Chapter 3

"Do you remember the first time we met Iunius?"

Eliam's calm voice woke me up, and I felt his strong arms around me. He sat on the floor leaning against the wall, and I rested my head against his chest. The intense pain that went through my body made me cry out in panic, and I tried to get away from him, from the pain, but I couldn't move. My back was broken, and all I could do was stay there until the pain passed.

I would heal, I always did, but it took hours, and it hurt so bad. My skin was charred, my joints ached, and I was bleeding from the wounds that hadn't healed yet. There was a bleeding hole in my head were my right eye used to be, and the pain pulsated. The jaw was still broken, as were the legs and my left arm. Some injuries had already healed, those from my first victims. And it was only the last ones left, from those who had died just before Eliam. Soon my spine would heal, my eye would grow out, and my body would become as it was before.

My aching body throbbed from his touch, but it was Eliam I needed now. His calm presence calmed me down.

"Do you remember it?" He asked again, his hand was carefully stroking my cheek.

"I caught you," I managed to whisper between my cracked, bleeding lips.

He laughed, and I saw in his eyes that he remembered. How could he look so happy? Recollecting me killing him, but he looked as if he was thinking of a memory that he held dear.

"You really did. When you came over to me, I wanted to do as my men did and run away, but I was so terrified that I couldn't even get my legs to move."

"Was it more terrifying than when I flew away with you?" I still whispered, but it was easier to get the words out now.

"I don't even remember that. When you took me in your claws, I fainted and didn't wake up until I was in my cell."

I laughed at the memory. But that only hurt, and the laughter turned into a groan of pain instead. Eliam gently placed his hand on my head, and tenderly began to caress my tangled, dirty hair. I closed my eyes and let him comfort me. He was good at that.

"The first time I saw you in your human form, I thought it was a dream. I could never have imagined that there was someone as beautiful as you. Every thought about who you were disappeared when you touched me. All I wanted was to be with you."

Had I been able to, I would have smiled because I remembered everything so clearly. I had been obsessed with Eliam long before we even meet. And when Aislin gave me her approval to capture him, it didn't take long before I gave the orders to my forces to attack the Eastern Army. Eliam's troops had recaptured Nostra's two main port cities, Rahm and Carnie, and now the Temple in Bur was under threat. Had Eliam and his army manage to take the great temple city, we would have lost control over all of Nostra. If we lost the Kingdom of Nostra, we would have lost half the continent, and that couldn't happen.

Up until Rahm and Carnie, Eliam had only been nothing more than a minor annoyance to Aislin and her three siblings, but for months I warned them. The reports of this fearless and strategic genius and his loyal forces became more alarming for each day. They won every battle, and nothing our forces did seemed to do any harm.

Commander Eliam Naor was called the Defender of the East. Among the people, he was a hero, and it was said that he was the King's most trusted man. He was dangerous, not only because the people and his soldiers loved him, but also because he was a military genius, despite his young age. Even the priests talked about him as if he was sent by the Twin Gods to destroy the Fae and their followers.

I was the loyal subordinate of the Fae, General in their growing army. I was an adviser and their strongest weapon, and I was determined to stop this great enemy.

But when Eliam was brought to my room, I no longer wanted to kill him. He attracted me as no other man had done before. He was impressive as a god, strong and full of life. He was my perfect equal. And it wasn't hard to seduce him. Like Eliam said himself, he wanted me from the moment he saw me. We made love, hot and passionate just minutes after he was brought to my room. Our bodies became like one, they blended, and we were perfect. But it didn't last. I couldn't make him forget his wife, his children, and that I was his enemy. Once I managed to get him, but not again, and I was furious.

No one had been able to resist me before. No one had said no to me, until Eliam. I tortured him in the most horrible ways, but nothing could break him. The love Eliam had for his family, and the loyalty towards the King and the Twin Gods was too great for me to break.

Aislin started to grow tired of my game, as she had irritably called it. She wanted Eliam dead, and it gave me no other choice but to obey. I would kill him, but I refused to let someone so perfect just die and become nothing but a fallen hero.

I was unique in the world with my dragon blood, the magic of my father, and the power that the Fae had taught me. There were not many left in the world who could do what I could. Many would never even think about doing what I had done. But I wasn't afraid to try new magic, to test my limits, and many times I was close to going too far. When I decided to take Eliam's soul, I crossed the line. But I never in my wildest imagination thought it would turn out like this.

I didn't kill him immediately. No, I wanted him to feel when his soul left him. Eliam screamed as if he was slowly being divided. He cried from the bed where he was tied up, unable to move. He asked for mercy as I slowly pulled out his soul and forced it into me. His screams were so tormented, so full of the deepest pain that even I should have wanted to help him, that I should have stopped my torture, but I hardly noticed his screams. The energy required to pull out his soul left me almost empty, and it took a painfully long time. But when his soul fused with mine, I was filled with a feeling more glorious than anything I ever felt. It was fantastic, euphoric. I was whole, perfect and everything was wonderful.

