Page 10 of Ravaged By the Reaper
The creature slithers again, tendrils curling against my eyelids with the pressing intimacy of a lover turned assassin. My bones flare inside me, a wild drum signaling some primal undoing. In one heartbeat, I’m plunged not just back in time—but into memory’s most fragile seams.
Warm lamplight shivers in the marble courtyard of the Companions Academy, stained in rose-gold and sweat. I’m twelve, perched on the edge of a fountain carved from bone-white stone. My gown is too stiff, too new. The silk rubs raw against my spine with every breath.
A senior instructor drifts near, her voice a silent conveyor: “Eyes forward, Amara. Poise, not panic.” I bite my lip. Can't let them see dread. I can’t let them sniff the enhancements—my hands tingling with something more than human.
“Remember, Destrier,” another whispers, fingers cold at my elbow, “grace under pressure wins clients. Never show your hand.”
I swallow air thick with jasmine, exhale with the echo of something I’ll one day callfear. I cling to that moment like a death grip—though I don’t know it yet.
Again—I'm eighteen, in candlelit silk sheets. A client’s voice, low and dangerous, curls through my hair as he entangles his hands in my platinum tresses.
“You are perfect,” he says, rough as ground stone. “What did they pay for you?” His lips brush the hollow between my collarbones.
My heart flares—a wild drum in my chest, loud against the hush. “They paid—only what was fair.” I’m lying. I know the Academy paid them for me. I'm trained to please, but I don’t know how to tell the difference anymore.
He laughs, and the sound slips off my ribs like acid. “Fair is convenient fiction. But you…” He guides my hand to trace his chest. “You’re something more.”
More. More.
Then coal dust choking in my throat—Coalition tutors, Protocol Offices deaf to my voice. I load my arguments, wet as gunmetal. “I’m legal. Human enough. Flexible. Useful.”
They lean back, cold as bone ribs. The lead diplomat regards me with the calculating gaze of someone reading troop movements. “Talent is not enough. Humanity is a commodity, Companion.”
And when I ask to be posted to Coalition worlds instead of selling comfort to our own, he just smiles thinly.
But in that moment, I taste adrenaline—sweet and vicious. I bristle. I’m not theirs.
The memories fracture and stitch into each other, like wet silk patched with rust. Hallways morph into silken sheets which become good-luck charms in my palm. Every scent sharpens: jasmine and sweat, spices and regret, antiseptic and despair wrapped in droid resin.
I feel arms weaker than I should be. My mouth presses against the metal table. Metallic down my throat. The worldsplits between memory and pain—my own body trapped here, screaming in its cage, even as I drown inside my mind.
“Help me,” my silent cry bleeds into the darkness.
In one memory, I see a corridor of translucent oil-drenched tiles. My footsteps echo, too loud. A reflection; a mirrored double of me kneeling, lips stained with silk roses. I’m telling myself to hold on. Quiet.
My breath hitches—I’m spitting wet terror into the air. Madness tastes of copper and lilac.
I claw at my head, nails lining up with invisible maps of survival. But every scratch peels open another layer of terror—unraveling me apart. Flesh, memory, identity—thread by bloody thread.
I see one image with the gleaming clarity of bone steel.
A figure, towering over bodies torn by battle. Scarf of gore and moonlight, eyes like embers. He’s leaping, roaring, red strength incarnate. In his hand is a blade—curving, chained, alive?—
He cleaves forward. Runningforme.
Not rescue. Claim.
And he’s suddenly there. Right at the edge of my memory’s scream. His presence narrows the storm inside me, a single lighthouse in the shatter.
I feel the extractor pulse. My muscles tense like loaded wires.
I cannot... not break.
I roar again—but only once; not mindless, but focused. My scream is a keening vow.
“Not now,” I rasp, even though I’m almost disconnected, bone to blood to consciousness. “Not him.”
Malem leans closer, unblinking. The fluorescent, machine-light hover over my face, and I taste steel.
