught, and his heart raced. He was petrified – not by magic, but by possibilities.
Fishing was supposed to be calming. Tiyan’s mind drifts far from war and fear. He imagines spring. Not winter. This year, winter came after spring – no summer, no fall. It came with the fae, terrifying and cruel.
“Not like that, Tiyo,” Amargas says, adjusting Tiyan’s fishing rod as it sinks too deep. “You won’t catch anything that way.”
“I know how to fish,” Tiyan mutters.
“You know… but not always,” Amargas replies, shaking his head. Tiyan pouts.
They talk for a while. The tension eases. Tiyan lets the rod drift with the wind – until it starts to pull.
“You caught something, Tiyo!” Amargas jumps to his feet.
But no matter how hard Tiyan pulls, the rod sinks deeper. Amargas, stronger, grabs it – but it’s ripped from his hands and vanishes into the water.
Still. Silent. No ripples.
“Tiyo…”
“Must be a really big fish,” Tiyan says, staring into the pond as snow settles on his hair. He gazes into it like a mirror. The world stops. Only he remains; looking, frozen.
“Tiyo, let’s go back. The water’s too cold to dive.”
Tiyan crouches at the edge. He peers deeper. Further. Into the black depths where darkness reigns.
And the darkness looks back.
The water parts. Tiyan stumbles backward, eyes wide, trying to grasp the shape rising from the pond. It looks like a woman – naked, beautiful, green-skinned. Her eyes are green too, without pupils or irises. Just green within green, like fresh leaves and moss.
He hears Amargas scrambling to escape, breath shallow and panicked. But the pond reaches for him with thick duckweed. The woman leans over Tiyan.
“Your fear brought me here,” she says, her voice like waves and rainfall. “Do you want to live, little creature?”
Tiyan, limbs heavy as stone, throat tight, nods.
“Then tell me – shall I kill your friend?”
“No… no, please,” Tiyan shakes his head, caught in the depths of her gaze. Deeper than the pond. Deeper than thought.
“But someone must die today. Shall it be you?”
“Tiyan, no!!”
“No,” he whispers. Fear wraps around him like a trap.
“Say just five words,” the woman smiles. Duckweed slithers toward him. He cannot move. “I offer you his life. Say them, and I’ll kill your friend. You’ll be free.”
“Tiyan, no!! Don’t play games with the fae!”
But Tiyan sees only the green void of her eyes.
And his death in them.
“I… I can’t…”
“If you won’t say them, I’ll kill you. He’ll be spared,” she says sweetly. Too sweet.
“No…” Tiyan clenches his fists in the wet snow. I’m only nine. I can’t die. The war will end. I’ll be Noyd’s boyfriend, just like we promised. “I…”
“Tiyan!”
“Tiyan, sweet boy… do you want to live?”
“Tiyan, don’t listen to her!”
“Please… I want to live…”
Amargas thrashes in the duckweed until it reaches his mouth and silences him.
“Then say the five words. I promise I’ll let you go. Nymphs never break their word.”
“You… you promise…?”
“Tiyangghghhjfhff!!!”
“My power for my word,” the nymph smiles.
Tiyan swallows hard. Him… or Amargas. The choice is simple. But not easy. He knew he’d say the words the moment she offered the exchange. But it was weak. Not what his father taught. Not what his mother repeated: Never trust the fae. Never endanger others. Never take their word as truth.
But Tiyan is nine. And afraid.
And he speaks.
“I give you his life.”
The duckweed slithers deeper into Amargas’ mouth.
“You’re a wise boy,” the woman says, touching his cheek and smearing it with mud. Tiyan gasps, eyes wide as his friend chokes. “If we meet again, perhaps you’ll offer me even more.”
Tiyan’s eyes fill with tears.
He cannot bear to watch Amargas suffer.
He stands. And runs. Faster than ever before.
Chased by the pearly laughter of the water nymph. And the wet, slurping sound of mud sealing Amargas in his sticky grave.
His flames reached to fairies, embraced them. In petrified silence, they started to dance like Bean Sidhe in his village.
He heard voices, the whole throne room bathed in voices, one angry, one laughing, a dreadful dream full of songs and curses, and a strange melody. It was a symphony of his pain. A note of his gagging throat, choking on his sister’s flesh. A horror that lasted and lasted, scraps of meat sticking in his neck, like dry and bloody cloth. He almost heard Mina’s scream. Tears flew, mixing with blood on a plate.
They fried here. THEY FRIED HER.
T H E Y C O O K E D H E R.
You are a monster. Just like before. Just like when you killed Amargas.
And he didn’t know, if it was his own thought… or Lorian’s mind telling him who he really was.
The fire bloomed in his mouth, burning the meat in his throat, leaving him breathless on the stone floor, while the lesser fairies danced.
Swirled.
One wing fell down.
Second.
The burned bodies scorching like in an oven. How many?
Black eyes in his soul.
The eternal night that ate him from the inside out. Devoured him, leaving the hollows.
Mina danced too and the meat was pouring from the gaps in her skin, like a dreadful and crimson stream.
*
Lorian approached the plate and crouched next to Tiyan. An unruly lock of hair fell from under his crown and hung above his brows. Tiyan couldn’t stop looking at it, hypnotized by it, until it became his whole world. Black hair upon the pale skin, touched with golden fairydust. Tiyan’s mouth was full of not swallowed, scorched meat, which stuck to his palate, so he couldn’t remove it anymore. A pained sound escaped from him, the boy was staring with half-lidded eyes at the faerie king, fear and hatred, pain and grief, all of them, mixed inside this gaze.
“You are so adorable” Lorian purred, one of talons piercing Mina’s flesh and pulling a string of meat from her cooked body.
“No… NO… oh goddess…”
The faery coiled the string on his finger and lifted it to his lips, his smile revealing a monstrous soul, that hid in beauty, like a poisonous mushroom peeking from soft moss.
“No…”
Tiyan heard the whisper. Silent, insistent. It couldn’t be her. It couldn’t be Mina. She was dead. Dead.
D e a d .
But it was her, even from behind the grave. Her soft voice, now urging him, tugging at his nerves, seeping into his hurt consciousness. He could almost see the rests of her standing from the plate, dripping of boiled blood, empty eye sockets, and her mouth, forming a hole.
Begging him not to eat her.