Page 2 of The Heartless One
Something scratched at the back of his mind. Fingernails trailed down the entirety of his body. He could feel them dragging down his neck, his shoulders, his back. Such a touch should be impossible. Unless…
He sat straight up, nearly cracking their heads together as he realized what it meant.
“Elric?” she asked, shoving her hair out of her face. She stared at him with those big eyes, and for a moment, he was shocked she hadn’t felt it, too.
But how could she? Jessamine was a gravesinger, but she had not tied herself to his coven beyond the simple bonds of friendship. She couldn’t sense the presence of another witch unless they were near. She couldn’t know how it felt like a ghost had ripped its talons along his entire soul.
“Elric?” she asked again, this time sounding far more concerned than the first time. “What is it?”
“Another witch,” he murmured. “Someone is worshipping me.”
Fear rippled through his body at the knowledge that another witch had tried to connect with him. His guts twisted, his stomach rolling with nerves, but even those feelings were a marvelous experience. He knew he should be elated at the thought of another witch, but more people inthe coven meant more voices who may wish to sacrifice him. A coven of witches was powerful, sometimes too powerful.
The wells of his magic were deep and old, but that did not mean they were endless. Witches who sacrificed in his name gave energy to him. The more people who sacrificed in his name, the stronger he would become. Already he could feel what this newcomer was doing.
This was a determined witch. He stretched out his magic, feeling his way through their world to the woman who sacrificed to him. She had gone off into some field and taken a man’s prized cow. The beast had been the best performer for milk, better than any other in the herd, which made it far more special. Someone had given the animal attention and reverence, so its death meant far more in the grand scheme of magic.
“What is she doing, Elric?” Jessamine asked.
“She’s sacrificing a cow to me,” he muttered, his vision almost gone as he focused on the sensation of what the witch was doing.
“You can feel that?” She reached out to hold his hand as though to help ground him.
“She wants something. They all do.”
But what?
The old words spilled from the stranger’s tongue, and he knew in that moment it wasn’t a woman playing at witchcraft. This wasn’t someone who had stumbled upon a spell book and thought she would try it out. This woman had been taught.
The sacrificial spell had to be spoken in the ancient tongue. Anyone reading those words would have stumbled on them or pronounced them wrong. But this recitation was nearly perfect. She built a strong spell, one that flowed throughout the realms of the living and the dead to find him.
Whispered words glided through his mind as the witch called out to him for help. “God of the dead, the Deathless One himself, I ask you to cast pity upon a poor worshipper who has long forgotten the old ways. I beg for your forgiveness in my lack of worship for too many years. I have nearly lost the dearest person to me, and I pray that you might fight onmy behalf to tear away the darkness that follows her. I beg of you to fight death so that I might have more time with her.”
“She wishes for me to stop someone from dying,” he muttered. “A simple request. I will ignore it.”
“Ignore it?” Jessamine’s hand tightened on his arm. “Elric, this is the first time someone has worshipped you in centuries!”
“Sybil worships me.”
Speaking of the witch, he could already see her sprinting toward them from the house. She had her tattered skirts up above her knees as she ran, her hair nearly tumbling out of the knot at the top of her head.
He watched Sybil struggle to get to their side, remaining seated even when Jessamine stood. His gravesinger cast an unimpressed glance in his direction.
“You’re going to make her run all the way out here?” Jessamine asked.
“Yes.”
“We could meet her at least halfway.”
“She is the one who chose to run to my side, Jessamine.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to sit there like an ass,” she hissed. “Clearly something is wrong.”
He reached out and wrapped a hand around her ankle, pinning her in place when she might have started toward the other woman. “Jessamine, I am a god. I do not rush to anyone’s side but yours. Ease your tone, gravesinger.”
Soon enough, Jessamine would need to come to terms with what it meant to be paired with a god. Their power put them above others, simply because of what they could do. A single word from her, and he would raze the entire world to nothing but brimstone and ash. She was no longer a normal woman.
But then again, she never had been. He wondered how her mother had taught her that being a princess was not the same as being a woman. Perhaps he would need to seek out that particular memory within her soul and learn how to handle this wild woman.
