Page 28 of Bright Soul

I ignored Bianca’s hiss of warning. We needed all the help we could get to kill the last ten unnaturals waiting in their containment rooms, and this woman was a specialist in doing just that, with a teammate hiding somewhere.

“Lead the way, then,” the shifter purred.

12

PHAERON

“No!” Myuna roared.

I muttered a curse as pain shredded through my already aching head. The Void laughed behind my ears. It knew I was weakened by mortal needs despite my kind’s functional immortality. Myuna didn’t notice my wince, and it was better that way. The moments that trickled by in her presence were more pleasant when the mistress didn’t notice me.

I hissed under my breath.No,I told myself.You have no mistress.

It was hard to focus for long enough to remind myself of that fact. I’d been awake five eternities now or longer, clinging to the merest trickle of power and sanity at the back of my head. Braza couldn’t feed me more than a drop of energy at a time without Myuna noticing the drip-drab of relief and coherency. Still, my body should’ve long given up.

Myuna and Garroway ignored the occasional unhinged laugh I uttered, in chorus with the Void or off-tune, when I was just so exhausted all I could do was chuckle at my own flaws. I wasgoing mad one excruciating minute at a time, and surely that was the purpose of my continued existence at the goddess’s side. She wanted me desperate enough to bend a knee to her. She bid me every day to submit to her will for the opportunity to finally rest.

And Cress help me, there seemed no other option than to give in.

Cress. The tones of her voice haunted me, and I was convinced it was the Void playing a trick. The version of her in my head was a distorted mirage of sound, and yet I listened anyway. She lisped in my mind in pleading tones. A human dialect, strange and blunt… I did not understand the words anymore.

“They killed the first of my children that managed to escape the pit they call a library,” Myuna sighed. That’s right. She’d called out in distress six seconds or hours ago, upset over something.

Garroway, who’d taken to whiling away many of the daylight hours on the dais next to her, patted her arm. He simpered something her way, and I nearly mustered the energy to sneer. How quickly he’d fallen in line and served her with devotion, even when Endaeron was not the dominant personality in his body.

Considering every supernatural he brought before her was consumed, Garroway had taken to catching animals for Myuna to experiment on. She’d twisted more than a few stray dogs into creatures resembling doskalos and created new unnaturals from other animals.

The goddess delighted in corrupting the fauna of Cerris City when they began hunting survivors for her at the times Garroway could not. Her white skin had gained a pearly sheen from regular feedings. She was a beautiful, deadly monster again, making sure to tap my awareness so I would be forcedto watch as she bloated poor grackles and seabirds into bulbous harridans and other innocent creatures into her twisted slaves.

She took to playing with her food, sucking souls one piece at a time so their screams of agony joined the Void’s chorus long after they were gone. “Don’t you want to look away?” she’d whispered. “Just submit to me. I will do the rest.”

Submit. Rest.

Had she just said that?No, just a recollection. Yet another voice stirring in the Void.

What she was really saying was, “…consume the group murdering my children and take the powercore for myself. We grow stronger each day.”

“While time may be of the essence.” Garroway pitched his tone to soothe as he rubbed her shoulder. His voice had gained the two-toned hiss of the Hungering Darkness. “You have yet to claim any other supernatural to serve you.”

“I have hungered so desperately. Surely you do not fault me for eating the candidates you’ve already brought me?” she asked. Their foreheads leaned toward one another, and her white-filmed eyes gave his a searching look.

“Of course not, my lady,” Garroway and Endaeron purred. The vampire skimmed her cheek with his fingertips, drawing her ice-white hair back behind one ear. A daring touch, so close to her mouth pit.

I recognized what I was witnessing with a sick lurch. Affection. The worst monster to grace Soiluire had found what may be the most desperate on Earth. As Myuna slowly caressed her hand down the vampire’s back, I wondered if her expression was that of lust or avarice. Did the self-proclaimed reaper of worlds have what it took to feel romantically for another? Or would she consume his soul the moment he stopped giving her what she wanted?

“Come nightfall, I will bring you new candidates, my lady. We can try until you succeed in taking their souls to serve you,” he promised.

“Very good,” she said, sitting straight once more. She loomed over him, glowing vibrantly in anticipation.

Once night arrived, Garroway came and went thrice, delivering victims one at a time that Myuna held in her massive palms, hesitated over, and then consumed their souls and bodies in a few gruesome moments. She couldn’t seem to help herself.

Time whirred on, and my body grew too heavy to support. Myuna did not permit me to sit, so I collapsed, splayed before her like a dying animal. The hunger and thirst had grown nearly as unbearable as the fatigue, my needs eclipsing Braza’s careful drips of energy.

“Give in. Submit,” she whispered.

My tongue felt like a flap of parchment in the desert of my mouth. “No,” I rasped, tasting blood.

“Very well… Watch,” she ordered. Wavering, I lifted my head and did as she bid. She consumed a wounded animal brought to her and twisted a dozen more, releasing a new pack of her monsters into the city to hunt for her.

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