Chapter 8

                                    

                                          
"Take me back." She said, completely numb. 
Ravage blinked. "What?"
"Take. Me. Back." Emyra stared at nothing in particular; her mind sat comfortably on the cusp of her subconscious and her awareness. "Did you expect me to honor a transaction made of my person by my dead parents?" She wouldn't acknowledge this. Her mind could not accept this. 
"Loft and Shay loved---" 
The ground rumbled at the mention of their names, and the bed rose from the ground. 
He knew their names. 
The way he said it was too familiar like he could recollect so many memories of them when she couldn't even recollect their faces. Ravage held firm with the tray of food firmly in his lap, his eyes steady on Emyra. She couldn't stand that.
"Don't you dare---" she grabbed the back of his head, gripping his ink-black hair as tight as she could to pull his face closer. "Speak. Their names. In front of me." Her royal purple eyes bore into Ravage's like lava bursting from a volcano. "Take me back," Emyra growled. 
With her gaze, she imagined burning holes into his perfect complexion. But he looked at her with...
Admiration? 
His eyes sparkled, and his mouth was slightly open. Before she could react, he cupped her face and closed the distance between them. "You..." he breathed. "You are a pure, chaotic, powerful force to be reckoned with." 
The fire within her heart stilled. She came back to reality, or what was closest to it. His ice-cold hands took but also replenished the warmth in her cheeks. Her constitution was weakened. 
He pulled back a little to take in her face. "You wish to go back to that coven of yours?"His tone was soft, almost sad, as he looked at her. Emyra took a slow breath, captured in his gaze as she tried to find her voice. Realizing it also would not come to her, she nodded slowly. "Very well." He hummed, not moving once. She wanted to move away; Emyra did, but everything within her did not. Ravage licked his lips, his eyes trailing all over her before he finally let go of her face and scooted back from her. However, he kept her eyes on his, almost as if waiting for her to tell him to come back. What terrified her was she nearly wanted to do just that. "I will return you in two days' time. But there will be conditions." 
Emyra began to protest, but he shushed her as he pulled her hand out of his hair. "These are my conditions, or you stay here." She sighed, knowing that he could keep her here forever and she couldn't fight it. Emyra had no idea where she was. Or how to get back home. She was at the mercy of this faerie. He grinned widely as he sat back, putting the tray aside and spreading his legs. "Good. When you return, you will talk to me every morning and night through our connection. You can either talk back or you can listen to me. All I need is a 'good morning Ravage' and a 'good night Ravage.'" She huffed her acknowledgment, urging him to continue. "Secondly, you will come back with me here occasionally unless you wish me to spend the nights with you at The Nest," Ravage said, the mirth written all over his face. He chuckled when she vehemently shook her head. "That's what I thought. Lastly, do not forget you are mine now, and I will never share. That includes that boy you were worshipping before I brought you here." He growled the last part out. 
"What kind of servant am I expected to be if I can't bed whom I wish!" Emyra exasperated. It's not like she had a chance with Dion, but still. Ravage raised his brow. "Servant?" He asked. His tone suggested he was confused by her wording. Emyra responded. "I know that yaruns are human slaves to the faeries. I don't know why my parents gave me to you, but---"
Ravage burst into laughter, completely interrupting Emyra's train of thought. "You-" he tried to say between laughs, "you think you're my slave?" He roared. Emyra blinked rapidly. What could be so funny? 
When he stopped laughing, his smile was too big to ignore. "Who told you this?" 
"My friend, she came from the other side of the ocean," Emyra said matter of factly, " and she said yaruns were human slaves to the faeries, offered up by their family as offerings..." 
"While I can't say for those other faeries," Ravage looked out through the glass wall as he spoke, "that is not what a Yarun is." 
"Then what is it?" Emyra grabbed a lock of her hair and pushed it in front of him. "My hair was bleak as well, but since I met you it turned obsidian." Then she softly pinched her cheek. "I used to have no color, but now I have some hue." 
Ravage grabbed the lock of hair and kissed it tenderly. She felt the touch of his lips from the end of her hair to her head, sending shivers down her spine. "It was a concealment spell. The bleakness of your features was to cover your essence, but I suspect Shay--" he cleared his throat at Emyra's glare, "I mean, your mother--- had made me a key to unlocking the magic in case of witch hunters." 
Witch hunters. She pondered internally. Her memory was foggy, in the years she stayed at the Nest, the horrors that Emyra knew faded away. She never wanted to remember what happened, and it felt like another life. 
Another life that is bleeding into her current one. 
"Come, you've slept enough." Ravage stood, pulling Emyra out of the bed. 
"Where will you take me?"
"I wish to show you my domain." Ravage pulled her into his side, wrapping her unwilling arm around his. "They call it the domain of the dead, and me the Dead King."