KINGDOM OF THE STONE -- a Wattpad featured novel

Chapter Twelve

Charissa hurried to the stoma and was surprised to see Somek and Pronos standing outside with their spears.

"He's inside," Pronos said.

She entered the stoma and followed a flickering light into the shadowy recess at the back. Amantis had spread out a drwg skin on the floor and lay on it, propped on one elbow. A small keleos lamp burned nearby with a soft golden light. He smiled up at her.

"I have it," she said.

"Good. Sit down." He patted the skin.

Charissa knelt and held out Karux's stone. "You can use it to help him, right?"

"Of course." Amantis took the stone and carefully placed it on a broken stalagmite at his elbow. "I'll deal with that soon enough. But first we have to deal with us."

"Us?"

"Our feelings." He stared into her eyes with a fierce penetrating look.

"Oh."

"You have to admit, you have some feelings for me."

"Well...." Charissa didn't know how to respond. Sometimes she thought she might be attracted to him, other times she was certain Karux was the only one she wanted.

"I know you've kissed him." Amantis leaned in close. Charissa could feel his breath on her lips. "You should give me a chance as well."

"I—"

Amantis pressed his lips against hers and she felt herself respond in confused desire. He pushed her back onto the furs and she clung to him to keep from falling. His knee pushed in between hers and she felt his hand on her leg, under her dress, sliding up her thigh.

She pushed his shoulders back. "No, wait, I—" she gasped.

"You know you want this. You've secretly wondered about it. The stone showed me." He fumbled at her small clothes.

Charissa froze in terror. Could it be true?

He held her down as she tried to struggled, his weight as immovable as a mountain.

-=====|==

For the next several days, Karux focused on getting his life back to normal. Without the stone, his visions only came at night and then as strange disjointed dreams, even without Mahd Mela's potions. Whenever he felt a familiar fuzziness start to take him, he remembered his anger. He was heard more than once muttering to himself the now-familiar profanity, "Void take it."

Rumors continued to fly all over the village first among the women, then among the boys. Whatever they were talking about, must have included him, because they always stopped when he appeared, sometimes giving him angry or pitying looks depending on what they had heard. Karux ignored them and spent a lot of time in the field tending the goats. Only then would his anger start to fade and allow him a measure of peace.

Though a month later, when he still had not seen Charissa even once in public, he began to wonder what had happened to her. It was impossible for a person to simply disappear in the small village, yet she seemed to take all her meals in her father's house, and was never seen outside. He wanted to confront her, to tell her how she had hurt him and to find out how she really felt about him and Amantis.

Amantis, however, seemed to have changed. He seemed bolder, strutting around in the wolf-skin cloak that was supposed to have gone to Garick and wearing the angorym long knife in a special leather sheath that hung from his waste. He took delight in ordering the others about in weapons practice and gave no deference to any adult whether in matters of combat or any other part of life. He soon had a devoted following of wolf-hunters who would do whatever he commanded. Even Theris and Macander stuck with him, if only because they were each one of the "wolf-skins" a part of his elite inner core.