Page 141 of Dark Souls

A second later, Hana screamed from her room. We all raced in to see her standing by her window, pointing down. I remember looking at the perimeter that circled our small cottage and shaking my head in confusion. We were encircled by a raging fire that was climbing taller than the roof. But the flames weren’t orange or red. They were black. Hellfire. Only powerful witches and warlocks could create hellfire with the blood of a sacrifice and onyx crystals thought to be blessed by Veles himself. Witches. The betrayal still hadn’t sunk in. It didn’t even enter my mind that Donna had done this. But she was the only one who knew where we lived. Because I had told her that day. My father swore and my mother grabbed Hana away from the window. I could hear my father shouting at Zoran but not really listening to what was being said. He grabbed me by the shirt and dragged me after him. I was frozen in a state of shock and denial. My father, forcing Hana into my arms, spun the world back into focus, and a tsunami of sensations hit me. Hana’s screaming was ringing in my ears as she buried her face in my neck. My mother was clinging to my father’s shirt, crying hysterically as he ran his hands over her hair, trying to soothe her with soft words. Zoran had shifted into his demon form and was breaking a window to let out the smoke that was blanketing the ceiling and creeping closer to us. I felt the heat of flames licking at my skin. The thatched roof was on fire. They were forcing us out. Or burning us alive.

My mother was screaming for my father not to stay and fight, her hands ripping his top as he pushed her towards the window. He told her, “Zoran and Luka will shift and fly you and Hana out the back while I distract them. There are too many of them to not notice us all try to leave at the same time. I’ll join you as soon as I can. I won’t take them all on, I promise. Just enough for you to get to safety.” I remember the fear in her eyes. Her telling him it was an entire coven. Maybe wolves and vampires, too. “Nearly a hundred, Maksim,” she kept saying, begging him.

Zoran told him he was staying. My brother was his father’s son and would never have let him fight alone. He told me I had to get Mama and Hana to safety. That it was the most important thing. Hana was too young and hadn’t come into her true powers yet and Mama was a vampire so couldn’t fly.

A loud noise ripped us apart as the roof fell through, separating my father and Zoran from me, Hana and my mama. My father ordered me to get them out. His authoritative tone, laced with so much fear for their lives, jolted me into action. I wrapped my arm around my mama’s waist and hauled both her and Hana out the window. The sight of the black fire was terrifying—a pulsating, chaotic wall of flames. I shifted into Heathen and launched myself skyward, only to be met by the unrelenting, scorching flames growing taller with each of my desperate attempts to pass. I tried so many times. And then four men walked through them. Figures that were magically protected just stepped right through the flames that would burn my family to ash. I shoved Mama and Hana behind an old, broken wagon in the garden and killed them quickly. I heard my brother’s roar from the front of the house just as I reached Mama and Hana again. It was a cry of agony. I felt so conflicted, wanting to help him but needing to get Hana and Mama to safety and keep my father’s word. My mother begged me to help them. That she would get Hana to safety herself but I saw two more figures step through the flames. They’d just keep coming for us. I ripped out their hearts before they’d finished their spell and the flames suddenly went out. I grabbed the girls and flew up into the air, staring down to see my brother on the floor, with a circle of witches around him, chanting as his body thrashed and bent unnaturally in all directions. My father was a short distance away, trying to both get to Zoran but also defend himself against around forty coven members. The magic that was pulsing from them was suffocating, causing visible ripples through the atmosphere as they chanted in unison. Everything happened so quickly after that. I was always planning on going back to help them but just as I’d reached a tree in the distance, my father fell to his knees in his demon form seeming to be paralysed by magic and a harrowing scream left my mama as a man stood behind him. With one precise strike, he cut his head off with that sword.”

Luka’s gaze raised above my head and I peered over my shoulder to see a huge silver sword with magical inscriptions engraved into the blade on display. A broken sob left my lips and I realised silent tears were streaming down my face as I turned back to Luka. He stared at me blankly.

“Alatar Knowlton hung it there as his trophy. Now I hang it there as mine.”

I wiped my eyes and inhaled a shaky breath. I saw Luka behead the coven leader with a sword in one of my dreams before he burned his body outside on a wooden stake like he had done to the rest of the coven after he’d tortured them. But I hadn’t even noticed it hanging there on the wall.

“And your brother?” I asked, even though I had already read the answer in that damned diary. Hellfire killed him.

