"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
Rynaezel glanced up to see Sattvas slowly approaching her, his step unusually heavy as if all that power was finally beginning to weigh him down. She twisted the dagger in her hand, twirling the dark metal handle in one hand, while the tip of the blade dug dangerously deeper into a fingerpad on the other.
"I saw something glint in his pocket, figured I should have a look," she shrugged, narrowing her eyes once more at the dark dagger the like of which she'd only seen twice, having chosen to keep her silence both times instead of asking questions. With a small sigh, she moved to release the dagger and place it where she pulled it out of Tamas's pocket.
"Wait," Sattvas interrupted, stepping closer so the tips of his leather boots almost touched Tamas's silent body. Rynaezel watched as he looked around them, noting Marie and Maige, who were busy with the latter witch's lightning in the distance. When his eyes ran over Tamas and finally settled on her, there was something hiding behind his irises.
Something that looked like guilt, in its loosest definition.
Something that told her that he wasn't supposed to say what he did next.
"Come, I want to show you something."
He extended a careful, hesitant hand to help her up. She watched, for a second, as his fingers twitched slightly, as if they were reaching out towards something forbidden, then she rose, ignoring it, still spinning the dagger in her hand.
Sattvas only shrugged and dragged a hand through his hair to push the strands of blue-black out of his face.
She followed him as he led her towards one of the cliffs surrounding them, the lacy hem of her black dress with golden stars scattered around it brushed against the smooth obsidian ground, creating a low hissing sound.
As they reached the edge of the precipice, the mountains spread out in front of them, running for miles and miles into the horizon. Thousands upon thousands of leagues of black stone melting away in its glassy, cursed glory under the sun, then stretching across the continent like a sleeping giant of wonders with stars etched like freckles into them by night.
If they weren't so dangerous, Rynaezel would've dared call them beautiful.
She felt his heavy, cool gaze on her like a cold snake slithering up her back to curl around her throat. Her grip on the dagger tightened for a second as she held back the darkness surging to the surface before she swallowed and turned towards him.
Rynaezel held out the blade between them. "You wanted to show me something."
"You've seen the dagger before," he said, drawing her attention. She watched as his hand slid across the smooth surface of the blade, skin whispering across slim death.
"Is this the one Tamas pulled out of my magic?" she asked nonchalantly, tilting her head to face him fully and block the sun seeping through her black, tangled locks. She saw his hand tense on the blade, metal digging into the crease of his palm.
"No," he said, at last, casting his eyes to hers. They were still as cold as winter deep within the continent, chilling to the bone like icicles ripping apart soft flesh, but she'd gotten used to them enough to not feel the frost coating the air. "This is his. That one would have vanished the second it found its target."
"Does this mean it's normal to pull daggers out of magic?" Rynaezel asked, crossing her arms over her chest and cocking her brow as she fully turned towards him. Standing face to face, he was half a head taller than her, but she didn't think it gained him anything.
"It's not. I don't think he knew whether it would work with your magic or not. But we can create these daggers out of our magic. This metal," he laid the dagger in both of his hands and brought it up between them like a long-sword, "Is called adamant. I think you've heard of the Adamant Gates to the Abyss. Well, like these daggers, they are a... footprint of our magic."
Rynaezel brought up a hand and ran a single finger across the smooth metal as if touching it for the first time. She flicked her eyes to his over the blade and found him watching her every movement like he wanted to remember the way her skin sounded against dagger.
"They are dangerous things, these daggers."
"Any dagger is a dangerous thing if you throw it hard enough," she shrugged, a coy smile spreading across her face like a viper. He shook his head, soft hair like spider legs falling into his dark eyes.
"These daggers, because they were created out of our magic, they have powers of their own," he spoke as he loosely twirled the blade in his right hand, "They have the power to absorb magic. Any magic. Any amount of it, too. Until there is nothing left. No magic... and no life."
Rynaezel watched as he motioned to his heart as he said those last words, and narrowed her eyes at the tip of the dagger menacingly glistening under the bright yellow sun.
"Gods," she whispered. Then, when his eyes snapped to hers and her mind caught up with the present, she opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again as she considered it. "It's an expression... sort of. Gods, like Gods of the Abyss, you know... Like, oh shit," she tried to explain, but she could tell it was only making it worse.
"Whatever. What I meant is that this can kill you, too, can it not?"
Sattvas nodded, holding out the dagger to her. She almost took an uncertain step back, away from the thing that could cause so much damage.
She could afford to lose her life, but her power...
"This can kill any of us," Sattvas said evenly as if it didn't bother him. "Two of these can kill two of us. And three..."
"I get it," Rynaezel cut him off as she shifted away from the knife, holding up a hand to stop his approach with the blade. "So why do you create them? If you are the only ones who can make them, and if you are immortal as immortal goes, why be the source of your own destruction?"
Sattvas smirked, a cold, lifeless half-grin that sent her flesh crawling. "Because five eons ago, when your kind was created, when we were imprisoned beyond the limitless light, we were forced to give up three of these daggers. As tokens, as retribution. So, somewhere, on this continent, those daggers have survived the wrath of time."
