Page 48 of Daghel

My knees grow weak, and I nearly crumble to the ground, but she catches me and forces me upright. “No time for that now. Listen—I was right! After I left you, I went to Vorn’s room while he was busy feasting, and you have no idea. He is in thickwith some of the outlier clans, all of them ruled by males who have overthrown their queens. They call themselves something absurd like ‘the Council. Apparently, when Daghel brought you here, it gave him exactly the opening that he was looking for to bring a gathol under his control and execute an experiment that the Council has been talking about for some time.” She shakes her head in frustration. “I do not know the details but all I know is that all of this has been orchestrated in a way I never could have imagined.”

“And what about Daghel?” I whisper. “You said that he’s okay?—”

“He is, he is. For now,” she amends with a grimace. “He is imprisoned. Drisk, too I imagine. I do not know what is going about but everyone seems afraid of them. And Anya—he avenged my people. He slaughtered nearly every warrior who participated in that attack before a pair of mages restrained him. Mages! Can you believe that my brother has had a mage here the entire time, and another had newly arrived?”

My breath shudders in and out of me as I grip her arms. I am unspeakably proud of Daghel but I am also confused. Why wouldn’t Vorn just kill him?

“There is something else, Daghel is not quite Daghel,” she says in a low voice and my gaze snaps to her in surprise.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that he is a Daghel, but he is also not. There is something strange about him that I cannot quite put my finger on.”

“Did he say anything?”

She nods. “He asked me to bring you to him.”

Chapter

Thirty-Two

DAGHEL

The cell door opens, and I scent her—I taste her on the air itself—before she even enters my prison. Before I can even set eyes on her. She is nervous and a little frightened, and from the corner of my eye I see that she is trembling as she steps inside.

“Daghel?”

I turn my head toward her and smile, pleasure humming through me. “Yes, mywyva?”

Her head cocks as she across the cell, and I can feel her gaze appraising me as it slides over me. “You are naked,” she observes with surprise.

“Ajek thought it would be entertaining. Perhaps it can be if you are so inclined.”

She freezes there in the middle of my cell, her eyes widening for just a moment, betraying her surprise and sorrow, before her expression shutters completely. “You are not Daghel.”

I chuckle in delight. The others were not so quick to catch on, much to their demise, but she is both right and wrong. Even now, as past and present, as the threads of reality and memoriesthat separate Durethikal and Daghel are coming more and more together, I am only truly beginning to understand. “But I am… but I am also more.”

She shakes her head, her upper teeth sinking into her bottom lip. “I don’t understand. Are you some kind of parasite… a terriblethingpossessing him?” Her brow furrows as she searches my eyes, and I smile in response. She is so close to hitting on the truth. Of course my mate would be so clever. “You are the dark shadow,” she says at last.

I grin as I offer her a shrug. Close enough. “You call me the dark shadow, I… Daghel… called me the darkness. I blame Driskal for that. He always had a sense of humor about such things.”

“Driskal,” she whispers, and I incline my head.

“Oh yes, he has been going as Drisk while lurking in the Fang Peaks. He found the other part of me, protected me and nurtured me as Daghel. Drisk knew all along what was required to let Durethikal in, but he also knew that it ultimately had to be Daghel’s choice. My choice.” I frown in annoyance and sigh. “It is so vexing trying to communicate about oneself in such a way, but I pray that you get the idea. The point is that Daghel has always been Durethikal. He is the warmth and love of Ishugor’s son that survived what the clans had done, leaving Vepra’s dark child to wander with half a soul through the snowy mountain peaks once I escaped the bound prison of my divine flesh. I am simply… whole… now.”

“I see,” she murmurs as she moves a step closer, her head tilting slightly as she cautiously regards me. “What should I call you then?”

I consider her question thoughtfully. “Daghel. For all my previous power, Durethikal died a cruel and terrible death within that imprisonment. But that death also released me so that I can come again. I am now Daghel.”

“Ok… Daghel. Linahna said that you are imprisoned for avenging her people.”

I peer at her, amused by her non-question. She presents it as a statement, but in truth it is a question for me, uncertain as if this was truly my goal. So soft and sweet. For all that had jaded her and hardened mywyva, ultimately her heart is soft and filled with a warmth that I crave and treasure above all things.

“Yes, and no. Seeing the horrors of the slaughter and understanding what was to come of the mated gathol was the last nail in the coffin, so to speak. It is what allowed this reunion to happen. They were… as you just said of me… parasites,” I reply pleasantly, despite the gnash of my teeth as I consider the taint within my clan. “The moment Daghel saw the truth of things and the vile destruction that clans were causing, and let his darkness in, it was the moment that spelled their doom. I merely waited, biding my time until they were all happily fattening themselves and celebrating their hollow victory. But the root of my intention was to clean up the filth and poison destroying the Cold Mountain Clans. It is simply that the worst of it was right there in the room and had participated in the massacre of the encampment.” My eyes drift from her to the door of my cage. “It is a pity that several of them escaped… especially Vorn.”

Her throat works but she creeps closer to me, her brow furrowing slightly. “They will want to kill you, Daghel.”

I laugh and the deep sound echoes throughout the walls of my prison. “I am certain that is what they intend to do,” I agree. “But they cannot. All they can do is imprison me until I surrender my flesh. That is what they did the first time. And to accomplish this, they will need first to assemble all their sorcerers and mages so that they can bind me again. Daghel may have been born of orc flesh and blood but upon welcoming in hisdarkness and becoming whole, my flesh is divine once again, and the mages are not so foolish as to overlook that.”

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