Abolisher
4.

Azryle Wintershade felt the tug again.

It was strong enough that a wave of dizziness rushed through his mind, blinding him for a moment. He staggered a step back, and fell down on the bed, steeling himself.

And then it was gone.

Azryle blinked tightly and lifted to his feet, an intense irritation gripping him. He ignored it.

“It’s getting worse every passing day.” Ferouzeh lounged in a settee beside the bed, all dressed up for the night. Her crimson dress clung to her lithe body like second skin—leaving her legs and arms bare, despite the chill season.

Azryle didn’t reply as he sized himself up in the mirror one last time. White shirt fitted his arms, tight enough that the cloth might tear if he so much as tried to flex his biceps. No room to stash weapons—not anywhere on his torso anyway. He did have daggers hidden at his hip, his thighs, in his boots, and one he’d managed to hide beneath the sleeve at his forearm.

He frowned as he did the last button at his chest—leaving the top two undone. “You couldn’t replace a fitting shirt?”

“It is fitting, you bastard.” He watched in mirror as Ferouzeh’s burgundy-painted lips formed a lazy smirk. “Our mark happens to have a taste for fashion.” She sighed. “We’ve been on hunt for this one piece of information for a year, now, Az, I don’t want to risk it because you’ve only ever worn fighting leathers, and that grey undershirt of yours.” She rolled her hazel eyes. “Burn that Abyss-damned shirt and Ianov will have less burden.”

Azryle tutted. “And more pollution.” He turned, all ready, and Ferouzeh lifted to her feet. He said, “If we replace nothing tonight, then what? We will have nowhere else to go.”

“There’s always somewhere to go.” She headed for the bedroom door.

Inn’s lights in her silken hair shifted like an obsidian waterfall catching sunlight as she looked over her shoulder.

“If there are questions, answers are meant to be found. And if replaceing them takes time … we’re immortals, Az, time is all we have.”

✰✰✰✰✰

The music in the club was blaring—deafening to Azryle’s heightened ripper hearing.

Myriad lights bounced on and off everyone dancing on the platform, which was sprawled across the vast room, flashing all kinds of colors. The scent of joy was strong enough that Azryle found his own mood unclenching, his heart—which once had been as unfaltering as ticks of a functioning clock—began beating with the rhythm of the boisterous music.

This feeling would never not be strange—of a free, untamed heart. Leashed no more.

Well, not to Felset.

This is yours alone, someone had once told him. Yours to give, yours to command. And this is where the strength lies, Ryle.

He was beginning to forget her voice, her fragile face. But he still remembered how her touch had felt, how his skin had felt lively and … breathing every time hers had been in contact. Her words had been foreign, then—unnecessary, strange. But now, as he let himself feel each thrust of his heart, echoing through his entire body …

Azryle shoved his thoughts. “How would I recognize the client?” he shouted over the booming music.

But Ferouzeh was already being swallowed by the crowd of wild dancers, like a bead of mercury being pulled into a gathered clot of it, her hips moving with the music. She still looked over her shoulder and grinned wickedly—widely enough that her round cheeks swelled out—her eyes sparkling. “She will replace you!”

And then she was gone, swallowed by the crowd.

Azryle blew out an exasperated breath and headed for the bar.

As he went, he caught another scent, well hidden behind the joy and excitement, wedged somewhere between exhaustion and misery.

Sorrow.

It wasn’t of one person, no—it was exuding from almost everyone present on the stage, and grew stronger as he advanced towards the bar, where men and women drank themselves to oblivion, trying everything to take a break from the world.

Azryle slumped down in a stool, and pointed at the barkeep for a drink. And waited for the client.

It had been a year without a lead, a year on this hopeless, unending quest. A year since he’d been freed from Felset by Syrene Evreyan Alpenstride—bound to Alpenstride. Like a toy taken from one and given to another.

Azryle pressed the heels of his palms against in eyes, elbows pressing in the bar.

He hadn’t gone around looking for Alpenstride, hadn’t been able to give up this … this bit of freedom, if he would dare call it that. Because he knew the moment he would near her, the moment he would lay his eyes on her, he would be no more than a dog—no more than what he had been a year ago to Felset.

