Choosing to say out of the Alliance, the Cinders are isolated in their own conflicts, and when Helia Cinder reaches to the void for answers, she inadvertently draws a creature out. Expecting to be eaten alive, she is instead left with a man with no...
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Wren couldn't catch his breath as he waited for the wound on his chest to close. Light magic was more difficult for the expedited healing of a dark-magic blood-bond to repair, but it barely left a scar as his skin crawled over the melted flesh. Pyre hadn't come back though, and Wren turned as far as he could to see into the hall. It wasn't far, and he collapsed onto the chair as he tried catch his breath again. Just being locked up like this had his heart hammering with fear that he knew was part of his suppressed memory. His lips were cold as ice, as was the room, and his limbs trembled in their constraints as he waited for what was coming for him.
This was familiar. Wasting away in the dark, freezing and hungry, completely alone and barely able to move his body. Four stone walls, no windows, the drip of water in the backer parts of the dungeon. Days, weeks, years passing by with no hope for freedom nor salvation.
"No stop!" Pyre begged around the corner.
Pyre feared nothing, so the higher pitch of his desperate voice had Wren jerking in his chains, but he was helpless. The sounds of a scuffle didn't put Wren in any better position to see what was going on, and the fight ended with a surge of light magic, a gasp of pain, and a thump. Footsteps echoed last, coming down the corridor, much heavier than Pyre's, and Wren's eyes practically peeled open as some two hundred pounds of tan muscle stood in the door.
"Talamayas..." the word trailed off, and Wren's breath quickened as his gaze sank into the soulless pools of blood. The love that had once lay within them was gone like it had never existed, and crimson marred his right arm, trailing thick liquid down where it dripped onto the floor
"You thought you could escape me?" Steam puffed from Talamayas' mouth as he examined the room, taking in the stone walls, the chair nailed to the floor, and finally settling on the manacles and chains that locked Wren's hands behind the chair and secured him to the wall. A smirk lifted Talamayas' lips, and his fangs were already longer then his mouth could contain.
"I wasn't—" Wren barely managed three syllables before Talamayas' hand crushed his windpipe and leaned down to breath steam directly into his face.
"How dare you let another man touch you." Talamayas inhaled his scent and his entire muscled body shuddered. "Here." Talamayas smudged moisture across Wren's cheek with the other hand, streaking it down his face, over his shoulder, and allowing it to drip down his chest. "What's left of Pyre."
Wren's jaw trembled over the hand that still held his throat, and he struggled to swallow as Talamayas watched him with deranged glee lighting his eyes at every hint of fear.
"What?" Talamayas asked, a deep rumble of insanity triggering every fight or flight instinct Wren had. "Did you expect me to show up on my knees and beg you to return like some sap?"
Talamayas lifted his blood soaked hand to drift his fingers against the side of Wren's face, down his chin, and when one touched his lip, Wren pulled away but couldn't get far with the constraints.
