Chapter 30

Chapter 30

Countless bodies were standing in my way, they were always in the way. I now knew why Altyr was perfectly okay without having anyone at his castle. This many people around all the time was just troublesome. I couldn’t go anywhere without someone being in my way.

Bursting the door open, Orrin hardly looked up at me as I made my entrance. Another man was talking to him, a priest of darkness. Orrin shook his head at the man before dismissing him away. He wouldn’t look me in the eye as he shuffled by.

“Anything?”

Orrin shook his head as he looked back to a lifeless Altyr. “No changes. He’s not getting better, and he’s not waking up. I don’t know how much longer he can last like this.”

“He will recover.”

“We don’t even know what’s wrong with him,” he said with a hint of anger.

“We know exactly what’s wrong, he had too much light.”

Orrin sighed and closed his eyes in frustration. “Well, for as long as it takes, he has a place in this home. As do you.”

A softness took over me as I remembered whose home I was in. It was his… his and Lenora’s. They had buried her under a cherry tree in a large garden. It was no wonder she loved mine, this one was said to be her favorite spot in the entire castle.

I grabbed Orrin’s hand and squeezed it tightly. He looked up at me with tears at the edges of his eyes. He was still mourning. Losing his wife and nearly his best friend like this was hard on him. No one else here understood what had happened. They had tried their best to warn his people, and advise them of the powers they encountered, but so many of them dismissed it and said it couldn’t be what they had seen.

We knew what we had seen. Lightbringers were leading an army of darkened hollows. Their weapons were made of metal and light itself. The darkness had a mind of its own and came back to claim one of its servants.

Then there was me.

I managed to stop an entire army of hollow with just my will. I was able to infuse Altyr with an unstoppable power, despite how brief that was. There was also the fact that I never went through the ritual. The darkness I had absorbed in the night was still on my arms. So far it hadn’t grown any further, hadn’t climbed its way through my veins. I wasn’t darkened, not yet.

The hole in my chest was an entirely different story. It ached an ache I couldn’t describe to anyone. There was no warmth, there was no light that could fill it. It hurt, it hurt me so deeply at times I could do nothing but double over in pain. Gritting my teeth and forcing myself to focus on anything but the pain was the only way I endured it.

The black mist would move across my skin, it would slither around my hands and arms when this happened. It somehow knew the darkness in my heart, the darkness in my soul, was fighting a war. Every time the hole would ache, the darkness would move. I couldn’t let it win. It hungered for more. It made me hunger for more. I wanted to touch the darkness again, let it invade my body and soul.

Swallowing hard, I turned my head away from them both to the window. There on the ledge was the last of the Night Flower attempting to propagate in water. I was trying my best to regrow it from what little I had left. Time would tell if it would work.

Orrin nodded briefly before leaving me alone with Altyr. I sat in the chair right next to his bed and took his hand delicately in mine. Squeezing it tightly I said, “You have to fight this, Altyr. You can’t leave me like this. Not yet. We have so much more to do. Our story is only just beginning.”

Looking down at the misting on my hands, I watched it as it swirled around. I took a deep breath in, trying to control my overwhelming emotions, trying to keep myself from crying.

A tear dripped down my cheek. “I will fight this, I will fight this darkness for both of us. I will not succumb to its desires. I have to get revenge. Revenge for you, revenge for Lenora. Revenge for my mother.”

“I will get my revenge, Altyr. I can promise you that, I will get my revenge.”

The End.