The sun was already setting. Yet the rocks were slippery from the previous bouts of rain. Dravon walked aimlessly downhill while his mind wandered off. He had ended up spending so many hours up that he knew it was about time he went home.
It's been a week already. A week after Athea Lyselle had unexpectedly barged into his residence.
A full week later and he still couldn't get over the events that followed suit.
He had been away fighting at the Northern Front for a whole month. After the battle ended in Valerune's favour, he returned home before his soldiers, unannounced.
He had met his bathhouse steaming with hot water. Sweet-scented candles burnt away.
Lady Fiona must have given extra instructions in anticipation of his return. Dravon had concluded as he contentedly sank deeper into the steaming pool of water. The steam sank into his open wounds, making him relish the sudden pang of pain it elicited.
When his head was finally out of the water, he rested it at the base of the pool while taking in the scent emanating from the candles.
Suddenly, he felt dizzy. Dravon struggled to keep his eyes open as sleep or something he couldn't control washed over him.
Then he saw her.
Athea Lyselle. His wife, with whom he has never had a single interaction.
She consistently strutted towards him in a controlled manner, as if she was counting her steps, or she was scared of the person she was walking towards.
His eyes gave way to whatever enveloped him, and when they opened again, he remembered hands groping him right inside the steaming pool, and while he would like to call himself the unwilling participant in the events that followed that night, he knew he was not.
In his state of semi-awareness, he had picked her up off the water, stepping all over her torn dress and underpants, and carried her into his room.
He remembered with shame his bed not being enough. The chairs, the wall, and after a few broken rare collections of ceramics later, he slept off while clinging to her pale skin, like it was going to disappear otherwise.
The next morning, she was not there. Dravon almost concluded that it was all his imagination, the event of the past night, that is.
But the broken ceramics and chairs tumbled all over the place were glaring evidence of what he was trying to deny.
Anger had suddenly surged through him.
What could have given Athea, who appeared timid, the effrontery to play with him in such an uncultured manner?
Was it a bigger plan orchestrated by the Lyselle house to have him tied to them? Or had she acted of her own volition?
House Lyselle was his sworn enemy, and nothing will bind him perpetually to them. Not a wife and definitely not a child he did not want.
That morning, he had angrily and uncharacteristically barged into her residence, sword in hand, ready to slay her.
Instead, he found her unconscious.
She was bedridden, covered from head to toe with bruises that clawed away at her skin, red and inflamed.
Killing her immediately would have still satisfied him, but Dravon hated anything that could come off as an ambush. While he had no problem spilling blood, he never wanted to be remembered as a man who ambushed his opponents in their weak state. More so, an unconscious woman.
Dravon was enraged at the deceit that she orchestrated, but nothing enraged him more than that the body that had made him feel so many things at once could be lying there almost lifeless.
"What happened to her?" He asked the wide-eyed girl who would follow her around all the time. She looked like she was about to disappear within the walls in fright.
"She was found in the lake this morning, almost dead." She was crying silently now.
While falling into a lake that late at night was suspicious in many ways, Dravon knew it couldn't have caused all the bruises that layered her skin.
Could he have done that to her?
Could he have inflicted those marks on her during last night's aphrodisiac-laced quest for pleasure?
The thought repulsed him so much that he hated himself. But more the fact that he can't kill her now until he gets to the roots of what transpired.
While there had always been gossip about Dravon being born of and possibly possessing black magic, Dravon had lived all his life hiding any trace of it.
Being intimate with a woman was totally out of it until that night that changed everything. Knowing what he was looking at could be as a result of whatever it was that had been living rent-free inside him enraged him the more.
He had instructed the physician to give her Silphium tea when she wakes. This would ease his mind. For though he can't kill her now, the thought of propagating with any woman, let alone one born of the House of Lyselle, sounded preposterous.
What was her end goal for pulling that trick on him? Dravon would never know.
He questioned everything the last week, yet nothing made sense.
"I have to avoid her." He decided within himself. Whether it was as a result of the laced candles or his own inherent desires, he knew something had changed within him, and being close to her would be dangerous.
The moon that once shone brightly was now almost hiding behind a cloak of clouds. Dravon knew that if he didn't make it down the mountain before it totally disappeared, it would be all over.
He walked briskly now, not minding the slippery rock. It has been a long while since his last wraithling attack, yet the wounds are still raw within his skin.
Dravon was almost at the foot of the mountain when it suddenly went point-blank. The moon had disappeared.
The air around him suddenly shifted as a slight wave brushed past his skin. Then the shadows appeared out of nowhere, countless.
In the darkness, they clung to his skin, clawing away at his flesh hungrily.