His each instinct would spike, and all he would want to do would be serve Alpenstride, please her, conform to her commands. As much as he’d loathed Felset, the strong want to provide her pleasure had been there—a desire he hadn’t been able to rid himself of. Which was what had led him into her bed, when he’d obeyed her commands like a good pet. There had been no fight.

The barkeep slid a drink to him, and Azryle’s fingers curled around the small glass.

The music seemed to dwindle behind him, and his speeding heart seemed to have climbed to his ears, as he felt—felt—Felset’s hands on his skin, her lips trailing every part of him. Felt as he lost himself to her, felt her chuckle as it reverberated in his skin, chilling his blood and bones. He’d been screaming with no one to listen, had been crying for help without knowing it.

He’d been dead. He’d been a lifeless thing, a toy, a minion, an asset—

Azryle heard the groan of glass in his hand as it protested against his tightening grip and the world reeled back to him. The music was deafening again, and he shot the drink down his throat. It burned.

He asked for another.

You have to control these feelings, Azryle, Ferouzeh had told him a year ago, a few nights after he’d been freed. These feelings had been a deadly flood. He’d felt rage so violent that it took over his sight, his actions. He’d felt despair so severely that Azryle had unleashed his mejest upon a forest—brought it to splinters before he gathered senses. He’d been a mess.

Being a Vegreka, Ferouzeh had chided, your mejest feeds on whatever you feel, leaving you hollow. We feel more than Grestel do, we crave it all. And it drives us crazy. We learn to control it as we grow, of course. But you haven’t had anything to learn control over. Your mejest has been ravenous for three centuries. It’s going to fiddle with your mind, it’ll keep demanding more. You’re feeling more than you should be, it’s tempering with your sentiments. You have to learn to control your emotions before you end up laying this world to ashes.

No matter where he might run, no matter what mejest he might hold, his soul was still bound to Syrene. Whenever she needed his presence around herself, Azryle felt the tug in himself like a flame calling to a moth. And wherever he might go in the world, wherever his immortal life might lead him, he would return to her like a moth drawn to a flame indeed.

They were bound, until death did them apart. Literally.

Even if the whole world came between them, even if the universe played against them, they will remain bound, soul to soul. Inseparable.

Until Syrene Alpenstride willed otherwise.

Azryle sighed and gulped down another drink. Then another.

He was careful, though—he could not afford to get drunk. Ferouzeh might say they had all the time in the world, but he wasn’t willing to spend his immortality being on one quest.

Yes, Deisn Rainfang had bought Syrene time—centuries, at least—by sacrificing herself; to end Drothiker, and the Enchanted Queen, but what after that? What would happen when those centuries end and Drothiker would still be alive?

To kill Drothiker, the five Elite Kaerions—the five individuals gifted by the otsatyas, Destined to end Drothiker—must drain their powers in Syrene and kill her.

But Azryle could not afford to let that happen, could he? His own life was bound to Syrene’s. Not that he would die with her, no, only that a part of his soul would rip apart. Literally. And he didn’t think he would be able to live with a wounded soul for eternity. Didn’t want to.

But he hadn’t felt that rip yet, which meant the duce was still alive and faring somewhere on whole planet Ianov. And maybe she was hunting for the Kaerions today, planning a way to help them end herself, but Azryle was inclined to replace her before that.

All he had to do was stop fighting the leash that bound him to her, and he would replace his feet walking towards her. Drawn to her, like iron to magnet.

It wasn’t even a leash around his neck, as it had been with Felset. No—with Alpenstride, the tug was on his whole body, his heart, his soul. And it was so gentle that he didn’t think leash was the right word at all.

A thread, perhaps—

Someone tapped at his shoulder.

Azryle whipped his head to his side, only to replace a woman sliding in a stool beside him.

He stilled. His breath caught.

SyreneAlpenstride sat beside him, a grin on her full lips. Her face was full now, healthy and beautiful as ever.

Just as it had been all the other times he’d seen her this past year, whenever he’d been drunk. And just as all those other times, Azryle knew better than to believe his eyes—his swimming, drunken head.

