Page 138 of The Concubine King
His knees hit the earth, the dry, dead earth, and he does not know whether his screams are rage or grief.Whatever it is fills him with a devouring heat, an agony that does not fall with his tears but rises to consume him with each one.
Every part of him cut away and replaced with a rotting hollow, like a dead tree being eaten from the inside out.It does not fade.It does not numb.But eventually, he stops.He picks himself up and kneels beside death, pulling their slight body into his arms, his lap, his chest.He closes his eyes and leans his forehead to theirs.They do not wake.
He leaves their body shrouded in white flowers.
He lives alone in the depths of the woods.When humans encroach into his trees he drives roots through their body until they are mangled forms of what they once were, and with them he chases out the others.Eventually humans learn to leave what is left of the forest to him.
It still grows cold and he still sleeps beneath the blanket of snow, waking in spring to the only life he has left.A life of emptiness and sorrow and grief.And so he lives it, over and over, losing himself to time.
One spring, he wakes early.There is something in his forest.It is mightier than humans.It is emptier.
He brushes fragments of snow off and stands.Kyarin stops several paces from him.He looks nothing like himself, and yet nature has no doubt of who it is.His skin is no longer darkness frosted with flecks of white: it is pale.He wears human cloth.It is strange to see him so close yet feel nothing of his presence.With Kyarin’s eyes downcast, he cannot read them.
‘You were right,’ Kyarin whispers.In the budding quiet of tender spring, it is loud.‘I’m not one of them.I can never be.’
He doesn’t reply.Kyarin sinks to his knees and lowers his head.
‘I am alone.You are alone.’He swallows.Fingers clench the fabric at his knees.‘Forgive me.For everything I’ve done.’He remains still, head bowed.
The pain that had faded to background noise comes stinging fresh.‘How can I?You let them—you killed—’ He bites back the words.
Kyarin’s fists curl tighter and his shoulders shake.‘The humans were… afraid,’ he whispers, ‘you would retaliate—’
‘We didn’t!’
‘You and death were too dangerous together.One of you had to—I shouldn’t have—but I couldn’t let them hurt you.I couldn’t let it be you, my shelter, I had to—’ The words cut off with a sob.Kyarin’s body hunches and shakes under his silent cries.
He cannot stop the tears in his eyes or the clinch of his soul, pulling him towards Kyarin.He cannot stop the pangs of grief softening his resolve.It was darkness who had spared him from loneliness his entire life—from the moment he woke—and it is instinct, reflex, to go to him.There is no anger, no resentment, that can fill the void burning inside him.Kyarin can no longer fill it, but nature aches for the salve that his companionship promises.
In the end, he was made for him.
Kyarin doesn’t look up as his feet crunch over snow toward him.Doesn’t look up as he kneels.Doesn’t look up as he pulls him into his arms.They lean into each other.Though darkness looks different and feels different, it is the same sweet chill in his long hair, the same slight pressure of his face against his neck, the same comfort of their bodies twined together.
A burning cold grips his heart.He looks down at darkness’s hand in his chest.
It is nothing like the pain of feeling it through the others.It is worse.As darkness wrenches his heart from its shelter, as the world goes quiet and the life around him severs from his senses, he cannot even scream.It is teeth being ripped from the root; it is a thousand needles to the back of his eyes.
Kyarin staggers to his feet and nature slumps, barely catching himself on his arms.The world is silent.He can feel his heart beating in darkness’s palm.He waits for fingers to close and end it.They do not.
He raises himself, trembling, from elbows to palms.Kyarin stares at him, face streaked with tears.In his hand is a ligneous mass of twisting roots.Nature remembers: his darkness is gone.
‘This is what you are, then,’ he snarls.
‘This is what you made me,’ Kyarin whispers.
Through grit teeth nature hisses, ‘Then you will make me this—you will remember me as long as the forest stands.Any human that dares enter here will never find their way out.’He wills the words into the roots of the trees, his fury into the sap threading their veins, and they listen.‘What is left here will remain untouched and wild, and you will remember what you’ve done.’
Kyarin’s soaked eyes do not move.His mouth opens but no sound comes out.
‘I’m not afraid to die,’ nature growls.‘I just regret wasting my life on something as worthless asyou.’
Kyarin steps back as though he landed a physical blow.A human sword appears in his hand.Metal flashes in the dappled light of barren branches as the blade slices through Ethyr’s neck.
He woke with blood on his lips and breath in his lungs.He could feel the thrum of life: laced through the dirt, climbing walls, spreading fields, growing forests.The particles and nerves of the world knitted together and woven through him.
The stars shifted into focus and below them, Kiaro held him in his arms.
Ethyr looked down at his chest, shakily lifting a hand to run fingers over the tear in his tunic, where wound had been replaced by wood.
