A Soul to Embrace (Duskwalker Brides #8)

Chapter 25

With his cloak hood hiding him further under the cover of night, Jabez sat on a tall pile of pointless rubble. The last time he’d been here, he knew part of his castle had still been standing.

Likely due to the weather and the foundations already being weakened, the last section had come down in the past two months.

In front of him was a crumbling wall barely tall enough to come to hip height. Much of what surrounded him was broken or cracked boulders, or sections of carved stone that refused to topple. Behind him was nothing but a flat mound of jagged rubble.

Where he sat was once his throne room – the place where his rule had ended.

Perhaps another would be upset by the state of the mess, but Jabez was unbothered. He had other things on his mind.

He didn’t like that once he immediately left Zylah’s presence, the only place he could think to go was Fayren’s. The little fox Demon had fretted upon finding him nearly passed out in front of her cottage, but his exhaustion and mana-depletion sickness had finally taken its toll on his body.

She’d annoyingly cooed and mothered him as she dragged his weak body to her bed, and then he passed out immediately. Fayren had attempted to help with the fever racking his body by dabbing a cold compress against his forehead. She’d stopped when she realised it only woke him whenever she approached, and he’d grabbed her wrist to prevent her from touching him.

She left him be, seeing that he didn’t want nor need her help, and she was only disturbing him from finally achieving rest.

For weeks he’d been suffering from a lack of sleep. More like years. His mind had never truly felt at ease – always alert for danger, always whirling with dark and unwelcome thoughts.

As much as the ookmanik had ensured he suffered, he’d managed to gain at least twelve hours of rest – which was more than he could say for most of his life on Earth.

He’d hidden all this from Zylah, of course. He wasn’t one to admit to his weaknesses, especially not in front of someone clearly upset. It was partly the reason he’d left. If he’d continued to stay and argue with her, he likely would have collapsed.

He also did truly believe she needed time to think.

I didn’t expect her to offer to come to Nyl’theria on my behalf, he thought as he picked up a small chipped stone and inspected it. He realised he should have, but he’d just been foolishly hoping she wouldn’t.

He’d considered her offer idiotic, not that he would say that to her bony face. Her emotions were just high. She had no idea what she was saying. Not the weight of it, nor the repercussions.

She’d forgiven him far too easily, and he found that to be rather absurd. She cares for me a lot more than I thought. As honoured as he felt about that, the issue remained that it was making her foolish. No one’s heart should be this set on a person to the point they’d completely disregard the horrible things someone had done in the past.

But that’s what Mavka are like. Once they had their heart on something or someone, they were hard to dissuade. They didn’t think nor act like a human and were emotional creatures.

Now that he’d slept, finally recuperating enough mana that expending it shouldn’t lead to any more problems, he sighed at his behaviour. He tossed the stone aside in annoyance at himself.

I should have just kept my fucking mouth shut. It would have been much easier had he not stupidly blurted out his own fucked-up, confused, and insane feelings. Feelings he had no idea how to dissect and assess. None of it made sense, yet they were obviously present, and he had no idea if they ran deeper than merely surface level.

They could be nothing but infatuation and curiosity. Maybe even loneliness eased by the contentment he found near her. They could even be more than just simple desire – but one thing he did know for certain, lust did not make him act like an explosive idiot .

Sure, it could blindside him like anyone who was obsessed with another, but it shouldn’t make him act irrationally. It shouldn’t make him stand in a cave and shout at a crying female pouring her heart out to him, just because seeing her damn tears wounded him.

With his elbow stabbing into his folded knee, he shoved his fingers into his clenched eyes in frustration at himself. What is wrong with me?

His thoughts were unravelling more than usual, chaotic and intrusive in the worst way possible. Where was his hyperfixation for his revenge? Why was he sitting on a pile of rubbish instead of heading through the portal hidden away by a garden just on the other side of the wall in front of him?

The answer was simple: it was because he didn’t want to, and the reason lay over a thousand kilometres away in a fucking cave. Probably crying, wondering if he actually did not intend to return because of her foolish jab at him.

Perhaps she didn’t want him to.

That would make things much easier for him. A clean cut was always easier to mend, rather than the mess he’d torn between them.

I know I don’t love her. Love was just not an emotion he was capable of. He was too ruined inside, too broken. He’d removed his tender heart when he’d been a mere boy and made sure to never transplant another one within him. What sat in his chest was an empty hole no one could fill.

