Spider's Game ((Book One) #Wattys2016 Winner!)

Chapter 11- Innocent Girls

Darith rested against a sea of silk pillows in the darkness and watched the wind ruffle the petals of the daisies Marim had brought him earlier. The night was cloudy, so his open window provided little light. The estate was off in the country, and no street lights intruded on the dark. In the dim moonlight, the web of energy spread out. From the distant corners, Silvia tugged at the strands, her fear stroking at him. The connection was more intimate than their night among the flowers. He tasted the spiders floating in the air. Their red intruded on the black, and he waited. Tonight, fear danced in the air. 

Darith smiled in his blanket of darkness.

Driven to understand, Darith had no choice but to search for answers. What were they? Not monsters from some fairy book to frighten children. They were something real, and real things could be defeated.

A frustrated cry tore from his lips and moved deep within the spider's web. The fabric of this inner world was not a wall, and his power glittered, tangled in the strands. His fingertips sizzled as he reached into the web. His mind stretched and he moved along the glittering silken pathways.

'This way,' the voice whispered.

The hand he stretched out in his mind was black as the nighttime void but it gripped the ripples of magic beneath the web, and vitality surged through him. His fingers drank, guzzling the power until Darith closed his fist.

The room around him was lit brighter than day by the glow around his hands, travelling up to his elbows. I don't' even know how to command this much.

'Destroy the walls, the cage. Walk free,' the voice hissed in his mind. 'This human cage cannot hold us.'

Darith lifted his arms, letting the light wash over him. His resentment burned inside it demanding release. Agreeing with the whispers from the web. He thrust his arms forward, the motion like swinging a gavel. The glass of his window shattered, and the trees out past the cobblestones bent and snapped. He pulled back as the first of the flowers ripped from the earth.

An image of Maris outside, picking flowers to bring to him, smiling as she looked up from her task defeated the rush of destruction. He retreated from the strands that stretched around her. Not those, I will not destroy her joy. Not even for my own.

He moved his fingers. In control of the seething inside now he swept his fingers to the side brushing the glass out of sight. Marim would come soon and he was not ready to discuss this with her. The darkness hid the mangled mess of trees now that his hands contained his fire.

Darith smiled. His spells that had once been so weak and so limited were fed by the night now. All his study and practice suddenly had a meaning. He could kill with the strength in him if he chose. Someday, he would.

He waited, the wind blowing over him from the garden. With the glass cleared away and the dark night hiding the rest, from outer appearances he might simply have had the door left open. But he knew. He knew his strength.

With her red hair down, Marim came as she did every night. The wind from the window blew her nightdress against her legs defining something painfully akin to a woman's form. Darith watched as she crossed the room.

"Darith? Your window is open." Her eyes questioned him.

"No. It isn't open. I broke it."

"Oh," Maris said and crawled into the bed beside him. Her hands closed around his. He tucked the magic back afraid it would burn her. "Why did you break it?"

"The better question is how."

"How did you break it?"

Darith stroked her hair, soft as spider silk under his fingers. "With hate...revenge blows on the wind. I'll explain another time."