Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Asking me about Bazak was the last thing I thought he would do. It shattered the tender moment I thought we were about to have in an instant. I hadn’t thought about Bazak and his Lightbringers in a few days since I had been working so hard on the garden and I preferred it that way. Keeping so busy and focused in this new place free from him and his cronies was therapeutic in a way that I hadn’t been able to achieve before. Altyr’s actions had been kinder, not reminding me of theirs. I had been mostly at peace.

My body stiffened, and I swallowed hard. “We have met a few times.”

“A few times? There was a lot more going on between you two than only having a mere acquaintance with the man,” he said as he leaned his back against the hard stone bench.

Every instinct inside me was telling me to run, to flee. I wanted to avoid talking about him, talking about how I knew him. Running wasn’t an option. I was trapped in a dilapidated castle in the middle of nowhere. The man next to me wasn’t forcing me to stay, but he was the reason I was where I was. It’s not like I trusted him with my deepest secrets even though I had to trust him with my life.

“He knew my mother,” I said weakly.

“The one with the bear?”

My eyes cut sharply to him as I gave him a look of bewilderment. He had remembered that brief cry of pain I had when I watched my home touch the sky in flames. That smirk of his popped up before quickly dropping when he noticed my surprise. I don’t know why I thought he wouldn’t have been paying attention. It’s not like we’ve had a lot of conversations.

I swallowed again, trying to push my emotions down before saying, “Yes. The one who gave me the bear.”

“It was all you had left of her…”

I took a deep breath. “It’s all I had left of her.”

“What happened?”

“Bazak happened.”

His hand went back to my knee, this time in a comforting squeeze. I don’t know why the touch felt different, but it did. It wasn’t sensual; it wasn’t trying to lure me into his darkness. That touch was one of knowing comfort.

“My father died when I was younger. He was a noble man, always trying to help people. It was helping someone that got him killed. Someone was trying to rob a neighbor of ours and my father tried to stop it. Only, they stopped him instead. He was a foolish man for challenging someone armed, but that was my dad for you, foolishly brave.”

I twisted my dress in my hands while staring at the ground as I spoke. “My mother was distraught. She went to the city guards as a sobbing mess. The Lightbringers didn’t have the whole town under their grasp at the time, we still had normal city guards then.”

He nodded along and said, “I remember the time.”

I shook away his interruption and continued, “My mother pleaded to everyone and anyone she could to find the thief that killed my father. This went on for months and months. All she did was harass the council, the guards, and everyone else to help find my father’s murderer. No one ever did. No one ever cared. We weren’t of high class, we were just normal people who didn’t have the coin to back up our questions.”

“We went through all our money fairly quickly because of her antics. I understand she was hurting, but we were starving. Honestly, it was my fault she met him.” Tears welled in my eyes. “If I knew what would happen, I wouldn’t have ever gone to them. I was so hungry though. So very hungry.”

His hand squeezed my knee, letting me know he was there and listening. Letting me know I was safe with him.

“I went to the Lightbringers for food. They were supposed to be this holy, benevolent order and they were. They fed us and let us stay with them. I insisted we stay in a small closet attached to the kitchens because we didn’t know them. She agreed at first. My mother pleaded to Bazak to find my father’s killer. It worked. They hunted him down and brought him to a brutal justice. You should have seen her. He entranced my mother with his status and the fact that he finally gave her what she had been desperately wanting. It put him on another level for her, a pedestal above all others. He was all she would talk about, how great of a leader and man he was. How they were saviors. She was obsessed.”

“I wasn’t fond of what the Lightbringers were asking us to do in exchange for the food. We were told we were there to give them company, to be glorified maids to their order. My mother would sometimes disappear for long stretches of time before showing back up, quiet but thankful that we had a roof over our heads. Mother though, mother was the first person to do anything for them in the city like this. Eventually, we weren’t the only ones they had collected. There were all sorts of people like us. People who came to them for help and for justice. They were gathering dedicated fans to serve them.”

“I’d hear them talk about the light, but never really understood the concept so I ignored it. Often enough it sounded like ruminations of madmen and made up stories about,” I looked away from him, “creatures that went bump in the night.”

He let out a huff of a laugh but didn’t voice any other commentary. I respected that he was giving me the space to talk.

“They were growing in power and influence and my mother was a woman possessed. She tried to move us to another room closer to the barracks but I threw a fit. I didn’t want to be near them any more than I had to. She was obsessed with Bazak though, and he allowed it. This went on for years. She eventually left me alone in my small closet and joined the others they had gathered in a joint barracks the Lightbringers provided. They relegated me to cleaning and cooking, but the guards, their looks were becoming more ravenous the older I got. I was thankful I was able to run away to my little closet for my own safety. That’s when I started trying to get some work outside of the order, away from their overbearing pressure and grabbing hands. I needed to get my mother away from them, but she was so incredibly wrapped up in their mission. Getting her physically away from them was the only way I was going to talk some sense into her. I was in the process of securing my greenhouse when she disappeared.”

