A Soul to Embrace (Duskwalker Brides #8)

Chapter 8

I keep remembering this girl, Jabez thought, as his eyes slowly cracked open to muted light. Midday had arrived, and he was safely protected from its rays.

Lying on his side with his back against the wall for protection, he took in the curled-up lump next to him. His chuckle was quiet so as to not disturb his companion of nearly two months now.

Jabez didn’t know if she thought she was being sneaky, but each dawn that they lay down to sleep, Zylah kept inching towards him. Any closer now, and she’d be touching him.

He preferred her to not lie so closely, as he didn’t wish to incite any affection on her side. However, he was also deeply aware that this was likely a Mavka longing. Merikh, the bear-skulled Mavka, had also chosen to sleep within reaching distance when they’d once been friends.

Which, at first, annoyed Jabez, as he was a deeply untrusting individual. It’d taken him a long time to learn that Merikh had two reasons for doing this. He’d claimed it was for Jabez’s ultimate protection, as, at the time, he’d needed someone to watch his back in his own castle. But deep down inside, the male Mavka had just longed to be near his only companion.

As much as Jabez had growled at Zylah for doing it at first, he eventually accepted it as he did many, many decades ago. She sought warmth in order to erase her loneliness... like a kitten with its littermates, or a pack of wolves hunkering down for the night.

That was just his assumption, though.

At least she doesn’t have quills to stab me with, he thought fondly, as he quietly shuffled to his back.

Staring up at the rocky ceiling of the cave, he let his mind wander. Every time he blinked, he was met with images of someone from the past.

The face of a small child; a little Elven girl. Someone he’d forgotten and was only beginning to piece together why she was returning to him. It’d been centuries since he’d seen her, after all.

Her face had been round, cute, freckled, and always smiling in his direction. Her big brown eyes looked at him with adoring awe, while white corkscrew hair fluttered around her head. If her long hair wasn’t neatly braided into protective styles, it was often messy from play, while regularly sporting a purple leaf or two.

Jabez remembered delicately pulling leaves from her hair before patting over the top of it gingerly.

Her face came to him in different memories. Sometimes she was sitting across a table from him, pretending he was a guest at some fancy restaurant as she fed him different sweets. Other times, she was next to him as he tutored her in classes she was failing in.

Then there were the occasional times where she’d be hovering a mere inch from his nose to wake him in the morning. Or she’d be behind him as he sat on a hospital bed, brushing his long hair with as much care as he took in removing leaves from hers.

Did... I have a sister? It was a question he’d begun asking himself only recently.

His time as a child had grown fuzzy after he fled to Earth. The scar on the back of his head throbbed in answer, and he’d long ago realised his memories may be missing pieces.

But he did know the truth; his anger had been real. It had been justified. His hatred had bred from his time in captivity, and from the way his own people had turned their backs on him.

His mother had been a crazed scientist, nosediving into chaotic experiments under the guise of progress. She’d wanted to help her people, even if it was against the order of the council. A radical woman willing to do anything and everything to get to a solution, even if it put her own life in danger.

Even if it meant... his father had no say in his creation, no consent. Jabez had always hated that. He’d despised that he’d never met his father, and neither had his mother because he’d been nothing but a corpse his mother had poked and prodded... and stolen from.

Just as Jabez was poked and prodded.

It was only in the reminder of this little girl’s face that he remembered it hadn’t always been done to experiment on him. No, he was beginning to remember being rather sickly as a child. He remembered being hungry, despite always having food. He remembered feeling malnourished and weak, even though he was a healthy weight and taller than his classmates.

What he didn’t understand was why his last encounter with Merikh was the reason for these memories resurfacing. Merikh had nothing to do with that part of his past. Actually, it was long before the Witch Owl had ever been born, and Weldir had still been trapped within his own domain.

But there had been a light scent clinging to Merikh’s fur. It’d smelt so familiar, and yet so distant. He still couldn’t place who it belonged to, and it nagged at the back of his mind like a constant ache.

His musings darkened. At every turn, he tried to delve deeper into the fog of his memories.

To why he was here, and how he got himself here. Not just in this cave with Zylah, but into this very realm.

A maelstrom of chaotic events shaped his life path. Many were his own fault, and most of those were shadowed by the fact that he couldn’t help it.

At a mere eleven years old, he’d been... suffering . He’d done many things he’d regretted then, and even now.

