by Lucas, Naomi
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Better than I did earlier.”
“Tell me how you’re not a thrall when everyone else who survived is?”
“Did you put cove and blimwort into the stew?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Calavia stretched her arms, feeling good. “Mmm.”
“Calavia, tell me why you’re not a thrall like the others, including your mother.”
She turned her head to peer at him. His words were hard to concentrate on. She smiled instead, and raised her arms high, feeling much better than she had a right to be. All she wanted to do was lie back and run her hands all over herself.
Astegur towered over her and caught her chin. “Answer me,” he ordered.
“What?”
“Why are you not a thrall?”
Oh. She pushed his hand away from her. “I told you.”
“You did not.”
“The mist still took everything. Those that remained succumbed to the curse long before I was even born. My mother…” Her vision blurred and spun as she spoke. “My mother succumbed when I was young, many years after the others.” Suddenly, the memories of those times flooded her head.
The frightened girl she was, watching her mother, ever so slowly fight a battle she could not win. Worldspin after worldspin, seeing her go from a human to someone more like the thralls that lived around them. It had been so slow and devastating when her mother finally lost all her humanity. Tears formed in her eyes, and the pang of that memory sliced through the good feelings running through her. She’d been afraid and young enough that her body had not yet even developed.
For an endless amount of time, all she lived for was to bring her mother back from the undead. Calavia had tried every wish and chant she could find in the long-gone books stored in the temple. Nothing had worked, and as time went by, her mother became less receptive, less interested in even being around her. It was as if she’d given up...
And now there is nothing left between us. Nothing at all.
“Calavia,” Astegur snapped. “Go on.”
There was a gleam in his eyes, one she imagined looked desperate and unforgiving, but then her vision blurred again and the gleam was gone.
She swallowed thickly. “The first breath I took was the mist. There was nothing it could take away from me that it already hadn’t. My mother was given a concoction from a traveling lich, another human who had been born in the mist, that would cure the symptoms of sickness. It’s made of—”
“I know what it’s made of.”
She flicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Yes. I have several vials left of it hidden in the vines of my altar room. It did not work for her. I don’t think the curse would have allowed it.” Calavia tried to lie back again, but Astegur rounded his arm behind her and kept her upright. “I want to sleep.” Thoughts of her mother still churned like poison in her head, making her head ache.
Because Calavia still held hope to save her mother one day. Still needed more time to try. Prayer was important to her because it was all she knew, but maybe… She looked at Astegur. Maybe there was a cure out there still, that could bring a priestess-turned-thrall back to life. Her eyelids fell. Maybe...
“Soon.” She heard Astegur say as sleep took her.
* * *
Astegur was losing her much faster than he expected.
Calavia was fading into oblivion right before his eyes, and he was not done with her. He had put too much slumber moss into her meal, thinking her magic would counteract its effects. He did not care about the vials, or her sudden onset of tears. He could assume where they stemmed from. All he cared about was keeping her alive and safe.
He hadn’t taken the toils of the past weeks into consideration. She had bled herself multiple times since his arrival, and vigorously bore his attention upon her innocent body. Her wounds were still healing, although the cove from previous days had accelerated her healing. He had to remember that she was still human, and not a full-fledged creature of the labyrinth.
That she had pure, strong blood.
Astegur watched her face fall with sadness, her eyes hood with slumber. He shook her awake. “Call your thralls,” he demanded, hearing an edge in his tone he did not like.
She rested back against him with a yawn. “Do you think there is a cure?”
“For what?”
“To turn a thrall back into a human.”
“If there was, I would know it. The tribes across the lands would know it. A power like that would not go unknown for long if discovered. There is no cure. Now call them.”
“But there could be, right?”
“Call your thralls.”
“Why?”
His arm tightened around her. “So I can lead them, and us, to victory,” he lied.
Calavia looked away from him and toward the empty, shrouded passageway. He watched as she kept snapping her eyes wide open, only for them to immediately fall closed again. He shook her lightly again, and she finally called out.
“Come to me,” she said weakly.
His hearts pounded in unison. Those were the very first words she had ever spoken to him. The same soft, yet commanding tone she used for her minions. It struck him mindless, knowing he was as much her thrall as every other being that lived within her existence. Footsteps filled his ears, but he could not look away from her at that moment, not even for eternal victory itself.
Not even if a giant came down upon Prayer and shattered its magic, and them, into oblivion.
When did I become this way? And for a small human who is easily hurt? There had been little time for him to process what had happened. His prick began to lubricate again and he cursed his priming, hungry loins. Was this what my sire felt with my mother? A primal pull? A shift in power?
He had all the power right now, and yet, he felt like he had nothing without her. Steam poured from his nostrils as he watched her, watching the entryway. Possession like he’d never known flooded his skull, an obsession he could not stop from taking over.
I bowed to her. I mated her. She mounted me. A beastly amalgamation.
