Chapter 30

Chapter

Thirty

TAMAS

I bit back my protest when she climbed off me. Then I leapt to my feet at the thought of her reaching the lake before me. There was no telling what waited underneath. "I'll go first."

Using the fattest root as my way in, I gently eased my leg down its slimy surface until my foot slipped beneath the water, and the instant chill went straight to my head.

"This is going to be bracing." Then relinquishing my hold on the root, I dived shallow, feeling as though I'd plunged through ice.

My feet buried in silt as I punched to the surface, tasting the tannins in the water.

"That was reckless," Tressya said.

"The Eone wants me alive."

There was enough starlight without the moon to reveal her solemn face, even from here .

"Sorry, they're off-limits for discussion," I added.

"Actually, I'm curious about something."

"There'll be no answers until you're wet."

"Fine." She followed my lead, using the root as a ladder. "You never said it was like ice," she remarked, sticking her toes in first.

"You never asked."

As I spoke, her foot slipped on a slimy root, and she lost her grip, plunging into the lake. By the time I reached her, she was brushing her hair from her face and gasping from the cold. I pulled her against me, cradling her back to my chest.

"My Razohan heat will warm you." There was a distinct drop in my voice, which I couldn't help, neither could I refrain from tracing my lips across her exposed shoulder. There was no halting my desire for more, more of her and what we'd just experienced.

"I have questions," she said.

"And I might have the answers, but first I need my fill." Suddenly her presence, her body, pressed the length of mine, her skin, soft against my lips, became far more important. Even though I'd had an orgasm to blow my mind, I barely felt satiated.

"This is serious, Tamas, because I'm not sure how you'll respond to what I ask."

I continued to trail my lips to her nape while I spoke. "Dangerous territory to tread."

"You have magic now?" she blurted out, referring to my crumbling the wall under Emberforge, revealing the mysterious tunnel and our escape into the Ashenlands .

"Oh, that." I stilled. "I'm not sure what happened there. It had to be the Eone's interference."

"They still have a lot of their power if they can work magic through you?"

The Eone remained silent, but I felt a tightening in my stomach, as if my guts were being twisted with a pitchfork. They were tense, waiting for her questions and my response. It was surprising they hadn't resisted my wish to separate Tressya from the rest of our party, and our sex… Lucky for them, they'd stayed buried during that. For now, they seemed placated by Tressya's obvious astonishment at the extent of their talent, though I couldn't be sure, as they had withdrawn from me, taking their emotions with them.

"I'd say more, you know I would, but now's not a safe time to discuss them."

"So it's not safe to continue our conversation of earlier."

I tightened my hold on her, flushing her against me, hoping the iced water would save her from feeling anything sticking into her back—but who knows, my arousal felt pretty intense.

I was desperate to tell her. This was my moment. She needed to decide if she wanted to gain as much herself, which would involve taking my blood, marking me, binding us together for eternity. This was perhaps my only chance.

Sadly, something so profound and precious as the partner bond should never be shared with the Eone. It was nothing short of perverting the sacred, but what choice did I have? And I had to clear my thoughts before they gleaned the truth.

"About this?" I gripped her wrist, held close to her stomach, and rubbed my thumb over my mark, hoping the Eone would not discern my intent. I had strived to bury my memories of that moment on the Sapphire Rose, but there was no telling what the Eone could access now that I had opened myself to them

"Yes," she whispered.

I attempted to shield my thoughts from the truth and dulled my heart from the elation at the prospect of her accepting our union. This was something the Eone must never know. As I spoke, rather than focusing on what I was going to say, I occupied my thoughts with Garrat and the challenges he would now face in the north following my encounter with Kaldor. "I explained somethings already."

"So…the same would need to be done to make it complete," she said.

Cursed be my heart for betraying me as it sped up. "Yes. A blood exchange. A reciprocal arrangement in the full knowledge of what is given and what is taken." I wanted to be clear, so she would know exactly what I meant, but that was impossible.

Tressya was quiet for a moment, then hesitantly added. "I think I understand the giving side of it. What's the taking?"

"Everything," I breathed along her skin, feeling a tremor invade my body that had nothing to do with the cold. Even my heart seemed to suddenly stop beating.

