The Wildness Within

Lesson Three - Hunger 2

A crunching of footsteps and the Raven Prince stood over him. Gwyn met his black gaze with a neck that ached. His whole body felt like it had been put through a wringer. He could hardly understand what had happened.

It was only meant to be one of them.

Just one...

'My darling, you were so hungry,' the Raven Prince said, staring at him in marvel. 'Your eyes are still glowing. Isn't that something? Does it count as a broken curse if you kill all those who have ever fallen under it? I suspect so.'

Gwyn stared up at him, hardly able to understand what the Raven Prince was saying. He stared down at his arms which were cauterised by his own light. Wounds open and cracked, a ruddy brown colour in the furrows of his skin. It was a dull, scratching pain. His palms had crackled flesh upon them. Every time he went to clench his fists, it hurt.

'Where did you send them?' the Raven Prince said.

'I don't know,' Gwyn said, his mouth feeling wrong. He felt like he was endless, too big for the flesh that contained him. If he let himself open up properly, he would disappear and become too big to be held by skin and bones. It should scare him. It didn't.

Where did he send them?

'There was a place,' Gwyn said, clearing his throat. 'There were places. I sent them there.'

'Was it very hard?'

'It was where they belonged,' Gwyn said, wanting to rub at his face, at the sweat and dust that had gathered there. He was aware that he stunk of decay and blood and gore. He pushed himself into a standing position and the world swooped around him. Viscera clung pink and yellow and violet to his bare feet. He looked down at himself. He must have stepped in dead bodies and not realised.

'Could you go there yourself?' the Raven Prince said, a strange obsessive light in his eyes. 'Could you visit the place where you sent them?'

'No,' Gwyn said, his mouth still not working quite right. 'I didn't belong there.'

'But could you?' the Raven Prince said again.

Gwyn licked at the inside of his mouth. Then he looked all around himself at the husks of bodies that he'd left behind. There was nothing of their lives within them anymore. He'd sent them all away. The light had captured them and he'd fed off something and then sent them...

He'd never felt so satiated. It was almost dizzying. He was stuffed full, overflowing with it, even nauseated. He'd throw up, but his stomach was empty. There was a pulsing, vibrant power in the back of his head. It felt like the beginning of a headache.

'How often...?' Gwyn said, furrowing his brow. 'How...often do I need to feed like that?'

'After today, not for a good long while I expect,' the Raven Prince said, smirking at the carnage around them. 'And really, not like that. Too long you've spent not feeding the way you should. That was a glut.'

'I can still eat...normal food?'

'If you like,' the Raven Prince said. 'It will keep this at bay for longer. You do not have to concern yourself with using it or losing control whenever I'm not there. You have exemplary self-control – almost too exemplary. But there are always fae I need killed. You'll come in handy.'

'I'm not...your murderer,' Gwyn said, feeling numb.

He'd killed all those people and it had felt easy and wonderful. Now, standing there, he felt like he should be bothered by it. Ash hated hunting a single human every month. Gwyn had just killed...