Not the female Demons he’d attempted to court, all of whom failed to gain his full affection. Not Katerina, who he thought may have been a good fit for him, as she’d been toxic in all the ways he was – manipulative, cunning, broken.

Unfortunately, they were also traits he disliked in himself.

But I would be an idiot to ignore that Zylah loves me. At least, to some degree. Enough to shed her own morals and join him in his war like a lovesick woman chasing after a careless man.

He doubted he’d ever be able to return such affection. He didn’t believe someone had to love themselves first to be loved, but the person just needed to seek it in some form. Jabez definitely lacked the first part of that sentiment, and he didn’t give a flying fuck about the second part.

He wanted nothing from anyone, unless it was to fuel his own bloodthirst.

Those had been his thoughts for the past three centuries, so why did he feel himself wavering now? For a fucking Mavka, no less.

She should hate him. In retrospect, she should have attempted to kill him for what he admitted. He was an atrocious person, and he’d leaned on that his entire adult life. If he admitted to that, then anything he did was born from something wrong and evil within him. He’d used that as a way to shed any guilt, putting it up to being a cruel, unfeeling, self-orientated person.

A person couldn’t hate themselves for something they were knowingly doing. They also didn’t have to like themselves, either.

Instead, he’d tried to mould himself into an idea. An idea didn’t have to have a heart, morals, or compassion. An idea was not a real person. He could feel desire and affection, although it was never deeper than surface level, so the emptiness within him mattered naught.

He could look in the mirror that way. Actually, he made sure doing so allowed him to fixate on the Elvish parts of him in order to fuel himself as an idea. To hate that part of himself, and to think of the Demon in him as a priceless tool to be used.

His magic was simply both sides of himself managing to bleed together to make him into some powerful being that consumed more, and more, until he could be unstoppable. A god in the lowest mortal sense.

It’d worked up until recently.

So why was the empty hole in his chest trying to grow a heart he didn’t want and had never needed?

I’ll only bring her pain. In her one-sided deep affections, in the fact that he would likely always prioritise his vendetta over her, and how he was absolutely willing to die for it. Of course he tried to avoid his own death, but that was simply so his plans could come to fruition.

So his idea didn’t die alongside him.

I should just leave– Before he could finish his thought, he sensed the air around him shift.

In all rights, what he felt shouldn’t be perceivable, but he’d long realised when Weldir’s black mist was being disturbed. And, since his disappearance, this area had become darker due to that demigod’s intangible reach.

Only one creature could do such a thing.

So, that Mavka and his bride told the others I’m still alive. Then again, he’d foreseen that. It’d only been a few days since he and Zylah had met them, after all, and he was certain they were trying to figure out some kind of scheme to intervene. Her parents wouldn’t like that she was spending time with him.

Unless, of course, Weldir sensed him hanging out in his foreboding mist. That’s a possibility.

Jabez picked up another stone and rolled it in his palm as he coldly stated, “You would be wise to remain incorporeal.”

Weldir’s mist shifted as a figure – so transparent she’d lost all colour and had turned white as a Ghost – floated to his left. With her toes hovering barely an inch from the ground, she slid through the air like one might across ice and moved in front of him.

For someone he hated, it was impossible to ignore that she was a pretty thing. When she wasn’t incorporeal and almost invisible, her brown skin was near flawless – not reflecting the hundreds of years she’d lived. If he had to guess, Weldir must have found her when she was in her early twenties, and she hadn’t aged a day since then.

Her hardened personality matched her sharp but feminine features – which he’d once found contradictory when she’d been a softer being. Her brows were arched, her cheeks high, and her jaw strong. Her nose was rounded and sat above a set of full, plump lips.

Her loose corkscrew curls were often messy from travelling through the Veil, but her dark-brown hair had always appeared glossy, even when it was littered with leaves or twigs.

Her curved and busty figure was hidden underneath her white cloak of feathers, but he vaguely remembered it from before she’d obtained this covering. It used to be black, like a raven’s dowl, but she’d opted for a more owl-like quality after a few decades. Her outfit over the many years had changed often, evolving to what it was today: a white dress that left her legs bare from the knees down.

She used to wear boots and flats, but he figured she’d given up on those. They wouldn’t last through her years, and she probably discovered being barefooted made her more nimble.