"Everything?"

"Everything." I repeated the word, infusing it with a depth that could anchor it to the bottom of the lake.

"Everything!?" I could hear her thoughts churning, then she made to escape my hold. "Even what is mine? My ability with spirit?—"

"Shh," I whispered against her skin, tightening my grip on her—my pulse hammering through my veins—feeling as though she'd vanish if I let her go.

"So it never mattered if I was the first to reach the Ether?—"

"Tressya," I whispered, as I covered her mouth with my hands. Perhaps it was already too late.

This was the deepest truth of my heart, the purest form of love I could give, yet I couldn't even voice its profound significance. "You needed to know," I murmured, closing my eyes as my tremors synchronized with the rhythm of my heart.

She pushed my hand from her mouth. "So it wasn't to track me?"

I shook my head, aware that she would feel the motion against her skin and possibly interpret it as a confirmation of her question.

"You wanted to take from me. Everything."

"It was to keep you alive," I whispered into her ear through gritted teeth. The worst part was the pain evident in her voice, adding weight to her accusation. I was powerless to explain it all, to make her understand while the Eone listened.

My thoughts betrayed me, slipping free of my noose, and the memory of our first meeting on the Sapphire Rose came unbidden into my mind, exposing the sacred moment to the Eone's scrutiny .

I pushed her away. "It's time to get out." My voice was rough, the warning a discordant note of ferocity.

She wasted no time wading to the edge and climbing her way out with the aid of the root. Twice she lost her footing on the slimy root surface, making me twitch to head over and help, but I didn't dare go near her, not now I'd revealed one secret to the Eone in that memory. If I was lucky, they wouldn't understand the full significance of what that memory meant.

Shivering from the cold, or possibly rage, Tressya fossicked around in the dark for her pants. "You've made it all so easy for yourself," she snapped.

"There are no barriers." My heart fell over a cliff, but I had to be honest.

"It all makes sense."

"No. You know my reason, but not the rest of the story. Not what came after." And because I couldn't express the raw makings of my heart, I added something else. "It could save us, Tressya." Once I wore her mark, it mattered little who controlled the Etherweave. Through our shared bond, neither the Eone nor the Mother could prevent us from accessing its power through each other.

"Or turn us…" she stopped before she'd begun dressing. "Do you really think either of our enemies will allow the other to survive?"

It was a topsy-turvy reply, but I grasped the gist of it. I tried to keep it as a scrambled jumble of words in my mind, refusing to pare it down to its intricate parts: the Mother and the Eone using Tressya and me as weapons against each other for control of the Etherweave. And what would happen to the two of us in the aftermath? Tressya's prophetic words haunted me.

"But kept a secret, it remains harmless," I said, wading to the edge and springing out. As long as our enemies were na?ve to the significance of our bond.

"It can never be harmless."

Was she referring to the blight now dwelling within us both?

Suddenly, Tressya fell silent, sinking her head to her chest, dropping her arms beside her, as though she now bore a burden too great to face. Seeing her like this, motionless, I couldn't move. The darkness of the Ashenlands reached deep inside, pulling with it all the Salmun's perverted manifestations to gorge on my heart.

I had rehearsed this moment, dreamed of it, and in my dreams, Tressya smiled, kissed me, accepted me, loved me, and never once questioned our future. Of course, in my dreams, the Eone and the Mother were absent, and neither of us was forced to speak in riddles. But this was the worst possible way I could have told her.

"Unity brings strength." I clenched my fists, wishing for a more potent means to express my conviction than mere words, which can so easily ring hollow despite bearing the weight of my soul.

"Remember what you said." Because I do . I would never forget. Her promise was to fight for me, and mine was to destroy the seven realms to keep her safe.

None of what I said seemed to disturb her thoughts. She stayed motionless, as if her mind wasn't even here with me.

Look at me. Let me know what you're thinking . Her silence strangled me. Her head remained sunk to her chest. Slowly I watched her hands fist beside her, a subtle sign of her emotional turmoil.

"It's our only hope."

Say something, Tressya. Don't shut me out . We needed each other. ‘Twain is the bloodborn'. It was always meant to be the two of us.

