Sea of Glass ✔️

Chapter 14 - His Other Half

The paper that the envoy returned with smelled sweet. Haydn couldn't place the scent, but it seemed to resemble the red and yellow fruit that grew in abundance on the trees nearby. He knew he liked the taste of its sweet flesh, but the name escaped him. What was it called again?

"My Lord, the locals refer to them as mangoes," one of the servants said. He placed a bowl of the fruit before him, peeled and sliced to his preference. Haydn sank his teeth into the soft flesh, sucking up the sweet juices. His eyes skimmed over the invitation from King Idris again.

The Kalili Dynasty cordially invites you to celebrate their daughter, Princess Evelyn. Please arrive at the palace two hours before sunset. We formally accept your request for lodgings and honor our alliance with the North.

It was the last sentence that got his attention. Somewhere in the distant past, the paths of Duke Artois and King Idris were able to cross despite the treacherous Glass Sea that divided them. Perhaps his mission of securing a few Mages for the Ylivian army would be easier than he anticipated.

He was eager to get off the continent and return to the salty embrace of the sea. It seemed that every animal in Myrania conspired against him from the mosquitoes buzzing incessantly near his ears to the birds generously splattering him with their droppings. No more large cats hunted him in the forest, but lizards nipped at his skin while snakes hid among his belongings, ready to poison him. The latter he assumed was a gift from Odi.

The head of the large wildcat sat on his desk in the tent. It glared ferociously at him, frozen in a murderous rage. If his servants came a second too late, he would have been the one with his organs buried beneath the dirt instead of the beast before him. Well, that was assuming that Odi let him keep all his innards. He recalled the desecrated grave and the experience of slipping into the dead Mage's skin. The sane part of him remembered to shudder at the strangeness of it all, but the rest of him remained nonplussed. He wouldn't trade anything for the power he acquired.

Haydn stared into the red eyes of the dead cat, the scarlet shade reminding him simultaneously of freshly spilled blood and the rouge smeared on the lips of the local whores back in Ylivia. Again, he was struck by a potent wave of deja vu. There was something heartbreakingly familiar about those eyes. Maybe in another lifetime ...

No, that was a foolish thought. He should simply be grateful that he was still alive after the ordeal. The long cuts under his shirt hurt every time he moved, occasionally ripping open to bleed beneath the hastily wrapped bandages. He was lucky that King Idris had sent him men to help him move into the palace. He couldn't do anything physically taxing while his injuries were healing, including hunting.

Of course, that left him with the complicated predicament of dealing with his growing bloodlust. The itch on the back of his neck got worse, making his skin puffy and numb. It spread to his chest where his cuts were and it took every ounce of willpower to not dig his nails into his skin. Between that and the head-pounding urge to murder everything in sight, he felt like he was going insane.

He almost fell to his knees to beg his God for relief. But he knew nothing would amuse Odi more than him succumbing to the madness. As the king's men transported him to the palace, he tried to distract himself from the sheer amount of physical suffering in his body. He remembered all those nights that he went hungry when he couldn't make a kill, the way his stomach would hurt and growl even when he stuffed his face with snow. Where did he go on those days when living was unbearable?

The answer was simple. His mind would take him to a fabricated future, one where he was rich beyond his wildest dreams. He would pretend to be a wealthy merchant and imagine his belly fat with all sorts of exotic delicacies. Little did he know that he would become a lord of a dukedom by stealing one of his victim's identities.