Tiyan would prefer to never wake up. Never to open same eyes that saw how lesser folk tear the flesh from his cooked sister’s body. Never breath through same mouth that chewed on her. Never dare to think of her – ever. And if her ghost was to haunt him during his nights, he would welcome her with joy, urging her to take revenge on him.
A small part would sacrifice to her eagerly. A part still wanted to gauge eyes of all the fae who watched him do the worst atrocity.
As so his nights were thick like dusty cobweb stained with fly corpses. His dreams sticky and restless. And when he was waking up, he felt the same flames that devoured Mina. His own fire, even if he put so much of hope in it… was just a trick, a minstrel’s game, shown to entertain the people. No mean, no use, only sparks.
He failed.
What if he would stay at home? Te Unseelie surely would still came for him. This charade was not for him to win. And he had lost long ago, when the small folk captured him in the Venklann woods.
During dreams, he had visions. Alina, his mother. Bald and worn, but caring and loving. A woman of little words and even littler emotion. She took the life as it was, trying to squeeze last drop of essence from their hopeless existence. She was wounded, yes, but that never defined her. While Tiyan was defined by his fear.
Noyda died because he couldn’t make right decision. Mina perished because he was a coward, unable to end his own life and cross all plans fae had for him.
His dreams… sunlit spring days mixed with snowy sadness, until nothing was as it seemed. Dreams so cruel, yet somehow relieving. He didn’t have to wake up. He didn’t have to face his crime.
But nothing what is good lasts eternity. His limbs were stiff, and his head pounded with millions hammers. He was laying in his chamber, not chained, dressed in golden silk.
A mockery.
But Tiyan had no more strength to consider it a humiliation anymore. His skin was pale as fae’s one. He lost weight, now he didn’t even remind the fit hunter he was before. Days and nights, how long was he in this state? It didn’t matter. He was here, without a chance to free himself from the nightmare.
Maybe he would have courage to bite through his wrists…
Lorian was standing by the window, looking at snow, which fell slowly from the silver sky. Cold sky, grey with a touch of glittering aura. Lorian glittered faintly too. His ears and eyelids were touched with golden dust. The shadows swirled at his feet and Tiyan could swear that he sees black wings behind his back. Made of shadowed feathers, they gleamed with void.
Tiyan had no will anymore. To insult his predator… or even think of it. The loss of Mina was the blow that hurt more than all his miserable life. More than pain they could subject him to, if he opposed.
“Why” he rasped. His voice was coarse, the words barely were coming out. His throat was clenched since he was forced Mina flesh.
Lorian didn’t turn to him. His long spindly finger trailed a shadow path on the frost-painted window. He painted. Shadows were forming delicate shapes. Flowers.
Hellebores. And lilacs.
The art was ethereal and beautiful in its dark way. But Tiyan saw only shadows which was entering him since his first night here – making him crave and slowly break.
“Humans… they are like these flowers” Lorian eventually spoke, his melodious voice filled Tiyan’s ears and caressed his destroyed nerves. “They lean to light and fall asleep during darkness. Sun makes them smile, makes them thrive. While night… is time when unknown takes the reign. Unknown, the worst enemy of humankind.”
His finger finished a hellebore petal.
“While we… we lust for the night. Because we lust for the unknown. Wildness. Surprises. We will take the pain, only to feel we are alive. We will torment our own hearts to reach the absolution. To reach that single point, when divinity is only a millimeter away from us. Because danger and dread… is the real meaning of existence.”
His hand made a single move and the leaves and petals were swept away, shadows scattering in all directions.
“That’s why humanity bound to light is doomed to fall. Those who never took the rot, are just a fragile beauty on the wind. A prey to darkness. So easy to disperse.”
Lorian’s black eyes turned at Tiyan. The stars glistened in them, like in a obsidian lakes.
“Alina knew it. That’s why she chose well. Her beauty was stained and her delicacy was hardened. That’s why she gave all what stopped her to reach her goal. And that’s why you preferred to kill that human girl, than die.”
Tiyan didn’t want to listen to it. He closed his eyes, but he clearly heard the soft sound of Lorian’s boots, which rang closer and closer, until the fae king stood next to his bed. For a moment there was no sound at all. Until Lorian sat next to him.