Azryle blinked tightly, and shook his head. Then silently cursed himself for being so careless—tonight, of all the times.

When he opened his eyes, the woman beside him had little to nothing in common the woman his treacherous eyes longed to see.

No—where Alpenstride’s eyes were a cloudless, day sky, this woman’s eyes were the darkest night—as dark as Ferouzeh’s hair—almost looked as if she’d embedded gems there. Her hair rose gold, reflecting the myriad lights flashing all around them.

As Azryle pointed at the barkeep for a drink again—this one for the lady beside him—she inquired, “Ryle Kewest?”

Ah, yes. Of course Ferouzeh hadn’t given out their real names. “Most tend to call me that, yes,” he pretended.

She was exhausted, Azryle could scent it over all the other scents in the room. Her gold-cored dark eyes heavy, rose-gold hair somewhat disheveled. Good, then. He wouldn’t be the only one to get blamed for this already-looking-disastrous meeting.

The woman shot the drink down her throat, the other hand fidgeting with something in her jacket’s pocket; her expression pained before she slammed the glass on the bar. The barkeep was already refilling it, visibly used to exhausted drinkers.

“And you must be Delaya Fairdust,” said Azryle.

Azryle watched and waited as she shot down a few more drinks, clearly frustrated at someone. Her eyes grew glittery after the drinks—her smile grew sharper than a knife. She began rapping her manicured nails at the bar, and hummed.

Then a moment later, she gritted, “One of my many names, yes.” Then another drink was at her rosy lips. Fairdust’s dark eyes moved to him—ran over him from head to toe. And then she snickered. “You’re more formal that I had expected.” Then added with a grin that could have had men on their knees, “And way prettier.”

Azryle slid a naked glance across her sinuous form. “My companion said to impress the pretty lady I’m meeting tonight.”

Her voice dropped to a hum. “There are many ways you can impress the lady tonight.”

He straightened. He knew where this was going—and steered the conversation. “Do you have the information?”

Fairdust arched a brow, one hand still in her pocket. “Have you brought my payment?”

“It was already done.”

“Yes, but a woman needs a few extra verst to get her immortal life through this expensive world.”

Azryle narrowed his eyes. And almost reached in his pocket to bring out verst, but then the woman caught his hand midway. Her skin was warmer than his, hand paler than his. Her voice lowered to a whisper when she spoke.

“Or you could pay me in other ways.”

Azryle was lightheaded and exhausted and in need for more drinks. In his three centuries of life, he’d been with Felset more than anyone else, who needn’t flirt with him. But there was no mistaking the intimacy in Fairdust’s tone, the invitation.

And it became clearer when she leaned in and her mouth was on his.

Azryle went still, his heart sped. His throat tightened as he felt the ghosts of Felset’s touch on him, felt her grazing his mind and hissing commands.

Azryle pushed the woman.

His head was pounding in his ears; sweat formed at his forehead.

For a moment, he wasn’t there. For only a moment, he was in a throne room; Felset’s one hand in his hair, other hand roving his entire body; her lips on his neck, as he stood still as a statue.

“Ablaze Kosas!” Delaya Fairdust cursed, snapping Azryle back to the club.

But the music was still faint in his ears, his heart louder, images taking over his eyes were clearer than the bar before him. Azryle grunted, painfully trying to fight these—these feelings rushing through him like a wild current of an ocean. After being confined for three centuries, they were now free and impatient.

Dangerous. Poisonous. Untamed.

He curled his fingers in a tight, near-shaking fist. As he did, a dagger slid out from beneath his sleeve, and settled right into his hand—its tip pressing into the heart of his palm.

Azryle pierced the tip into his flesh, and let the pain guide him back.

The muffled music sharpened; it was like rising to the surface of water. Suffocating, and then breathing.

When his sight cleared, he caught Fairdust narrowing his eyes at him.

“I’m—” Azryle began, not knowing what his mouth might voice.

But Fairdust cut him off. “You need a dance.”

Azryle flinched. “What?”

“You look like you’ve had a rough century.”

“Make it three,” he muttered. And shot down a few more drinks.

Sobriety be damned.

✰✰✰✰✰

He didn’t know when he was led to the dance floor.

