Recent content by Keres

The sound Agravayne made as he folded in on himself was deeply, viciously satisfying. Keres kept the sword up despite the tremor in her arm, the point wavering as she tracked each of them with it, her grip tightening until her knuckles ached. The voices surged the moment fear slipped its hooks...

She couldn’t argue. He wasn’t here. And yet she wanted nothing more than for him to stride through that doorway right now. But she was alone, always, and perhaps she was a fool for thinking he'd actually 'care'. Her breath quickened as the brute stepped into her space, the shadow of him...

Keres flinched at the first heavy slam against the door, her breath catching. She was on her feet before she even realised she’d moved, backing away, palms seeking something solid until her shoulder blades collided with the cold stone wall. The draft from the narrow window played through strands...

“Yes.” she snapped, the sound sharper than she had intended and her brow knit tightly. “Thank you for reminding me,” she added bitterly, as if he’d scraped a fresh wound open. “I didn’t want to kill them…” she muttered, as though saying it aloud might wash some of the blood from her hands...

Can you get stronger?.. Keres’ chin dipped in a small, hesitant nod at the question. She didn’t know the answer, not truly, but she’d felt the rush of tearing a soul from a living body. A terrible, devouring power. A high so fierce it had nearly ripped her apart. If she learned to control it…...

Keres let out a slow, exhausted sigh, her shoulders rising and falling in a shrug. His answer wasn’t what she’d hoped for. No shared madness, no shared ghosts. Just stones that screamed at her and her alone. Her gaze dropped to her knees, pulling tighter into herself. “I always hear the dead,”...

Her brow knitted, a tight, pained crease forming as his words sank under her skin like hooks. Her stomach twisted at his shame and regret. He thought she blamed him. He thought she needed to forgive him. As though either of them had been given choices. Keres swallowed hard, forcing clarity...

Keres hadn’t expected how deeply the music would cut. How quietly it would move through her, slipping between the bruises and the raw places inside her chest like water seeping through cracks in stone. When was the last time she’d heard a song? A tavern somewhere, with Roul beside her, tankard...

Keres jerked her hand back the instant he flinched, fingers curling into a fist before she drew her knees in tight, arms winding around them as if to make herself small. The air between them felt suddenly too fragile. “Threnody…” she echoed softly, eyes lowering. “Alright. If that’s what you...

Keres sucked in a sharp breath as his voice broke the quiet. Her spine stiffened, her blood running cold as the world seemed to tilt beneath her. She turned her head slowly, meeting those soft green eyes now bright with pain and confusion. “I…” The word fell out of her, thin and useless.. No...

Keres did not fight. Her body drifted on a tide she could neither command nor comprehend. Anything that was not pain, not cold, not the whip or the ghosts gnawing at her nerves, she let the numbness take her. What was offered, she accepted in a fogged, spiralling haze until thought itself...

The moment his blood touched her tongue, she knew she had erred. The pain she’d drawn from him was satisfying, yes, but the blood itself was not mortal. It burned. Sweet, metallic, and wrong, and the moment she swallowed, it flooded through her like liquid heat. Her pupils dilated, swallowing...

Keres held his gaze, refusing to look away even as the whip slid like a serpent over her skin. The handle’s path down her throat left fire in its wake, and when he looped the cord about her neck, the rasp of leather made her pulse stutter. It wasn’t fear, it was rage, raw and shaking, fighting...

Satisfaction burned through her like fire in her veins. The shock that had flickered just briefly across his face filled her with a dark, dangerous delight. She had caught him off guard. The Shrike. The untouchable, unshakable tyrant. Her lips curved faintly despite the leather in her mouth, her...

Pain muddled her senses, casting a haze over her mind as she struggled to focus on him. Her chest heaved with each ragged breath, black eyes blazing at him despite the drowsy weight in her limbs. When he shoved the handle of the whip into her mouth, gagging her, she let out a choked sound...