A Chill in the Flame (Villains #1)

Six

Six

That Night

August’s eyes bulged like those of a fish. Ophir’s hope for rescue had been struck down the moment it arrived. His hands relinquished his weapon and it clanged to the polished floor with a sinking, metallic sound. His large, calloused hands went to meet the shape that protruded from his chest. Ophir stared in horror at the blood-soaked steel that pierced his armor and severed lungs, vital meats, and bones in one sickening puncture. The blood hadn’t blotted on his front as it might have if he had been wearing a tunic, but instead a small, horrible waterfall of sticky crimson began to pour from the base of his breastplate as his life dripped out to his feet.

Ophir cried his name in anguish. She reached for him through the deep well of shock and horror. The man who’d stuck him yanked his sword out with a swift jerk, sending August to his knees. The wet, garbled sound of death muted his words as he looked at Ophir.

“Save her,” he said before he collapsed to the ground.

She winced as she braced herself for the assailant to attack, but the gruff cries of new bodies stole his attention. Ophir whipped her head to see if anyone was advancing on her, but the tangle of limbs and swords and masks paid her no mind.

August must have been right on her heels, as he’d burst into the room moments after Ophir’s arrival. She hadn’t seen him at the party. She scarcely saw him now, even as he stood before her. She struggled to understand wave after wave of horror as they crested and broke, drowning her in one impossible horror after the next.

His rallying warrior’s shouts had still contained hope. Perhaps he’d hoped Caris’s bright, blue eyes still retained a spark of life, a speck of recognition, a moment of hope as he’d come to save her.

His last choked plea had been a command to help her sister, and Ophir would die trying.

Ophir begged the fire to answer her cries, but the drug in her system pressed down on her. She held her hands out before her and willed her power toward the men, watching her weakened flame sizzle and spark as she crumpled to her knees.

“Please,” she pleaded with her flame. “Please.”

When it did not answer, she began to drag herself across the room toward her sister’s exposed body. Shreds of rosy fabric still clung to the place around her waist where her dress had been indecently ripped down the middle. Her veil was nowhere to be seen, revealing her blank, unseeing face to the room. Caris’s fair skin was marred with signs of restraint and struggle. Ropes had bound her wrists and ankles to the bed. There was something strange on Caris. Something foreign and terrible and unknowable.

“Caris?” Ophir blinked at the slick, odd twists of reds and purples and browns and blues that piled atop her sister. Caris stared back soundlessly, unmoving as the odd, wet shapes remained.

Ophir wanted to scream, but the involuntary sounds gagged her, suffocating her.

There were far too many men in the room. The space was littered with so many bodies. August had taken several down—the carnage of his fight staining the floor with liquid pools of crimson before he’d fallen. Ophir hadn’t been looking for movement behind or around her; she could only see her bound, mutilated sister and the fallen guard who’d been her only hope of their escape. Wait, how many had fallen? How long had Ophir been on her knees? Time swam, intermingling with the blood and guts of infinite nothingness.

Hands yanked her suddenly.

With no warning, Aemon latched on to Ophir by the ankles, dragging her backward. She yelped as rough hands yanked her further from the bed onto the floor, smearing her through the lakes of blood. She hadn’t heard or seen him enter the room in the commotion. Her eyes had been fixed on her sister, her eyes and ears deadened by the gore around her. She cried out again in protest, kicking and twisting as she tried to crawl. Ophir’s hands slipped on the floor as she grasped toward Caris, desperate to reach her sister. Ophir’s black dress slid against the marble floor as the angry man grabbed at her gown. His pretty face was twisted in horrible delight as he flipped her onto her back to look at him.

“You’re not going anywhere, princess” came his bloodthirsty growl.

Ophir called to her fire again, but no flame would answer. She tried to scream, but no sound emerged. Aemon’s hands were at her bodice, gripping at a knife and tearing her breasts free with the aid of his dagger, when all of a sudden, he stilled. He’d gone from cutting to frozen in the span of a second as an odd, high ringing sound filled the room. A dark line began to spread across Aemon’s throat, and with glacial slowness, his head slipped from where it had perched atop his neck. His body collapsed down onto Ophir, crushing her under his weight.

Now the screams found her, ripping from her throat in a sick, feral sound.

The stranger who had tried to get her out of the manor was holding a strange, curved sword drenched in Aemon’s blood. The hilt appeared to be made from bone itself. He didn’t have time to stop and help her as his blade was swinging once more at another attacker in the room, allowing Ophir the time she needed to push Aemon off of her and close the space to where Caris was tied to the bed. She grabbed her sister, and she could hear the stranger shouting above the noise to stop.

Why would she stop? She needed to free Caris. She needed to save her.

