Bringer of Winter- a M/M/M Epic Fantasy Romance

27- Hag

*****TRIGGER WARNING?: threats of rape*****

KHIF—

Oh gods, blood was everywhere.

No matter where I looked, it was splattered against the walls, covering every inch of rug and carved stone. My skin itched with it— both dried and still warm, hot, coating me and feeling as if it was popping against my skin like soap suds after a bath.

The screams pierced through my ears, digging into my brain like mealworms trying to devour me bit by bit. Servants fled, friends and family I loved, leaving me to fight for them. As was my place. But I had to find my family first, my sisters and my mama and my papa. I had to protect them, or my everything was lost.

"Mama!" I screamed, desperation and pain making my voice hoarse, brittle, and my throat ache. "Naka! Ally! Naka, baby, where are you!"

The castle was dark around me, the normal warmth of the halls snuffed out by the evils of men seeking power or vengeance, riches— I knew not what. It didn't matter, not really. They wanted me dead, my people, my family, my entire world, dead. The why of it mattered very little.

My daggers were lost inside of a man I had killed... An hour ago? Longer? Gods, I knew not. In that moment, that was all that mattered.

"Mama!" I yelled, pushing my way through and into her rooms. The ones she shared with my papa. The ones she had spent so many happy years. And where she now fought off a half dozen men with Ally clutching the leggings beneath her tunic skirt and sobbing harshly as blood splattered through the air and caught in her beautiful golden hair.

I leapt atop the first man I could reach, snapping his neck and falling with his body, tumbling off of him and jumping to the next. I killed three before they knew I was there, and then my mama was crying out, a dagger embedded into her shoulder, and I roared. I screamed for my mama, for my family, torn apart by blood and loss. I bellowed for every dead je'lyen I had to step over to reach my mama's rooms. For every life I had been forced to take to protect everyone I loved and everything I knew. I howled for every single moment that I had fought on this gods-accursed day.

And immediately, a return call sounded from across the castle, my l'ayai finding me at last, his voice strong and filled with rage.

Hopefully he was now not too late to make it to me.

I could feel him moving towards me, but I pushed his presence away. I slaughtered the remaining men standing between me and my mama, but just as I reached her, just as I mustered up the last bits of my reserves of strength, my shay'yah rising up like an avenging angel in my chest, my entire world crumbled to the stone beneath my bare feet.

A blanket of something that felt like velvet, freezing water slipped over my skin. I was deaf, nearly blind but for shapes and movement, and my body felt heavy, numb, frozen with something I couldn't possibly name.

"Khifin? Khifin? Cailleach!"

My mama's voice broke through the haze just as my knees hit the stone of the floor of her rooms. She grabbed at my shoulder but I felt it as though through a thick wool blanket.

"Mama...?" I whispered, horrified at hearing the fear and uncertainty in my own voice. I was the Cailleach Bheur. I had been for only a few months, and already I was failing so spectacularly. How was this possible, that someone, something had broken through my protective barriers so easily and was now somehow rendering me useless when my people needed me most?

The silence was deafening. The ancestors had been in my ears for as far back as I could remember. Offering advice, teaching me spells and the uses of my shay'yah. Warning me of danger before it could manifest. And yet now, they were silent. I could neither hear them, nor feel my shay'yah pooling beneath my ribs as I normally could. How was this possible, that I was so cut off from everything I was, when I hadn't even felt how?