Bloodrush (Scarlet Star Trilogy #1)

Chapter 25 - A Bitter Wind

'Merion and I made a pact today. He said if he ever gets to be Prime Lord, like his father, that I could be his secret advisor. I almost laughed right there and then. Just the thought of Karrigan's face.

Truly though, the boy has become my friend these last few years. He'll be twelve in a week.'

4th June, 1867

'You know why they say your blood boils when you're angry?'

'I know very well,' Merion gritted his teeth against the surge of power he felt in his hands. It felt good, like the wood to his fire, the chorus to his raging song.

'It's because it does. The angrier you are, the harder you rush, boy. Now that can be a good thing once in a while, but right now it ain't. You'll turn your insides to a pulp if you ain't careful, hear me? This is a tough shade,' Lurker admonished him.

Merion was not listening. He was busy focusing all his pent-up anger, as if he were running a whetstone down the edge of a sword, as he had seen the guards do back at Harker Sheer.

Home. The blood raged within him. For a day and a half he had been left to simmer quietly in his room. A day and a half for his thoughts to tie themselves in knots and chafe themselves to threads. A day and a half of Rhin rustling and poring over maps and diagrams, and whatever else he could get his sneaky grey claws on. He had largely ignored the boy, despite Merion inviting him along to his training sessions. Merion had given up asking what the hell he was up to. It was something big, that was for sure, big, dangerous and possibly nefarious. But although Merion secretly harboured a fear that his small friend was about to get them into an enormous amount of trouble, it was buried under his boiling, bubbling anger.

Anger at listening to his aunt and trying that Shohari blood.

Anger at stabbing his chance of going home through the heart.

Anger at disappointing Calidae.

Anger at disappointing his father yet again.

'Steady, Merion!' Lurker broke him from his reverie.

Merion held his hands out straight and squeezed all of his power into one singular point. The air cracked like a whip between his rigid fingers. Sparks popped and snapped in his palms. Fingers of lightning crawled across his forearms, dancing between the saluting hairs and pimpled skin. Merion pushed harder. The lightning pooled in his cradled fingers, bent and crooked like claws. In each palm, a blue-white orb began to spit and crackle. Even in the late afternoon light, it was blinding. Merion closed his fingers around them, the veins and muscles straining in each of his arms. His eyes had become bloodshot, but still he pushed his fingers closer, compressing the orbs into piercing, burning stars.

When at last his fingers touched, the orbs vanished with another whip-crack. Merion was suddenly and violently bent double as a pulse exploded from him, breaking like a wave from every inch of his body. The wave swept outwards. Lightning crackled across the dust, throwing rocks aside and snapping the dead shrubs from their roots. Lurker cried out as he was sent tottering. He would have fallen had he not found a boulder to hold himself against.

'Fuck me,' he gasped, twitching involuntarily.

'I would rather not,' Merion replied, equally breathless. He fell to his knees and tried to shake the tingling from his arms and chest. His heart had either stopped or was beating so fast it had become a dull drone.

'You're a natural-born crackler if I ever saw one,' Lurker said as he brushed himself off.

'A crackler?' Merion panted.