The ashes in his mouth tasted like blood. Thick, old and oily. The smell of burnt wood reached him, enveloping him, almost pulling the vomit from his mouth. He felt as if something was crawling under his clothes again, hungry, a promise of pain hanging over him like a heavy cloud.
“Shadow’s pet. Far from home. Open and ready for our gifts.”
Tiyan tried to tear himself away, but something held his arms tightly, even as he did everything he could to tense and break free. A spell. A cold wave of desperate fear ran through him.
Where is Qhal?
The question bored into his mind, but he didn’t get an answer. But the wide-open eyes, staring at him from every direction, held the knowledge of hours without breath; just flames. He felt them under his skin, like a strange tingling that moved under his clothes, rippling in his trousers and under his shirt, wanting to enter him.
He felt the touch on his head again, someone pulling at his hair and his neck being yanked back painfully. The eyes that looked at him were old, almost eternal. The cracked skin of the fey gave off the faint glow of the burning furnace. This fey burned… under ashen and cold skin.
Tiyan tried to break free again, but it was no use. The spells held him as tight as vines and roots.
His vision became blurred, reality thickened; like a spider’s web, dripping liquid. His eyes were so ready to close that he felt he was trudging through snow again; the snow of his own mind.
“Shadow‘s pet… delicious meat…”
They were watching him, alert eyes, tiny faces, smiles of joy on their lips.
No. Crooked smiles. Dark gleams in their irises. Something slid down his leg, something with teeth, and he wanted to just close his eyes and die. Underneath his clothes, vermin and small creatures crawl, squeeze into crevices, bite him with their teeth, eat him alive.
“People like pets.
“He should be glad we gave him ours.”
“He should be happy to feed them.”
“So they won’t be hungry anymore.”
Please kill me, he tried to mutter into the ground. Their spells held him down on the forest floor. The happy faces, the exultant faces, everywhere. And the sound of his flesh. He felt it being drilled by hundreds of tiny teeth. But he couldn’t scream. He couldn’t. They took it from him. His voice caught in his throat.
A laugh, somewhere near his ear. A joyful giggle, innocent as a spring. A cornucopia of colours around him, also like spring. He wanted to disappear into it, give himself over to the colours. Yellow, blue and green… but all he could think of was red. Crimson. Rubies splashed over his skin.
A small hand caressed his skin, a face in his peripheral vision.
“The Shadow likes to take the voice of his prey.”
“And ask them to do the impossible.”
“Poor pet, he should stay at home.”
“Serve his master.”
“Watch him enjoy himself.
“Perhaps we should give him time.
“To enjoy.”
“Perhaps he will break the spell.
“Perhaps he will fill us with his voice.”
A desperate groan left his mouth. The teeth reached his thigh and the creatures resumed eating him, slowly. His eyes watered. He tried to reach behind him, but his hands were bound by the spell, which held him tighter, pushing him deeper into the snow.
“We could give him a sweet death.”
“But only if he begs very nicely.”
“Can he beg nicely?”
“So he broke our hearts.
“And made us love him.
“More than our pets.”
He choked on his words, unable to form a sentence. He wanted to tear the air with screams. Please allow me. Allow me to scream.
The creatures under his clothes seemed oblivious. There was no quick escape.
Only pain.
A long suffering without end, a nightmare of the worst fears…
Worst fears.
Nightmares.
Mirages.
They don’t have Mina. It’s not Mina that the vermin are drilling into with their teeth. And this is not his worst fear.
As if through mist, he saw silhouettes that weren’t tiny, ashen Fae, nor anything bound to his aching flesh.
A shadow.
A hungry shadow that burned everything around him, leaving him at the centre of a ring of night.
These Fae are made of fire; they cannot die by burning. But they can die by HIS power.
The shadowy flame spread and suddenly Tiyan could move. He couldn’t believe it. The sound of his body being consumed stopped, leaving the place to the howling wind. He opened his eyes wider. The snow was melting, trickling down from the cliff, a river of warm water.