He didn’t know when he’d let the music lead him.

Azryle only knew the bird in his chest was lively, beating with the pattern of the thunderous music.

Delaya Fairdust was dancing against him—wild and drunk. She was laughing with him, her arms twined around his neck, making his head bow.

It wasn’t Delaya he saw though.

It was Syrene Alpenstride.

Her feline grin as delirious as he remembered from the night she’d been bathing in the lake, right before the baeselk’s assault. Her eyes glittering with eternal joy.

She took his hands to her waist, biting her lower lip, and they began roving, as if answering to an unasked question.

With his swimming head, Azryle didn’t know when his lips landed on hers.

It was as if time jumped fifteen minutes from there, and he was back at his apartment, Syrene’s lips on his. She kissed him deeper and deeper and unbuttoned his shirt. His one hand shut the door behind as the other slid to her thighs and hoisted her up against a wall.

Everything was a blur from there.

Faintly—so faintly—a thought tattled that this was not Alpenstride. That she was a stranger who held vital information.

But did it matter? All Azryle wanted—needed—was to get Felset’s traces off his body, his mind, his soul. They were engraved in his mind and soul—ineffaceable, permanent. But his body … if myriad other touches could replace Felset’s, if they could bury her traces so deep in his skin that they disappeared, then be it.

Wasn’t that what he’d been doing this past year? Bedding different women to get rid of Felset’s traces on his skin.

But was it working?

Azryle didn’t want to know the answer—the truth. So he let the question vanish into the coiling smoke of his drunken mind.

✰✰✰✰✰

Azryle loathed the aftermath of drinks.

His head felt as if it were filled with shards of mirror. With his ripper hearing, even the chatter of people down in the street felt as if they were all shouting in his ears. Azryle thought they would begin bleeding soon—his ears.

He opened his eyes. And flinched when found Ferouzeh standing over him. She was glowering, hands poised on her hips. Ferouzeh, who otsatyas-knew-how managed to be so gleeful and energetic all the Abyss-damned time, did not seem very delighted.

“What?” he whispered. Whispered, and yet the sound bellowed in his head. Azryle winced.

“What happened last night?” the healer ground out, hazel eyes lively with irritation.

Slowly, every second from last night sunk in. And Azryle jerked up.

He looked to his side, but the woman from last night wasn’t there.

Ferouzeh smacked his head.

Azryle snarled, whipping his gaze to her. But Ferouzeh was furious—Azryle had never seen her like this. It struck him enough that for a moment, the piercing volumes in his head and ears ebbed.

Until the healer spoke again.

“How could you do this—how could you be so irrational, Azryle, this was our one chance—” She threw up her hands.

Azryle hissed in pain, bringing both his hands to cover his ears. Otsatyas knew he’d gone through all kinds of torments, but the aftereffects of drinks were something else entirely.

But Ferouzeh didn’t seem to care. She went on. “She was our only link to Kefaas Petsov. We—no, you have been on this hunt relentlessly. Always treading carefully, not letting yourself get distracted even for a moment. But the moment we replace a lead, you ruin it, you—”

“I didn’t ruin it,” Azryle snapped.

“Really?” Ferouzeh shot back. “Then what is this?”

She stretched her hand, a paper in it. A note.

Azryle took it.

✰✰✰✰✰

There are tales about your countless skills, but none tattled about your remarkable acting, Prince Azryle Wintershade. Until next time, when you, I hope, will be in your wits enough to heed others like a predator you are, rather than looking like a hurt pup drinking his sorrows away, Your Highness.

With all love,

D.F.P.

✰✰✰✰✰

Azryle stared and stared at the paper, at the words. And it crumpled in his hand.

“Well?” demanded Ferouzeh. “How did she even suspect. You even had that wretched tattoo glamoured and hidden from your skin.”

But Azryle wasn’t listening—couldn’t listen.

Looking like a hurt pup drinking his sorrows away. His gut churned. This was what it had narrowed down to? This was where these human feelings had brought him? Going from an undefeatable assassin—from the Pall Moira—to someone slowly being crushed beneath the weight of weakness?