I dressed quickly as she finally lifted her head. The depths of her blue eyes had pooled to darkness in the starlight, but there was no misreading her expression, cold like the lake, hard like stone, sharp like a blade. I'd never seen such an expression on her face before.

She shouted a word I couldn't decipher, sending a shimmering tingle through my body.

"What's going on?"

The power woven into the word was unmistakable. She shouted another, as incomprehensible as the first, but equally imbued with authority.

"Are you trying to control me, Tressya?" I ran my tongue across the tips of my fangs.

Another power-laced word was her reply, sending feathering tingles along my limbs. The Mother.

Damn that cunning bitch and her scheming mind. She understood every word we'd said, and now she would force Tressya to end me, ensuring there was only one wielder of the Etherweave.

"It appears I wasn't cryptic enough." I uttered.

‘We gave you a reprieve, young Tamas,' Ineth said.

‘Because you needed to know her lack of commitment to the feelings you so readily profess,' Carthius continued .

‘We have known all along about the significance of the Razohan mark,' Ovia added. ‘Your weak heart has kept her alive this long, for if we really wanted her dead, she would be, and you would have been powerless to stop us. And now, as you can see, she is owned by her Mother.'

‘She has rejected you, Tamas, when you opened your heart to her,' Fivia said, as Tressya, driven by the Mother's greed to possess the Etherweave, shouted another incomprehensible word in her search to find the right word to cripple my soul.

‘Hear it in her words, young Razohan. She seeks to control you, tame you, bring you to your knees before she destroys you.' Ineth's words were like fierce claws scraping across my mind.

I gritted my teeth against their harassment and the barrage of inscrutable words Tressya shouted as she attempted to penetrate my mind. A Razohan's mind was normally impenetrable because of the multitude of souls residing within us. It should be impossible for the Sistern to delve into the depths of our inner lives to find what they needed for control. However, the Mother was surprisingly powerful. By combining her strength with Tressya's, I sensed the first hint that they might actually succeed. And why wouldn't they, given how adeptly Tressya had disabled the Salmun?

"Fight her, Tressya. You're strong enough. I know you are."

"What if I don't want to be? She is my Mother Divine after all. What if I'm more than happy under the Mother's control?" Her voice was as serpentine as that of the wicked old crone—not soul voice though. She had yet to find that one word that would chain my soul to her command.

‘It is time to release the burden of this woman that lays across your heart. She was always your disease. Now we give you the cure,' Carthius said.

I clutched at my temples, feeling the insidious creep of power worm its way into my head, as Tressya—the Mother— refused to relinquish her fight to control me.

"‘We have to remember'. You told me that." I cried. "Don't let her win."

Another fiery lance of word-driven power crippled my body, sending me stumbling backward. How could the Sistern possibly win? How could the Mother find a way through the myriad of my souls to that one special place that dominated me?

Thaindrus was right. The Sistern had formed an alliance with one of the Nazeen, enhancing their ability to use soul voice. That was the only way Tressya was succeeding. It had to be.

"Bow before me, beast," Tressya yelled. The Mother's poisonous venom dripped from every word.

"You're my enemy," she spat. "That's the choice I've made."

In horror, I realized the sinister thread in her voice had woven through my mind, strangling my free will. I fell to my knees, driven by her command, and I stared up at her, silhouetted by the starlight, and saw the Mother's brutal fury etched upon her expression.

"Fight Tressya," I implored, loathing the feeling of mental chains. My mind was bound once before; the most harrowing experience of my life. My beast roared, desperate for release, but the binds of soul voice were as tight as Romelda's magic.

"It's on your knees I'll deliver your punishment," she crooned. Her words remained laced with soul voice power.

‘Feel your powerlessness, young Razohan,' Ineth said. ‘Let it permeate your mind with the truth. Those you love most will cripple you. At some point, everyone will fail you. Power is your only friend to seek. The Etherweave is your family, your lover, your savior.' His words echoed through my head.

I tilted my head back and roared to the stars, my helplessness funneling my rage.

"Tressya, please, hear me," I begged, unable to crawl my way forward to her feet.