Jabez ignored her ghostly appearance as he looked down at what lay in his palm. He tossed it nonchalantly, as if to prove her presence here meant little to him.

“What do you want?” Jabez asked.

“To see you be miserable,” the Witch Owl stated, before hopping up onto the stone wall in front of him as if it was a seat. She crossed her ankles and swung her legs, her bare feet going through the solid wall and disappearing before reappearing as they flung forward.

Jabez rolled his eyes and let his head fall to the side. “Misery you won’t find.” He gestured to the rubble beneath him, and made his tone exaggerated and flamboyant for his next words. “I’m merely scheming the best way to rebuild my castle and rise from the ashes of my death like a phoenix.”

He lifted his gaze up to her face, just in time to see her smug appearance fall and dread wash over it. Her loose curls floated around her face and hung there as she lowered her gaze in anger, peering at him through long, dark eyelashes.

“You just don’t give up, do you, Elf?”

He stifled the urge to sneer at what she’d called him, despising the word. Especially as it was intended to be an insult.

“No. I’m incapable of giving up.” He cocked a brow at her, feigning smugness. “Why did you think it would be different this time?”

Her full lips pouted in ire. “I thought your near death would awaken you from your stupidity.”

“So long as I live, while the Elysians hold their impenetrable city, I will always be steadfast in destroying it. That has never changed in the many years we’ve fought.”

“Then why are you sitting on the evidence of your ruin like a pathetic man, rather than trying to rebuild it as swiftly as possible like last time?” She cocked her brow this time, and her lips curled knowingly.

“I’m searching for something vital first.”

Yeah, the answer as to why he felt something for Zylah, to the point he had this strange, radiating ache in his chest right now. Maybe why his cock kept jerking at the smallest thing she did, or why he was so damn drawn to her in the first place.

Where did all his cunning callousness go? She’d offered him exactly what he wanted, and he was finding excuses not to take her up on it.

And rather than discarding her because he knew bringing her to Nyl’theria was a foolish decision on his part, he was fucking finding excuses to not do that either.

It should have been easy. Had any other female presented her manipulative ultimatum of him staying to give her what she wanted, or to leave and never come back if he did what he wanted, he would have smugly left in a heartbeat.

He may have inferred it with his last words, but they’d been hollow. Well, not at the time due to his anger, but after much reflection, he realised they’d held not an ounce of weight. Instead, they only added to the chaos of his thoughts and questions as to why he was still fucking here in this godsforsaken, shitty realm.

But he really did adore needling the Witch Owl, and he let a malicious grin fill his face.

“Coming to pester me like this will only fuel my hatred and push me to rebuild faster.” With the stone clasped firmly in his grip, he lifted his forefinger to tap at his lips in smug thought. “Now you’ve revealed that you know how to trap me, and I doubt you have a second stone to blast me with. You have no secrets, nothing left to fight with, and, Lindiwe, we both know how much of a cunning bastard I am. My Demons will only see my return as further proof that I’m all-powerful, and those who didn’t follow me will surely do so now. You’ve handed me the perfect opportunity to come back stronger than ever, with more influence. What will you and your offspring do when my demands hold even more weight?”

He gave her his best charming smile at the end, especially as he could see her delight waning with each word. Her humour-filled lips uncurled, and her brows slowly furrowed until they pathetically made her eyes appear beseeching.

“Can’t you just leave us alone?” she rasped, her distant voice cracking with emotion. “We want nothing to do with this.”

“You have Weldir to thank for your situation. Had he joined me like I offered, everything would have been different.”

“But he does not hate the Elves like you do!” She threw her arms out to the side in frustration.

“We were cut from the same cloth. Both created by the Elvish trying to intervene with the Demons, both of us scorned and locked away, both then freed only to be trapped in a world we can’t escape.”

“Just because you experienced the same doesn’t mean he has to feel the same way you do.” She sighed, and let her arms fall into her lap in defeat. “He wants to protect, and you want to destroy. Can’t you just find another way and leave us be?”

Jabez rolled his eyes and then brought his arm back to toss the stone in his hand at her. It sailed through the air, went through her intangible body, and clunked against the ground on the other side of the wall.

“Quit your whining,” he bit at her lightly. “I have no intention of harming your little Mavka anymore. I gave that up a while ago.”

“You had them hunted!”