She reached for the ropes that bound Caris, still not understanding the bizarre shapes and textures and colors atop her sister’s bare torso. Her fingers were too thick and heavy and stupid from the drug to work the knots that bound the eldest princess. She abandoned the restraints and grabbed her sister’s body.

She began to pull Caris against her as the stranger’s commands grew louder. He was yelling for her to let go—commanding her to step away.

She clutched her sister to her tightly as she felt something terrifying, horrible, and liquid.

A cloud seemed to descend upon her, filling her mind with a thick, blinding agent and her lungs with smoky rage. She couldn’t understand what she was feeling. She refused to believe the evidence before her. She pulled away from her embrace to touch the strange substance on her sister’s body. Her hands were not meeting solid flesh. There was a smooth, terrible squish against rope-like shapes and soft, circular meats that had been exposed from within the elder princess. Ophir pulled up her crimson-colored hand as she finally understood the blank glaze of Caris’s sapphire eyes.

She froze, staring at the blood on her hands.

The stranger had her over his shoulder in a swift, sweeping motion. The world bobbed as he turned and ran. She was numb. She stared after the carnage in the room as they sprinted from it, leaving her sister’s disemboweled, lifeless corpse behind, along with August, Aemon, and the demons who had worn masks of flesh and blood.

Organs. Caris’s organs had not been inside of her body as they should. Ophir had seen the smooth tissues and vermillion cells and slippery evidence of something so evil, so foul and unholy, that her brain had been unwilling to comprehend the sight.

The party had scattered, guests screaming and sprinting from the premises once the battle had spilled from the bedroom into the hall. Tables were overturned, drinks shattered as pitchers and glasses and lights and mirrors and every manner of thing toppled to the ground in the desperate need to escape. Naked bodies sprinted across the yard of the estate toward the city, breasts and buttocks and skin exposed against the elements of the night as they were consumed with the sole purpose of survival.

“My sister,” Ophir mumbled into the stranger’s shoulder as they ran from the building to where the horses were tethered.

The masked man had a small cloak in his saddle bag and wrapped it around her, both for the shock and for the havoc Aemon had wreaked on her bodice. Between the dissociative state and the sedatives in her system, Ophir wouldn’t be able to sit on a saddle. The stranger mounted his midnight-colored horse and tucked her against him, urging the steed into a trot, then a canter as they rushed from the estate.

The man remained silent as he held her tightly against him. He asked nothing yet seemed to know precisely where to go. She wasn’t sure how much time passed on horseback before they arrived at the castle, but the man was dismounting and making his horse promise to stay put before she realized they’d arrived. He scooped Ophir off the saddle and continued to hold her as he carried her in through a side door.

She should ask questions. She should demand to know how she knew he was a princess, or even more alarming, how he’d learned the castle’s hidden entrances and exits. She should be worried. She should feel something, anything. But she didn’t.

The stranger ducked into the first alcove he could find. He laid Ophir on a chaise before he spoke. “Are you hurt?”

She looked down at the blood on her hands and then back at him vacantly.

“Were you cut? Do you need a healer?”

Ophir tried to shake her head but had no idea whether or not she’d been hurt. She didn’t know anything. She stared with unseeing eyes as he quickly and roughly assessed her to ensure she hadn’t been punctured. He didn’t touch her—simply ensured that the blood that soaked her did not belong to her.

She did not speak, and he did not say goodbye. The man disappeared like a dark phantom in the night.

Ophir didn’t lie there for long.

She stood to go look for her sister. She needed to find Caris. She needed to help her. She needed to find a healer. She needed the royal guard, the constabulary, the knights. She needed…

Ophir stumbled to a halt as she realized the full weight of what she had seen. Understanding hit her as brutally as though she’d been struck in the back of the head with a brick.

Her feet did not need to find the healer’s hall. She didn’t need to return to Bernith’s manor. She didn’t need anything, because Caris no longer lived. She’d taken her sister to a party, and it had gotten her killed. She was the reason her sister was dead.

A sickening curl—that of a poisonous weed growing roots and vines and branches—began to grow from her belly. The wicked plant twisted within her for two days until it had reached her mind. While the castle planned the firstborn sister’s funeral, Ophir clung to one thought, and one thought alone: she wanted to join Caris. The noxious plant with its twigs and thorns and barns told her that the only thing she could do was to leave. While others slept, she spent two nights awake, picturing the noxious weed and its shadows upon the ceiling until that wicked curl within her brought her to the beach. Its roots urged her onto the beach, aching within her as she stared at the water. It knotted more deeply inside of her, urging her to make the pain go away. It told her that everything could be washed away if she stepped into the waves. The memory of Caris, the sight of her lifeless eyes, the pain and guilt and shame of what she’d done could drown with her among the waves.

She removed her shift and let the wind carry the thin fabric to the black waters before she knew what she was doing. She marveled instead at how warm the waters were. Almost as warm as if she’d waded into Caris’s blood.