Eliam had stopped screaming and was lying still on the bed, blood flowing along the joints where he was chained. He was still alive but was empty of everything—a shell without any content.

Me, on the other hand, felt more alive than ever before, and when I left Eliam, I gave orders to my servants to kill him and send his body back to his forces.

Eliam was dead, and my life was perfect. Everything was better, the food tasted more, the wine was more delicious and Aislin, she was outstanding. When she touched me, it was like pure happiness filled my body. Every touch gave me great pleasure and joy. My mistress was pleased with me. I had managed to kill Eliam, which would make the Eastern Army fall into chaos without its strong leader. Our army would without problems destroy it entirely, and Nostra would become ours once again. I had never felt so alive before, but I should have known better. Everyone who possesses some form of magical ability knows that one can not take another soul without being punished for it. It's taboo.

When the sun went down, and the full moon was clear in the night sky, it began. The punishment for my crimes. My hell.

I suddenly felt sad, as if the elated feeling I had felt all day had only been the effect of a drug and was beginning to subside. I didn't want to be with anyone, and my friends, servants, and soldiers just annoyed me. I hated their dull voices, their fake laughs, and even their smallest movements made me want to kill them. I couldn't stand anyone's company, so I locked myself in my room. I tried to relax with a bath but only became anxious by the silence. I couldn't sleep or find enough peace to read a book. Nothing calmed me.

When I heard the first whispers, I was extremely emotional for no reason, I sat and cried for the first time in over two hundred years. In the beginning, the whispers were so faint that I couldn't discern what was being said, but the voices became more numerous, and finally, I heard what they said.

"You killed us," was said over and over.

When the whispers turned to angry screams, Eliam came, and with him came the truth. I had been blind, and for the first time in two hundred years, I saw and thought clearly. It was like being hit in the stomach. I completely lost my grip, screamed as if I was possessed, as I sank on the floor. All while my lost conscience came back like a flood and threatened to drown me. And I cried in panic.

When the servants came into my room, they found me lying on the floor in a fetal position. My hands were over my ears as if I was trying to shut out the truth. They tried to calm me down with kind words. They lifted me and laid me on the bed, the same bed where Eliam had met his death. I barely noticed the servants, all I heard was the blaming screams, and all I saw was Eliam. He stood at the door, staring at his murderer with an accusing look. I cried. The feelings of guilt filled me. My hands were covered with blood that wasn't there, the blood of all the innocent I killed. And I suddenly remembered every single one, all the hundreds whose lives I had taken. I knocked down my servants as they tried to stop me from leaving the bed and took a knife from a nearby table. I cut my wrist, but the deep wound healed immediately. I tore my hair, cried, and screamed my frustration, the knife trembling in my hand. I remembered all the soldiers I had tortured horribly. All the children that were burned alive by my bolts of lightning. And the hundreds I had sacrificed to my rulers. I took the knife once again and pressed it into my chest. As the blade pierced my heart, I screamed at the unbearable pain that filled my body, but I didn't die. My body forced the knife out, and my heart healed. Helplessly I fell the floor. The tears fell, and I cried for everything I had done.

The servants had left me, but they came running back with Aislin and her guards. They immediately tied me to the bed so I couldn't hurt myself or anyone else. I saw that they were scared and that they were worried about me. But all I felt toward them was contempt. The truth showed me after all the years who they really were. Aislin, my love, I both hated her and loved her at the same time.

They locked me up in my room. The guards stood outside my door, and my beautiful princess was in the room with me, right by my side. This was strange magic to her, but she understood it meant the end for me. I was of no use like this, and she couldn't get me well again. I really want to believe that she felt a little sadness when she sentenced me to death because before she left me, Aislin kissed me and said goodbye.

Those bastards! They should have killed me right away, not wait until the next day. Then I would have been dead, and I would have been free from this endless pain. For this, I hate them even more.

Eliam said nothing for several hours. He only stared at me as I lay tensed and agitated by all the emotions that ripped through my body. Although he was dead, he hadn't changed at all, except his eyes. The beautiful dark brown eyes were now jet black as the darkest night and full of the deepest hatred. He started talking to me just before The Others came. From his seat at the door, he told me in an icy voice that when I took his soul, I disrupted the balance of the Afterlife. His soul would have been reborn in a new saviour, a half-god who would save the world from a future cataclysm. I destroyed everything, and the future was forever changed. The Twin Gods of men could not take my life, nor could they send me to hell.