Tiyan’s eyes opened. Lorian was just sitting there, relaxed and carefree, so close that Tiyan’s skin crept.
It would be so easy for him to push him onto the bed and take him, messing with his mind. It would be so easy, that for Tiyan, it was more perverse than the actual act. He could choose to force him. Choose to take his will away again and make him his slave.
That was worst, the defenselessness he was subjected here to. And Tiyan… Tiyan started to not care. Fear was as distant as love and hope.
“My mother never lost her will. She was the only human in the village who still was doing what is right” dull, forced words came through his throat. They were so alien. Falsely confident, sounded like opposition. His mother… it was so long ago…
Lorian caught him by his cheeks. A sudden, violent move. Tiyan moaned in protest when faery’s fingers dug into his skin.
“Your mother was power of her own kind” five long talons grew into his cheeks, drawing blood. But Tiyan didn’t care, there were worse things than lacerations. Lorian’s voice was calm, soft and delicious, and Tiyan felt as he starts to drown in the mud made of faery sugar. Tasty. Like guts coated in sweet syrup. “Yet… even she was well aware where the real victory lies. She wanted to save the village. She would do everything to save this one tiny settlement, to offer it longer existence. And she turned to old tales… to scratch my most itching place.”
Tiyan felt as blood trickles through his face. But that didn’t matter. He was deaf. He hoped to be deaf. That he will become deaf to not hear the incoming words.
“She offered me you. For life. For safety of her people. She knew you were blessed by the ancient elders with force beyond human comprehension. You were the only human that could fight us, the only human that could rival with Ain’asel. The gods made you to destroy me. To stop my hungry jaws from tearing their meat and swallowing their power. And you would be able to stop me – if they had the chance to teach you. But I weakened them so much, they had no strength to do so.”
His smile cut into Tiyan’s veins.
“You would destroy me and with me, your own kind” he laughed charmingly. “Now… you are just blind child, trying to find a purpose in a power that is far greater than the flames. You are a gods’ child. You came from a human womb, but Gravir Markon didn’t impregnate your mother. The flames soiled your mother when they still could soil. Your mother feared you and loved you. Maybe feared you more than love you. But she feared me more.”
Tiyan wasn’t listening anymore. He was crying.
This was… last thing he would ask for. Tiyan felt the ugly truth in faery’s words. Cutting like sharp blades, as only truth can cut. He felt Lorian’s mind, slowly tugging at his own. The fae king seeped truth after truth into him, until he was full of terrifyingly real things.
He was too weak to battle it. His nerves were just open burning wounds and his mind slowly started to bent into something too willing to embrace night and darkness.
Mina didn’t deserve that. They all, their whole family… a lie that he held close to heart, to not get mad. And since the beginning, he was a fodder his mother created and sold, to secure the village – and herself too. He always was wondering why lesser folk never attacked Inamora after the war.
He was bartered for this.
He felt hot presence of Lorian, so close to his skin. He embraced it, embraced Lorian and all what he represented.
Why…
“You can still save your kind” a sensual purr in his ear. Tiyan leaned to it. Let him do it. Let him have his body. It was all a lie. Just a lie, his life, his love, his very being. “The gods are hungry and they won’t leave your kind alone. Your fathers are bottomless hungry maws full of flames. If I won’t stop them, they will swallow fae… and humans with us.”
“How.”
His ears rang. His body refused to breath. He felt as his throat still chokes on Mina’s flesh. His lungs pumped not air but shadows.
And they strangely felt like bliss.
“You can die.”
He let Lorian slip into him with his power.
His only purpose was to save Mina. He lost everything and his tears changed to dry salt. And everything he held onto to still have hope, became a sand on the wind, carried far away from him.
And again, shadows made him produce helpless moan. Lorian didn’t even have to take him. Tiyan felt that if death looks like this, it’s better than life. It’s better than being a worthless demigod without purpose. It’s better than witnessing as they destroy Noyd to serve Lorian’s plans.
His mind collapsed into fractured void.
He was a flame.
And his was…
… nothing.