“They bound him to the cottage by magic and watched him burn beneath the flames. I was halfway back to him when I could no longer see his body; the flames had consumed him and his screaming had stopped. I fell to my knees in the grass, tears streaming down my face, wanting to die too. They were dead because of me. It was the least I deserved. That’s when I saw her. Belladonna was hanging back, standing with another woman that I later knew to be her mother. She was watching my home and my brother burn with a wickedness in her eyes. Eyes that I thought I had once loved. I stood to my feet, ready to kill her with my bare hands and not caring if I died doing it as long as I took her with me. But then Hana screamed my name from the trees. It was a beg. A cry for me to come back to her and to protect her. I was all they had left. Belladonna turned at that moment and locked eyes with me across the field. And she fucking smiled. It took everything in me to not kill her but fly back to Hana and my mama, who had long stopped crying and was now just a hollow shell of the woman she once was.”

I stood up and started pacing the room, unable to sit still and listen anymore. Rue was reeling, wanting blood. My heart was breaking into so many shards for the man I loved, for the family that was torn apart and I was so fucking livid. So furious that I couldn’t contain it. I stormed from the room and heard Luka calling my name but I was possessed by the red mist of fury. I grabbed the portrait of Belladonna in the corridor and smashed the frame against the wall, against the floor, stepped on it, screamed at it at the top of my lungs. Then I did the same with the others, ripping all the portraits with my unsheathed nails, trashing the last images of who they were and what they represented. I could feel Luka’s eyes on me, watching from the shadows as I got lost in my rage, destroying everything within reach. When there was nothing left within my vicinity, I hunched over, grabbing my knees and panting out breaths.

The sound of Luka’s bare feet padded towards me, stepping over the shards of glass that littered the floor until they were in my eyeline. His huge hands grabbed my shoulders and pulled me upright. Then his arms wrapped around me and I closed my eyes, burying my face in his chest.

“Why is it that you are always the one comforting me?”

“Having no humanity has its advantages. Trust me, I wouldn’t have been able to relive any of that with it.”

I pulled away from his chest and stared up at his face, stroking my hand, which was covered in my blood, down his cheek. He pressed his face into my palm before turning and licking the blood off me. “Do you ever think you’ll turn it back on?”

He stilled, closing his eyes. “I don’t think I can. I’m sorry. I know that makes you sad.”

“It makes me angry. But not at you, Luka. You need to stop blaming yourself. Belladonna did this. The Knowltons did this. They were the ones that killed your family. Not you. Of course, I want you to turn your humanity back on so you can start to heal. So you can start to live the life you deserve and I can love all sides of you. But if you can’t. I don’t care. I fell in love with you like this and it’s enough for me. You and Heathen are enough for me.”

He started shaking his head. I grabbed his hand and pulled him back towards the library. “I feel more level-headed now. Let’s continue. There is so much more to cover and I have to go to dinner at the castle tonight but I don’t want to leave until I know everything.”

“I think we should stop. That was already a lot for you to process.” He argued, but I shook my head, sitting down again on the rug and taking another shot. “You are going to be wasted by the time you make it to dinner.”

“Ah well,” I shrugged, tugging him back down. “I’m fine. I apologise for my outburst. I feel calmer now. You may continue.”

His lips curved up into that sexy smirk and his eyes twinkled. “You are my favourite person.”

Those unexpected words knocked the air from my lungs. It wasn’t ‘I love you’ but it was his version. I leaned forward and kissed him deeply. Our tongues danced a slow waltz of everything we felt for each other but were unable to express in words. When I pulled back, he held my gaze and smiled sadly. “I’d do it for you. I’d turn my humanity back on if you asked me to.”

I traced his lips with my finger as I shook my head.

“No. It has to be for you. I’m sticking around, regardless.”

A Snitch

Hepickedupthehandmade scorched stake and I held my breath. I hated that thing. The dried blood that covered the wood was a reminder that he used it to give himself relief from the pain he held inside. He twisted it in his hand, staring at it as if it was a cherished artefact and not a deadly weapon.

“Normal wood can’t kill me or harm me like other vampires. Staking me would not kill me. Any inflicted wound would heal with no scarring. I’d barely even feel it. Same for Heathen.”

“That’s why when I held a wooden stake up to his throat in that club, his skin didn’t burn!”

Luka lifted his head and stared at me with amusement. “You held a stake to his neck? Fuck, I bet Heath loved that from you.” A thoughtful but sad smile appeared on his face. It was the first time I had heard him talk about Heathen like he really knew him.

“You miss him.” It wasn’t a question but a realisation. Beneath the anger and concern in every conversation we’d ever had about Heath, there was also underlying pain. And now I understood. He missed him.

“I do. It’s been a long time. Is he…” He paused and searched for the right word.

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