Page 84 of His Darkest Desire

Neither warm nor cold, neither welcoming nor foreboding, it was nothing…and yet did not his presence make it something? Somewhere?

His head throbbed, and whispers of pain coursed through him. But the pain was distant, detached, and his body… Somehow, it was distant and detached too.

Mayhap he wasn’t in this nowhere at all?

Voices jarred his thoughts. They echoed gently through the void, emanating from somewhere far off, from an unclear direction—from everywhere and nowhere. They were familiar, just like this place. Familiar but impossible to identify.

Vex poured all his focus into listening, determined to put names to those voices, to trace their sources.

He walked forward, or at least he seemed to. The blackness around him remained unchanging, unwavering, affording no indication that he’d moved at all. Pain and sound washed over his being in waves, but only the former was sharpening.

One of the voices was so warm and soothing. It beckoned him, and he longed to hear more of it. Though it was not his own, he had the sense that it belonged to him all the same.

But it was a different voice that reached him with sudden clarity. It was a soft autumn breeze sweeping through the darkness; beautiful, sorrowful, ephemeral.

“You’ve visitors without, magus.”

Vex had heard those words before, long ago.

Shade. That had been the wisp speaking.

A response came in low, rumbling thunder, powerful, commanding, and aloof. “Turn them away.”

Vex’s voice, Vex’s words. But he had not spoken them. Not here, not now.

“Would the magus not so much as gaze upon these travelers before casting them out?” Shade asked with far more patience and gentleness than Vex had deserved.

Something rose from the nothingness around Vex. Gray mist swirled and coalesced, solidifying into a floor, walls, and a high ceiling. A huge window with intricate metalwork inlaid in the glass took shape before him—a window high in his tower.

A lone figure stood before the window, staring out with hands clasped behind his back. The long black hair and pointed ears, the broad shoulders and lean waist, the stance and posture; all of it belonged to Vex. He was looking upon himself, but the goblin before him was not Vex.

This was the magus. This was who he’d been long before he’d taken Vex as his name.

Beyond the glass lay the magus’s realm, whole and hale. Silvery moonlight shimmered on the loch’s dark waters and illuminated the glen’s hills and ridges. The reflections of innumerable stars danced on the water’s surface. The trees swayed in the breeze as though to unheard music, already wearing their autumnal reds, oranges, and yellows.

Something was amiss below. The woods in the tower’s shadow were always dark and quiet. Serene. Uninhabited. Yet orange light now glowed beneath the canopy, and tufts of pale, diffused smoke escaped through the leaves.

Campfires.

“Visitors?” the magus growled. “This is an invasion.”

The air around him rippled and warped with the release of raw, unbridled magic. Vex felt none of it—not the slightest stirring in his blood, not the faintest tingling on his skin. There was only the dread pooling in his gut, cold and heavy, sending out icy tendrils to creep through his bones.

The travelers in the woods needed to be turned away. They were not safe here.

Shade flitted into the space between the magus’s face and the window. “They are of your kind, magus. They are goblinfolk.”

The magus tensed. Vex screamed, bending his will toward this ghost from his past, imploring the magus to make the right choice, the only choice that could’ve protected everyone.

Cast them out! Banish them from this realm, deliver them from their doom!

Vex felt his body moving someplace else, somewhere removed. He felt the ache in his muscles, felt the heat coursing through him with every thump of his heart. Discomfort crawled beneath his skin. But all those sensations were muted, separated from his mind by unseen, incomprehensible barriers.

Until a hand—warm and soft—brushed his cheek.

He stilled, mind and body.

That hand, Kinsley’s hand, stroked from his cheekbone to his jaw and back again, instilling him with calm. She spoke to him, but he was too far away to understand what she said.