Page 2 of Reforging Onyx

Did he care about Shane? The thought of the wolf made white hot anger threaten to surge up within him. If the wolf hadn’t interrupted him, he could’ve been free.

Or a vampire.

He said nothing.

Dominic’s thumb brushed lightly over the bare skin of Onyx’s chest, making his skin prickle. “In light of your… choices yesterday, I’m making a modification to our agreement. You can’t try to kill me or yourself.”

It didn’t matter.

The agreement wasn’t going to continue anyway, not after what Onyx had done. Dominic would punish him, and they’d return to how things had been. Onyx would try to kill Dominic, and fail, and Dominic would rape and torture him and make those splintering cracks spread and spread until there was nothing left of him.

Dominic sighed softly, continuing when Onyx remained silent, “I thought things were better, Onyx. Weren’t they?”

The words caught him off guard, and he let out a choked, bitter half-laugh, half-sob. Dominic was so wrong. Things weren’t better. Onyx no longer had a reason to fight; he no longer had a reason to survive except to face day after day of… whatever this was going to become.

“Of course you thought so.” Onyx's body started to tremble in anticipation of everything going horribly wrong. This conversation was the precursor to Dominic further amending their agreement in a way that would hurt him.

Fuck, he wished he had been faster, that he’d cut deeper, that Shane had just left him to bleed out. If only something had gone differently, he wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Dominic made a soft sound of agreement. “I did think so. Books, games, music, free time. Weren’t these better? You’d been adjusting so well. What happened?”

What happened?

Wasn’t it obvious? Obviously not.

“There’s no way out,” Onyx found himself whispering. “It’s just… one day after another of being your fucking toy, trying to earn treats and shit that doesn’t really matter, with you touching me over and over again and expecting me to just be grateful to you because you were like… even a little decent.”

“If those things don’t matter, what does?” Dominic inquired.

Onyx didn’t even know how to answer the question, not to someone as utterly out of touch as Dominic Bancroft. Couldn’t he see the answer? Could he really be that oblivious?

“Freedom,” he finally choked out.

Not that he’d ever known freedom for himself. Not that he’d ever experience it in the future. But it held an allure to it that he wanted — badly — to experience.

“My magic,” he added, yearning for the feeling he’d had in his dream where he’d used it both so innocently and with such deadly efficiency. “I don’t want any of this. I don’t want you. So yeah. I’d rather die than belong to you.”

“Freedom,” Dominic repeated with a sigh. “That was never your birthright, Onyx. Not as a witch, not as a Rayne.” His thumb traced a light circle on Onyx’s chest. “Freedom is an illusion, a distant mirage that tempts and taunts and never delivers the fruits of its promises. The most that any might have is their choice of gilded cage or iron. Whether it was mine or another, you were always going to be caged.”

“Easy for you to say when you’re the one who has it,” Onyx said bitterly, pulling against the touch. He still didn’t understand why they were lying there with Dominic’s arms around him, but he didn’t necessarily want to bring it up and have to really confront it or what it meant. “And I didn’t have to be caged! I was only a kid when everything happened. I didn’t deserve any of this.”

Dominic’s arms tightened around Onyx, only relaxing once he’d stopped squirming. “That was a decision that neither you nor I had any hand in,” he stated. “And as a child, that was undoubtedly true. But after you joined the rebellion? You forged your own pathway there.” He sighed again. “I offer the gilded cage with as much freedom as I can provide, and that is still not enough.”

“Stop making it sound like I’m some ungrateful brat,” Onyx snapped, trying to sit up again, to put distance between himself and Dominic, only for the other witch’s arms to tighten around him even more.

No matter what he tried, he couldn’t get up or move away.

“You’re not the one who was tortured and… and…” Onyx couldn’t say the other word even then. It would make it too real, would send further cracks through his already fractured psyche. “You’re not the one who keeps having to give everything up. You’re not the one who has to keep putting up with things that make you uncomfortable, things you hate. You’re not—” He made a frustrated sound. “Just… don’t act like you’re some good person, because you aren’t, and we both know that.”

“I would never claim to be a good person, Onyx. I’m under no illusion of that being the case. I have no altruism in me, only ulterior motives. And my ulterior motive right now is to find out what we need to do to bring you back from the edge of the abyss, because it cannot have you.” Dominic took in a deep breath of Onyx’s hair, making Onyx shudder hard against the sensation of warm breath against his skin. “Your magic? I believe I know how to allow you that for a short period. I’ve been working on that these past days.”

Onyx went still, and for a moment, he stopped trying to free himself of Dominic’s grasp. But even the idea of getting access to his magic couldn’t override the pain and agitation. It was probably only a lie anyway, or something Dominic would tell him about only to deny it now.

“Why?” he asked, his voice suddenly fragile as he voiced a question that could have so many different meanings. “Why do you want me so bad? I’m just some stupid kid who made stupid decisions. I can’t even be a weapon. I can’t be anything. What do you want from me that you can’t get so much more easily from someone else? Why me? Why?” He blinked back tears.

So badly, he needed to know. He needed to understand.

Dominic’s arms remained tight around him as he spoke. “The first and greatest gift of the gods to humanity was fire. With fire, with the ember of creation, the world came into being. Civilization arose because of those embers. Those sparks of creation, of knowledge, of curiosity and the need to know ‘how’ and ‘why.’ From hand to hand, the embers have passed. Civilization to civilization: by conquer, by trade, by negotiation, they have spread. From father to son, mother to daughter, generation to generation.