“And I removed that order months ago too.” When her lips parted in disbelief, he shook his head. “Demons like to hunt. They jump on bounties and spread word swiftly. They are less inclined to share the removal of a decree so enthusiastically. You attempted to destroy someone who no longer had the desire to harm you.”

“You had my son killed,” she stated, hurt further bowing her eyes.

“And how many sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers have your precious sons killed?”

He cocked a brow at her superiorly and her lips tightened.

She couldn’t deny it; she was a hypocrite in her own right. She allowed them to be brought into the world, knowing they would be violent and unsympathetic towards the hundreds they’d eaten – families destroyed or broken apart. It didn’t matter if they were humans or Demons. She never stopped them from killing, and he wondered if she’d shed her guilt about it in the same way he had.

She wanted him to feel sympathy when her hands were just as unclean as his were.

But Jabez knew how much her children meant to her, and he was in a giving mood. Surprising, since he was feeling rather sour after his argument with Zylah – or maybe that was why he was inclined to pity her this night.

Jabez picked up a new stone to play with to appear indifferent. “What was his name?”

He noted her brows drew together in confusion at his question. “Aleron,” she answered quietly.

“I apologise for Aleron’s death, then,” he said nonchalantly. “Like I said, I’d already removed my decree by then.”

Actually, he’d done it before the day he’d asked Merikh to join his side once more and come with him to Nyl’theria. He’d already been formulating his next plans, and they’d involved him – someone he trusted, someone he had faith wouldn’t fail him. When his old friend didn’t turn up at the castle like he’d expected him to, Jabez had then begun figuring out other options.

One in particular required no Mavka’s aid nor death, but it was dangerous. Possible, although it could take years to give him what he wanted.

Years he no longer wanted to wait. He was getting older, which tamped down his rage in withered tiredness.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Lindiwe asked in exasperation, shaking her head at him.

“No. It matters naught. It changes nothing and doesn’t bring him back.” He inspected his new rock, finding it rougher than the others – likely a piece of broken clay that kept the stones of his castle together. “But it’s an apology all the same. Through my false death, that decree has been abolished, and your terrifying children are free to walk Austrális and eat everything they stumble upon. That should at least bring you peace.”

Once more, she looked as though she didn’t know what to make of him. Then again, it was rare for Jabez to apologise, and he only did so for her benefit rather than his own.

What would his regret do to aid her, other than make him appear like a pitiful man seeking sympathy for his own stupidity?

“I guess knowing you will leave us be does bring me peace,” she admitted after a small silence of her weighing his words. Then her lips curled as she looked off to the side. “And Weldir brought Aleron back anyway.”

Jabez paused and tilted his head as he lifted his gaze to her properly. “He is a god of the afterlife. That shouldn’t be possible.” When her lips curled further, tenderness and joy filling her expression, his features twisted into a cringe of disgust. He threw his hands up. “Great. He’s figured out how to return the dead. What’s next? He’ll obtain a physical form and finally be free?”

That would irritate Jabez to no end.

He wanted Weldir to suffer as much as he did, especially for getting in his way for the last three centuries. If it hadn’t been for that demigod and his damn ward blocking his Demon army from leaving Earth... Jabez’s plans would have come to fruition decades, if not centuries, ago.

He didn’t trust the way Lindiwe’s expression creased in humour as she shifted to fix it on him. He didn’t like that his exasperated question... could be the truth. She didn’t deny or confirm it.

Fuck, he thought, tossing the stone to the side. Something has changed.

Much had changed in only a short period of time, and none of it was in his favour. The past three years were evidence of that, from his own demise, to Katerina’s death, to the other Mavka constantly obtaining new brides... to Zylah.

The world was shifting. His time here was ending.

Part of him was relieved about that, as much as it brought on a new page of darkness.

“Where is Zylah?” she asked.

She didn’t call her... what was it again? Fyodor? So, she truly had spoken to Zylah’s parents.

“I’m surprised you don’t know,” he answered, lifting a shoulder to shrug. “Don’t you watch all your children? I’m betting Weldir watched us walk through his mist.”

Even now, Jabez had the inkling there was a set of creepy eyes tingling the back of his neck. Hopefully his worry over Weldir’s physical form was nothing but paranoia, and he didn’t come to smite Jabez while he sat here, unaware of the potential danger.

Or, perhaps, he knew Jabez was ready for anything and everything. He had his magic back; nothing could stop him from creating a protective force or teleporting the moment he sensed another presence.

