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The eye stared back at him. Raised like a scar, the skin was redder than he remembered it. As though it was irritated from his close encounter with the witch. Looking down at the mark was nearly as unnerving as looking the witch herself in the face. Whatever the magic was, one that was far older than that of the elemental magic he leached from the world, it thrummed in time with his pulse. Where the elemental magic of mages could be molded and shaped without consequence, this power felt as though it was clawing its way deeper and deeper inside him, ready and wanting to take from him in the same way it gave to him.
“I don’t know what I’m looking at.” Merritt leaned closer. “Did you lose a bet? Someone carved your hand up?”
Remis shook his head. He dared to look up. Where Merritt was confused and blissfully unaware, Percy had paled.
Percy slammed his book shut and one hand covered his mouth as he spoke behind it. “Please tell me that is not what I think it is.”
“What do you think it is?” Merritt looked between his friends and frowned.
He closed his hand into a fist, hiding the mark, then picked up the fabric to re-wrap it. He couldn’t look at it any longer. “I certainly don’t know why or how, and if it wasn’t for the supernatural way it feels and seemingly communicates with me, I would find a reason to call it something else, but it’s a witch's branding, a warning that I’m being hunted.”
“As in the brand the Emperor Grandith once wore?” Merritt blinked slowly, thoughts churning behind those bright blue eyes.
Remis chewed the back of his bottom lip and nodded. “It’s only speculated that he was hunted before he became the hunter.”
“I think we can all agree it’s better to be the predator than the prey,” Percy whispered, still wide-eyed and slack-jawed.
"But it communicates with you? How? It’s just a scar.” Merritt tilted his frame away. As far as Remis knew, it wasn’t contagious, but his friend shied away as though he might be hunted next.
“It’s my own voice, my own thoughts, but louder…more demanding. It burns through my body.” He was stumbling over his words like a nervous child. “I-I don’t know. One minute I’m getting my shoulder fixed up, the next my mind is screaming at me to run. It’s an overwhelming instinct.”
“We are running from a witch.” Percy’s eyes glazed over as he murmured to himself and seemingly fell into his own thoughts.
Remis worked in the silence that followed, tying up the fabric again. His friends were taking this remarkably well. They weren’t throwing themselves out of the carriage to get away from him or shrieking uncontrollably, so that must be a good sign. Perhaps he had overreacted, and this wasn’t as bad as he originally thought it would be.
“She’s going to kill you,” Percy looked at Remis as though he was a ghost. “Fuck your father for sending you through the Deadwoods, but this…this is what kills you. I’m so sorry, friend.”
Perhaps it was as bad as he originally thought. Percy assumed he already had one foot in the grave so the level of panic he’d lived in for the past day appeared to be quite appropriate for the situation.
“Stop. Stop talking like this.” Merritt held up a blistered hand. “Why?”
Remis shrugged but immediately regretted the action as pain flared in his shoulder. He watched out the window, rubbing a palm over his chest where the fear had nestled against his heart. The houses they passed were getting smaller and less fanciful. The occasional storefront came and went.
“I have no dealings with witches to my knowledge. I haven’t a clue as to why one would want to hunt me or would even care about me at all.” He thought briefly of the women he took to bed and more often than not abandoned. “A lover scorned?”
Merritt’s answering laugh was almost a wheeze. Even Percy’s lips quirked up at the corners as they shared a clear look of amusement.
“A lover scorned?” Merritt barked. “Really, Remis? You think your cock is so magical a woman cursed you for leaving her without more? No, those women aren’t dense. They know your reputation and they use you accordingly. The faster you forget them the better they’re off for their own sake.”
He stiffened at the insult. Clearly his cock wasn’t some sort of love drug that women took hits off of, even if he was quite competent in his skills in the bedroom. But didn’t women get attached? Didn’t sex mean more to them than it did him? Warmth tinted his cheeks. Apparently, he didn’t give the women he took to bed enough credit, and instantly he felt stupid for voicing his initial thought. He knew plenty of brilliant capable women; it was a shame that the words his father spoke were often the first to come to mind, leading him in a spinning circle of talking himself out of a taught mindset.
Merritt sobered with a long sigh. “No, I want to know why you didn’t tell us immediately?”
Remis opened his mouth to respond then promptly closed it again. Why hadn’t he? They’d risked their lives to travel to Croughton with him. Proved themselves as his devoted friends time and time again yet he hadn’t told him this one very terrible secret. Guilt replaced his fear as the carriage turned one last corner and began to slow.
“I’m not sure I even want to admit it to myself,” he whispered, “Telling you both makes it more real.”
“More real than being chased out of the physician's care by a witch?” Percy asked.
He chuckled, though it was a dry sound. “Does it change anything? Will you two leave me to go home now that you know?”
The part of him that loved his friends like brothers screamed for them to say yes. Should his friends stay here and leave him to finish the journey on his own they had the best chance at survival. Every other part of him selfishly wanted them to stay. He desperately didn’t want to be alone in this. He needed Merritt and Percy now more than ever.
“I swear, every time you talk you just become more idiotic.” Merritt rolled his eyes. “We’re with you until the end, whatever it may be. Witch or no. Right, Percy?”
Percy looked at Merritt from the corners of his eyes. “I don’t know that we have a choice here. I’m sure he’ll get himself killed without us. At least if we’re here he stands a chance.”
Relief, joy, and a splattering of guilt washed through Remis. Yet another reminder that perhaps Remis was everything his father thought him to be: a coward incapable of handling any of this on his own.
