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The baron didn’t answer him, and instead watched warily. It was rare he traveled anywhere alone, and the fact that he did not have Alaric at his side sent alarm through the baron. His father hadn’t been expected to return for two more days.
When the boy glanced down at himself again, the blackness had climbed to his elbows and seemed to be working its way up to his neck. A hollow ache in his stomach felt like something clawing itself out of a hole, scraping the inside of him. “What is happening to me? What is this?”
“You are becoming.”
“Becoming what?” he dared to ask, not truly wanting to hear his father’s response.
With a skyward glance he looked around, before his gaze landed back on the baron. “This world, it feeds off your vitaeilem. The moment you step inside of it, do you not sense something consuming you? A feeling of gnawing in your belly?”
Hehadfelt that. A disturbing sensation of teeth and nails deep inside his gut. He rested his hand there, the panic rising up in his throat.
The sound of crackling branches drew his attention toward the trees, where shadows moved in a way that seemed unnatural. As if many objects were casting them, yet there was nothing but trees when he glanced around. “You do not change in this world?”
“I change at will. You see, I’ve learned how to control the hunger which feeds on me. I’ve learned how to keep it from consuming me.”
“How?”
Instead of answering, he smiled and crossed his hands behind his back, pacing between the two trees ahead. “Why have you not tried to kill me yet?”
“You’re my father.”
“And that means so very much to you. I’m touched.”
The blackness spread farther than before, over his arms and he could feel the tingly sensation at his neck. Dread stirred a cold sensation in his chest. “Am I dying? Withering like the forest?”
A loud screeching echoed through the trees, and the baron turned around, eyes trailing over the ghost-white tree trunks for what could have made such an awful sound.
His father’s chuckle sent a shudder of fear down his spine. “You will not perish here, because my blood runs through you. The blood of Letifer. I cursed him, and in turn, he cursed me. And you. We are one of few who can walk this plane freely without beinginfectedby what lives here.”
Still searching for the source of the sound he’d heard, he asked, “What lives here?”
“Would you like to see?”
The ruckus of ferocious barks and snarls echoed behind the boy, and he twisted to find all three of his dogs bounding through the forest, toward him. Dread sank to the pit of his stomach. For months, he’d tried to keep the dogs away from his father, who he feared would destroy them. When they reached the baron, they stood at either side of him, guarding him. Cerberus paced in front of him in a way that reminded him of a lion guarding its pride.
Lord Praecepsia’s brows winged up. “And what is this? You’ve found yourself a pack of guardians. How lovely.”
“They do not belong to me.”
“It seems they beg to differ.”
The screeching echoed again, and the dogs turned their attention from the boy’s father to the woods, seeming to take a sudden interest in it.
“Stay, boy,” I whispered to Cerberus. “Stay.”
Whining, the dog sat back on its haunches.
The gnawing sensation in the baron’s belly intensified, and he placed his hand there, trying to settle the strange feeling that’d come over him.
“It craves, even if you don’t want it to.” His father’s voice had grown distant to the thoughts inside his head. Horrible thoughts.
As if manifesting themselves, he glanced to the side to see Syrisa standing there, her long, blonde hair draped over bare shoulders, as her thin gown clung to her full breasts.
She isn’t real, he told himself.Not real. Yet, he could feel her phantom hands on him, as if she stood beside him, stroking him. Agony stabbed his belly, and the baron fell to his knees, grimacing as it moved through him. The dogs shifted around him and whined, clearly nervous. His groin throbbed as the ghostly stroking sensation heightened.
“Tell me that you do not find gratification in pain,” his father kept on, still standing off from him and watching him writhe in pain. “Tell me you didn’t enjoy when Syrisa put her hands on you.”
A burst of anger exploded inside of him. “No! Do not speak another word!”
