Calder stared at me, his dark eye making me flinch, something in my mind snapping with remembered pain. He held out a hand and I swallowed my fear, pushing to wobbly legs and launching myself across to where he stood, falling into his arms.
“You came back,” I whispered, shuddering against the feeling of shadows closing in around me.
He gripped my arms, pushing me back, just out of reach of the darkness swelling around him.
“I was an idiot, Ven. I was selfish.” He spoke quietly, regret swimming in his blue eye. “I should never have kissed you. I could feel your pain in the next world. The Darkness can feel you, like it knows you, and it’s my fault.”
I shook my head, reaching out to him. He stepped back, his eyes drifting over my shoulder.
“I wasn’t the only one who felt it.” Rage vibrated from his voice, spitting hellfire from his black eye. The shadows around him swelled, the smell of sulphur burning through the room.
I glanced over my shoulder, to the man now reclined on my bed, his arms crossed over his chest, his long legs stretched out lazily. Fjor’s gaze was an endless, terrifying chasm—there was no sign of humanity in the empty depths, and yet…
“What are you doing here?” I asked, my mind stuttering with confusion.
“Your magic screamed at me.”
“And?” I prompted.
He spread his arms out, a small smile threatening the corners of his mouth.
“I came to help. Does that really surprise you?”
Too shocked to respond properly, I turned back to Calder, wanting to reach out and touch him, but not wanting to drive him even further away.
“I’m going to make this better,” I promised him. “I’m going to win the other four battles and save you, and then you’re finally going to have a life, Calder. We have a plan.”
“We?” Fjor asked, sounding amused. “Do you mean the children I just banished from your room?”
“Shut up, sadist,” I snapped.
“Is that really how you thank the man who just saved your life?” he returned calmly.
“I had it under control.”
“If by ‘under control,’ you mean that you were about to become a mind slave to an endless repetition of your own personal nightmares, then yes, you had it under control.”
“Can that really happen?” I finally turned from Calder, giving Fjor my attention, which was exactly what he wanted, because he bared his teeth in a threatening grin.
“Of course it’s possible, Skayld.”
“It didn’t happen when the recruits were being sorted.”
“Your mind isn’t as strong as theirs.”
“You mean that her fear is stronger than theirs,” Calder interrupted furiously. “Not that she is weaker.”
“Agree to disagree.” Fjor’s smile sharpened.
The whole room darkened, and I quickly spun around, alarmed by the fact that Calder seemed to have swelled, the cloud around him distending until the sky beyond was no longer visible. My skin suddenly prickled, a shiver passing over the back of my neck. Something had changed. I could smell rot in the air, and the dark mass around Calder seemed to wriggle, reaching out for something to grasp on to.
Looking for something to infect.
I jerked my hand to my chest, stumbling backwards, missing the edge of the bed and tumbling down to the mattress. Calder stepped forwards, his eyes still full of fury. I trembled, my mind divided, torn between two very imminent impulses. I wanted to flee the Darkness, and I wanted to protect Calder.
“It’s killing me,” he said, some of the rage filtering out of his expression. “Hurry, Ven.”
I sucked in a breath, biting down against the sob that tried to escape my throat as Calder disappeared, the roiling, destructive energy leaving with him. I grabbed one of the pillows, tossing it across the room in a scream of frustration. All the while, Fjor lazed on my bed, looking bored.
“A girl’s first crush is always so dramatic,” he muttered as I clawed my hands through my hair.
I ignored him, crawling back to where he sat and leaning over him to snatch up the fryktille.
“Ledenaether give me strength,” he murmured, his dark eyes rolling up.
I watched as it dug its needle-like legs into my palm, the first bolt of fear shooting through me.
“Frey!” I yelled, curling my body over, my fingers forming a fist around the beetle, a fist which I hid against my chest, protected from Fjor’s meddling.
I heard the door opening, footsteps rushing into the room.
“I thought I banished you four,” Fjor rumbled.
“Stay,” I gritted out, as the nightmare began all over again.
“Why is she doing this exactly?” The words were a bored, silky question, and the last thing I heard.
Evil had returned to haunt me, shining out from eyes mutilated by scars and colours. The feeling of heartbreak was familiar, but it consumed me all the same, tearing out of my throat as Calder’s inky hand pushed through my chest. I accepted the pain, the sorrow, the fear. I allowed it all to flood me, and then I asked for more. I sucked on the power feeding me my nightmares until I could only hear the repeated murmurings of the people who had poured their spirits into making such a device.
I saw their eyes and felt their own fear, leaking into their words like a crack in a dam wall, allowing me to slip through unnoticed, tracing my way back to them. I repeated their words soundlessly, my lips forming each letter as I thought about how to reverse the incantation. It was far more difficult than it had been with the single-word incantations I had tackled so far—which had been impossible enough in their own right.
Eventually, those voices began to separate, the words becoming two different incantations—one, to feel my fear; the second, to show it. I grasped the first, thinking of the Aethen word for “feel”.
Fyne.
It didn’t seem as straight-forward as uttering the word backwards, which would potentially only force someone else to feel my fear—or as simple as figuring out the word opposite to “feel,” as that could create an incantation to make me numb.
Frustrated, I gripped the beetle harder, until a single word popped into my head.
Fryktille.
I had searched past the voices layering onto the artefact, and had wandered into the fryktille itself, surrounded by the meaning of its true name.
Fear beetle.
A small spark of power pushed through the negative emotions crawling all over me, spurring my lips to form the word aloud. I spoke it with intention and power, commanding the true name of the object.
The fear inside me spluttered, blown from my consciousness like a candle snuffed out by the wind, and the little needles withdrew from my skin. I sat up, shaking, my limbs weak, my eyes bleary as I held it out to the formless shapes standing by the side of the bed. One of them jolted forward, taking the beetle, and I heard Frey’s voice resonating from the blur, but couldn’t understand what she was saying. I slumped over, curling around a pillow, my head becoming too heavy to support. I slipped into a heavenly nothingness, and for once, I dreamt of nothing at all.
Fifteen
Beetle
When I woke, it was either days or hours later, because the sun had only just begun to sink toward the ocean. I blinked at the sky for a moment before sitting up and casting my eyes around the room. I went rigid when I caught sight of Fjor, lying exactly where I had left him. His arms were still loosely folded over his wide chest, his long legs still crossed at the ankles, but his eyes were closed.