Fated to the Dark Elf Episode 8

Chapter 45

Thorne

Blind rage numbs my mind, the roaring in my ears unintelligible from the roaring of the surge of power around me. The dust does little to obscure my elven vision, and I know the image in front of me will be seared into my mind for the rest of my life.

Delia, her face smeared with blood and tears, dust sticking to the moisture on her face and coating her beautiful features in grime. Delia’s green eyes are wide and unseeing in the chaos from the explosion, her human vision unable to make sense of anything past the debris, but I can see everything perfectly clearly.

Her dress is torn to expose her breasts, and she’s pinned to the ground beneath Iknola.

Iknola’s eyes raise to meet mine, his hands still wrapped around Delia’s wrists and holding her beneath him, and he has the good sense to look afraid.

He should be.

Fury sweeps through me at the sight of him, and I fling a tendril of magic at him, so purple it’s nearly black. Iknola is thrown off of Delia and slammed into the wall above the hearth so hard that rock crumbles around him at the impact.

With a flick of my fingers, the skin on Iknola’s hands begins to melt, the flesh bubbling and curling as it peels back around the muscle and sinew of his digits. Iknola lets out a blood-curdling scream as pain contorts his face.

He thrashes uselessly against my hold, against the pain I’m inflicting on him, and in my thirst for gore it sounds like the loveliest song in the world. No amount of suffering will be enough for what he just tried to do to my Delia.

A violent smile stretches across my lips as I watch him writhe in agony, and I slam him against the wall again, and again, relishing in the way his screams hitch in his throat as I slam the air out of his lungs again and again.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Delia, her eyes wide as she watches me. I expect her to be scared or disgusted with me, with my penchant for cruelty, but her face reveals none of that.

Instead, she looks… glad. Relieved. Excited, even.

I tear my attention from Iknola for a moment to look more completely at her, and to my surprise, she smiles at me. A smile much like the one plastered on my face as I hold Iknola suspended against the wall.

Her apparent approval only bolsters me, and I turn back to Iknola, forcing a tendril of magic down his throat, sucking the air from his lungs. His eyes bulge as he struggles for air, and right as he’s on the brink of suffocation, I pull back, watching as he sucks in greedy breaths.

He tried to take her from me. My Delia. He chained her up like she was an animal, made her bleed. He was going to force himself on her.

And now, he’ll suffer for it.

I let Iknola drop from where I’ve held him high on the wall, his chest still heaving dramatically as he struggles for air, and I lunge for him. I don’t want to use my magic to end him- no, that’s far too easy, too impersonal.

I want his blood on my hands. I want to feel him die beneath my fingertips, and then spit on his soul as it flees his body.

My fingers twine through Iknola’s hair as I lift his head from the ground, forcing him to look into my eyes.

“I took your hands because you dared to touch what belongs to me. Now, I’ll take your life, because you tried to play with mine,” I tell him.

Before he can respond, I slam his face into the ground, splintering several planks of the wooden floor with the first impact. I lift his head again, noting with satisfaction the blood pouring from his nose and the way his eyebrow has split, and then slam his head back down again.

I do this several times before I remember myself and turn to Delia.

“Care to join me?” I ask her over Iknola’s bleeding body.

Delia gives me a wry smile, and with a flick of my fingers, I unlock her manacles, freeing her. She wobbles slowly to her feet before sagging back onto the pillar, too weak to stand by herself.

She looks somewhat disappointed before shaking her head. The fact that she seems so disheartened by her inability to exact revenge on her would-be rapist makes a strange surge of emotions swirl in my chest.

Strangely enough, the fact that she accepts, even mirrors, my more murderous tendencies arouses me. My vicious little vixen.

I raise Iknola’s head for the final time, readying to slam it into the ground, before the disturbed bastard begins to laugh.

“You can kill me, Thorne, but you’ll never get what you really want,” he says between breaths, his laughing and voice labored as he chokes on his own blood.

“Your father will always fucking hate you,” Iknola adds as he spits out blood, looking up at me. I snort derisively down at him. Did he really think that would shake me?

“I don’t give a shit what my father thinks of me,” I snarl, rearing back to crush his skull with a punishing blow.

“But you cared about what your mother thought.”

