Nyx (Mate's Mark Book 3), page 4
But I fought through it. My desperation to fall into the embrace of an endless sleep outweighed the pain even as my limbs thrashed in protest. I’d seize and shake until my teeth clanked, but I wouldn’t eat.
The fantasy of never again waking inside the nightmare of that place helped push me past the agony. I longed for peace, but it was never granted.
I was never allowed.
Rough hands strapped me onto those tables and forced nutrients into my body as they shouted words I couldn’t understand. They injected me with more needles and fed me through a tube until they were certain I’d survive long enough for their next experiments.
In those moments, I longed for my cell.
For the only home I’d ever known.
Now I’ve recreated that cell and bound myself inside those walls. A tear splashes into my bowl, and my hand shakes as I lift the spoon to my mouth and force myself to take another bite. Flavors explode on my tongue. It’s a sensation I’m still getting used to after a lifetime of bland meals. Chew, and swallow, then repeat. I do it again and again, methodically eating my dinner until it’s gone.
Water pours in a sputtering stream from the faucet as I wash my dish and set it aside to dry. I should return it to Ronan, but I don’t have it in me to face the world. My eyes drift over the growing stack of cleaned plates and bowls, guilt once again gnawing at my insides.
Seems I haven’t had it in me for a while now.
Moonlight melts into a pale sunrise and shines through the window, its glow illuminating the oversized t-shirt that covers my torso. Sleep escaped me throughout the night. My mind was too full of memories to quiet long enough to rest. Birds chirp in the distance, and I sit up and stare between the vines into the bluish-orange dawn.
My eyes wander to Reyes’s cabin across the path, and I wonder if he ever has trouble sleeping. Probably not. He’s so confident. Comfortable in his own skin, but not in the same loud way as Ronan and Elas. Reyes holds a quiet strength that silences some of the turbulence in my mind, and I hate how I fall apart in his presence.
What must he think of me?
So damaged and pitiful.
So fragile.
So strange.
My bare toes curl against the wooden floor. I should wear shoes like the others, but I loathe their restrictive bindings when all I want is the dew-covered grass beneath my feet. After I slide a pair of shorts under my shirt, I step outside.
Underneath the canopy of the forest, I’m more at home than I am inside my cottage. My kind are deeply in tune with nature, though I never had the opportunity to learn its magic. I was too young when I was taken, and time has stolen the bits of knowledge I once had.
Now I rely purely on instinct. My hand drags along a low bush, and I push my energy outward, watching as it rewards me with blooms and new, bright green growth. It gives me peace, however fleeting. I loop around the outskirts of the village and soak in the quiet morning while everyone else still sleeps. Through the trees, my eyes land on the garden, and I heed its call.
Wood creaks as I push the gate open, taking a deep inhale of the fresh, earthy scent. Reyes spends so much time here that I feel his presence everywhere. In the hand tools that lean against the fence, and the empty bottle he set beside them. In the primitive shed he and Lillith spent a few days building. It’s a little lopsided, but it serves its purpose. Useful, even if it isn’t perfect.
Reyes respects the plants in a way the others don’t. They know they’re important on a surface level, but he acts as their keeper. Waters them and fights against the insects, and checks them daily for disease or damage. He builds fences to protect them and reuses pieces of netting that keep the animals out of our food. It makes me sad that the forest creatures are being denied this feast, but I understand it’s necessary. I’ve overheard Ronan and Reyes discussing our supplies, and that we need more to feed everyone through the colder months.
This world is harsh, even outside Ljómur's walls.
My knees sink into the soft soil, and I trace my fingers along the giant, velvety leaves. Ronan calls this plant a squash, though that word doesn’t make sense to me. He also called it a squash when he killed a spider on his leg, and these things are very different. Their words confuse me, but I try to remember them. I try to find space in the white noise of my brain.
Dozens of long, yellow-green vegetables rest on the dirt underneath the leaves, and I give the soil a boost of my magic as I inspect them. Faint rustling startles me, but when I turn, a small creature stares at me from the other side of the fence. It has a bushy tail and makes a curious chittering noise at me, and the hint of a smile tugs at my lips.