"Stop sniveling, beast. It's embarrassing you," she growled, her hands clenched into fists. Then, with a voice dripping with scorn, she taunted, "The mighty Razohan, on his knees, begging, ‘Please, oh please, save me.'" There was no trace of Tressya in anything she said. Was the idea of bonding with me so abhorrent that she'd allowed the Mother to take control? Or perhaps she was furious about my betrayal.

‘Treachery, my friend, carves wounds that never mend. It can shatter you or forge you anew. The choice is yours. Vengeance is not a tunnel into darkness. It's a path to power. Embrace it, Tamas, and you will conquer,' Ovia said.

I sucked in a breath. "Tressya," I panted, feeling my throat thin. "You're stronger than her."

‘Begging is not the way of the Razohan,' Fivia said. ‘You are a disgrace to your people.' It was as though she stood beside me, whispering in my ear. ‘She is wicked, utterly wicked. A woman unworthy of your loyalty, and even less deserving of your heart. See how she revels in her triumph over you. Wicked, wicked woman.' Her last words flowed swiftly, as if she found great pleasure in saying them.

The Eone was as pernicious and deadly as the Mother. These were lies. They had to be. I shook my head, a savage cry tearing from my lips as I fought against their persuasion, against their emotional influence—against their hatred for Tressya, threatening to flood into my heart.

Arching my head skyward, I felt my fangs descend, claws break the skin behind my nail beds, hair prickle up my spine and along my shoulders.

The beast was not wanted now. I had to convince Tressya, help her break free from the Mother's hold as she'd done for me.

With Razohan blood pumping through her veins, Tressya dove for her discarded clothes. In the next moment, starlight glinted off the steel of her blade.

"I should've done this a long time ago." She rested her finger on the tip of the blade. "But it was too much fun, watching you play the fool." She slowly strode toward me before she lowered the blade in front of my face, laying the tip on my nose. "And you thought you were invincible to the power of the Mother's voice." She swiped the blade away, nicking my cheek as she did so.

A snarl escaped before I could swallow it down.

"Silly, silly, boy," she crooned.

‘Choose us, Tamas, and you will transcend these petty words and shift beyond anyone's reach. You will become power incarnate, breathing life into the word revenge,' Carthius said.

I closed my eyes, shaking my head, feeling torn between longing and insanity. Inside, my beast roared to break free from the Mother's binds.

"All silly little boys must learn their lesson," Tressya continued, soul voice strumming the cords on my heart. Only now her taunts were fading to the background as a violent tremor wracked my body.

‘That is it, Tamas,' Carthius whispered. ‘Open to your strength, my friend. Stop cowering in your fear. You are worthy. You are the one. The only one to wield the power of the Etherweave. You know it in your soul. There is nothing that can stand in your way. Not even these pathetic little word games. Break. Free.'

My beast punched through my restraints and severed the bind of the Mother's voice as I launched upward. Then, before my eyes, Tressya transformed into the most magnificent beast with a thick coat of dark auburn fur, shimmering like dried blood in the starlight.

She had found her beast. This moment should have been profoundly glorious, but The Eone had stolen all my emotions—draining joy from my mind and heart—except one. Fury. Which they played like a master with his lute.

We faced off, rising to our full height with lethal claws extended and fangs bared in a snarl. But then I looked into her eyes and saw the same intense blue that had captivated me the first day we had met. In that moment, I saw her confusion and fear, and realized the Mother had lost control over Tressya's mind once she was in beast form.

‘Now, young Razohan. It is your time now. You have proved your strength. Come to us.'

I had believed my mark was a shield to protect us from our enemies, but there were too many lies, too much betrayal, and too many intent on severing what we had, determined to keep us apart.

The moment I lowered from my full height onto all fours, Tressya did too. I couldn't meet her eyes, couldn't even look at her face. Guilt permeated every pore, alongside a burning hatred; a hatred so pure it seared like a branding iron through my soul, directed entirely at Tressya.

In utter horror, I knew I'd succumbed to the Eone, to their strength of will. Hope, love, desire, none of it had been strong enough.

Aware she possessed the speed to keep pace with me, I leaped up, powering myself skyward with my beast's strength. Fleeing was all I could do to prevent a fight between us both. With the Eone's ability to wield their magic through me, Tressya didn't stand a chance.

Once clear of the canopy, I released the Razohan beast, transforming into the nightmare and ascending into the night sky.