In Chains
Page 36
“Don’t throw things at me,” she grumbled and reached for the mysterious object.
Haros just laughed, pouring two glasses of wine.
Sivelle stroked the familiar soft material, recognising its shape through the dim light immediately. She gasped, hugging the stuffed dragonette toy to her chest.
“You brought this with you?” she asked, squeezing the toy as if her life depended on it. “I thought I’d lost it forever.”
“Thankfully, I had the foresight to pack it before your father burnt your room to a cinder. I wasn’t sure if you’d want it or not, but—”
“Of course I want it!” Sivelle cried, smoothing the soft fur away from the dragonette’s beady glass eyes. She stared at the toy for a moment, as her vision began to waver with tears.
“Shall I bring the wine to the bed or– hey, what’s wrong?” Haros’s eyebrows shot up.
Sivelle sniffed and gave a short, soft laugh. “Haros, you have completely and utterly ruined my life.”
The demon faltered, a tortured look crossing his handsome face for a moment.
“And I couldn’t be happier,” Sivelle murmured, casting him a wide smile as she wiped a tear from her cheek.
Haros quickly caught up with the situation and smiled back at her.
“That’s the first time anyone has ever looked so pleased to have their life ruined,” he laughed.
“I had a pretty abysmal life to begin with. You have totally and completely destroyed any remnants of it. How can I ever repay you?”
The demon paused thoughtfully for a moment before grinning. “I can think of a few ways.”
“You pig. I’m having a moment here!” Sivelle scoffed playfully, casting him a sour look.
“Sorry, sorry.”
Haros joined Sivelle on the bed. She shuffled aside to create some more room, as he clambered in beside her.
Sivelle sighed happily. She had her dragonette toy tucked beneath her one arm and her head leaning against Haros’s chest. She reached out to take her wine glass from his outstretched hand.
“You know, I could be persuaded to stick around and continue to ruin your life for the foreseeable future, if you want me to?” Haros said quietly.
Sivelle smiled and pressed her lips together.
“I’d like that, Haros. I’d like that a lot.”
The End.
Follow the adventure into…
Hestaesia
After Dark
The room was quiet, other than the crackling of the fire and the rough scratching of King Zelrus’s quill on parchment.
Raxx sat in a corner, cloaked by shadows. He sighed heavily.
“Something troubling you?” Zelrus asked, not looking up from the letter he was writing.
“Not at all,” the shadow demon replied. He allowed his form to waver into view.
At his reluctance to elaborate, the king looked up and met his eye.
“You know I’m always keen to hear your thoughts,” he said, holding Raxx’s gaze.
“I was thinking about your meeting with Cirro. Should it all go to plan, have you any thoughts on—”
The door burst open. Both Raxx and Zelrus leapt to their feet.
A young demon, face shining with sweat and chest heaving, leant against the door.
“My king, one of the soldiers you sent with Commander Lephas has returned. He… he brings grave tidings.”
“Raxx—” Zelrus began.
“On it.”
As Raxx disappeared into the shadow realm, the room around him darkened and faded. He slipped past the young demon in the doorway. Travelling easier and faster than he would in his corporeal form, he hurried down the staircase, into the main entrance hall of the king’s compound below.
There was a commotion and it didn’t take Raxx long to locate the cause of it.
A bloodied demon sat, surrounded by his comrades, wrapped in a blanket. His eyes were hollow and haunted, the unfortunate, familiar expression of someone who had seen the horrors of battle.
Raxx didn’t make his presence known, just stalked in the shadows and eavesdropped on the soldiers’ conversation for a moment.
“How many of them were there?”
“Did the commander get away? What happened?”
“They’re dead? We cannot stand for this any longer!”
Recognising the distress on the shell-shocked soldier’s face, Raxx allowed himself to become corporeal. He appeared, seemingly from nowhere, in the middle of the group.
“That’s quite enough,” he said, startling the other soldiers as they shuffled away obediently.
“Lazuli’s men ambushed Commander Lephas’s team, sir,” a particularly outraged foot soldier told him. “Griff was the only one who made it back.”
Raxx turned his gaze to the bearded man sat before him. Griff tightened the blanket around his shoulders and stared at the floor.
“The commander, where is he?” Raxx asked.
When no answer was forthcoming, the shadow demon scowled.
“Has Griff spoken since he returned?” he asked the group.
“A few garbled words, only enough to know there was an ambush. He’s soaked in blood and frozen to the bone.”
Raxx nodded, taking a few steps forward.
“This is going to hurt a little,” he muttered to Griff and reached out to press his thumb against the soldier’s forehead.
“What are you—”
Majicka flowed from his body and the world around him disappeared.
Raxx opened his eyes, finding himself stood in a snowy woodland clearing. The area was silent and frozen in place, a simple snap-shot in time. Snowflakes hung, suspended in mid-air.
Raxx cast his eyes around the scene before him. Dark red blood lay everywhere, mottling the snow around his feet. He stepped over a disembowelled body and began searching for his friends in the fray.
The King’s Guard outnumbered the demons vastly. Lephas headed up a small team of four, plus himself and Haros. There would have been no chance of success against this many of the faerie king’s soldiers.
He found Griff, behind a log, holding a wound at his side with fear in his eyes. Judging by the furrows in the snow, the demon had dragged himself and hidden out of sight of the faeries.
Raxx walked to a group of three or four King’s Guard, surprised when he found Haros amongst them. The shadow demon’s blood ran cold as he spotted the bloodied arrow jutting from his friend’s shoulder. The King’s Guard were capturing Haros, binding his wrists behind his back.
Lephas and the princess were nowhere to be seen.
Raxx’s head began to pound, blood rushing to his ears. His time was almost up. He took stock of the forest, making a mental note of any landmarks that would help him navigate back to this spot at a later date.
The shadow demon closed his eyes and when he re-opened them, he found himself stood in the warm compound once more.
“Wh-what did you do?” Griff gasped, grabbing his head with a pained grimace.
“Just had a little look around, that’s all. Did the commander and the princess escape?” Raxx asked, resisting the urge to swipe snow from his shoulders that he knew would not be present.
“Yes… I think so,” Griff mumbled, rubbing his temples.
“And Haros?”
“T-they captured him. He was still alive when I saw him last.”
“Get him to a healer. He’s got a serious injury to his right side that will need attention as soon as possible,” Raxx instructed.
One of the soldiers curiously inspected Griff, gazing back at Raxx with astonishment when they located the deep gash at the demon’s side, hidden beneath layers of armour.
“How did you—”
Raxx slipped back into the shadows and strode away towards Zelrus’s chamber.
The King needed to hear about this.