As much as his mother had tried to pamper him, the truth of his birthing was revealed to him at a young age. He was different, he’d always known he was different, and it was impossible to hide the truth. He’d been the only one with claws, fangs, horns, and red eyes. It hadn’t mattered that everything else about him appeared the same as his fellow Elysians.

He was part Demon.

The people had accepted him, but his mother couldn’t shelter him from their untrusting gazes. A select few had even looked upon him with disdain, as if he was an unwelcomed sight.

In the end, it was his fellow classmates who had broken him.

Jabez had been the only one of his kind. Not just within his school, but any school. In no corner of the city had anyone looked like him, acted like him, or shared his Demon traits. He’d been living as an outcast, even if his home had been warm and loving.

His eyes narrowed at the ceiling, both as a glare and a way to see deeper into the haze of a memory that had always been a blur. The day where he’d snapped.

A day he regretted, as it was what initiated the horrible life he’d thrust upon himself.

He’d killed an Elysian child, although he himself had been the same age. He’d never been able to forgive himself. No matter that it had been a bully who hated Jabez because he’d been born a half-Demon and looked and appeared different. No matter that the bully and his friends had tied him up by his horns at lunch while they attempted to rip out a few of Jabez’s newly growing fangs. The death had been undeserved.

He and them... they’d all been young, foolish.

Jabez had been dying on the inside.

Something had come over him when he bit at the child’s hand to defend himself and the taste of something delectable slipped down his throat. The bloodbath he’d carried out had been utterly forgotten in a traumatic episode. He only knew he’d done something wrong as he walked the halls covered in blood, unsure of what he’d done, but he knew his stomach finally felt sated for the first time.

Everything else was a blur, but... he now distinctly remembered patting that little girl’s head as he cried into the cloud of her hair. How she’d wailed in his arms while hugging him tightly in return. How he’d hidden them so they couldn’t be found, afraid of what he’d done, and how much trouble he’d be in.

He refused to face that same regret all his life, which is why he’d saved that human girl in the village. It was why he never allowed his Demon army to feed off the truly innocent under his watchful gaze, even if he helped to break down the walls of a village.

Lifting a single hand, he stared at the lines on his palm, unable to hide from his own claw-like nails tipping his fingers. The pathway of his life had been smothered in the blood of many, and he’d tried, with all his might, to prevent it despite constantly failing.

The dream of a petulant teenager. Oh, how those fateful events forced him into a life he’d much rather have not led.

A life he kept needing to dig deeper into for self-preservation. He yearned for the day he could finally let go of it by ending this war which had never met a battlefield. He’d much rather have fought against the Elvish people who’d turned their backs on the very creature they sought to create – especially as they were the reason for his existence.

But even then... his heart had long been giving up in this endeavour. The opposing pieces of his playing board had been stuck in another realm, and he was unable to gouge his claws into their throats. Each year he’d grown, he’d become more spiteful, until one day... he’d fully matured. In that maturity, having governed thousands of Demons who were their own beings, he understood that controlling a large group of individuals was truly impossible.

He long ago learned that what his past entailed wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for the mistakes of a few young boys. Moreover, the Elvish government wasn’t entirely at fault, even when, through fear, it had condemned him to be buried beneath the ground in a prison.

A fear he now fully comprehended. A fear that lingered in his shadow; it was always with him. It’d been in every corner of his castle, between every stone gap, and within each of his breaths.

A fear he’d been controlling, so it didn’t tear into him and swallow him alive.

His hand finally fell to rest against his abdomen, and once more, he stared up at the cave’s ceiling.

What a pointless endeavour, he thought, as he let his gaze slip to the sleeping creature beside him. Well, perhaps not.

Zylah’s lessons had gone exceedingly well over the past nearly two months since he’d met her. She was quick to pick up reading and writing over the last few weeks since they’d settled in this cave. Now that she was able to read mostly on her own, he’d obtained a few books that were more advanced.

She was currently able to have somewhat proper conversations and utilised the dictionary he’d acquired on her own. His lips cracked a grin at the numerous times he’d seen her reading the dictionary without his direction. When she read the novels, she would occasionally bend the book to him, point to a sentence, and ask him to explain a word she couldn’t understand the definition of.

Jabez tried his best to explain, even when the concept was complex. He often sat quietly by her side and watched in case she needed assistance. It allowed him to recede peacefully into his thoughts like he had for most of his life.

Before long, she’d no longer need his assistance. Which meant he’d soon be able to proposition her.

He’d extend the same invitation to her as he had to Merikh the last time he’d seen him. If she joins me in Nyl’theria, then we can rally the Demons living there.

