Lord of the Night

Chapter 60: Vow

He fiddled with the cuff on his wrist, pushing it around in circles. I wondered about his other uncuffed wrist. Did the leaders at the Mantle not know he could override one cuff? I wouldn't be the one to tell them.

After a few more seconds, I probed gently, "Is it because you aren't taking enough lifeforce? Or is this cuff sucking your lifeforce away?"

His tongue played against his teeth, a quiet wet sound that seemed to echo through the chamber. "No, neither. I only need extra lifeforce to use my powers. And when I'm wearing one cuff, it just dulls sensations."

I wanted to address the first part, but I found myself caught up on the last thing he said. "The cuff dulls sensations?"

"It's like wearing earplugs, but for all senses. I experience everything less intensely, so it's easier to control myself."

"Wait, just a few minutes ago when I was... you could barely feel it?"

His eyebrows shot up. "I think you could tell I could feel it."

"Well, yes. But you could feel it less?"

"Plenty to push me over the edge. You don't know how enticing you are, Remgar. Without the cuff, I would have lost all ability to reason."

Just the thought made my heart thump a little faster. "I'd like to see that."

He clucked his tongue. "No, you wouldn't. I would have killed you."

I wasn't convinced. I wanted to make love to the real Isalio, not a restrained half-muted version of him. But that was a topic for a later time; right now, I needed to prioritize a more important question.

"So if it's not the cuff, what's draining your lifeforce? Are you losing that much lifeforce from fighting? Or from controlling the Morgabeast?"

"I don't want to talk about this."

"Isa, please. What if we were talking about me right now? Wouldn't you want to know?"

His brow furrowed, but after a few seconds of silence, he blew out a sigh. "Fighting doesn't require too much lifeforce. Controlling the Morgabeast takes more, but even that was fine, until..." His fingers traced with the loop of his drawstring. "Over the last couple of months, the Morgabeast has started stealing my lifeforce."

Nausea swelled in my gut, cold and hard as though I had swallowed a stone. "I thought beasts gave lifeforce to their Demons, not took it away."

"Yeah, well, Demons are supposed to be able to control their beasts too, not the other way around."

I had known the situation was bad, but this was even worse than I had imagined. "The Morgabeast has control over you?"

His eyes remained on the string of his pants. "I don't think it can control me, but I can hear it in my head, urging me to do things. And each time I ignore it, it takes more lifeforce."

"Fuck. Isa, that's..." I realized I was clamping his shoulder too hard, and I forced myself to relax my hands. "Is it trying to kill you?"

"I think it... needs me, for now. Or at least, it's hoping to use me instead of destroying me. But the more I feel its desires, the more I see that I'm... I'm not in its final plans. It will kill me when it's ready."

Fear constricted my throat, tightening my voice. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"I didn't plan to ever tell anyone. If anyone found out I was battling my own beast, they might have decided that was the perfect opportunity to overpower me. One more pressure could turn the balance in the Morgabeast's favor."