My voice was getting shakier as I got further in my tale and I couldn’t help but let tears fall as I recanted the experience.

“I begged and pleaded to them to tell me what happened to her, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. They claimed she went missing, and it was a mystery to them as well. That they were looking for her too. They found everyone though. Everything they ever needed, they could find it! But they couldn’t find my mother? It made no sense. I confronted Bazak and he…”

Altyr was leaning in closely, looking as if he was listening to every word I had to say. My tale must have enthralled him as I could tell he was watching my mouth closely. Repeating everything, telling someone what happened was painful, but it was also a bit of a relief. Recanting the tale to a vampire of all people was actually the safest possible person I could share it with. They had just as much reason to loathe the Lightbringers as I did. Bazak was favored by everyone in the region now. Him and his men would never be seen as anything but purely needed justice. The creatures of the night would be the only ones who could understand the deep seething hatred I had for Bazak. Here in this castle, so far away from any of them, with a strong vampire at my side, I finally felt a sense of safety I hadn’t been able to experience in Silver City.

I took a deep breath, letting the air expand in my lungs to give me strength before I said, “he blamed me. Said it was my fault for not being faithful to the light. I refused to go to their seminars and their preachings. I wanted nothing to do with their religious order and willfully ignored everything about it as best as I could. He told me I had tainted myself and my mother from their blessing because of my actions. He said that if I had been more dutiful, if I had been with her as she preached the good word of light then I would have been by her side and known where she went. Then he told me I was corrupted, I wasn’t willing to do what my mother had done for them. That I would never know their true protection. That’s when he held me down and took from me the one thing I could never get back.”

I lifted my dress up toward my thigh, revealing a large silver scar from the top of my knee to my hip. Altyr’s lip raised in a scowl as I felt his finger trace the scar. I saw a darkness swirl across his silver eyes.

“Cutting me here to show me he could, he was showing me how he could hurt me worse than what he was about to do. That’s when he did it, he took my girlhood. He took the last innocence I had left. He held me down and made me scream. And I did. Over and over I screamed for help. No one stopped him, no one came running to my rescue. He enjoyed every moment, enjoyed every scream of despair, as he forced himself on me, bruising my body and soul. I laid there afterward in pain and agony, sobbing for myself and for my missing mother. That night I ran from them and never looked back. I had to tolerate their existence in the city, but at least they didn’t have control over my life.”

I could see Altyr’s jaw flexing, his teeth grinding together. His eyes grew darker, pools of darkness swirling across his vision nearly consuming the shining silver of them. He stood up abruptly, anger bubbling under the surface. There was a heat emanating between us, the connection we had was seething and felt uncomfortable, almost painful. It churned with the anger he was exuding. He took a few steps away before turning back, about to say something before he took a few more steps toward me. Looming over my small frame, he ground his teeth together as the veins in his neck visibly pulsed; the anger rippling out of him.

Dropping to his knee, he fell before me and grabbed my hand, clenching it as he said, “We will kill them. We’ll kill all of them. I promise you. The pain he caused you, the way he broke you, I will not allow it. They cannot continue doing these things to people. I will kill Bazak.”

I tried to pull my hand back from him, but he had it snatched tightly. “What happened to me was horrible, but everyone else loves them. They keep the hollows and vampires out. People need them.”

“They have done more than that, more than you know.”

“What don’t I know,” I asked. “What did they do to you?”

He looked away, avoiding my eyes as he said, “they are the reason this castle is empty.”

It had been something tragic. I placed my other hand over his, trying my best to let him know he had an ally, someone who hated them as much as he did. Turning to meet my eyes, his own softened and he pulled himself up to sit back on the bench with me. I turned to face him, still holding his hand in comfort.

“I had left them. I had left the castle, I shouldn’t have left…”

I tried to say something, but he stood up again before I could offer any words of sympathy. He shook his head and said, “they killed everyone. My entire coven. Every human and vampire alike that lived here. They are the reason I’m alone.”

My eyes widened. He truly understood how horrible they could be. They destroyed my entire world and his too. I reached my hand out to him, my fingers brushing his before he pulled away and marched off, not looking back at me. I watched as he walked straight out the large doors, out into the ward, alone.

I stood in the garden, my hands hanging uselessly to my side while I tried to process what had just happened. The connection between us severed again, the hollow hole in my chest was aching right alongside my bruised heart. He wasn’t mean because he was an evil monster. He wasn’t a monster at all, just a man who lost everything. I could truly relate.

We both lost too much.