“Hungry?” I ask as I pluck the smallest fruit from its stem and pass it through the fence. The animal holds it with tiny, clawed hands and chitters again. “You are welcomed,” I say as it takes a few rapid bites, and its cheeks push out wide.
A sound beyond the trees startles us both, and my new friend darts away and scurries up a tree. Fear clamps its icy fingers around my heart, and I scramble to my feet, barely remembering to close the gate behind me as I dash for the safety of my house. I pause, though, at the familiar rumbling voice. Indecision makes me hesitate for a few long moments, but I recognize the sadness in the quiet whispers.
I know their pain.
Shaky feet lead me back into the forest, noisier than usual to announce my arrival. Elas sits against a large tree. His eyes are closed and his face tilted up towards the dawn sky, and his ears twitch as I approach. “Hey, Nyx,” he says, never opening his eyes.
“How did you know?”
A bittersweet smile spreads over his lips. “You smell like the honeysuckle plants that grow near the stream.” We’re both silent for a long stretch before he forces another smile, this one rigid and fake. “Are you here to learn more fun words? Ronan yelled at me for two whole minutes after you called him a pervert, but I never admitted anything. Secret’s safe for now.”
“You are sad,” I say after a moment, and the budding happiness on his face crumbles back into pain. Guilt tries to close my throat, but he pushes out a shaky sigh and nods.
“Yeah,” he rasps, taking a few steadying breaths. “Yeah, I am.”
The mossy ground is still damp as I sink onto my knees beside him. A lifetime of having no one to talk to has made it difficult for me to express myself with words, but for him, for what he has done, I try.
“It is… hard, sometimes,” I say, and he opens a single eye to glance at me. “To remember you are no longer there. To remember you are free.”
“You must think I’m such a coward.” His voice is rough, and I frown as he shakes his head and swallows with a harsh click of his throat. “You spent a lifetime there, and they broke me after only ten days. I have no right to complain, especially to you.”
“We do not compare our evils. It is all bad, no matter how small. But what they did to you… it was not small. I do not think you are a coward. A warrior. A hero. What you and August did was brave. Saving them… saving so many people from becoming… this.” I gesture at myself, and he watches me closely. “You speak of being broken, but you are strong.”
“You’re strong, too, Nyx. Stronger than you realize.” We’ve reverted to the common language of the other side, and words come easier this way. The sound of Elas speaking it brings a rush of nostalgia so potent, tears flood my eyes.
“I don’t remember home,” I whisper, blinking away the moisture. “My parents, or siblings… the smell of the air. The sky or the trees. It’s gone.”
“It’s been a long time,” he insists, but I shake my head.
“Time isn’t the thief here. They are. I can…” I hesitate, unused to being this open with people, but the sadness in his eyes has shifted. The razored edge of it has become gentler, and I realize as much as it hurts to talk about it, my sadness is shifting, too. “They caged me, too. They didn’t know what to do with me. The humans found me, and they weren’t cruel, not at the beginning. They were curious, and deep down, I understood their curiosity. I was as different to them as they were to me.”
My hands draw mindless patterns over the moss, enjoying the soft fuzz beneath my fingertips. “Over time, they became indifferent. I couldn’t understand anything they were saying. Basic words—yes and no, food, sleep. Years passed, and I was a novelty. A trophy. A strange thing in a cage they’d show their important visitors. They believed capturing me was a feat to boast about, but I was only a child when they took me.”
“What changed?” he asks, and I close my eyes, replaying the fuzzy memories from the buried depths of my mind.
“Our people came. Familiar skin tones and words… words I could understand after so much silence. Gods, I was foolish enough to hope. Despite the years of isolation, I dared to think I had been rescued… freed. And maybe I would’ve been, if that damned mark wasn’t there.”
