AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“One night when he and I were alone on patrol, he just jumped on top of me, pinning me down. He knew what he wanted. He knew what I wanted, even if I didn’t. It was... it was wonderful. He was wonderful. And once we started, we didn’t stop. Ardor save me, we almost got caught so many times—going out on little expeditions to gather firewood, only to return an hour late and with half the expected load.”
“What happened?” Aurelius asked, peeking out from a tear-soaked gap.
“Sama happened,” he whispered. “We were to sneak in and take the enemy camps. All of us. The entire Brotherhood of Ardora. They would all be hit at once. Every outpost, cutting them off from the Rinathi mainland and killing everyone who remained. But...”
“There was a great storm?” asked Aurelius.
Calix shuddered as if naked in a winter wind. “It churned the sea into fury. My Brotherhood was lucky. We all made it ashore, taking our outpost under the cover of the snow. Xiber’s outpost. But the Rinathi managed to raise the alarm before we killed them all—lighting their great warning cauldron, able to burn the hottest blue even amongst the storm. We didn’t even bother to extinguish it. All reinforcements were supposed to be dead. But the other Brotherhoods hadn’t made it ashore—their boats were wrecked or unable to even approach. And so, instead, every single Rinathi on Sama came for us.”
“Was that when you consumed the black brave?”
Calix breathed deeply, steadying himself. “Thousands were coming right for us. There was no escape. There was no time! It was like a test from Rina herself. As if she was challenging us to see if we were more worthy than her own soldiers. And the dead war priest’s body was right there—the blood barely dried...”
Calix grimaced.
“We’d all heard the stories from childhood, how the Rinathi drink it to give them strength. It was Terim who made the call, cutting out the heart before any of us could protest. Then we stood in a circle—just the four of us, Terim and Zotikos and Glarus and then... and then...”
Calix’s fingernails dug into his back. Aurelius hugged him closer as the heaves began, the big man falling into desperate, gripping sobs.
Aurelius didn’t need to hear the rest of the story. The ending was famous—one soldier was found alive the next day, naked and soaked in blood, surrounded by the bodies of over a thousand Rinathi and three of his fallen comrades.
And the question had long been asked: how could one soldier possibly do all that?
But now, Aurelius knew.
In that moment, Calix had awoken as a satyr.
And he had fed on his own Brothers.
“They didn’t deserve to die like that!” Calix bellowed.
“They would have died anyway,” said Aurelius, hugging him as tightly as he could. “You all would have died!”
“In battle! In glory! Not as the husks I left behind to have their throats slit. Too empty and broken to even fight back!”
They stayed like that for the longest time. Eventually, the tears stopped, and Calix pulled back from his embrace, leaving a cold empty where the warm had just been.
Calix gripped his own arms tightly, his eyes red. “I know what happens if I let go, Aurelius. That is why I pulled back from society. Last year there was someone ... someone that I almost fed on. And when I look at you, all those feelings come back. I want to drain you dry, Aurelius. These urges in my fucking blood are screaming for me to leave you empty! Even now, when the moon is full, it is taking everything in me to resist! I don’t want to hurt you! I don’t want to feel this way! But I can’t stop it!”
The big man bunched his arms together, as if trying to retreat inside his own chest.
“Goddess, I wish... I wish I could have had something with Terim. I wish I could have something with you. You are so strong. You know that? To be able to live your life and willing to go public at just fifteen? To risk it all for the man you loved? But I can’t do that! I can never allow myself to be that thing again! So if you care for me at all, please, just let me go!”
Calix turned to leave once more.
Every beat in Aurelius’s chest yearned to follow him. To just take what he wanted. To put his own desires first.
The forlorn footsteps faded into the sound of the whistling ocean, beating against the fabric gates of the closed stalls.
And he let the prince leave.
65
TEIGRA
The agora bustled with midmorning shoppers. Light glinted off dew-soaked radishes as Teigra hummed a little tune.
It was all going so well.