He was closer now than before, stepping up to her with barely three steps between them. She wanted to step away, but there was something there now, in his ice, something new. There, just behind a void of darkness, she thought she was finally able to glimpse something warmer, something breathing within him.
"And, before they find us, we need to find them. Because the witches who have them, I doubt they know that should we die, they will follow us wherever death leads. For now, these daggers are weapons that kill without mistake, and they give the lost magic to the founder."
Rynaezel didn't realize that she'd been holding her breath until she finally drew one in as his gaze left her own and found the horizon instead. There was something unsettling about Sattvas, something that, and she'd never admitted it to anyone, frightened her. Not in the way in which a dagger frightened a mortal, but in the way in which heights send chills down one's spine.
It was as if he was an abyss, and she was standing on the edge, on the verge of a plunge.
"I'm going to show you, now," he said and handed her the dagger. This time, as her palm wrapped around the hilt, it felt like she was holding darkness by the throat.
"What are you going—"
She didn't finish as she felt him step behind her, felt that calamity of power draw closer and closer until he was right behind her, breathing down her neck. She felt him hover there, on the edge of contact, before he leaned forward.
His hand encircled hers from behind and she couldn't stop the shiver that shot through her as she felt his chest brush against her back. He brought their hands up, fingers curled tightly around hers, dagger held within them. She didn't dare glance back at him, so she watched their hands instead, trying to breathe.
"I'm going to show you how to draw power from the dagger," he said, and she felt his breath on her neck, cool like autumn wind, like the whisper of a falling leaf. She clenched her jaw hard enough for her to feel it somewhere in the back of her skull.
Sattvas brought their hands up through the rays of sunlight enveloping the cliff, and she felt his muscles stretching against her skin. She could have sworn she felt the power in his veins reaching out towards her, too.
"Don't freak out," he whispered as their hands came to a stop above their heads. She cast her gaze up, to where a knife pointed down at her, bathed in sunlight like a painting of religious violence of the past eons.
Don't freak out.
Then, she really felt it. There was a surge of energy like all the sudden life was galloping around her. She felt something bolt upwards behind her, like a spear of fire sailing into the air. And she followed its movement with her skin, she felt it nearing and nearing and nearing and—
"Don't be afraid," he said, and she wasn't, but—
He tightened his hold on her fingers and there was an explosion all around her. There was power so raw it earned to splinter her bones apart coursing through her, power so elementary it shocked her senses into oblivion until all she could feel was that place on her skin where his hand held hers, where all that magic was born.
She felt the knife move as if on its own accord, driving itself into one of the rays of golden sunshine around them like it was made out of flesh and bone. She felt the dagger twist under her hand like a snake, and then there was more light flooding through her.
Rynaezel gasped as energy washed over her bones like water, taking every imperfection with it until she was not a witch, not a girl, not a vessel. She was just light, a channel of energy that flowed as freely as the universe itself.
"I'm going to let go now," she heard a distant voice and even in this state, in this ethereal place into which all that light had driven her she felt his every syllable reverberate in the marrow of her bones.
Then she felt something lift off of her, something step away.
It was like waking up from a dream. Like one moment she was somewhere, and the next she was bolting out of her sleep like it was a prison. It was like that night. Because after that night, that's when dreaming became a curse, when the only thing she could associate the loss of control with was gasping awake to strangers in your room crawling over naked flesh.
And so she did what she'd done then.
She felt the knife still nestled in her hand, felt those hands on her, and those bodies and those crooked smiles in the dark, and all the light around her could not drive them away as she stepped forward with the speed she did not know she had.
And there was a cracking in the air and breathing flesh underneath that dagger.
Rynaezel, rynaezel, rynaezelrynaezel—
"Rynaezel."
She gasped.
And the darkness flushed out of her like sand blasting out of a broken hourglass.
She stood close enough to him to count the rays of the sun reflected in his pitch black eyes. His gaze was on her eyes, digging into them like they were a grave to be unearthed. She followed the line of her hand to the dagger she held against his throat.
"Sattvas—" she jerked away and the dagger clattered to the ground like a broken toy. Rynaezel watched him swallow and bring a hand to run his fingers over the place where the dagger had been.
Was a god afraid of death? She thought he must be.
Because death was a joke old as time, yet to everyone it came with a fresh laugh.
"Power is a dangerous thing to take, Rynaezel," he said and the way his name rolled off his tongue... There was that sensation again within her as her mind responded to the sound. Because it sounded like he'd known her before. Known her all along.
"Especially for you... I should have been more careful." he breathed out.
"Why?" was all she could say as she trailed the movement of his fingerpads against the skin of his throat, as she pushed past the void in his eyes in search for that something new, something warmer.
"Because you've already taken too much, darling," a familiar voice like sweet poison cooed from behind her. "Stolen from us enough to last you a thousand years of unchallenged reign."
(sunset) ☾ (sunrise)
a/n: u guys i cant write slow burn with me its always like a freaking rocky road watch it escalate like all hell's broken loose then die down like they've already broken up and divorced three times wtf
anyways, i know where this book is going in the near future so woop woop (i struggle with this so much because i know how everything is going to end, but i usually cant find the perfect way to get there sad) and u guys r gonna hate/love me we'll see ha ha
here's to another good week!