IN FULL COLOUR - Dark Fantasy

Axel

We watched in horror as the sickening green liquid, slid into the delirious young king’s veins. Pam held the syringe with expert precision and did not tremble as she pulled the needle out of Coyne’s thigh. Her thick red hair was gathered on top of her head in a messy high ponytail, which had been tied up without the use of a mirror somewhere during the extraction and distilling of the poison. Even though it had been somewhat diluted, the mere thought of what it was and the nauseating green colour had my insides revolting.

She took a careful step back, while I took one forward. We needed Coyne. We needed his shadows out there in the forest to be our ears, our eyes and our claws.

Black swirls gathered and clustered together at the injection site, the darkened area seemingly pulsing in pure delight as the venom spread.

I sat down next to him on the bed and pulled him up into a sitting position. The young king was babbling incoherently, his eyes shifting onto imaginary things behind me, darting from one place to the next.

Jarryd coughed uncomfortably and for a second, we exchanged glances. When I turned my attention back to Coyne, the gathering swirls had stretched into a line, curving upward, over his chest, and up his neck.

I kept my hands gripped onto his shoulders, feeling his body shake underneath my fingers. It had been hours and still, the withdrawal continued.

Pam took another step back, setting the syringe onto a cupboard, without ever taking her eyes off Coyne. The blackened swirling mist underneath his skin crawled up the inside of his neck and assembled in his face, the bulk of it collecting around his brows, slithering into the white of his eyes and over his golden almond irises until no colour remained.

His body stilled. His eyes stopped darting and he let out an exhale. One that had the hair in the back of my neck standing up.

“Coyne?”

His pitch-black orbs flicked to me before his head turned in an almost animal-like movement to fully face me. Every inch of his eyes had gone as black as the night itself.

He showed no signs of emotion. The trembling had stopped, the rapid heart rate slowed to a rhythmic beat and the dark smoke under his skin started swirling again.

I kept staring at him in anticipation, waiting for him to strike. The beast inside of him stared back at me. Not a wolf, nor any other animal I recognized.

No, this was something else. Something I wasn’t familiar with and something truly frightening.

Finally, the blackness slowly faded from his orbs, changing them back to his normal warm glow and revealing the whites around them once again.

“Axel,” he replied and dipped his chin.

Behind me, Pamela fainted, and Jarryd caught her before she could hit the ground.

A crooked ghost smile tugged at the king’s lips, “are they in the forest?”

The look on his face was terrifying. Merciless. Cruel.

I nodded and again, I thanked my lucky stars he considered himself an ally to us.

In a movement so smooth and lethal, he stood up and strode out of the tiny house, stepping over Pam like she was a piece of furniture.

He clicked his fingers and three large Regmus beasts prowled to his side, rubbing against his legs like oversized domestic cats. “Well, Alpha, show me the way,” he said so gracefully, a shudder went down my spine.

Since he had been out for practically the entire ambush and evacuation, I had to explain everything that had happened to him first. After I stopped speaking, he stood motionless for a moment staring at the ground, frowning and then demanded to be taken to the iron gate. He wanted to see it for himself.

When we got there, the iron firmly locked in place, Beast was still sitting there on the cold hard ground, now in human form, staring into the shadows of the hallway as though Molly might come walking back to him any second.

My heart clenched at the sight. He was a fierce, brutal warrior. Never showed an ounce of remorse, or empathy, none, except for now. And in that moment, I realized it had all been an act. An act to push people away, make them scared of him, so they wouldn’t get too close. A way of protecting himself. His heart, which by the looks of things loved just as fiercely as he fought. A very dangerous, but well-hidden weakness

He was in pain. I knew that pain. Had felt it. Had lived with it as my only companion for years.

King Coyne stepped up to the iron, examining it, “we’ll get them back,” he said into the stillness of the passage, his voice travelling down the expanse of the corridor into the night which had fallen outside hours ago.

Beast didn’t look up. Didn’t even indicate that he had heard the king of Shadows and Whispers.

I turned, saying to Jarryd over my shoulder, “get someone to bring him clothes and something to eat.” Jarryd nodded and his eyes glazed over, just as Coyne’s eyes faded to black.

The Regmus, a few steps behind us, lowered their large bodies to the floor and angled their heads, listening.

Coyne’s lips were moving, his fingers twitching in the air, but he made no sound.

My eyes met with Jarryd’s but neither of us moved, breathed. We watched the king as he spoke into the shadows all around us.

“I can see them,” he finally said.

My heart stopped dead in my chest.

“Four women, shackled, bound and blindfolded.”

Beast looked up.

“They are alive.”

“Their condition?” I found myself asking.

“Alive,” Coyne repeated again, and I knew there must have been a reason he didn’t elaborate.

His eyes returned to their normal colour, the Regmus standing up again, “let’s go,” he said, looking between us.

“We need to end this before dawn.”

I swallowed hard and pressed my hands into my pockets to hide their trembling from my men. I wasn’t trembling in fear for myself, but at the way Coyne had said that the girls were alive and nothing more.

Gabrielle

Somewhere throughout the trek, I must have passed out; my body unable to endure the intensity of the burning and stinging in my back. I knew it was ruined because I could smell the thick metallic stench of blood and ripped flesh hanging all around me.

I couldn’t sit up. Couldn’t move. The pain was excruciating.

We must have stopped for the night because I heard the crackling of fire not too far away, as well as the murmuring of male voices. Tried as I might, I couldn’t hear or smell the other three women that were taken. I tried, but all I smelled was blood and the old fabric which covered my face.

Cold wind ripped at my exposed skin, and I managed to move my hands, hissing in pain as I searched for the front of my dress to tug it down over my bare legs.

I tried to link Axel, tried to reach out to him, but the bond had gone quiet. Either because we were too far away from each other, or something had happened to him.

I clammed my eyes shut tightly and tried to reach out to him again. And again.