And her name is…

Nyx knocks lightly on my door but I’ve been up for hours. I’m already dressed when I open the door and we go together down to breakfast. No one else is there, except Wulfric, and we take our seats while Nyx chastises me.

“Were you limping?”

I turn from her to my platter. “Maybe. -Don’t give me that look! I slipped in the shower and bonked it. It’ll get better on its own.”

I don’t look at her but I can practically hear the eye roll. “You’re more accident prone than Vera pruning thistles. What about your feet?”

“Well I only force myself to put shoes on when we’re going outside because it’s freezing, but I still can’t wear the heals Helion wants for the ball. My arches don’t like the bend and all the weight on my toes is excruciating.” I admit, and I’m sure of this because I had tried them again this morning before getting dressed in my pants and sweater.

Nyx gives me a sympathetic smile. “Tonight after dinner I’ll treat them again before you go to bed. That’ll give you the most time off them. Maybe we’ll do that every night this week before bed, see if we can’t get you more relief.”

I nod but Wulfric speaks before I can. “The ball?”

I’m surprised he’s speaking to us, but I’m more surprised he doesn’t know he’s here to escort me and Helion. I look over at him and he looks a mix of angry and confused.

“Kheliq’s ball? You know it, he probably had you design the security layout for it all,” I return.

“Of course he did, but why areyougoing?” He snips, bringing his hands together into one large white knuckled fist.

“To look for my friends. Ignacio said there was proof others were taken when I was and I can’t leave them there.” My voice is firm, and I stare at him because he might know who Kheliq has and I never thought to ask.

Helion had already confirmed there were humans, and it hadn’t seemed necessary to verify with another source. My mind flashes through the images of everyone I knew from the children to old people and I stuff down the thought of anything specific. I can’t think too much about it. I can’t let myself feel those feels here.

“You don’t remember.” His words feel like an ice pick in my chest because they’re said with so much dread.

“Remember… remember what?” I don’t want to ask and fear creeps into my voice as I try to stop myself and can’t.

He rises from his chair and comes around the table to me. He offers me his hand, never taking his eyes off me, and I wait.

“We should go somewhere to talk,” he insists.

Nyx is rubbing my knee and I feel her pop something back into place. “She can’t walk right now, this needs a few minutes.”

“Don’t you….” Before I can threaten him he’s picking me up and marching out of the room. “Put me down!” I demand.

“Don’t let her ruin that knee!” Nyx calls after us.

“Not helping Nyx!” I yell back but she blows me a kiss. “Seriously Wulfric, I don’t want to go anywhere with you.”

“I’m not going to hurt you little mouse, but you’re not going to want to hear this in front of anyone else when they come down.” He keeps walking up to my room, stopping in front of my door as I pull the key from my pocket, and he takes it to open the door. “Believe me, I don’t want to be the one to tell you this, but if it’ll keep you from going to this stupid party I’ll take the hit.”

He closes the door behind us and drops me on the bed. Then the pacing starts and he drags his hand through his hair. When he’s in front of me again he drops to his knees on the floor.

“What do you remember from the first month after he took you?” His question is wary.

I stuff down the lump in my throat. “Him interrupting my birthday party, he commanded his men to start killing people and setting fires… I was drugged and tied up. They took me to his kingdom on horseback but I was barely conscious through that. Then… nearly bleeding out in a prison cell after siphoning the energy from the wood.. The guards mopping up my blood as it soaked in and fixed some of the floor.”

His hands are on my legs, and he squeezes my thighs as his eyes seem to darken for a moment. “Anything else?” I shake my head and he sighs. “He did take others, four humans; a teen, two adults, and an old man. Kheliq was sure he could use them to force compliance from you, but it only made you angry. You snapped the necks of two guards the first day they started questioning. He had you restrained after that, and after the different beatings he had your friends take care of you and then each other. I… I wasn’t there. I think he knew I wouldn’t agree with killing an entire town to kidnap someone and he waited until I left to go looking for you…

“When I got back it had been going on for a month and Kheliq wasn’t very forth coming with information. It’s only been recently while questioning the guards mercilessly about your escape and what I know about you now that I figured out what he was looking for…”

“My friends,” I grit out. “What happened to my friends?”

I remember their faces now. Josh, Amilia, Wilhelm, and Gregory. The tears gather behind my eyes and threaten to fall with the answer I feel is coming. My mind is gathering up the collected memories from that month like a stack of papers that had been knocked to the floor. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to hear him say it, but I’m also not strong enough to look at the imaginary papers I’m unconsciously gathering.

“You were delirious when I got there, but you told me it was meant to be mutually assured destruction. You knew you couldn’t get them out. They weren’t healing like you, but you had been secretly healing them the whole time.. you were exhausted….”

“They were going to keep getting broken, and I wouldn’t be able to keep fixing them,” I whisper, knowing the tears will fall if I keep talking but now I can’t stop. “I couldn’t drain metal then, I couldn’t siphon from anything I wasn’t touching, and they were starving us. Amilia had thought she was pregnant when they took us… and when I healed her of that loss I had started trying to heal and break everything I could to get us out. We had no hope and none of us would leave any of the others behind. So we decided I would siphon from them, gently put them all to sleep, and then I would drain the energy from anything that I could touch until it killed me.”

