Page 43 of These Eternal Bones
“Molly…” He growls, and it is without a doubt a warning. I can feel it in the jump of my pulse, a sensation over these past months I’ve come to crave. My head snaps to him, waiting, watching for something, anything. Any sign of what I’d done wrong, to explain this sudden wrenching change in him, like perhaps if I look long enough, I’ll understand why it’s troubling me so. Why have my nightmares come back, and why does it feel hard to breathe? It’s that final thought that makes me take notice of his eerie stillness. He’s…not breathing. I watch as he shifts ever so slightly, but his chest is as still as stone aside from the movement required to speak. “Very well. The Nephilim will escort you–”
My chair drags across the floor roughly as I stand. “And why not you?”
“I have work to–”
“Work…yes, you are very busy as of late. I think it is best that I stay at the cottage until the storm passes. Perhaps my debt is nearly paid. You should start to search for a new source of entertainment.” I spit, anger scathing the walls of my chest, making my bodice feel too tight as I go to storm past him.
A gasp is ripped from my throat as his hand snaps out, the movement jerky and rough as he snatches a tendril from the air. Heaven knows what that damned thing had intended to do. “As much as I admire your claws, today is a good day to keep them sheathed, little human.” For the first time in days, I have his full, undivided attention, and it is…horribly intoxicating. The pang of loss is ripe in my gut, but how can you lose something you never had?
You cannot.
He dematerializes his tendrils then, and I find myself holding my breath as I continue past. I no longer wish to breathe him in. The Nephilim is waiting in the hall as I pass, his golden bronze eyes glancing back to Elric before settling on me. He dips his head, gesturing for me to lead the way. When the sound of crashing echoes in the chambered hall, I barely flinch.
The storm is wild, and for the first time since the snow started falling, I’m privy to the unyielding and brutal side of winter. Its gusts of wind are so violent that they rob the heat from my bones and the questions from my chest. The only saving grace is the heat radiating from the man at my back. Like sitting beside a fire, but it brought no comfort. When we reach the cabin, he declines my invitation to step inside and warm up, but of course, he’s rude about it. Usually, I don’t let it botherme. Today? I slam my door in his face. Perhaps the only person who wants to speak to me less than Elric today is Cartiel. The feeling is mutual.
21
Snapping of a Great Many Things
Elric
The blizzard rages outside. I rage inside.
Myself and the storm are very much alike in our pursuit of destruction. My hunger rides me, my mind as foggy and unclear as the borders of my prison. My claws gouge the lounge seat, with an ominous rip barely heard over the howling winds. For nearly a millennium, my hatred for that putrid coven has festered. I have had nearly a thousand years to be angry and bitter, but I feel it most in times like this. Ones where everything inside me is screaming, bellowing for her. To go to her, to taste her, to feed…to bond. My restraint waging war against a soul deep impulse that demands submission. It was a special agony to love and desire so deeply, to know that your supplication is as surely inevitable as the grief it will cause you.
I will kill her.
In every life, it is I who drives the first stake.
The bellow that leaves me is visceral as footsteps trail along my floor, Tien having gotten in the habit of walking instead of simply appearing. My ominous growl is a warning, a vow, as he rounds the corner, his odd features taking in the damage around him. “This has gone on long enough, sir, I must insist you feed.”
The thought alone sends a wave of disgust through me as I pace across the marble floor. My lips curl over my fangs, my bottom lip healing before being gored raw again by them.
“I have brought–”
“Allow that fucking creature near me and I will add it to your already misshapen form,” I warn, nearly too far gone to be affected by the widening of his eyes. It was a foul thing to say. Tien has been perhaps my only friend throughout the centuries. He and the selkie have been here for all her lives…and all of her deaths. Tien was there at the first. They stand waiting and steady as the years bear heavily on my mind. When my sanity frays and I become more creature than man.
“You will hurt her like this, sir. Perhaps it is time for the bond–”
My tendril snaps out before I can stop it, knocking him roughly in the chest before banding around his wide neck. He lets out a savage growl, his claws goring the appendage before blipping out behind me this time. “There are only six hundred and six years left. I fear there will be nothing left of your mind when the borders release us.”
I strike again, narrowly missing his jugular before he blips back in front of me. “I am warning you–”
“Yes, sir, quite effectively, but I am warningyou,the creatures of your estate are fleeing into the storm… fleeing your rage. The Nephilim speaks his discontent–”
“The Nephilim has always spoken of his discontent!”
“He has grown bitter, too much so, I fear. He should be watched.” He offers calmly, always calm.
It only adds to my unraveling as I pace. “Then I will kill him.”
“Are you so far gone you have forgotten why you kept him alive all these years?”
A pang of hurt filters through the anger, slowing me…just a little. He was the first to find her in her last life. He’d loved her dearly, and she him. Nearly inseparable, the two of them. He’d found her, when she died. He’d nearly depleted his soul trying to call her back. I’d held my breath despite my burgeoning bellows of despair.
It didn’t work.
He has not been the same since that day.