Despite my intentions, I freeze, and Iknola grins, his teeth stained a dark shade of red.

“Poor little Thorne, whose mommy died of some strange, mysterious illness. Didn’t you find it strange? That it was all so sudden, so easily blamed on the rising population of Rach?” He continues.

What the fuck is he talking about?

“Your father killed her. Poisoned her, to be exact. That’s how much he hates you, Thorne- he hates you so much that he’d kill his own wife, just to punish you, control you.”

Despair and frenzied wrath take control of me as Iknola’s words echo in my mind, and with a final roar, I crush his skull against the jagged floorboards, blood and brain matter splattering as his skull splinters beneath my hand.

Deafening silence fills the cabin, Iknola’s words still ringing in my ears.

He killed my mother.

He poisoned her.

Because of me.

White hot anger sears through my veins, my body rigid over Iknola’s corpse under the weight of his final statement. With a roar, a burst of energy, of chaos, emanates from my body and sends the pathetic pieces of furniture flying.

After the clattering comes to a stop, I hear shuffling before Delia’s warm, lithe body is wrapping around mine, her arms twining around my neck as she pulls me down to her chest.

For the first time in years, I cry. Sobs begin to slip from my lips, tears coming faster as my body shakes beneath the weight of my grief. I cling to Delia as if she’s the only thing keeping me on the face of the planet, and she holds me tightly, murmuring soothing sounds above me.

It’s unthinkable, what my father did to my mother. Unacceptable. Unforgivable.

And it happened because of me.

Eventually, I find the will to gather myself, and I pull gently away from Delia. She wipes my tears away with her thumbs as she reaches forward to gently cup my face, her own eyes shining with tears.

I don’t know what to say to her, how to put words to anything I’m feeling. She must see it on my face because she simply nods, offering me a small, sad smile.

“How did you find me?” She asks quietly, her green eyes searching mine.

“Anulu,” I rasp, my voice still thick with misery. “She waited for you, thinking you would need some company after saying your goodbyes. She saw everything, and came to me immediately. It wasn’t hard to track the two of you after that.”

“Thank you,” she whispers. I nod, unable to find the energy for words.

Delia’s arms wrap around my neck again, and I pull her into my lap, nestling my face into the crook of her neck and inhaling her scent.

“I’m so sorry, Thorne,” she murmurs as she runs a soothing hand through my hair.

I nod again, still trying to make sense of it all. As things become clearer, as Iknola’s words finally begin to settle in my mind, I know what I have to do.

“What do you need from me?” Delia asks, pulling away slightly to look into my face.

“This,” I respond simply. I’ve never been comforted by anyone, never allowed myself to be vulnerable or show such open emotion. It’s confusing, but it feels… good. Even in the wake of all of this bad.

“We can do this for as long as you’d like,” Delia tells me gently. “But I meant what do you want to do? About… your father?”

“I have to kill him,” I tell her emotionlessly. It’s the truth. I may have been able to look past the way he has always treated me, his obvious disdain for me and his outright cruelty, but I will never be able to forget what he’s done to my mother.

His life for hers. That’s what has to happen in order for anything to move forward at all.  

“I think you’re right,” Delia says slowly. “But how?”

I think, chewing on her question. My father has no real magical ability to speak of, but he makes up for it with cruelty and cunning.

“We surprise him,” I say eventually. “Between the two of us, I doubt he’ll be able to escape.”

Delia nods and gives me a grim smile, and my resolve strengthens. Yes. We’ll do this together, as a team.

We stay together in the cabin for a while, Iknola’s broken body forgotten on the floor while we hold one another. Being this close to her makes me wish we’d done more of this, that I’d let myself see Delia for what she truly is sooner.

She’s my equal, my partner.

My other half, just as the prophecy foretold.

Gathering ourselves, we climb to our feet, leaving the collapsing cabin behind us hand in hand. On the way back to the manor, my mind continues to circle back to my father, to what awaits us when we walk back through those doors.

Despite my vehement hatred of him, and despite everything he’s done, I wonder if I’ll be able to do it- if I’ll be able to kill him. Even my abhorrence for him can’t overcome the thought that continues to play through my mind.

Can I really kill the only piece of my family I have left?