Page 7 of The Song of the Void

He drowned in an endless sea of pain.

His eyes widened, and he shoved himself away from me. He stared, horrified, dark brows drawn together as he fought to recover from the shock of having someone on the outside touch the pain he internalized.

My breaths came in rushed waves. That agony I felt within him—I hadn’t felt anything like it before. Just one dip inside it had my legs weakening, my heart slamming into my ribs, my head throbbing. It wasn’t normal. Something was seriously wrong with him.

Once he recovered, he tightened his hands into fists, expression hardening like steel. “Don’t fucking touch me like that,” he snapped. “Now, do I need to throw you over my shoulder again?”

I could hardly focus on anything but the lingering memory of pain. “N-no, don’t.”

“Never thought the person I was trying to save would cause me this much trouble. Not even a Siren.” His gloved fingers wrapped around my wrist as he pulled me out of the alleyway, back into the flickering light of the lampposts that lined the main street.

I glared at the back of his head and dug my heels into the cobblestone to make it a little more difficult for him to drag me along. Warm wind tossed grains of sand from the surrounding desert against my cheek. With most of the city guards occupied with the pirates and putting out the fire that raged at the banquet, we didn’t come across a single one as he yanked me towards the outskirts of town. The houses and shops were eerily quiet and still. Curtains had been drawn across the windows, and the few civilians we passed by ducked their heads and didn’t even acknowledge us. It was as if the normally bustling, bright capital city of Arvensis had all already received word of the attack on the party tonight and were cowering in fear.

Lampposts weren’t even lit in the seedy neighborhood he dragged me through. We walked in silence until I just couldn’t take it anymore. I had too many questions burning on my tongue, starting with, “Who exactly is your employer?”

No answer. Not even a look behind him.

“Why do you think the Druinn general put this necklace on me?”

Still nothing. Asshole.

“This is your first time, isn’t it?”

That actually earned me an over the shoulder glare. He took a deep breath through his nose and tightened his free hand into a fist. “First time what?”

“Saving someone. You’re doing such a good job.”

He scoffed at my fake praise and jerked to a halt so suddenly that I ran into his back. “We're here.” Nameless Asshole pulled out a tarnished brass key and unlocked the dingy metal door we stopped before.

I threw a glance up and down the shabby, dimly lit street. This was the perfect place to be kidnapped and sold like a product instead of a person, but I’d already been through that once. What were the odds of it happening again?

Inside the door, a single lit torch halfway down the stairs brightened a cold, dark descent. I hesitated, but he shoved me by the shoulder and followed me like a haunting shadow down the stairs. Our footsteps echoed in the cramped tunnel of stone, each sound heralding a fresh wave of unease through my body. The distant drip of water somewhere off the ceiling wasn't comforting, and neither was the odd chill down here. I usually liked the cold, at least compared to the devastating heat that was this desert city, but this cold felt clinical.

I shivered.

He led me down a dark hallway and pushed open the door at the end with a screech of metal. The room inside was significantly brighter, with lamps strewn about all over the floor. Open crates lined the walls, filled to the brim with tools and spare metal parts. No bed, no wardrobe, absolutely nothing comfortable about this place. It felt like a dungeon. Or maybe…a laboratory. At the far end of the room, a standing lamp had been adjusted with a focusing piece of glass to provide a spotlight on a worktable littered with stacks of books, papers, and a small pile of platinum jewelry. Someone sat on the stool examining a ring that glittered silvery in the light, but he jumped and whipped his head around at the slam of the door and the resounding lock afterwards.

“Oh! Finally, you made it! What took so long, Rei?”

He was a teenage Human boy, and a hideously dressed one at that, in a collared shirt and a mud-brown vest made of scratchy-looking material. He wasn’t actually wearing burlap, was he? Perhaps I was too used to Nightwhisper’s wealthy clientèle, but he looked like a poor servant in serious need of some fashion assistance.

“The Druinns must have hired pirates to be their little distraction. They attacked the banquet. Had to fight my way out. Don’t worry about me, I’m perfectly fine,” Nameless Asshole said sarcastically, holding up the hand I had bitten. “She tried to take a chunk out of me, though. Like a baby shark.”

The boy had called him Rei, so I supposed that meant he wasn’t nameless anymore. Still an asshole, though. I looked with pride at the two little holes I had made in the nice leather of his glove. Should have bitten him harder and drawn blood.

The boy grabbed a crutch leaning against the worktable and used it to help himself stand with a bit of effort. He approached me slowly, a slight limp in his gait, favoring his left side. “Um…hi there,” he said, his voice the soft drawl of someone raised in one of the fringe villages, and not the well-educated, larger cities of Arvensis. “I’m Ash.”

He limped close enough to stick out his hand towards me in that silly Human custom I’d never understand. What did holding someone's hand and moving it up and down do to serve as an introduction? I narrowed my eyes as I studied him. This boy looked maybe…sixteen, seventeen? His pale, freckled face was clean-shaven, as if his frail body didn’t have the strength to grow a hair there. He wore a tiny gold loop earring identical to Rei’s. Enchanted Druinnic jewelry that allowed them to communicate, I realized. My eyes drew to the walking aid he used, made of fine wood etched with intricate carvings of swirling vines and leaves.

“Lost my left leg from the knee down a couple years ago,” the boy said. “Learned how to walk again using this, so even if I don’t need it, it’s kinda comfortin’ to me, you know?”

I forced myself to look away. What was wrong with me? Gawking at someone when I was so familiar with how uncomfortable it was to be the one being eyeballed. “Sorry. Wasn’t trying to stare.”

The boy, Ash, shrugged and ran his fingers through his halo of fluffy golden waves. “Oh, it’s fine.”

There was something adorable about his accent, and the way he said that. Fahn. I pursed my lips and crossed my arms over my chest, staring him down.

“Er, you have a name, ma’am?”