The Game (A Dark Romance)

"I'd heal faster if you let me use my magic."

"No, girl. You'll feel the full effects of these wounds. You'll suffer with them until they're healed naturally."

Bryn could be cruel, but never senselessly so. Hail did not understand why he wouldn’t just let her use her spells. Most of these wounds could be gone in a matter of hours.

"But..."

"You use those tricks as shortcuts," he said. "You think they'll save you. They won't. They'll ruin you. You need to feel this pain, and the pain I bring you after, or you'll never learn.”

“You just want me to hurt,” she hissed.

He loomed over her, one massive, scarred hand on either side of her face, cradling her head gently as he took her apart with his words.

“You want you to hurt, lass. You use the world to make that happen. First the bearoark, then me. You seek out monsters and you make sure they hurt you. I’m not going to disappoint.”

She tried to move to sit up, to explain that this wasn’t her fault. The motion sent a blinding light through her. She passed out.

One

Level One

When Hail woke again, she was worse than she had been before. She was dying. She knew it, not deep in her gut, but in the pit of her mind.

“Bryn…”

He hadn’t left her side. Rough threats be damned, he’d been there with her for as long as she had been insensate. Her bandages had been changed, but it was not the wounds on her arms or legs that hurt now. It was her head. It ached and it throbbed with a pressure that made her want to scream. She let out a whimper and put her hand to her head. On the way up, she noticed that the collar was gone from her neck. He must have taken it off. He must have taken mercy on her when her condition deteriorated, when he realized these weren’t mere flesh wounds.

“I’m here, lass.”

“I’m dying, Bryn.”

“Yes,” he said. “You are.”

She’d had some time to regenerate now, between being dragged off the side of the mountain and returned to the lyrakin den. Proper mages only needed a matter of minutes to begin to regenerate their magic. All the hours she’d spent lying around unconscious must surely have made a difference.

Hail dug deep and tried to heal herself, drawing from the pool of energy inside her. During her battle with the bearoark, she had drained it to its dregs and still there was nothing left. She was not a proper mage. She was a lyrakin wearing a mage’s hat, and that was almost more humiliating than what Bryn had in store for her.

“I’m out of mana. Can you get me one of my magick vials?” She would eventually regenerate her magical powers on her own, but it would take days, maybe even a week. She was coming to terms with the fact that she wasn’t very naturally talented. Lyrakins weren’t. There hadn’t ever been a lyrakin welcomed into MU, the Magical University, and there probably never would be. Unless, of course, she had something to do with it.

“You know we don’t have any potions, lass,” Bryn responded predictably. He did not allow potions, just like he didn’t allow magic.

“How many times are you going to do this?”

Maybe her head was addled, but the way Bryn was talking, it was strange. It was as though he had been here before. As if she had been here before, as if he had tried various ways to stop this, and yet he could not.

“Don’t answer that. You can’t possibly know.”

“I need my potion,” she whimpered.

“We don’t have…”

“In my room, there’s a chest in the corner. There’s a… there’s healing potions. Under a lambskin journal. Don’t read the journal.”

“Does it now, lass?” He folded his arms over his chest, biceps bulging in a way that might have threatened her if she weren’t facing a more or less imminent demise.

“It does. Get me the potion, Bryn. Or watch me die.”

The lass had always had a way with words. It was a way that twisted their meaning, yanked it away from reality, and rendered whatever she was saying absolutely useless, and yet entirely compelling. It was a magic of a kind he disapproved of, though it was not magic at all, strictly speaking.

She was right. Her life force was fading, and without intervention she would surely perish. His ban on magics and potions did not stretch to the limits of letting anybody die for it.

He made one of his under-the-breath growling sounds, and said nothing as he left the room to do her bidding. He was master of lyrakin and yet he found himself following the lead of this little wretch far more often than he would like. Hail had a talent for twisting reality to her will. From the moment she showed up, a sassy, wide-eyed teenager who never followed a single rule, she’d been trouble.