Mergle stuttered and garbled nonsensical words. His forehead rested against the bars as he gripped them and shook with frustration.
“Allow me.” Serwin patted his hands. “I have the strength to expend.”
Mergle slid down the bars until his butt hit the floor. He leaned against them with an exhausted sigh and dropped his hands in his lap. “Thank you. I have tried many times through my life here. Each and every one has taken a nip out of my life source.”
Jessandra reflected my shock at his gratitude. I squatted next to Serwin and looked Mergle over. He appeared older than last I saw him. Skin darker. Wrinkles deeper. Eyes a tad less lively. Then, he slumped to the floor.
I blipped into the cell and knelt over him. “Mergle!” I patted his face and gently shook his shoulders, but he didn’t wake. “What is happening to him?”
“The geis is taking its stipend.” Sadness and regret filled Serwin’s eyes. “Only he doesn’t have enough energy to pay it.”
“Then what? He stays comatose forever?”
“Normally, yes. Or until he gives himself over to become one with Faery.” Serwin gazed around the dungeon. “But here… I fear this place will sense his weakness and come for every last morsel of his life source.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“No. In Faery, your essence becomes one with all. You can be felt through all things and you never leave it. Over time, you are reborn to live it again in whatever vessel you choose. It is an eternal cycle.”
Although I tried to hide it, trepidation laced my words. “And here?”
He chose his words carefully. “This place was designed to devour and funnel the magic back to its creator.”
Jessandra knelt next to Serwin. “But it funnels it to Astaroth.”
“Therein lies our dilemma.”
They looked at me, and my gaze dropped to Mergle’s prone form propped up on my legs. “I don’t keep their essence for myself.” The thought never crossed my mind that I could.
“However, you feed it to the realm.”
“To keep us alive! It is what I’ve always done. It is my purpose.” The statement echoed through my mind, but I heard it in Mergle’s voice.
He encouraged me, molded me, and finally shoved me to put order to the chaos. He impaled the belief in my brain until it became my own. Now I shouldered a responsibility I desperately wished to unload. I became his tool, his weapon to yield when the chance arose. I scooped Mergle up and laid him on the cot. He was small, but mighty. The fear of losing him to the Hall of the Unnamed crept over me. I hadn’t felt it since my youth when he stopped withering.
“I am strong enough to feed the realm my power.”
“Yet, you haven’t withered. Not like them.”
“Neither has Jessandra. My power satisfies its insatiable hunger to a degree and filters back to me to recharge.”
They exchanged looks of confusion. Serwin’s held a hint of something else—something I felt when looking at Calista. Love, longing, sorrow. Living, breathing grief. He lifted a hand from his lap like he wanted to touch her but grabbed the bar instead.
“That we do not understand.”
“Just as we do not understand the language you share with Mergle,” I reminded him, bringing the conversation full circle.
Serwin forced the words out slowly and methodically. He didn’t have nearly the trouble Mergle had. “We are tongue-tied. The magic ensures we do not break our oath whether on purpose or by accident. No one can manipulate, trick, or coerce one under its thrall. We can communicate because we made a blood pact to the k—” Serwin choked and gasped for a breath— “eeper of our oath together.”
I wondered whom they made their pact with and how powerful they were. “That requires an immense amount of magic.”
Serwin relaxed against the bars. Perspiration beaded his forehead. “No more than you possess.”
I could see the fear in Jessandra’s eyes that I would experiment and subjugate her to test my theories. “Astaroth is different.”
The sardonic chuckle that erupted from Serwin stiffened my spine. “He’s no more special than any other I have crossed.”
His laughter died when he stared into my eyes. I could see the same eons in his that my brethren claimed to see within mine. Only his were the eons of his life. I didn’t understand how I could see it in his and not the others, but I wasn’t about to let this opportunity slip through my fingers.