I grit my teeth, my anger returning though tears are streaming down my face. “He wouldn’t even give us that! They caught on that we were doing something and stabbed me. I only lived because I was draining them so quickly I thought my bones might explode. Even as I was putting them to sleep they stabbed them too, not even able to let them pass peacefully. I had bled so much, but I had siphoned enough to kill my friends and live. Then they knocked me unconscious and left me in the cell with them for nearly two days” I look at Wulfric. “That’s when I decided I wouldn’t kill myself- not unless I could take that son of a bitch with me.”

My eyes feel like cold fires set in my skull and I’m nearly growling as I look through Wulfric to the image of Kheliq’s withered corpse in my future. I slow smile creeps across my face and I feel my fangs for the first time in what feels like forever. I feel hands squeeze my thighs and my hands find their way to rest on top of them. If they hurt me I will detach them from the arms that control them.

They squeeze me again and I refocus on Wulfric’s face, his brows are pinched together and a desperation I can’t assess is plain on his face. I hold his eyes as a thought settles like a falling feather. His dark eyes keep me grounded and I use them to focus on this thought as it tries to evade me. It’s right there, right in the open but it’s like I can’t focus and I need help.

“What is it?” Wulfric asks, and I try to ignore who he is and focus on how he can help me.

“Helion wouldn’t lie to me,” I say, but it feels like I’m forcing each word out.

He squeezes my legs again. “Okay?”

“He told me he made contact with someone in Kheliq’s court.. I assumed it was you.. he said..” I pause and swallow. “He never confirmedmyhumans were alive, just that he made sure Kheliq wouldn’t kill any humans this month before the party when I could get in… but I read in the letter…”

Now the letter I saw seems fuzzy, like I never actually saw it and only imagined it being there. I can feel the question there.Was there a letter?I don’t remember the exact words, but I’m good with remembering things like that. I don’t forget things of importance like this.

“I can’t remember the letter,” I admit.

I feel a sort of *snap* in my head and I scream. I don’t mean to, but it hurts so much that I wonder how I’m still upright. It’s only after my screaming has stopped that I realize I’d closed my eyes and I open them to meet a much more pain expression than my own.

“Helion’s lied to me,” I say softly.

He nods slowly, empathetically, and reaches to cup my cheek. “Yes.”

“He said he wouldn’t… and Ibelievedhim. Why would I believe him? I don’t believe anyone, I can’t…”

I drift off but Wulfric starts up like he knows real answers are what I need. “I suspect he has an affinity like Ignacio’s. The trait is already incredibly rare, so to have two in the same bloodline is… surprising. He likely hid it because people wouldn’t want a king who could make them believe whatever he wants and he wanted the crown. I suspected it when I got here but I couldn’t prove it, not that…”

“Not that I would have believed you anyway,” I finish for him. “You’re right, I wouldn’t have believed you, but it’s so obvious now... I never believed him when..” I stop. That thought would be better kept to myself.

“When what?” He urges but I shake my head. “Are you okay? Do you need to siphon? You can take it from me. I saw how fighting Ignacio’s wore you out, I can only imagine how breaking Helion’s felt.”

He sounds caring, and I forget that he doesn’t know I was trying to use him.Helion. There’s so much I want to ask him about when I escaped, and what happened after.Lied. This seems like the perfect moment for all of that, but this time my anger is for someone else.He lied!

“I want to kill him,” I admit, seething in the rage that builds as I think about all the times he’s said my name or called me darling. “He is planning something and I want to know his end game.”

Wulfric smirks at me. “There you are.” I move to stand but he keeps his hands in my legs, still smiling. “I promised Nyx I wouldn’t let you ruin the mending she did, so where are you stomping off to?”

I glare. “To find Tiago so I can see Helion. He’s still at his house and I’m not waiting for him to waste another of my days thinking about this.”

He remains firm. I don’t like that answer.

When I siphon in a way that I would consider ‘correct’, I pull the energy steadily and evenly through the form. Any living form I can siphon from wants to maintain an even level of energy everywhere and will work to maintain that even distribution. Taking the energy too quickly means it comes from the siphoning point first, leaving that area near empty while energy from the other area are pulled through it. If I was pulling energy through a person like this, it would be increasingly painful starting out like pins and needles and moving into a hypothermic feeling. When I siphon correctly it comes like exhaustion and could be peaceful. It’s when I rush my craft that it hurts.

I move to grab his thigh and yank a piece of energy to cause his leg to buckle. It likely feels like the whole leg has gone suddenly to sleep and I’m able to pull away from him as he goes down. I’m skipping off to the door as he groans out my name, a certain joy filling me with besting him.

“Feel free to say my name like that again. I mind it less when you sound like you’re in anguish,” I coo, closing my door quickly behind me and moving into the hallway to search for Tiago.