“What are you going to do with my heart?”
“I’m going to eat it.”
The Sorcerer didn’t hesitate in his answer, and thus dispelled the last vestiges of the illusion of love.
The girl’s face paled and the Sorcerer felt like himself again, reveling in the new surge of vitality in his blood.
“I always knew there would be a hidden cost,” she murmured.
The girl turned her face to the sky, deep lavender in the hour before sunrise, and finished her climb out of the Caverns and disappeared.
The girl would be all right, the Sorcerer thought, confident he’d done better by her than to any of his other conquests. With everything she’d gained from him, her power was formidable.
The Sorcerer shook the torpor from his limbs and turned back to the shelf, his eyes reaching for the velvet bag before he got it in hand.
Pulling the gathers open, his innards clenched when he saw the heart. He had never waited this long to feed. But first, he had to bring it back to life.
The heart was so quiet and still.
He waved his hand over the bag and whispered the spell of awakening.
The Sorcerer waited, but nothing happened.
Jostling the bag between his fingers, his voice rumbled with another command to make it pulse again.
But the heart rocked in silence.
The Sorcerer frowned.
This had never happened before.
Those were powerful spells, but now he needed his strongest remedy.
He searched until he found the potion he once used to bring a dead man back to life, holding his breath as he sprinkled a few drops and waited.
Nothing changed.
He doused the heart with the tonic, massaging the supple tissue, and muttered the most powerful incantation in his memory, a spell that had never failed him until now.
A crest of panic rose in his breast, but the Sorcerer pushed it down.
This couldn’t be happening. He had no appetite for a stillborn heart. The heart had to be alive.
For hours, the Sorcerer scoured through volumes he hadn’t read in centuries, trying anything that promised a solution.
But no spell could make that heart beat again.
The sight of it was enough to drive him out of his senses.
The heart was plump and fresh, and had the light aroma that only came with untouched innocence. It was the most appealing he’d ever seen, the heart of a young girl and robust with the first stirrings of desire.
He could only imagine how sweet it would taste. He knew this heart couldn’t be truly dead, or else it wouldn’t be so enticing.
His starving had gone beyond pain. The Sorcerer had to feed.
He dug inside the bag, but his fingers couldn’t clutch what was inside, no matter how persistent his reach.
He felt a push against his hand and realized the heart must have a guardian.
But how could that be? The girl had given it up to him.
He remembered that day clearly, the defiance glinting in her eyes when she accepted his offer, but only if he granted her one request.
“Before I lay with you,” she had said. “I want you to take my heart.”
And that was how she did it.
Because her heart remained pure of the choice that she’d made, the Sorcerer had no claim on it.
Yowling, he hurled the velvet bag against the wall with all his might.
He never knew hunger could be such misery, and the humiliation that a conquest had outwitted him sent him into a fury.
The Sorcerer stormed around the chamber, throwing treasures to the ground and ripping texts apart.
What little calm he had left whispered that he was only rendering himself weaker by destroying an irreplaceable knowledge, but the Sorcerer didn’t care.
All he could think was that she must have known.
Every night when she came to the Caverns and absorbed his lessons, every time she surrendered, even while staring at him from the spiral with her white cheeks, the girl knew she had the better of him and he couldn’t bear it.
The words were crumpled in his hand, one of the few pages left of the texts he’d burned to ashes.
The Sorcerer muttered them insensibly until their meaning sunk in and he finally stopped his rampage.
He reread the page and grew weak in the knees.
This spell was written so long ago, the language had been forgotten, but he was grateful for this gift from whatever god of retribution had took mercy on him.
The spell was perfect.
He wouldn’t get the vitality he desperately needed.
After his pride was restored, then he would feed.
There was always a jealous peasant girl with dreams of nobility and riches. He would have no trouble finding those who could be easily duped.
But first, he would have his revenge.
As the Sorcerer gathered all he needed, he imagined how the events might play out.
He wished his influence went so far that he could choreograph his vengeance to his liking.
But once the spell was cast, he knew the girl would suffer. That would have to be enough.
The Sorcerer of the Caverns glanced in the mirror he would use.
At least he’d be able to watch.