It wasn’t until the footsteps stopped and the shadows of all her thralls fell upon them that he forced himself to look away from her. His eyes roved over them, searching for her mother among the group, but she was nowhere to be seen. He looked back at Calavia and knew, even in her haze, that she had noticed too.
“Tell them to listen to my commands,” he ordered.
She glanced at him briefly then looked back at her thralls, nodding. She gave the command for her thralls to follow his lead just as her head rolled to the side.
Satisfaction and dark infatuation filled him.
He laid her down gently onto the linens and leaned over her, feeling some of the tension leave his gut. He licked her neck and face as he removed his arm from under her and rubbed his horns over her chest.
“When you awake,” he rasped, low with assurance, “you’ll be safe.”
He just had to break her soul in the process.
Chapter Sixteen
“Gather your weapons, and prepare to leave this place,” Astegur ordered as he moved away from Calavia. He turned to look at the thralls around him. He met their dead, bleak expressions. They moaned and shifted in eerie unison, seemingly ignorant of his demand, and for a moment, he thought Calavia’s final command hadn’t worked. But then they turned away, white, wet, and ghoulish to the exit.
“Do not make a noise, the enemy is listening,” he added as they left the room.
He turned back to Calavia when a soft snore pricked his ears. He brushed her tangled hair from her face and ran his fingers down the curve of her neck where he had licked her. Then he pulled back and tightened the cords around his waist, retrieved the weapons he shucked aside while they mated, and placed them back on his person.
He rummaged through his satchels until his fingers brushed over the vials he’d taken from the goblins, the ones filled with or
c and human blood. His hand clenched into a fist, knowing that the centaurs weren’t their only problem.
Every being in these lands would know by now that the centaurs were on the move. Every tribe had scouts. He wondered if his brothers had found out by now as well, if they wondered about him. Astegur shook the thoughts away and moved to another satchel filled with roots and herbs for medicine and dumped it out.
With one final look at Calavia, he strode away from her side and entered her altar room. In minutes he had refilled the empty bag with some of the last remaining clumps of her wax. It was all he could carry. He sifted through the vines around the edge of the room and looked for the vials that could cure humans of mist sickness, but could not locate them.
He snarled, his movements clipped. Anxiety and speed gnawed at his hooves.
I have to find her mother. Astegur stormed back through the temple, flicking his eyes everywhere, searching for her. Where is she?
Now that he knew she controlled the barriers, he no longer trusted they would stay up for much longer. They could not be relied on. Especially not if Calavia’s mother wanted death, and not with a full-blown attack from the centaurs on the horizon, offering it to her.
He stopped at the exit where he came across some of the thralls. “Find Calavia’s mother,” he snapped, his eyes shifting to the green lights hovering on the outskirts. The thralls moved away in opposite directions, and he stepped into the swamp.
Stakes remained upright and pointed out in every direction, and he moved between them, scanning his surroundings. The smaller ones were hidden within the tall grasses and reeds, rooted to the ground and mud beneath. Between them were the long ropes of braided reeds that tied them together, tied them to the shacks and houses, and as he maneuvered through them, he checked to make sure they were still encased with Calavia’s wax.
He suddenly cursed their existence as he wound his way through the tangled, knotted webs they made as they slowed his progress significantly. He tried not to think that he, once again, was about to do another first in his life. Flee.
If Calavia had not been involved, he would have fought to the death, would have taken as many of her enemies out before his lifeblood spilled across the ground. He would have taken his glorious death with a grin.
But her safety was in his hands, and she trusted him now to help her. That meant something to him. He had changed. No longer was he a blood-lusting young bull hoping to kill anyone who crossed him. Now he had the possibility of a future, one that he had to protect. Even if that meant running from battle.
Astegur bared his teeth at the mist and continued his search. Time passed in quickened haste. The brume swirled around him with the green of the light orbs, as if they were leaking their magic, as if they were dissipating before his eyes.
He tore through what was left of the settlement, looking everywhere for the mother, but she eluded him.
A faint scent of smoke caught his nose and he knew the bonfires the centaurs were erecting were drawing nearer. The water, the swamp, everything was literally vanishing beneath his hooves. He hissed through his teeth and gave up on his search. By this time tomorrow, the centaurs will have Prayer surrounded. There was no more time to lose.
He was making his way back to the temple when he caught sight of Calavia’s mother. He startled to a stop before the broken steps and looked up at her. Blood, old and new, stained her torn, flimsy dress. Her black hair twisted in the breeze, obscuring half her face. But he saw enough of it to know she looked upon him with morbid, mindless contempt.
“You,” he muttered, sharing her perceived hatred.
She wrenched her mouth open to scream and he surged forward, knocking her into the stone with such force dust rose around them. She fought and tore at his skin, ferocious with survival. He clamped his hand over her mouth and stopped her from making a noise. She bit in and ripped at the skin of his palm hard enough that he felt the flesh tear away.
Astegur cursed and fought her upright against his chest, clamping his other hand under her chin to force her jaw closed.