His stomach turned. Saying he was disgusted with himself was an understatement. What did you do when you had a strange urge to claw at your chest and squeeze out every indescribable thing blooming behind the cage of your ribs?

What did you do when you wished to feel nothing at all, only so you could be strong again?

Azryle clenched his jaw. He pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. An unbearable pain brewing in his chest, making his eyes strangely itch.

What was happening to him? What had she done to him?

How was she able to screw him up in each way possible? How had he let her—

“Ryle.” Ferouzeh’s cool fingers gently touched his shoulder.

Azryle looked towards her, swallowing the tightness in his throat as he did. Fury had ebbed from her beautiful face, those slender eyes pinned him with …

Pity.

The pang in his chest blossomed to irritation too quickly. He shrugged her hand off his shoulder, suddenly aware he was naked—only a blue sheet was covering him up to waist. He opened his mouth to snap at her, but Ferouzeh heaved out a sigh and fell down in the chair behind her.

“Felset destroyed you,” she said abruptly. “She took each part of you and crushed it, and relished in it. She made you a vessel, an asset, a toy—”

“Ferouzeh—”

“—but you’re free now of her now, Az.” There was something in her voice—a plea, he realized with a jolt—that had Azryle feeling like a child. The same child whom Ferouzeh had played with three centuries ago, before he was captured by Felset.

“I watched you.” Her voice broke. “One day you were a child coming to me to play because you didn’t have your family anymore. Then next day you were horrified after hunting down a baeselk for the first time, and you didn’t want to play anymore. Then the third day, there was nothing. No child, no adult. You were cruel—you didn’t even smile.”

He stilled.

“Every passing day, you returned to me with less life in your eyes. Less humanity. You grew into a fighter, a criminal. A predator who relished in gore. And I couldn’t do anything—couldn’t fight for you. I watched as she drained life from you. I watched as she abused you, broke you, patched you up and then broke you again. I tried to replace all the ways to free you, to buy you from her, if possible. But you’d become something precious to her—an obsession. Then you disappeared for a whole century. I thought you were gone—out of clutches of any sort of help. But then Mae told me what Her Majesty was doing to you in those dungeons, and I still couldn’t do anything. Every effort proved fruitless against her, every word in books was useless.

“Then you finally returned. Bathed in blood, and skinny, and horror-stricken.” Silver lined her eyes. “I watched you fade away, watched as you turned to a breathing dead body.”

She reached out to touch his hand. Azryle tensed, an instinct spiking to snatch it away from her grasp, but he didn’t.

“I want her to suffer, Ryle—I want you to make her suffer. More than anything. I want her to go through Saqa over and over again, until she loses her damned mind, until death is her only reprieve, until she begs for death.”

He’d never seen Ferouzeh wish harm on someone before—she’d always been carefree. Free from loathing. And this … this caught Azryle so off guard that he didn’t think he could move.

“But more than that, I want you to heal. You’re free of her, now, Az,” she repeated, “and bound to one person on the whole damn Ianov who can defeat her. We need to help Syrene. We need to replace Kefaas Petsov, replace more about Drothiker, prepare Syrene before Queen Felset sends the planet to Saqa. We cannot afford to get distracted.”

“I didn’t,” Azryle said softly.

Before Ferouzeh could open her mouth again, Azryle reached out into the depth of his mejest. It was as if a hidden pocket opened in the world, and a stone dropped right in his lap.

It was glassy obsidian—a twin of Fairdust’s dark eyes. But her eyes had somehow been darker, entrancing.

Ferouzeh tilted her head. “What is that?”

“Delaya Fairdust had never meant to give us information,” Azryle said, recalling the way she’d thrown herself at him, as if trying to distract him. “She’d just come to see who was looking for Petsov. Worst case scenario: she might be hunting Syrene. But this”—despite himself, Azryle managed a small smile, picking up the stone—“from the way she’d been fidgeting with this in her pocket, as if just making sure it was there, this will bring her right back.”

The stone was cold—freezing. So cold that it pained his hand. He dropped it. “Kosas.”

But when he looked to Ferouzeh, she was grinning. “Looks like we’re meeting sooner than she’d gambled.”