He grunts, obviously curious as he glances at my arm, but I’m not ready to talk about that part of my past. “It was the first time my heart was truly broken,” I continue, “when I realized they were only there to put me in a different cage. The first time I understood what it meant to be hopeless. To feel unfixable. How little I knew then, thinking I was lucky enough to be broken so easily.”
“We’re stronger than we realize,” he says again.
“I wish we weren’t.” The awful truth slips from my lips before I can stop it, but his face holds no judgment. “I wish my mind had shattered in those first years, so I didn’t have to watch them chip away at the pieces that remained.”
“You remember it all?”
“Yes,” I whisper. “Memories of faces, of people and family I loved, slipped away. One morning I woke up and couldn’t picture my mother’s face. I couldn’t remember what her smile looked like, or the sound of her voice. But I could tell you every detail of that base being built. How they arranged the crates of building materials. The sounds of the tools running constantly, day and night, with their sawdust and metal sparks. I watched it all from my cage.”
Elas hums to let me know he’s listening, but now that the words are flowing, they don’t want to stop. “When they brought me inside, they gave me the very first cell like it was a prize. It was shiny and new and clean, but it was still a cage. Some of my time there is hazy. Entire years are barely more than sounds and smells rather than memories. They stole my life before that place. Left me with nothing but pain and sadness, and trying to figure out how to live without hope because they took it. They took everything from me.” My lips seal shut, my chest raw and split wide open with the honesty of my confession.
Elas releases a quiet whine in the back of his throat. “We weren’t meant to be caged,” he whispers, and I shake my head as fresh tears build in my eyes.
“I don’t know how to not be caged anymore. Even here, they hold me.”
Elas nods, leaning his head against the trunk and closing his eyes against the growing light from the rising sun. “They caged me when I was a young soldier as punishment for disobeying. It was a way for them to control me. I’ve always hated the dark and had nightmares, but lately…” He takes a few breaths, and I give him time to collect his thoughts. “Since we’ve been back, whenever I close my eyes, I’m in that cage, with those bars slowly crushing me. Every time I sleep, I wake up terrified I’m still in that place.”
“So you try not to sleep.” It isn’t a question, and he pulls in a shuttering inhale as he nods.
“So I try not to sleep.”
Quiet stretches between us as the birds grow louder. The heat rises with the sun, and eventually, I calm myself enough to continue. “For a long time, I believed I had done something to deserve it,” I say quietly, and his attention bores into me. “I thought I must’ve angered the gods and just forgotten… because if not? How could they let such a thing happen without reason?”
“You think there was a reason behind any of this?”
My fingers drift over the moss as I force myself to meet his eyes, and I give him a solemn nod. “If I’d never been captured, that camp wouldn’t have been there when Ronan and Cameron passed by. They would’ve made it to this village without learning of Ljómur. Maybe I had to sacrifice those years so the truth could come out… so the others could find their freedom.”
Elas is quiet again as he nods thoughtfully. “It gives it purpose.”
“There has to be a purpose in this pain, Elas.”
“And what was the purpose in my pain? What good did it do to spend those days in the darkness?”
The last few stars are suspended in the sky as I tilt my face upward. They’re barely visible as the sun shines over their glow. “You saved those people. Set them free. Because of you, they do not have to live their lives in these same cages we do.”
“Fuck,” he mutters, swiping at his eyes before thunking the back of his head against the tree trunk a few times. “And this is our reward? Am I supposed to never sleep again?”
Such desperation clouds his voice that I lean forward and gently wrap my fingers around his wrist. He stares at my deep green skin against his dusty blue for a long time, like he understands what this takes from me. Like he knows how hard it is for me to touch another.
But Elas is safe, and for once, I can help.
“Come find me,” I say as I squeeze him and pull away. “When you cannot free yourself from that cage, you find me. We will try to open it together.”
Reyes
Shadows offer me cover as I wait. Sweat coats my palm as it tightens around the leather-wrapped handle of my dagger, and the thud of footsteps inside the storage building make me tense. The porous surface of the bricks catches the fabric of my shirt as I peek through the window to track his movements.
