“We do not like to be laughed in the face. Even if your smile is stained with pain”.
“We do not like to be torn from eternity. By a mere immortal. By a mere creation.”
“You will be fed with fire.
“Until you break.
“We do not forgive.
“We do not like to forgive.
The huge, scarred, partially melted face that hung over him smiled. In a way that nothing could match the sheer horror of it. A smile that knew… that he had allowed himself too much. Both with them… his kingdom… his destiny. His future, past and present.
After all… they created him from the starlight and the darkness of the night. They created them all.
He knew he was dreaming, but he could not wake. He was trapped in the horrors of his own soul, stuck to eternal blood.
Shining like molten gold, it dripped on his skin, leaving stains.
“You are pestilence.”
“War.”
“Death.”
“We do not like chaos. We like food. And then… silence.”
” Peace. “
“Nothingness.”
“Red blood stops flowing.
“And then the sun eats your ashes. No more magic, it’s all ours.”
“The Fae were a mistake.
“Too strong for our liking. Too reckless and too proud.”
“Too LOUD.”
“And when they perish. Your soul will be impaled on the crown of the day.”
And he saw it.
Eternity with a blade drawn through his body, exposed to the dazzling wonder of light. Burned until he turned to dust… waiting for the next cycle to revive him. He should be afraid, but this… filled him with even more determination. It meant they were afraid, and if they were afraid…
“You all like pain.”
“Of others.”
“Fae should be consumed.”
“Too much screaming, they bore us. They make us angry.”
“AND YOU KNOW, LITTLE FAE. THAT YOU CAN NEVER TRULY WIN.”
“It’s a matter of time.”
“A matter of days.
“A matter of hours…”
And they swallowed him.
He wasn’t even in his bed. He was stretched out beside it, this time without Nymre, without Leira. His limbs still felt as if they had been consumed by flames. His chambers, guarded by shadows, were the best way to secure his nights. Where they clung to his dreams, pushing harder than during the day. He let them in, reluctantly.
If anyone saw… it would end like Corvel. That foolish boy who thought he would become… what? Who? His friend? His mentor? He would laugh bitterly if it were not for the fact that it was not fun. It was just…
*
He washed his face in a basin. He was still beaming with sweat, but the water cooled him enough to put on his clothes, his least elaborate, most casual… and leave the room. His tight, feathered robes were replaced by dark, ethereal silks. He will seek solitude elsewhere.
War.
And pestilence.
He felt the thoughts of the gods, they liked it when everything was quiet, organised. As cruel as they could be, they didn’t want wars or chaos. They wanted nothing more than to be well-fed and surrounded by a world that breathed slowly with hush. So hungry that they created an entire race of Fae to feed on.
Did they realise that if they destroyed them all, they would be hungry forever? Lorian suspected they were more simple and childlike than they wanted him to perceive.
He needed them all, as did the gods – the Fae, the humans, all of them. Some hated him, some loved him. They loved to hate him and they hated to love him. And that gave him the strength he needed to go on, to put his hands deeper into the fire. Fear fed him as gods fed on magic. Reluctant love, burning love, or utter hatred, contempt. Something his blood, touched with the gold of the gods, learned to absorb.
And yes, nothing could take away his pleasure, not even them. Addicted to the core of his power, to the pain that gave him more than anything else.
And he was becoming that. Sometimes he feared it. Sometimes he wished it would never end.
The corridors were almost uninhabited. Only lone lower faeries passed by, carrying orders or doing their duties. They didn’t bother him, of course. He was alone in this huge palace. He liked it. Mostly. But partly… sometimes…
… when he was a young prince, he seemed to have everything. Friends… how strange that word sounded now. A father who scolded him for his recklessness, but loved him. And lovers, many of them, who came and went, but never with fear. Autumn was as silent as the gods would have it – weaker than winter, more submissive. And his soul wasn’t one of them. Ambition, coldness and cruelty were not part of the Autumn realm.
But it was not always you.
How amusing that you think of it now, when your limbs still burn with the afterflame.
He reached the small niche – the one where he had taken Leira the first time, the first time after so many years – and she gave herself to him, willingly. The cold stars looked down at him from above, small spheres scattered across the cracked sky, forming intricate patterns. The moon, smaller than during the new lunar year; still huge.
Leira… how long has it been? Thirty-five years. She was old in human years, so young in Fae terms. Corvel was thirty-five when his boiling shadows bit under his skin with splinters of night. But Corvel was not like Leira, even though he was a faerie. Corvel, ambitious, power-hungry, but naive and delicate as a spring leaf. Lorian could mould him like clay, take him from his father and shape him – if he wanted to. But he was beginning to like the boy. He reminded him that youth had every right to be naive and reckless, power-hungry and delicate.
Leira, however… She was the mirror of his soul. Dark, ruthless, passionate. And a human. A lower species whose only characteristic was fear. Victims created for all the unseelie to use. How could someone like her even exist?
She was like him, along with Nymre. Nymre was his body and mind, and Leira was his soul. And he was greedy enough to want both. Nymre… she was not naive, she was not Corvel. She might have sent spies after Leira, right after they started to fuck each other. But… she didn’t try to kill her. She didn’t confront her with violence, apart from that show of might she did with her ravens. And he was tempted to break into her mind.
He should have. But he didn’t.
He read Leira’s mind the whole time. For her safety, yes. But also out of a hopeless need to bathe in her spirit, indestructible, radiant. His darkness, his shadows longed for it. Her thoughts were like sharp blades and he loved to cut the body of his court with her wits. He loved the pain with which the faeries received wounds from a human woman.
She took his pain as her own. Because she wanted to feel him. Because she longed to connect with him. Because… all the time she was more like him. Not like humans, not like her lover, Mira, who he had taken from her with his own hands. Not even like Alnam, who found her in pain and mistook her for his prey.
She was like a moth, tearing the cocoon of humanity. To form a beautiful creature, daring to swallow the flame…
But her mind kept that tiny little hole in it. Where her former self resided, hidden, invisible, pushed into the deepest corner. The one shaped by fear and human emotion. That part hated him, resented him. Sometimes this past self, even if unreal, burrowed into his being, causing regrets, showing visions.
There was no other way to know her. There was no other way to see her.
She thought he didn’t feel regret, that his Fae heart wouldn’t let him. But he did. Winter Fairies could feel things… surprisingly human. They weren’t just hollow eyes and deep desires, even if the face they showed to the world was the easiest, most comfortable one.
He hid it well, though, forgetting it – on the surface – just as she hid her black hole of memories.
He would burn that memory – if he wanted. But that wouldn’t be Leira anymore, just another puppet on a string.
He was devoured by many vicious flames. Gods, his own hunger, his own desires… The fire burned in him, now fully unleashed. Just like in Leira, when he was passing his fire into her body.
Just like in Ritualists, who longed for his shadows, because they couldn’t stand the intensity of this heat.
Reluctant love he was getting from them was another delectable treat.
How long can one feel pain and still absorb it, just to live? When this life he fights for turns into a streak of suffering… The woods loved him for it, slowly pouring their remaining strength into him, for he was their saviour. But how long before he gives up?
But he was stubborn, and that was the most tenacious trait he possessed – he was set on his goal like a wild beast on its prey. And he learned to live with it, even as it chewed away at his body on a daily basis. While the gods… slowly were losing their strength.
As long as it took. He was past the point of return.
But what will the world look like for him when it ends?