He’d be gone before they even had time to blink.

“Zylah is not his direct descendant. He can’t feel her like he feels our children, and I didn’t know where her burrow was because the moment I left her to help another of my children, our inability to scry for her meant we lost her.”

Just further proof that she was different from the rest of her kind. She was even out of Weldir’s gaze, and he hadn’t thought about what that would have meant for him up until now. It was a relief to know their privacy hadn’t been violated.

“It also didn’t help that she was taken from sight by the whims of an unpredictable man when he did find her.”

Ah, so they had at least watched some of their time together in the Veil since they’d likely disturbed his mist. He doubted Weldir had been able to observe in the underground pocket beneath the village, as the stone itself had an additional spell on it to stop those from seeing that area. That spell was tied to the mana stone, ensuring it didn’t need Jabez’s help to fuel it – he’d always been worried about someone trying to steal it.

They’d likely watched them at Fayren’s and within Spiral Haven. A smile threatened to curl his lips when he thought that may have been confusing for them.

Watching him care for Zylah, spending time with her like a male courting a female... yes, that would be very confusing.

They likely didn’t intervene or show themselves earlier with her by his side.

Jabez waved his hand through the air dismissively. “She’s somewhere safe.”

Lindiwe’s lips flattened disapprovingly. “Whatever it is you're planning with her, I ask that you stop. She is my grandchild, after all. I want to see her safe as well.”

Not liking being told what to do, Jabez chuckled, his eyes crinkling with mischief.

Then he lifted his right hand to show her his uneven nails, brought the two he’d had within Zylah’s pussy to his mouth, and sucked on them. At her horror, he brought them out with a wet pop and gave her his trimmed middle finger.

She visibly shuddered, and he found that utterly satisfying.

“I do what I want,” he answered with a large grin. “Haven’t you learned that trying to tell me otherwise just makes me want to do exactly the thing you don’t approve of?”

“You’re disgustingly vile.”

“I’m an opportunist,” Jabez answered with a shrug. “Such are the woes of an uptight prude like yourself.”

If she wanted to see the worst in him, then so be it. He had no interest in correcting her, especially as he refused to let her know any truth pertaining to his inner thoughts. Her opinion mattered little to him.

His humour didn’t fade as he asked, “How is Merikh these days?”

She stiffened and then appeared guilty as she looked off to the side. “He’s fine. Happy, I hope.”

Happy. Jabez could live with that.

“Has he found a bride?” he asked nonchalantly, pretending not to care.

“I... believe so.”

A bride, then. So that’s why Merikh didn’t come to his side. I can live with that too.

After all, even if that bull-horned, bear-skulled Mavka hated Jabez, he still considered him a friend. His only true one. At least one of them deserved some happiness after their shitty, lonely lives.

When Lindiwe said nothing, and Jabez offered only silence, he thought she’d finally disappear. She got what she wanted: answers and peace.

Instead, she remained, haunting him as she’d always done. She’d always liked lingering in his castle, following him as a pestering, untouchable force. The only way to battle that was to taunt her in return, and he’d completely lost the will for it.

He’d lost the will for much these days.

“Why are you still here?” Jabez asked, annoyed that she was choosing to remain when their conversation was obviously done.

She offered him a small smile. “To watch you be miserable.”

He sneered at her for that. “Misery you won’t find,” he repeated.

“I still hate you.”

“Feeling is mutual.”

Jabez then ignored her completely, while making sure she didn’t move from her little perch. He didn’t trust she wouldn’t try to end him while he receded once more into his thoughts. He could see Lindiwe attempting to mete out justice for all he’d done to her and her kin.

For now, he would allow this amicable truce; this wasn’t the first time they’d done this. Two enemies conversing, who had done so for centuries.

In the time they spent in each other’s uncomfortable, silent presence this night, only one truth came to him. Digging through the rubble of his past allowed him to clear away just one lingering thought.

A stupid one on his part, he knew, but one that had twisted into an irritating ache in the back of his mind.

He lifted his gaze towards the clouded sky, thankful the rain had disappeared but annoyed he couldn’t see the stars and their mystical glittering.

I want to see Zylah one last time. And to say a proper goodbye. Not just for her sake, to give her closure, but also... for his own.

Funny that, as his non-existent heart squeezed painfully at the thought of doing so.

Fuck, I’m pathetic.