Unfortunately, the bloodied wraith, now her weapon, continued to pound at the creatures that peeked between the shadows, the wraith’s destructive energies causing her to use it as such. Inhuman shrieks and screams abounded in the dark, mixing with the sorcerer’s sinister laughter. Tessa felt like a prisoner in a madhouse.
When the wraith was no more than a lump of bloody pulp, like the other wraiths she’d unwillingly decimated, she released it at ‘Sin Garu’s feet. And similar to the other casualties, this body was soon ripped apart and devoured by hazy, spider-like creatures that appeared out of nowhere.
Soon only a stain remained where the wraith had lain, and the reality of her battles settled heavily upon her. The confusing feelings of both triumph and disgust, excitement and weariness, warred for supremacy, making Tessa exhausted all at once. She wavered on her feet, and not surprisingly, her strength left her as suddenly as it had come. Stumbling, she fell hard on her knees, gasping at the pain.
“Not again.” ‘Sin Garu snorted with disgust. “For months you refused to succumb to a Storm Lord, ignoring both his obvious sexuality and magical allure. Your tenacity against Marcus showed an inner strength I’ve yet to see here.”
He grimaced, his beautiful features pinched, yet in no way ugly. “How can you wield such power against the wraiths and be so weak afterward, when you have the potential to be so much greater?” He seemed to be talking as much to himself as to her, and she had to focus on his face to keep it from blurring.
Squatting down to meet her at eye level, he put a hand under her chin and forced her to meet his gaze. “Tessa?” he said softly, making her wish she had the energy to worry about what he wanted now.
“What?” she rasped, praying he would soon tire of his games, simultaneously longing for and dreading Marcus’ arrival. She loved him, wanted him near, but didn’t want him in danger. Not at the hands of this merciless devil who wanted nothing more than to make Marcus suffer.
‘Sin Garu reached for her hands and slowly brought her to her feet. It was agony to stand, her mind splintering at the effort to hold herself apart from him when she needed so much to lean on someone. As before, where he touched her she felt bone-numbing cold, but as miserable as she was, the small pain was more an afterthought.
“Tessa,” he began, staring deep into her eyes with an intensity that alarmed her. “I fear I’ve gone about this entirely wrong.” He broke contact to walk around her, eying her from different angles. She refused to follow him, knowing to do so would have her crumbling to the grungy floor.
He smiled and inwardly she flinched. “You’re an intelligent woman, and much more aggressive than the Prince of Fire’s affai. Perhaps if I explain a few things, you’ll understand why I appear to be in the wrong, when in fact, I and my people are the injured party here.”
She blinked in astonishment. Did he seriously think she would listen to anything he said with an open mind after torturing her for what felt like days?
“Sit.” He motioned to a chair that suddenly appeared at her back and nudged at her knees. Dropping into it, she waited, trying like hell to regain her strength.
“You know only what the Storm Lords have told you, and in my error I treated you like one of them, even knowing you should not be held accountable for your ignorance.”
Oh, gee, thanks for being so noble. Does that mean you’re not going to rape and kill me now? She bit her lip, wanting to light into him but for once refusing to give in to her temper.
“The Storm Lords are but one facet of Tanselm’s history. The true believers, the ones who made Tanselm what it is today, a world of magic and promise, are the Dark Lords.”
“Dark Lords?”
He nodded, seeming to appear thoughtful. But the conniving glint lurking in his gaze gave him away. What did he hope to accomplish by telling her any of this? According to Marcus and his brothers, most humans from a world with ‘no magic’ weren’t worthy of the great ‘Sin Garu’s time. Just her luck he found her interesting.
“The Dark Lords were my people, and we once ruled Tanselm. Warriors, sorcerers, healers and academics. People like the Light Bringers, people like you, even. Our scholars, in fact, are still mentioned in the Light Bringer texts as men and women of great renown.”
She blinked, not having expected ‘Sin Garu to sound so matter-of-fact, as if he were reciting a passage from a history text. The minute he’d said Dark Lords, she’d imagined a legion of wraiths and worse tearing up Tanselm.
“And the wraiths?”
“Unfortunate souls trapped in the tug of war between the Dark and the Light. They were once as you and I, but encountered a dreaded curse, and today they are only as wraith.”
“The Netharat.”
He scowled. “What the Storm Lords call those diseased with madness. I control them through spells and thought, because I thought I might find a place for them in our world. But the Storm Lords call them foul beings and evil creatures, because of the way they feed and their preference for the dark.
“They cannot help that they need flesh and blood to survive. The curse brought them to this. But they were innocent bystanders in a battle that should only have affected the lords of Dark and Storm.” Icy rage resounded through his voice, and despite her belief ‘Sin Garu was trying to manipulate her, she could feel the real rage in him at what he said.
He raised his hands, in frustration, then supplication as he startled her with a simple apology. “I do not ask you to believe me. I’ve treated you so wrong, done to you what the Storm Lords have done to the Netharat.” He lowered his gaze, his lips flat. “I cannot express to you how sorry I am that my hatred brought me to this.”
Oddly enough, she was starting to feel a smidgen of compassion for him. There were two sides to every story, so perhaps there was more to Marcus’ tale than he and his brothers had shared with her. ‘Sin Garu seemed so sincere, and that scared the shit out of her.
He just put you through hours of torture killing those he supposedly pities, her conscious shouted. But a strange inability to differentiate truth from lie settled over her like a fog, clouding her sense of judgement.
Was the sorcerer using some sort of spell to make her indecisive? But if he could do that, why not just make her believe him and not Marcus?
“All of this must seem ridiculous in light of the way I’ve treated you. But had you come to me first, without the influence of the River Prince,” he said with disdain, “you might be fighting with me instead of against me. Darkness is not evil, light is not necessarily always good.” He paused, his white face gleaming under a sudden shimmering of light above him.
“The illumination is uncomfortable for me, but not because I am evil, but because of the way I’m made.” His eyes grew shuttered as he watched her. “You have probably been told the Netharat, like me, are evil. Wraiths, Shadren, even the Djinn, I suppose.”
Shadren? Great, another evil faction she hadn’t yet met?
“While Michael Davis was certainly unbalanced, not all Djinn are bad. The Djinn are a handsome race, intelligent, and unfortunately for them, more comfortable in the dark than in the light.”
He waved his hands and incanted under his breath, and suddenly she and he stood once again in Michael Davis’ stark living room. Davis’ body was nowhere in sight, but his house stank of death and decay.