She kicked and howled like a rabid animal as he dragged her inside the temple and into the old kitchens where Calavia slept. She fought him the entire way, shredding the flesh of his arms and sides.
“Help me!” he called out to the thralls, needing them to hold her down before he physically harmed her with his strength.
Several of the thralls rushed in and grabbed her as wildly as she battled to get away. Frenzied, crazed struggles ended with the thralls holding her limbs down.
Astegur made sure their grip sustained before he unclasped her chin and reached for one of the linens beside Calavia, who remained undisturbed, and forced it between his palm and her teeth, stuffing it further between them and into her mouth. He jerked his bloodied hand back with a hiss and went to the hearth where the leftover stew still simmered and dropped his hand in it, hoping there was enough cove in the broth to soothe his torn flesh. He wrapped it up using more of the rags strewn about before he faced Calavia’s mother once again.
Her struggles continued. She was not in the least bit subdued with the other thralls holding her down. Long nails and thin hair flew everywhere, spittle rained between them and their gaping mouths. Disgusted, Astegur left to retrieve several waxen reed braids from outside. He bound the mother’s loose and pallid limbs together.
When he was done, he wiped the sweat from his brow and exhaled his distaste, but the moment of rest did not last long. There was no time.
He checked his packs once more and made sure his weapons were adequately attached to his body before he spoke again.
“Carry her,” he pointed at the mother still writhing and growling on the floor, “and make sure she does not get away or make noise. Do not make any noise.”
The thralls hefted her up. Astegur turned back to Calavia and knelt at her side.
He hoped she would not wake until they were far up the mountain trails. Once they were there, there would be no other options for her to choose but him and her survival.
He scooped her into his arms, and without a backwards glance, ordered the thralls to follow him. They strode out of the temple together. A faint murmur left Calavia’s parted lips and he squeezed her slight human frame tighter to his chest.
“You will be in new barriers of my own making, home and in my furs.”
Outside he found the rest of the thralls waiting, some holding their old pitchforks, some carrying spears, and some without anything in their hands but their nails that grew long and sharp from their fingertips. They neither looked at him or Calavia nor her bound mother. He addressed them anyways.
“We will make our way out of Prayer and into the mountains to the west. You will protect Calavia and I for the duration of the journey and not make a sound. We will not stop until we reach our destination and a new home.” The mother shrieked through the cloth in her mouth and the thralls holding her forced her mouth back shut. He waited until she was muffled. “But if you wander off before we get there, you are on your own forevermore.” Astegur ran his gaze over the mass of dead flesh and their husks of living instinct before he hefted Calavia further into his arms and stepped into the swamps.
Before he had always viewed thralls as human waste, but now he understood why liches collected them.
One by one their wet steps followed him, and their moans were replaced with a frightening, waitful silence. Carefully, he made his way in the opposite direction of the ramshackle houses and broken pallet paths and toward the mountains one could barely see high in the foggy horizon. His eyes darted from their outlines to the ghastly green orbs he was headed for.
With each step he took, he heard the sound of the mother’s struggles increase, and felt her rage blast the back of his neck as if she breathed down it. She was the only creature to make a noise amongst them, as if she wanted death to find her. He squeezed Calavia closer to him and pitied her suddenly for all she’d been through, all she lived with before his arrival.
&
nbsp; He came upon the first green light and a sense of assurance seeped through him. Even though he was running away, it felt right; Prayer was never meant to be saved. And he knew, before the next fortnight passed, he would be back with his brothers and slaughtering the horsebeasts who threatened them. He would be back.
He passed next to another green light, and then another, eyes watchful, senses alert for any centaur scouts. None were around. Their bonfires had not made it far enough to surround the settlement yet.
When he passed the fourth green light, he realized something was terribly wrong.
The mother had ceased making noise.
Astegur stared at the green orbs before him, then at the edges of the mountains so near, and felt the thick swirl of the mist draw close as if it watched him, swallowing his perverse unease. The palms of his hands slickened with sweat against Calavia’s flesh. The green of the lights filled his vision as he tried to deny what he already knew.
A whistle went out. Another answered, followed by another, coming in every direction but behind him. No. He gritted his teeth and bowed his head, pointing his horns outward before him, as an imperceptible tendril of steam released from his nose. He surged forward into a sprint, bending his large frame over his female. No!
He made it to the next light when another appeared in the distance, and another, and by the next, his muscles had strained and grown. Mistfucking witches. The distant whistles had morphed into splashes and hollers.
A jittering screeching cackle eclipsed it all. Astegur stopped, his vision blurring with morbid haze as he finally turned.
He was back before the stone steps of Prayer’s temple.
Chapter Seventeen
“Calavia, awaken!”
She didn’t want to. There was a cushion enveloping her from all sides. There weren’t cushions like this when she was awake. All the beds and pallets had been destroyed long ago by water and mold. But in her unconsciousness, they still existed. In her dreams her mother still spoke and lullabies still put her to sleep at dusk.