I was a half-dragon, and they had no power over me, but they could use all the people whose lives I had taken, and whom I was forever bound to. Every full moon since that night came all the hundreds of people I had killed as Cadhla. They came and did to me what I had done to them. At each full moon, I died hundreds of times. I was burnt alive, mutilated, and tortured in every conceivable way, and last came Eliam. Even though he couldn't take my soul, I felt what he had felt, and it was worse than everything the others did together. When the last death came, it was a relief. I woke up from that death with injuries no one else could have survived. But I was, to my great sorrow my, father's daughter, and with his inherited powers, all wounds healed no matter how serious they were. If an arm was cut off, it grew back again. The only way to kill me was by separating the head from the body, but to my great disappointment, had I never decapitated anyone. Hence, no one did that to me. I woke up from the pain and found Eliam standing at the bed end. I cried when I saw him and asked for mercy, but he shook his head and said I hadn't shown him any. He was right. I knew this. I deserved everything I got, but still. I didn't want to suffer anymore. It hurt so much, and self-contempt consumed me. I had told Eliam that it didn't matter, soon the guards would come to execute me, and I laughed with relief. Soon this nightmare would end. But Eliam refused to allow it. He wouldn't let me get away so easily. I would suffer for what I had done to him and all the others, so he took over my body. I was still in there but had no power over my limbs.

Helplessly, I couldn't do anything when Eliam with an immense force made my injured body destroy the straps that held me in the bed. And then he threw us out the window. The glass shattered, and the ground came crashing towards me, but just before I fell to my long-awaited death, Eliam managed to take my dragons form, and we flew. None of the injuries I had as a human was there when I became a dragon and White were both strong and fast. As a spectator in my own body, I saw how the landscape beneath me changed as we travelled east. It was no longer Nostra's golden grain field, but below us was Tempest's green forests and mountains. We moved fast and uninterrupted, and when we reached the sea, my human body had completely healed, and I fell asleep with exhaustion. After all, I had no choice but to let Eliam take me where he wanted.

As I slept, I dreamed about the first time I met Aislin. I had wandered around different countries without any idea of where I was going. I was looking for something I'd been missing since my father's murder a hundred years earlier—a home, somewhere where there was a person that accepted me and wasn't afraid of me. When I was captured by the Fae's forces and brought before the four siblings, I'd been a person who could never hurt another human being. I hadn't even been able to use my abilities to save my father, and that shame burdened me. My father had always talked about how all life was valuable, that taking another person's life was like destroying a part of yourself. I had taken what he'd said as the ultimate truth, so much that I couldn't even hurt anyone to defend myself or the one I loved. I had been a naive fool, but the way I became later, after meeting the Fae, was to go way too far in my desire for revenge. I had always been different, powerful with my gifts and strange in my appearance, but I had once been kind-hearted. The Fae had immediately realized that I was special. They had the ability to sense the power of others. And they wanted me, so they simply took me. I didn't even notice when it happened. When their will took over my own, and I became their Cadhla. But when their grip on me was broken, I saw everything as it truly had been, and I knew. It started when Bearach took my hand and called me a friend. It became even stronger when Caoimhe kissed my cheek and called me sister. When Tuathal gave me my sword Fury and appointed me as General, I was theirs. And the final blow was when Aislin took me to her bed and called me her beloved. Then I was willing to die for them.

I woke up from my sleep as we left the Ocean of Beginning behind us and flew in over Hycor's vast desert, the Sea of ​​Thirst. I understood where we were going, and I was filled with hope. Of course, Eliam took me to his Ruler, King Alexander II of the United Kingdom of Lorea, the Ruler of the Lorean Empire, which consisted of half the world's countries. Eliam wanted me somewhere safe from the Fae, but I hoped and truly believed the King would execute me immediately. I was Cadhla, and now the news of Eliam's death should have reached Lorea. I was quite sure I would be dead within a few hours, but not even that went the way I wanted it. The King decided to let me live. I was taken to this prison, built in a mountain far into the distant mountain chain of the world's backbone. The highest peak in the chain was the Hat of the World, my home for over one hundred and thirty years.

The cell was the same, and every visit from the dead was the same, but everything else had changed. The soldiers aged and were replaced, I became more like a living death, and even Eliam was different. At first, he had enjoyed watching me suffer. However, after a few years, his hatred began to diminish, and eventually, he started to care about me. Now I saw him as a friend.

I looked up into his black eyes with my only one.

"You're too good to me, Eliam."

He stopped caressing my hair and looked at me, his eyes sad.

"If people had shown you more kindness, maybe none of this would have happened. I think I know you better than anyone. I know for certain that you're good."

I smiled, which I could without hurting since my jaw had finally healed.

"Thank you for believing that."

He returned my smile and continued to caress my hair. I came to think of one thing, something that I had thought about while waking up from one of the last times I died.

