Obsidian Ridge - Jess Lebow [67]
"Alone," she whispered, her voice all but gone.
Her body convulsed, jerking uncontrollably. Xeries squeezed her against his chest. Holding onto her was all he could do as she slipped away, her spirit taking a long time to leave her tormented body.
Xeries continued to clutch her to his chest long after she passed. His body twisted and in pain, nothing else mattered to him. Shylby was gone.
"What is happening in here?"
Xeries looked up at a man wearing dirt-spattered clothing. He drew closer, hunched over and carrying a pitchfork.
"What?" said Xeries, confused, not sure where the man had come from. His voice still sounded strange.
"Who are you?" The farmer lowered his pitchfork and pointed it at the young man. "What are you doing here? I heard your strange noises and saw what you did, so don't lie to me, boy."
Xeries's memory came back to him then. This was the man who had opened the door to the barn at the end of their ritual.
"You killed her," said Xeries, his sadness growing into anger. His words echoing each other as if Shylby were still there speaking them in unison with him.
"I saw what you did to her," said the farmer. "Don't try to blame nothing on me."
"It was you," said Xeries, reliving the moment in his head. "You interrupted our spell. You were the one who made me slip." He laid Shylby s head down on the floor and slowly got to his feet, not taking his eyes off of the man.
The farmer started to twitch, clearly nervous. "You better tell me who you are before I run you through." He shook his pitchfork.
"You killed her," Xeries said, pointing an accusing finger at the man. "You took her away from me. You ruined everything."
Shoving his arms out at the farmer, a torrent of magic spilled from his hands. The air rippled and distorted as a shock wave blew the man backward, sending him smashing through the wooden wall of the barn.
All of his sadness and frustration came bubbling to the surface. "You killed her," repeated Xeries, walking toward the man he'd just sent sailing away. "And now, I'm going to kill you."
+++++
"Have you heard me?"
Xeries watched the last of his memory play inside his head before answering. "No. I was… somewhere else."
"We're here so that you can replace me. You've brought me here because I'm no longer useful to you, and you're going to cast me away, just as you have all the others. Isn't that right?"
Xeries returned to the dais and climbed the steps. Setting his goblet down, he stood in front of his most recent wife.
"I am not casting you away. We are here because this is where I was a young boy. This is where my bloodline started." He took hold of the veil and began lifting it over her head.
She tried to take it from his grasp, but her hands were shaky and slow.
"Please don't. Don't look at me."
The veil came over her head, pilling up on the stone back of her throne. Underneath, her face was terribly wrinkled. Her cheeks were deep craters, her eyes nearly falling from her head, and her veins bulged as if they wanted to burst through the skin. She looked drained, like a shriveled fruit, sucked dry from the inside out. This was not the effect of a long life, running its course on the human body. This was something else.
"Do you see what you have done to me?" she said, looking up at him with bloodshot, dried up eyes.
"But your sacrifice has given me eternal life," he said. "Does that not please you?"
"Does it matter? You have drained me, and I am no longer of any use. Now you will find another, and you will drain her too, all the while professing your love."
Xeries nodded. "That is my burden, yes."
"It is not a burden if you make someone else carry it," she said, gathering her veil and dropping it again over her withered face.
Xeries sat back down in his throne, and resumed his waiting. His wife's life force would not last much longer, and he would need a new bride to drain, very soon. His patience was indeed running thin.
Chapter Twenty
King Korox paced the battlements on the outer wall of the palace. A fortress, it wasn't. Llorbauth