He stood up, recognising his hands, legs, skin and clothes.
Where is Qhal?
He stepped out, and the flaming shadow went with him, like an ominous black and crimson storm the goddess had brought to save him. But he knew it was his. The hot shadows were his, they were him. And they were a gift from the kidnapper of his sister.
They saved his life.
There was no sign of the fairies. Just an empty and noisy world of eternal winter and wind and hollows around him, a true face of Ain’asel, merciless and unforgiving. And he burned his roots. Unconsciously… but willingly.
The hot shadows were still licking the stone when he saw Qhal. He seemed to make no connection, lost in whatever reverie the Shadow Fairies had put him into.
He would have laughed bitterly. Qhal had been sent to help him, and now he found himself helping Qhal instead, worried. That too was a mirage. If it wasn’t for the shadow’s orders, there would be no attempt at guidance. Fae hearts were made of rot and darkness. And he had to save him from that, or he would never reach the palace.
The wind hit him with a force that would have almost blown him off the cliff once more. It was as if the Shadowlands protested against its name. It wanted to extinguish the shadowy power, to kill it. Destroy it. And with shadows – him.
He crouched beside Qhal. He did not see him, though the fey’s eyes were open. The shadowy fire was dying, the last sparks flickering across Qhal’s robes. The spell they had cast on him had to be stronger, which didn’t surprise him. Qhal was a Fae, and the little fairies expected him to show much more resistance.
He looked around, surprised at his cold-blooded calm. It was as if the shadows had taken his meek courage and reshaped it. Poured strength into his veins.
He saw the backpack Qhal was carrying, tossed to the side, tangled in lonely roots sticking out of the massive mountain.
He tried not to think, not to remember. The vermin and creatures biting and crawling in his flesh hit him hard, and he couldn’t get them out of his mind.
The Shadow likes to take the voice from his victims.
And he saved him. Put something inside him… and now it was blooming.
He felt the scar beneath his heart still pulsating with fire – not his fire, not safe fire, but old but still damaging coals and searing pain.
The coal fairies hated him with a passion. And so did the one who had taken Mina.
His trembling hands began to search for the bottle of liquid Qhal had given him after he had found him. To pour it down his transparent throat and to tear him away from the mirages of his mind.
He felt terribly alone.
Alone, among the cruel teeth of the sharp mountains and the slowly gathering storm over the Shadowlands.
If Qhal did not wake quickly, he would slap him back to reality.
Hard.
Without a second thought.
Qhal hardly drank. But the drink slowly ran down his throat. His eyes were still wide and unconnected, but his mouth uttered a faint sentence. It made Tiyan shiver.
“Lorian’s… blood… give… his… blood…”
Lorian’s blood.
Tiyan had no idea what he was talking about. Lorian’s blood. Did he expect him to know what it was? Tiyan began to feel that he should leave the Fae alone, lost in the mirages. A good revenge – even if it was not him, a thought foreign to him, a side he had never expected – but he knew that he would freeze under this cold moon if he parted with him.
He began to search frantically through Qhal’s clothes. If he needed it, it must be among the things he was wearing… or… in the backpack. He almost fell into the snow as he tried to reach for it again. His hands felt as if they had to freeze again. The vines surrounding them slowly but persistently withered, as if Qhal’s dismay was destroying his magic, even the one he had already cast. He was about to rip his backpack open with trembling hands – crawling vermin, eating his flesh, going deeper – when a small bottle fell onto his hands. Small, clear, with a blue liquid inside.
He uncorked it, an intense scent of moss reaching his nose.
Whatever it was, it was blue. Like Fae blood.
Again his legs carried him under the crevice where the Fey sat, like a dead doll. He poured the liquid down Qhal’s throat. Droplets fell from his mouth, staining his transparent neck a deep blue.
He hoped he wasn’t making a mistake.
And that he wouldn’t kill Qhal right now.