Chapter 45: Forty Five

Chapter 45: Forty Five

Valka

The first time I met Thane was the first time I died.

Not in the battle camps of Silvermoor. Neither was it on the streets of Voss, when I’d awakened and died in the body of a human infant. Neither was it when I’d fallen off the cliffs and died by Malachy’s spear.

The first time I met Thandric, I was in Lucien’s arms, already dead.

What happens after death?

Stillness.

It was upon the floors of our private home, hidden away in the hills, surrounded by the bodies of the servants who had become family, who had attended me and raised my daughter to her little age of six, that Thane had found me.

I was long gone, the only thing keeping me tethered to Earth being the bond between Lucien and I. The bond between Erasthais that transcended life and death. I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t rest. Because he wouldn’t let me go. I didn’t want to leave, either. I wasn’t ready to leave. I had the rage of a thousand glaring suns in me. I had pain to inflict. I had vengeance to gift. I had men to kill, their wives, their mates, their children to murder for taking mine from me.

"Do you understand what it is you seek, child?" Thandric asked, a wind I could not feel ruffling his white hair. It was strange. I never realized how much he looked like Lucien.

Lucien could not see or hear us. He was far too gone in his grief to notice the shift in the air. It might have been hours since he found us. Days maybe. I couldn’t say. I no longer had a sense of time. I’d sat by his side, watching him try to stitch my wounds together and roar whenever he failed.

The man had been a bastard. But I’d never seen him cry like a babe like he did when he knew my body had begun to decay. When he knew he’d have to set fire to my skin and collect my ashes.

"Yes," I said, rising to my feet. My gaze met ancient violet ones. "Bring me back."

Thandric’s lips curled in mild annoyance. "Wanting it doesn’t mean you deserve it. There is a trade to be had. A life for a life." His eyes dropped to my belly. And it was then I truly understood what else had been stolen from me. "A son."

"Whatever it takes," I said. If the dead could feel, I might have burned with grief. For the child I never knew. For the child I did know. For the screams she gave. "Make it stop," she’d cried. "Mama!"

Thandric’s head tilts. "State your purpose."

My purpose. My purpose. My purpose.

I didn’t know it. All I knew was I had to come back home. All I knew was I had to avenge the lives of those who tried to buy me time. To avenge my daughter. I had no answers for Thandric. I only had answers for myself.

War.

Whatever Thandric saw in my eyes, in my shredded garments, on my soiled skin, my stolen dignity and the bruises that told a story of how they’d reveled in ripping me apart piece by piece, it was enough of an answer.

"Then hear me, and understand what you ask," he said, voice like stone sinking through water. "You will not awaken in your body. It is ash-bound and empty. I will cast your essence into the vessel of another. A child still soft and unformed. Two souls in one shell. This is no rebirth."

"What is it, then?" My voice was faint, a distant echo in a void that didn’t exist.

"Possession,

A chill moved through me. "And if she dies before either of these happens?"

"Then you return to me," he said. "Only to be cast adrift once more. Forced to behind again. Again. And again. Until you succeed. Make no mistake, Ilya Blackspire. Should you consume them, you will have killed them completely. Their lives, their loves, their attachments, all gone. You steal their chances to live here and in the After." He leans in. "Is that something you’re willing to have on your conscience?"

I do not miss a beat. "Yes."

******

The next time I opened my eyes, it was in the body of a weak willed human. It was easily to take possession of her, but in the end, she was only human. We died the second time from the plague in a flooded gutter in Voss. We were twelve years of age.

I met Thandric then, the second time. The last thing I saw before he took me was a scowl on his face.

The second time I opened my eyes, I was still human. I began to think Thandric was toying with me when I died again. I’d barely turned eighteen and I was struck by a stray arrow while being pursued by wolves dedicated to hunting down Lycans.

Thandric had come to me yet again, and instead of that scowl, he’d been laughing at me. "Oh, but you have the absolute worst luck."

But the third time I opened my eyes, I was a wolf born to an Omega and a woman who never should have been on the wrong side of the wall. A woman who had been tortured for so many years, she’d only remembered who she was when she fled and stumbled upon a wood carver’s workshop.

The gods had smiled upon me, I thought.

But I was wrong.

When the child was born, she was strange. Strange in the sense that she knew she wasn’t alone, and something older, something that didn’t belong in her resided in there. And Lyra Ironfang did not cry as a child. No. The first thing Lyra Ironfang did was wrap my essence in chains and expel me from her mind.

She was only a few days old, but she was already one hell of a bitch.

It cost her gravely, that single action. The physicians couldn’t find her pulse by morning and she was proclaimed dead. Her mother couldn’t handle it. She left. Margot Nythorn left and never returned, leaving Eldric Ironfang with the body of their dead child to bury.

But Lyra Ironfang awoke the next dawn like nothing had happened.

And I knew the gods hated me. Truly. Because the child was a rebel. And would not be subdued.

This isn’t Valka speaking, as you must have realized. Whichever names you choose to call her. It doesn’t matter.

I am Ilya. And I am fucking trapped.