1
The sound of her heart beating rapidly in her chest rings in my ears—the sound of her heartbreaking. Her doe-like eyes are wide and full of fear as she clings to me, begging me to spare her.
“Nyk, please,” Barbi whispers, her voice filled with anguish.
I steel myself against the onslaught of emotions the sight of her elicits within me.
She is nothing but a means to an end. Remember that, Nykander!
From the beginning, she was only supposed to be one stop in my long road of revenge.
But the ache in my heart says otherwise.I may have put on the act of a lifetime to make her fall for me truly and utterly, but once more, I have made miscalculations.
Despite striving to keep myself distant, my act may have become my reality.
I should not like her. I should not care about her. I should not even want to look at her.
Yet this is yet another broken vow woven into the string of lies I have told myself.
When Barbi had arrived at the palace of Kiya, I thought this was my chance to travel to another, richer world since I had already depleted Akkaya’s resources. After so many failed experiments, I thought I was getting closer to crafting a new magical body to contain Moe’s essence. But with the energy of hundreds of thousands of souls still missing, I knew I had to find another world to pillage. The only other option was finding the mythical artifact, but I had long given up hope for it. After searching for thousands of years, chasing rumors and phantasms, I had to admit that my only chance at getting Moe back was good old-fashioned murder.
The only thing I’m good at these days.
Moe would hate me for it. But she could direct her anger towards me while being in my arms. Just hearing the sound of her voice, no matter how angry, would trump everything.
Barbi’s arrival had been fortuitous, especially as she’d talked about the vast population of Anthropa. But Damien had gone and ruined our chances with his idiotic brain. Sometimes I wonder why I chosehimspecifically. He was not the brightest male, nor was he the most obedient—as evidenced by his latest foul-up—but he was entertaining enough that I let it slide.
Thousands of years of doing the same old thing—killing, torturing, harvesting souls—tend to get boring. Of course, there’s the occasional coup, or revolution—which I may or may not have incited. But even that got boring after doing it for the thousandth time. Damien at least provided some entertainmentwithhis idiocy.
Perhaps I should have killed him off eons ago.
But every time I was on the verge of doing so, he did something amusing and I put it off.
Alas, after he scared Barbi into running away, I had to change tactics.
I managed to come up with a plan that would get Barbi to trust me enough to take me to her world—after all, she needed to voluntarily invite me there in order for me to be able to cross over to Anthropa and stay there indefinitely.
To my dismay, she proved to be far more entertaining than that rat Damien ever was. Even her inability to shut up was oddly endearing. But where I only sought to control her long enough to get an invitation to Anthropa, I ended up getting hooked on her worse than an Aperiot on Zantrax.
It did not hurt that she was remarkably similar to Moe in all ways, from her appearance to her cheerful disposition and her unmatched kindness.
The first time I laid eyes on her, I was shocked at how much she looked like Moe. But I shrugged it off and put it down to chance—despite the fact that I couldn’t help myself from sneaking look after look. In that, I never lied to her. She isbeautiful. But that should have been my first sign that I was going off the rails since I have never found another female beautiful in seven thousand long years. Maybe the madness I have heard affects ancient Sons of Tenebreis is true after all, and I have finally succumbed to it.
Even with that dangerous predisposition hanging over my head, I kept to my plan. I resolved to use her, no matter how much I was drawn to her. I should have known from the start that there was something special about her. The moment her blood hit my tongue marked the beginning of an addiction. It was the sweetest, most potent taste, and one I hadn’t experienced before.
Except…with Moe.
That should have been my second sign.
And yet, I had never been able to fully mate Moe. No matter how much I begged the fates, it never happened.
To find myself bound to Barbi was a shock, but it also proved to be a pivotal moment in my planning. Mayhap the fates are not so vicious, since they gave me as a mate the daughter of Lispera herself—one of the greatest Supremes to ever grace this universe. During her heyday, her power was so great that the Tartareian army’s morale was at an all-time low. Her name alone could instill terror into soldiers. The rumors had swirled around her great powers as they had about her unique beauty, making her more myth than person.
The moment the bonding mark appeared on my chest, my strategy changed.
When I was gathering enough energy to craft a new body for Moe, I’d heard rumors about a forbidden soul swapping technique that allows one person’s essence to lay claim to another’s body. It is rather like the demonic possession low level demons use, but the main difference is that while demons have to cohabit with their host’s soul, the soul swapping only allows for one soul to exist in one body at a time.
Despite it being an appealing solution, I did not seehowI could find someone worthy of Moe’s essence. And just how I would have needed the power of tens if not hundreds of thousands of souls to make her a new body, her vessel would have also needed that type of power to withstand the soul-swap.
