Page 89 of A Haven of Brimstone and Darkness

Theos.

My woman. My brothers.

Where are they? Are they safe? Are any of us?

I peel my eyes open, finding myself suspended above a stone floor. Blood drips in slow, steady droplets from my body, forming a puddle on the gray platform. My hands are frostbitten. My feet are the same. All circulation has come to one point—keeping my heart beating as it fights for survival.

A part of me wants it to stop. The pain. The terror. The sorrow. I’m tired, so damned tired. Why did I ever fight so hard in the first place? What was the point if this was how I was meant to end up anyway?

For the first time since my mother’s death, I feel tears fill my eyes. They swell behind my eyelids as I shut them away, trying to stave off the inevitable.

Music echoes toward me, disrupting my less than positive thoughts. The sound is low and melodic, dark and entrancing. I hardly recall the torture. Only brief glimpses of black brimstone blades and a whip embedded with the same stone as it cut through flesh and bone.

Why? I have to wonder. What is the reason?

But that’s the thing about pain and loss; sometimes, there is no reason. Sometimes, bad things happen to people who don’t deserve it. I learned that fact from my mother. This is no different. No amount of changing the past could have altered this outcome. Caedmon knew it. Azai relied on it.

“Open your eyes, Ruen.”

Ignoring the plying voice, I keep my eyes defiantly shut. I’m tired. I don’t want to fight anymore. I hurt. I want to stop. I want to cease this incessant agony of life.

“Ruen.” The voice grows deeper, frustrated.

Leave me,I silently beg.

A touch lands on my shoulder, and though my body is too fatigued to respond, my insides flinch at the sensation. “Ruen, you are better than this,” the man says. “Open your eyes and see me.”

I don’t respond, not even to shake my head.

I’d barely been able to get to my hands and knees on that damned stage. In front of them all, I’d revealed my weakness and I’d frozen. I hadn’t been able to fight then, an invisible pressure keeping me in place, filling my veins with stone. Blood oozes from my mouth, dribbling down over my chin.

That soft touch disappears only to come back with something even softer—fabric, I realize. The speaker dabs lightly at my lip as if easing that one discomfort will change anything.

“Fine then, keep your eyes closed, Son,” the man says as he performs his service. “But let me ask you something.”

No. I don’t want to hear it, but trussed up as I am, there’s no escaping his words.

“When you reached into your soul and fought back the first time, what was your reason?”

I try not to listen to his question, but somehow the words filter through and the answer appears before I can stop it.

“What did you see?” Caedmon asks.

Them. I saw them—Kiera, Theos, and Kalix. I saw my family.

Caedmon continues as if he can hear the unspoken answers. His fingers trail lightly over my face. The cloth disappears, returning a second time, but with a slight difference. It’s been soaked in something cool and soothing. The wet fabric runs over my filthy face, and as the blood and dirt is wiped away, I feel as if my soul is being cleansed as well.

The dark thoughts that had consumed me for hours since I’d been dragged before the populace of Ortus fade into the background.No!I cry out for them. Through the hours of pain, they’d been my only solace. I’m not ready to release them.

I must make some sort of noise because Caedmon’s voice returns, soothing, soft, comforting. “It’s alright, Son,” he whispers. “It’s alright to be afraid, but don’t give into those things. They cannot help you. Only you can do that.”

They had helped though. Those thoughts were all I had when the pain had nearly made me black out only to have Azai force my head back and dump some foul liquid into my throat. A punishment, he’d said, for defying him. He wouldn’t kill me. I was too powerful yet for him to waste raising me. They had to wait—for the Spring Equinox’s moon rise.

“You know why, don’t you?” Caedmon asks.

Dry, cracked lips part and a rasp is my only answer. Azai had told me the truth—that the whole reason for this farce on Ortus was to suck the life out of each and every student at the moment that our powers would be at their strongest. A challenge to get us all here, for sure. Dangerous to have so many that could kill them within arm’s reach, but the benefit would last them another century or more. Youth. Longevity. Selfishness.

That is all the Gods are.

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