"I didn't just imagine it, Eliam. There were lesser dead today."

"You said that last month, too," the man reminded me.

"Yes, but it's true. I know something has changed Eliam, you have to know something."

It took a long time for him to respond, and in the meantime, hope grew inside of me. As simple as I was, I couldn't stop believing, though I was always disappointed time after time again.

"You're right. It���s been going on for a few months now. At first, there were only one or two that were missing, but these last two times there have been about ten that hasn't come."

I knew almost nothing about this curse. No more than what Eliam had told me, and it wasn't much. But I knew it could be broken. Otherwise, the King wouldn't have wasted all the money it cost to keep me here all these years. But how things were going, neither Colter nor any of the other soldiers wanted to tell me. The fact that it was less dead that tortured me meant something, and I knew without a doubt that it was important.

"What does that mean?" I asked excitedly, but Eliam had no answers.

He shrugged his shoulders and remained silent as he quietly continued to caress my hair. I couldn't relax, but I stayed still in his arms and let my body heal. I hated not knowing what was going on. The uncertainty tore in my body.

It was shortly after my eye grew back that Colter came. I had managed not to faint from the pain, but instead, I had screamed again, and he heard that. I saw the worry in his eyes as he entered.

I moved away from Eliam when Colter came in and leaned against the wall next to him instead. I didn't know why I did that, but for some reason, I didn't' want Eliam to touch me in front of Colter. Eliam stood up and backed away when Colter reached us. The Captain carried a bucket of water and some clean rags. He said nothing as he squatted in front of me and gently began to wipe the blood from my face.

"You missed one hell of a party, Colter. Too bad you didn't join," I smiled bitterly.

"I heard enough," he said, his voice strained.

Colter had only heard my screams of pain. The screams of the dead could only be heard by me. We said nothing to each other for a good while. He continued to wipe away the blood as I watched him and Eliam, fascinated by their differences. Eliam had the people from Evali's dark features. He looked refined with high cheekbones and almost elegant facial features. Colter was from the northernmost parts of the Empire, the land of Telor where the winters were severe and the summers mild. He was light in both the skin and the hair, the colour of his hair was similar to rye, and the skin was slightly brown from the sun but next to Eliam's he was almost pale. He was also shorter, but bigger with muscles that made his uniform tighten. They were as different in appearance as they could be, but they still attracted me to the extent that I felt hot just being close to them.

Their differences were not only on the outside. Eliam easily showed emotion but put the duties of his family, the King, and the Twin Gods above all. Colter, on the other hand, very rarely showed any emotion. He never laughed or raised his voice. Admittedly, he was a good soldier who obeyed orders without hesitation. Still, it had never been his wish to become the Captain of Company Draconis and its two hundred men. Colter had once told me that he first wanted to take over his grandfather's farm and work as a farmer. But he was his father's only son, and as the duty of guarding me was inherited, he had no other choice. I felt sorry for Colter. It was my fault that he was stuck here on this isolated mountain, in the middle of Reid's snow-covered mountain terrain. I felt terrible when I thought about it, and without thinking, I put my hand on his as he was removing the blood from my cheek. He flinched and looked up at me with his clear blue eyes. His face was filled with surprise.

"Thank you for everything," I said and managed to smile.

He didn't smile, but he nodded, and as I removed my hand, he continued as if nothing had happened. But Eliam had seen it, and he understood. His ever-so-eloquent facial expression immediately showed what he felt. He was worried.

"You love him," he didn't ask, he stated it.

"Yes, I probably do."

I didn't have to think, nor did I want to deny it. Eliam was quiet and seemed to be thinking about something.

"Does he love you?"

It made me look at Colter. He had heard me talk to Eliam after every full moon, but if he really believed that Eliam was there, I didn't know. No one else but King Alexander seemed to believe me.

Our eyes met, and a pleasant warmth filled my body, but I shook my head.

"No, he doesn't."

This, I was sure of. I knew he had feelings for me, but it wasn't love he felt. Eliam said nothing, but I could still see the worry in his eyes. It touched me that he cared about me.

"A new day dawns, Iunius. I must go," Eliam leaned down and gently kissed my cheek.

"I wish this could be the farewell we both long for, but I dare not hope, and I beg you to do the same."

I said nothing because I would never stop hoping, and Eliam realized that. So he shook his head tiredly, but as he disappeared, he had a lovely smile on his lips. I laughed and sighed contentedly as I felt my last injury heal. In one whole month, I would be able to get some rest. And I felt pretty hopeful for the first time since I ended up in this cell. Eliam was probably right. By the next full moon, he and the others would come again, but there were fewer dead returning each time, so I dared hope for an end to this nightmare.

Colter continued to wipe the blood in silence, and I fell asleep exhausted, sitting against the cold wall, on the cold hard floor.