Page 76 of Sanctuary of the Shadow
In the end, she prevailed.
Gritting her teeth against the searing pain in her chest, Harrow stepped through the door and pulled it softly shut behind her. Without a backward glance, she took the stairway out to the back courtyard to escape into the night.
…
Raith fought the dream prison with everything he had. Images of his violence and the violence done to him flashed in rapid succession, interspersed by the screams of his victims and the screams of his own self. Still, he fought to break free.
Agonized screaming. His own. Others’. Blood and death and destruction. Enslaved, bound to another’s will, forced to commit unspeakable acts…
Darya intended to keep him trapped here until Salizar arrived and captured him again. But the Water Queen had spent fifty years underestimating him, and it seemed she still hadn’t learned her lesson.
With a monumental expulsion of willpower, Raith finally managed to pull himself out of the mire of horrific memories. He jerked upright in bed, whole body shaking, skin slick with sweat. The sheets around him were torn to shreds from his claws. The images continued to swirl around his head.
The atrocities he’d committed… Centuries serving as one of Furie’s assassins. The pain he’d unleashed upon the innocent. Torture at his mistress’s hand for his disobedience. Fifty years in a mythical cage as Darya’s kill experiment.
He lurched out of bed, head spinning, heart pounding. The memories kept coming. Staggering forward, he crashed into the wall, knocking a picture to the floor. He stumbled back into the bed, then the table, then the couch, before finally ending up on the ground. On his hands and knees, he shook his head violently, trying to force them away.
But they persisted.
Captured by Darya in his weakened state. Blasted by wave after wave of magic, trying to break him. Darya’s frustrated screams at his continued defiance.
The images traveled back in time.
Furie screeching at him in rage. Why had he spared the Seer child? How could he have defied her? How had he been able to break his vow? Then, burning. So much burning. Beyond skin and bone, since he had none, the Fire burned his very essence. Incorporeal meant unkillable, so there was no end to the pain. An eternity of fire. Of agony and betrayal and hatred.
He traveled even further back.
The full moon cast a glow over a sleepy encampment surrounded by tall evergreens. Several small caravans were positioned around a fire, horses grazing nearby. Women gathered around the fire. One cast a small bag of stones upon the ground, studying the contents. The others shared food and drink. A small child sat beside a doting mother.
A shadow descended upon them from the darkness.
They stood no chance against him. His very existence was death, his only purpose to destroy. He simply touched them and unleashed the fire that was within him, and they burned from the inside out. Their screams echoed into the night. The horses whinnied in terror. Blood pooled on the pine needles. The caravans toppled in the chaos of unleashed powers. Defenses that did nothing to save them.
Only the small child remained.
She thought she was hiding, but he knew exactly where she was. He smelled her skin, could have heard her heartbeat from a mile away. He was death, and there was no escape from him.
He descended as a smoky shadow. The child was his final charge for the night. Perhaps then he could finally rest, free from the relentless compulsion to fulfill his vows.
The wraith hesitated outside her shelter, watching her. She didn’t cry, didn’t scream. He needed only to stretch a claw forward and stroke her tiny face, and she would burn just like the rest of them.
He was bound to do this. Powerless to resist.
He resisted anyway.
The start of fifty years of torture.
He made his own free choice for the first time in his existence, and the agony that consumed him as a result was a thousand times worse than the quick deaths he dealt to the Seers.
His essence dispersed; his power drained utterly. He was whisked away, blown like a feeble wisp of smoke from an extinguished candle, drawn back to the origins of his bondage to face his mistress’s wrath.
Raith’s spine arched. His claws shot out and dug into the wooden floorboards. His wings burst from his back. He was pure shadow again, but he didn’t try to alter his appearance, abandoning all pretense of blending in.
There was no lying to himself anymore, no hiding what he was.
Harrow was gone. He didn’t need to wonder what had happened or why she’d left. Everything had been explained in the dream. Darya’s intervention, reaching out to her last remaining Seer. Protecting her from the monster that had killed her family and now held her in its clutches.
Harrow had awoken and fled him in horror.
