Page 121 of Synodic

Whatever joy I felt moments ago was completely washed away by overwhelming panic. Even Demil’s face whitened at the piercing scream. Apparently, Ven’s situation had worsened since he’d seen him last, which worried me even more.

I took off running in the direction of the scream, my heart pulsing in my throat. Rowen would have to wait. Hopefully he wouldn’t worry, thinking I intentionally left him with nothing more than the cold side of the bed.

I could feel Demil running at my flank. “I swear he was fine when I left him,” he called out from behind me.

Too preoccupied to unpack his statement, my mind raced with what could have happened to Ven to make him scream like that. I knew he was quite the intrepid little explorer, but even this seemed much too far from the village for him to travel to in good conscience. He was smarter than that.

I skid to a stop as the land before me turned grey and cold—a clear line of division between life and death. My eyes prepared to scan wildly for Ven but they shot right to him on the other side of the line, and my blood turned to stone.

Wrapped in impossibly thick arms, a purple-faced Ven struggled against a headlock. His face contorted as he tried to pry himself from the unrelenting grip of the mountain that was Graem.

Standing next to him was the smooth, vile face that haunted my every day and every night— Erovos himself—in the flesh. A dark hood of smoke billowed around him, and his skin was stretched tight across the sharp lines of his face.

Fear cast aside, I chased toward Erovos to scratch his face off and tear him apart, but Demil pulled me back with a firm grip on my upper arm.

What was Demil doing? Why wasn’t he charging with me to save Ven?

“My long-awaited light, my, how you have evaded me for quite some time. I wouldn’t move if I were you. One word from me, and Graem will twist his little head right off his neck.” The emanating power from Erovos was oil-slick, choking down my throat and clogging my veins.

Ven squirmed but didn’t look afraid, more indignant and frustrated than anything else. He fought uselessly against the colossal man’s arm tightening around him, and I willed for him to stop struggling, to remain as still as possible. The foul giant didn’t even know his own strength; the slightest tick from him could snap Ven in two.

“Demil! Help me,” I pleaded, pulling against his hand cuffed around my arm.

“You said the boy wouldn’t be hurt,” Demil said with a tight throat.

This couldn’t be real. I was in a play. I had to be. All of us actors, rehearsing and running our lines with a false realism that would drop the moment someone shouted ‘cut’ But no one ever did. The play continued on, and it was a tragedy.

The horror set in, turning me as frozen as the dead forest hovering around Erovos like a billowing cloak of decay. I turned to Demil’s square face, his hard gaze revealing a small layer of guilt.

“Demil, what have you done?” I asked through strangled rage. It had been him all along, befriending me to my face, getting close to me, only to report back everything to Erovos.

“It could have been different, you know. If you would have given me a chance. Do you think I like always coming in second? All my life living under the shadow of my sister, Rowen, of everyone. This…this was my chance to beseen.”

I blanched. This all stemmed from a jealous brother, warrior, lover…it didn’t matter. Demil could never measure up.

“You’re pathetic. Betraying all your friends, your family, the people that love you.”

“No one loves me, not like they love you and my sister. I’m merely a tolerable expenditure to my people, to you.”

“What will you be when the dust settles and everyone sees you for who you truly are?” I asked with seething rancor.

“I will be remembered. That is all I ever wanted.”

“You’ll be hated.”

“Demil shall be favored by all my children,” Erovos spoke through his thin lips. “And your light shall feed them all.”

In a leap of white fur and fangs, Sabra lunged out of the forest bushes, sinking her teeth into the meaty flesh of Graem’s forearm.

Graem howled with a force that rocked the trees. With his free hand, he grabbed Sabra by the excess fur around the nape of her neck, and wrenched her from his arm. The white wolf never released her jaw, and the oaf never stopped pulling, and with a fanning spray of Graem’s flesh and blood, he slammed Sabra against the nearest tree.

The wolf hit the wide trunk with a heart-wrenching yelp, then fell limp to the ground. My stomach dropped sickeningly as Sabra stayed an unmoving mass of white at the base of a tree.

Ven’s tortured scream ripped from his throat in agonizing waves of rage. Tears ran in rivers down his dirt-smeared face. He hadn’t seemed truly afraid until that very moment.

My wrath turned to a deadly silver glow, filling my fingertips and veins with a vengeance of ethereal light.

But whatever this ability was, I still had almost no control over it. It was wild and unpredictable. Back in the crypts, when I’d aimed for Aliphoura, I’d missed considerably. I could have hit Rowen, or even worse, brought the whole cave down upon thousands of innocent lives.

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