Then, finally, he could fight his way into the Elven city of Lezekos. He could finally step out of the shadows and live the life he’d been missing.

He didn’t even wish to govern it. He didn’t truly desire to be a king. He wanted peace, and the only way to achieve that was within the protective dome the Elysians lived under. Then he’d invite all the Demons who were close to the completion of their evolution to join him, of which there were many thousands.

Over time, the lesser Demons would consume each other and evolve, and they, too, could join them. Then, when there were only a few lesser Demons left, they would eradicate them and live like real people. Their children would go to schools, their people would craft and have jobs. They could discover Nyl’theria and hunt for lost artefacts and ruined civilisations.

By the time they understood the technology of the Elysians, they could then take over those advancements. By that point, Jabez assumed he’d be rather old and ready to pass. He’d like that, to one day close his eyes in old age and die peacefully, and not fear his death might come from the jaws of a Demon.

It’s what he’d always longed for. To live out the rest of his life like a normal being and be nestled in comforts.

He hadn’t been given a day of that since the moment he’d been locked away in his youth.

Jabez licked at the inside of a tooth that had grown back after the other children’s cruel yanking. Like any other Demon, his fangs grew back when they went missing – a rather charming trait that not the humans, or even Elves, had.

Growing restless with his thoughts, he sat up. Placing his elbow upon a singular bent knee so he could cover his eyes, his ears twitched with irritation at himself and the dreams of the little girl who haunted him.

I’m tired. He’d been thinking that for years.

His movements disturbed his companion, and Zylah shifted with alertness. She quickly sat up and put space between them by shuffling away nervously.

Jabez waved his free hand when he figured she was only doing it because she’d been caught sleeping so close to him. “Don’t worry, Zylah. I don’t mind anymore.”

“Really?” she asked, her tone full of hope.

“I’m aware you’ve been sleeping beside me for the better part of a fortnight.”

She chittered, which had started to become less of a way to communicate and more of an infrequent, albeit cute, sound that reflected her emotions. It caused him to lift his hand away to peek at her, and he found her teal orbs had shifted to a reddish pink in embarrassment. She was too easy to make uncomfortable, which often had him wanting to playfully needle her – despite never doing so.

She scratched at the ground. “I did not think you knew.”

He chuckled mildly at the ridiculousness of that.

“You know I have sharp senses. I sleep lightly so I can hear and smell people approaching me.” When she didn’t calm, he rolled his shoulders back to stretch them. “Like I said, it’s fine. If it makes you feel better, you’re welcome to sleep next to me. Your warmth is pleasant, especially as we’re deep in winter now.”

His gaze landed on the dead campfire. He lit it every night in order to take away the bite of cold his Elvish body just couldn’t handle. That was something he deeply missed about his lack of powers – he couldn’t shield himself from the cold or the sun anymore.

His nose scrunched at the loss, and the weakness he experienced without it. He’d never realised just how deeply he’d relied upon his magic until it was completely gone. He tsked at his stupidity and complacency.

Learning to be without it had been quite the adjustment, like a limb was missing. He wished to breathe and know that each breath drew in strength and mana. He missed the comfort and security of it.

He missed feeling like himself and like he wasn’t a weaker being.

His stomach grumbled, and he once more tsked. I need food. And not just the food he’d been stealing from the crops and farms of humans, but meat. He was aware of how much his need for meat bothered his companion, but he wasn’t willing to grow sickly like he had as a child.

At least she now understands, since we’ve spoken about it.

She’d thought he was just cruelly hunting for sport and didn’t understand that his internal organs didn’t work like hers. Her hunger was ever present but unending. His, however, was easily soothed and required he did so or he’d wither away.

At least her hunting lessons had been going well, and she rarely succumbed to a bloodthirsty rage.

He’d hunt without her, but she refused to allow him out of her sight. It was as though she worried he’d run away at the first opportunity he had, as if he’d changed his mind about being her companion.

He could have escaped at any time.

She’d soon discover as to why he hadn’t.

So why haven’t I asked her yet? They were able to communicate quite well now. He was sure if he explained about the Elven realm and about the Elysians, she would comprehend their conversation.

So why hadn’t he had that conversation with her? Why was he... putting off asking her to join him in his conquest?

As his eyes landed on her teal orbs and rabbit skull, he still didn’t know the answer to his hesitation.

Could it be... that I’m worried she’ll reject it?

Or was it deeper than that?