AllFreeNovel
Share Us
One fell swoop that was painless. For a split moment I could not register that it had happened as my hands fumbled to discover the truth.
Red. The tips of my fingers were red. Confusion spread through me for a moment, but soon melted away. My mouth parted and I took a breath, gurgling as blood popped like bubbles deep in my throat.
A spray of red splashed across Mother’s unblinking, wide stare. That one tear no longer the only thing wetting her face.
But before I could feel the warmth of blood spreading down my body, I was overcome with a chilled, soundless darkness. My eyes met Marius’s for a moment. I smiled.
Then nothing.
Just the sweet, calm, uncontrollable lullaby of death greeted me.
30
Marius
My body was a prison of agony. Hot, stabbing hunger gripped a hold of my gut and twisted. The pain almost knocked the wind from my lungs, buckled my knees, made my world spin, gripping its sharp talons into my stomach with relentless demand. Yet the feeling was no more painful than the itching that began to spread across my skin. A fire, far greater than what Jak had not long wielded, burned away at me, brought on by the skimming of dawn that washed over the world.
I did not run for cover, not as I watched the river of red spread down his neck, bathing his chest until the dirtied, cream shirt was stained beyond repair. How the colour of life drained from his face, his features relaxing as though he fell into sleep with his wide eyes left open.
So this was what it was like. Death. Inconsolable death, something I had wished upon myself more times than I could count. Usually, when my Claim passed by my doing, I was still in the dissociation brought on by the curse. But Jak had done it, kept me from feeding until daybreak. I had come to hold him in my arms, my teeth grazing his soft, welcoming neck. It was a harsh yanking feeling that felt as though I had woken from a nightmare, gasping for breath as a newborn would.
Jak — despite successfully breaking the curse — had gifted me with a new curse. To watch as he died before me. No longer blessed with being unaware. Detached.
I did not blink. Refused to look away for a moment as the light drained from his beautiful eyes. Eyes I had looked deeply into as I held him. How they would gleam from within when he caught glimpses at me, or spoke on topics he adored. Eyes that I had made weep. Now the bright colouring of blue seemed to fade away to a pale grey, a coating of nothingness passing over them as his stare was lost to me.
One moment he was there, eyes pleading with my own through the windows to his soul. Then like a flame on a candle he was gone. Snuffed out.
“Jak.” I registered the lyrics of his name. Did I speak it? Did someone else dare say it aloud?
I waited for him to register the call and respond. To lift his beautiful, soft-angled face with that smile, the one which lifted from the left corner of his mouth more than the right. The smile that creased three lines beside each of his eyes. How it peaked his brow in an expression that screamed mischief.
I registered nothing but him. Watching his death stilled the hunger that scratched across my consciousness. It nullified the pang of hunger. Like the inside of a shell, my breathing echoed throughout my ears, silencing anything else around me.
It did not last, this peaceful moment as I watched death take him.
My own pain intensified as the sun finally threatened to break the curve of the earth.
Wait. I willed the morning to listen, my shadows slipping away from me as the light joined the funeral.Please, wait.
She spoke, the woman whose greedy grip held onto Jak, the knife still in her hand, dripping blood across the ground. “Come and fetchhim.” Her arm loosened around him. My Jak. She spoke again, but I did not register, not over the roaring anger that beat through me.
The noise of his blood dripping across the ground was terrible. Alluring and deadly. My eyes flicked to it, mouth parting, as I watched each splash.
“Jak.” His name again, this time I felt the tug of my lips as I finished speaking. Shouting. I was shouting.
The woman smiled and released her hold on him. One push and he was no longer held upright. His body collapsed beneath him. He fell. I moved.
In a blink he was in my arms. All I could register was his touch, as cold as mine, as blood raced rivers across my torn, charred jacket. I lowered his stiff body to the ground, my hand carefully cupping the back of his head. Someone was crying. Was it me?
I barely felt the growing discomfort anymore, not as I lay him down. All I could focus on was him. Jak. His blood. How it never seemed to stop from pumping out the jagged slice across his neck. I reached my finger for it, fighting the urge to pop a digit in my mouth.
Then a hand reached for my shoulder. A nailed finger, tapping for my attention.
I turned, eyes narrowing against the sudden glare of light. Then the person’s body moved in view of the growing dawn and I saw her smile. Her thin lips parted, revealing the line of perfect white teeth behind them.
“Being locked away all these years… I feel that it is only just I let you watch the sunrise in peace. See it in its glory and know that you will meet my pathetic son in whatever hellscape you visit in the afterlife.”
I registered the murmuring of the group of cloaked figures behind her. And Katharine. Sweet, young Katharine whose scent screamed of fear and panic. She was splayed across the ground, expression a jagged slice of anger and sadness. Her round eyes wet, her lips turned in a snarl.