Black hair bobs in a sauntering stroll, and once he’s finished with his mission, he moves towards the exit. The blaring sun shines directly onto the front door, and I use it to my advantage as I wait for him to step outside.
Is it cheating to do this when his arms are full of rice and beans? Probably.
Do I care?
Absolutely not.
I launch myself from the shadows with my dagger drawn, aiming for Ronan’s weaker left side. Mere inches before I make contact, he swings, and a ten-pound sack of beans smashes me in the face.
“Oh, motherfucker!” I shout as I stagger backward, gripping my nose as stars flash in my vision.
“So clunky on those feet,” Ronan chides with a bored click of his tongue. “Tiny human that makes so much noise.”
“I’m not tiny,” I argue with a scowl, still holding my throbbing nose. Fuck, it hurts. Ronan looks infinitely pleased with himself as I gesture at my five-foot-nine frame. “I am perfectly average.”
He snickers as he gives me a snooty once-over. “Yes, average is a good word to describe you, isn’t it?”
My eyes narrow, and I flash my teeth at him, but he only laughs harder in that infuriatingly condescending way he has. “Maybe you’re just a shitty teacher,” I taunt, and his laughter fades to a growl as he bares his fangs at me. “Three lessons now, and I can’t even sneak up on someone? You must not be doing something right.”
“Cocky little asshole,” he snarls, and my grip tightens on my dagger. The blade is real, but blunt enough not to pose an actual threat to Ronan or Elas. When we started these sessions, I suggested a wooden practice knife so I wouldn’t hurt them. Ronan laughed me out of the room.
Let’s see him laugh now.
“Yeah, well—” My words cut off abruptly as my gaze fixes over his shoulder. “Who the fuck is that with Cameron?”
“What?!” he growls, whipping to stare at where Cameron sits alone beside the boiling cauldron, sanitizing glass jars for the upcoming harvest.
While Ronan is distracted—and before I can second-guess myself or my sanity—I grab a few strands of his hair. The dull blade tugs as it slides through them, and he freezes, predatorially still. He turns to face me, his eyes dropping to the dozen long strands pinched in my fingers.
“Oh, shit,” I whisper as the black of his pupils expands.
“What have you done?!” he bellows, and instinct sends me into a dead sprint. He roars behind me, and his feet thump on the ground like a countdown to my demise.
“Fuck!” Every head outside pops up and stares in my direction, and I will my legs to move faster. “No, no, no, no… Cameron! August!” I wail, and Cameron watches me with a wicked grin while August stares from the porch with wide eyes. “Someone save me! Please! He’s going to… he’s going to kill meeeaaaaaAAHH!”
Ronan tackles me from behind, and I grunt as we hit the ground together. The air whooshes from my lungs as he pins me there, easily eighty pounds heavier than me. “Did you seriously cut my hair?” he shouts from on top of me, and I whine as I lift my head in search of a savior.
“Oh, you done fucked up,” Cameron says with a laugh.
“It was only a few strands!” I wheeze through strangled breaths. “A tiny little spot no one will ever see! Let me up!” I wedge my elbows beneath my torso and try to lift myself, but he shoves me back down and forces another grunt from my throat. “You can’t just use your weight to pin me!”
“Looks like it’s working fine to me.”
“Yeah, well, just because you’re getting a gut doesn’t mean you have to make it a weapon,” I taunt.
Cameron inhales sharply, then cheerfully yells, “That was maybe not the best move!” Ronan’s fingers fist my curls and lift my chin from the ground.
“First you cut my hair, now you tell me I’m getting a gut?” he growls near my ear, low and oh, so dangerous.
“It’s not your fault happy people get fat,” I gasp as he pushes his body even harder on mine. It forces out the last of my breath, making my voice come out in a barely there squeak. “And you are very, very happy. So happy. The happiest.”
Ronan pitches forward, most likely to wrap his hands around my neck. His weight lifts from my chest long enough for me to take a gasping inhale, and I use the opportunity to buck off the ground, trying to throw him. He only chuckles darkly as those fingers squeeze in my hair until it stings.
