AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 2
One Year Later
One of the most important aspects in forging metal, especially weapons, was having control. Over the forge, over the piece you worked on, over the material you used to craft it. If you didn’t have control, everything went awry, and you could kiss your sweet commission money—and if you were incredibly unlucky, some burned skin—goodbye.
It would then be ironic to admit that, in my twenty-six years of life, I’d had control—real control—for exactly sixteen of those years. Ten of the last eleven had been a horrific whirlwind that had resulted in me forging swords, daggers, and magical wards for anyone Lazarus had commanded and then, after I had escaped, anyone in New York who could afford to pay the prices my reputation demanded. As it turned out, Lazarus had boasted far and wide about my ability to forge nightsteel. I could thank Lazarus for my one and only source of income in the life of freedom I now had.
My fire magic, on the other hand, wasn’t exactly what I’d call “in control,” which seriously hurt as well as aided my forging business. But I’d gotten by okay so far, having only burnt myself and some products a few times. The ability to buy a workshop and the attached studio in cash was worth it. No one questioned anything when you bought it in cash. And Lazarus’s prideful boasting of his once blood-slave’s work had paid off.
I had a lot of customers, and those costumers had often had tons of money and a willingness to look away knowing I—or rather the entity inside me—had burnt Lazarus’s feeding community to the ground.
I lifted my current piece—a dagger with runes inscribed for my friend Willa—out of the forge and began working it into shape one last time. We’d reconnected a few weeks after she and I, and many other feeders, had escaped the flames of Lazarus’s empire burning. Sweat now beaded along my brow, not just from the work, but from the heat. Between hits with my hammer, I wiped the sweat away. My fire magic made forging so much easier, but it was still hard work.
“I’m personally a fan of the heat myself,”said a dark, wispy voice that coiled around my body.
I kept working as an excited shiver coursed through me. Mrak’s presence wasn’t new to me, but my body always reacted like it was. “Does that mean you’re from Hell?”
“One day, I will tell you everything.”The tendrils of his voice that’d been wrapped around me drifted away, replaced by my skin tingling in a sensual way.
“So you keep saying.” I tried not to let Mrak’s distractions bother me. As I did every day. But Mrak had very much enjoyed the arrangement we’d made, and by extension, the fact that he could talk to me or enjoy me at his leisure.
I couldn’t see Mrak. His form wasn’t and had never been corporeal. But his voice lingered, and he could touch me all the same. Sometimes, Mrak could form tendrils of shadow or smoke. It took much of his energy, or so he always said. Instead, he preferred to directly manipulate my body itself, creating sensations and talking directly into my mind.
“I will,”Mrak continued, his presence sliding along my skin in distracting but arousing ways.“When the time is right.”
I set down the hammer for a moment and wished he had eyes I could look into, if only to level him out. “Mrak, I’m trying to work. What do you want?”
Mrak’s presence slipped down my arms as if he were actually holding me.“All you’ve done since Lazarus was killed is work. Relax a little.”That feeling of hands on my arms slipped across my chest, as if he were holding my breasts from behind.
My body so easily relaxed against his touch—as it had every day since I’d accidentally summoned him and made a pact. Rescue for safety. Power for the promise of never being hurt again. It was the caring and the love I hadn’t expected. Or, if not love, at least intense lust. For someone so incorporeal, Mrak certainly lit my heart and body on fire.
“There you go,”came Mrak’s voice against my ear, and for a moment, I swore I could feel his breath caressing my skin. My body unfurled with warmth beneath his barely-there touch. Even a year after his presence had joined with mine, the intimacy of his touch still excited me.
I wasn’t sure if Mrak’s presence mixing with mine meant true possession, or if he was simply somehow anchored to me now. All I knew for certain was that Mrak was never far when he drifted away, even when he went quiet, and that he could probably read my thoughts—as well as bring me screaming over pleasurable cliffs.
I caught sight of the metal I’d been working getting cold. It was enough to snap me out of Mrak’s enticing trance. “I need to finish this commission by tonight.”
“Somewhere to be?”Mrak’s cool tone was enough to tell me he’d had other plans for me. He always had other plans, most of which involved pleasuring me. I wasn’t really a fan of the one-sidedness of this relationship, but without being able to always see him or touch him, there wasn’t much I could do but listen to him talk and appreciate him for how—and what—he was no matter how much I’d love to return the pleasurable favors.
I turned to the mirror hanging close by on the wall. Its frame had been one of the first things I’d made after escaping a vampire feeding community with Mrak’s help. I’d needed to turn ten years of trauma into something I could actually exorcise, or I’d fall under. So I’d turned my new fire magic and my anger intothis. Using the skills Lazarus had taught and exploited me for, and turning them into art.
It’d been one year since the day I’d made the pact with Mrak, and I still wasn’t entirely sure what he could and could not perceive outside of my presence. He seemed to know my thoughts and generally where I was and what was around me, but without knowing if he was actually possessing me or just sort of anchored to my existence, I couldn’t say for sure. Still, talking into a mirror as if he were my reflection made it easier to speak my mind.
“Yes, actually, I do have somewhere to be.” I held up the almost-completed dagger in my hands. “Willa needs this by tonight. She’ll be by soon to pick me up.”
“Willa can wait.”Mrak didn’t say it like an order, more like a suggestion punctuated with the sensation of fingers trailing sensually down my back and shoulders.
I bit my lip. “Mrak.”
“That doesn’t sound like a ‘no.’”
I swallowed hard and tried to come back to myself. Mrak’s advances were hard to ignore—mostly because there was nothing tangible of him to push away—but he’d never once crossed a line I’d drawn.
“What exactly is this aversion to me having fun?” I asked, staring into the mirror and trying to discern his form when it wasn’t there. I’d often wondered what he looked like over the past year. Like, what heactuallylooked like. I was pretty sure this shadowy, smoky humanoid visage that occasionally accompanied his presence wasn’t actually Mrak’s true form. But that, amongst other things, was something I didn’t know about him.
What Ididknow was that he had saved my life, and for that, I owed him a debt. Which was why I’d made a pact… and then developed feelings. It’d happened quickly, this care and attraction that’d bloomed. It had started because he’d saved me but had grown into something much more genuine.
“I don’t want that,”Mrak said—rather unconvincingly, if I did say so myself.
