On Death's Honor

Chapter 32: Deals With Chaos

There was no telling how long I'd kept going in and out of consciousness - just that it did little to distract me from the pain. It could have been ages, or it could have been minutes or even seconds.

One thing I knew for certain, however, was that I was going to regret playing into the hand of an ancient being, one that was something greater hiding in the fields of gods. Nothing good was going to come out of this.

Yet, if it worked . . . If she could truly get at least some of this madness out of my head . . .

The Circle is going to kill you.

The agony in my side told me differently.

They'll have to get in line.

Refyra cut into my calf with swift, firm motions, somehow easing the swelling gathering up in there. I wanted to move, wanted to tell her nevermind, that I could handle life a little while longer with these things that ached for freedom. Yet the words never came - or if they did, I wasn't aware of uttering them.

I was, however, aware of the traver fighting whatever the hell Refyra was trying to do. It had tried taking root in the nymphtan, and judging by the strange infection in my calf, it'd nearly succeeded. If she'd kept her teeth lodged in me for a second longer . . .

And here I thought I'd be the only casualty for when it became fully aware.

My life played in flashes before my eyes. There was a girl grinning down at me from her perch in an old, sappy pine tree, her gray eyes catching the distant sun's light just right. There was an older, sickly woman, her body frail, that refused to let her disease take her joy in life away from her. She laid on her bed, whispering stories to me and the girl inside a home our deceased father had built long ago.

A boy chasing me throughout the village because I'd stolen his clothes while he bathed in a pond not far from there. I hadn't expected him to take me on my bluff; he didn't care that everyone saw him without any sort of protection. It ended with me simply dropping the clothes altogether because boy, I did not want to see any of that. Or at least that's what I kept telling myself.

Then I was standing in the dark, the sky a mocking clear, the moon full and bright. Everyone stood silently between the buildings around the square, while I stood before a post only one other had died on before. A jar of blood rested awkwardly in my hands, and I couldn't for the life of me look up to meet the eyes of the person I was sent to kill to prove what flowed through my family's veins was not entirely evil.

Which was ironic, because I still had the blood of a newborn fresh on my clothes.

Through the memories, I could feel myself choke on tears. I wasn't sure what they were from.

A furious, outraged scream echoed deep within my skull. A shadowy figure ran, desperate to catch me while the flashes behind my eyes began to fade.

"Not now, Rhoe," I whispered through numb lips.

And that was it. The thing was no longer there. The roaring in my head subdued drastically. It wasn't completely gone - Refyra had promised only to take out the most powerful of my peculiar problem - but gods, I wasn't going to complain.

Weakly, I lifted my head, my stomach churning when I saw the girl holding a strange mass of dark, angry shadows with a bluish tint swirling in there. Holy hell, that looked a little too similar to the dark magical items we were often forbidden to use.

The girl's blue gaze snapped up from her prize, and she grinned upon seeing my mortified face.

"Would you like to hold it?" She asked, gesturing to me with what I assumed was the traver.