Some innate part of me wanted to close the book in the very next moment. Still does, like a flower closing up in the face of a blistering storm.
The silence between Kai and myself stretches on a little too long, and I meet his eyes, shadowed by a pinched brow.
“What?”
“Did your tutor have a bad case of selective teaching? How do you not know any of this stuff?” he asks, slashing his hand through the air. “Some of the races in this book forged your way of life!”
I stare at him blankly. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to be more specific.”
“Well, take the Unseelie for example”—he indicates the picture—”pulled from the volcano by Jakar, God of Power. Thousands of years ago, they were the dominant, over-lording race, driven by their compulsion to sow seed and strengthen. To nest, fuck, and breed.”
I flinch at the rawness of his words, cheeks burning at the way he emphasized that crass four letter word.
“The plague of their archaic beliefs still echo in your society,” he continues. “For example; slaving was a very serious problem back then. As a result, bleeding one territory to bolster another is now forbidden, which is why changing one’s territory colors must be a voluntary choice.”
Tongue a chalky lump in my mouth, I shake my head, wondering if I should have waited to ask these questions when my brain is fully functional. “I don’t get it. If they were so transcendent, why aren’t they still around today?”
Kai lifts my hair, sweeping his fingers down the length of it, sending a shiver across my scalp. He tucks the weight over my shoulder so delicately you’d think he was handling a weave of spun gold.
“Their voracious hunger for control planted the seed of their demise,” he says, eyes bleak. “The Unseelie devastated races, Orlaith. Even their own. Ripped each other to shreds in a great battle that destroyed an entire territory and threatened global extinction. Some believe Jakar himself tore apart the sky, unleashed bloody ruin, and exterminated what was left of his ... miscreations,” he growls, attention falling back to the page. “The reek of that wash of power still taints the sea in some parts.”
I frown, studying the picture again.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked. My world, it seems, is getting smaller by the second.
I look upon the next marker, and a ball of tension gets lodged in my throat, making it hard to breathe.
Slowly, I peel back the leaf of paper.
“And him?” I ask, barely able to look at the man depicted across a stretch of two pages.
He’s built from powerful slabs of brawn, his hair dark gray, eyes black like the night sky. He’s unrefined, beastly in his bearing, as if all that’s stuffed inside him is almost impossible to contain.
He reminds me of the storm clouds that chew on my tower sometimes.
There are five versions of the man, each more haunched and distorted than the last, showcasing his gradual metamorphosis into a monster.
One I recognize.
“Bjorn. God of Balance. As you can see, his form is depicted similarly to the common day Vruk.”
Sharp shrieks echo through my memory, and I nod, remembering the ground trembling so much I thought it might crack open and swallow me whole.
“His ... his talons,” I bite out, jerking my chin toward the long, black hooks glinting off a shaft of sketched moonlight. “Does it say anything about them?”
Kai taps a slant of script riddled across the page. “Klahfta des ta ne flak ten. Simplified, it means something akin to unparalleled.”
“Oh,” I whisper, nodding, thankful I didn’t try to stomach breakfast or lunch. “And the common day Vruks this depiction was based on?”
“A Vruk’s talon is lethal.” Kai clears his throat, stare casting out across the bay. “To anyone.”
I frown at the turmoil failing to hide in the depth of his ocean eyes.
“Kai?”
“Safety is important to you, yes? Above most other things?”
“I guess so. Why do you ask?”
His tongue slips out, sweeping the glitter of sea salt off his lips. “Be right back.”
“Wai—”
He dives, disappearing beneath the water, his gossamer tail a slash that sends a string of seaweed topside.
I sigh, waiting patiently for his return.
When he reemerges, his arms are burdened by a small, tarnished chest he lumps on the rock beside me before prying the lid open. He digs around inside and reveals what appears to be a curved blade sheathed in leather. Its unworn hilt is forged from a dark metal, unadorned but for the end—tipped in ebony stone.
“What’s that?” I ask, eyeing the thing like it’s about to leap out of his hand and bite me.
Kai hesitates, then suspends it between us. “Something that can protect you from anything. Always.”
Unease spills through my chest.
I reach out, hand shaking as if my body knows something my mind is yet to catch on to. I grip the curved sheath in one hand, the hilt in the other, and tug ...
Only a few inches of the weapon are exposed before I slam it shut, stomach churning, heart beating hard and fast.
A talon.
It’s a fucking talon.
“W-wow ...”
“I just thought, well, you said you hate your new sword, and I ... Are you okay?” he asks, tone tender, his beat tapping around my edges.
I stuff the thing in my bag. “Never better,” I lie, closing the book and placing it atop the talon so I can pretend it doesn’t exist. “I just want to make sure this special gift is nice and safe in my bag.”
“Treasure ...”
Looking up, I paint my face with a grin. The big, dazzling sort that usually gets him right in the gills. “I’m fine. Really. And thank you. It’s such a thoughtful offering.”
He frowns. “You’re lying. I can feel a rise in your core temperature. You don’t have to accept the gift if you don’t li—”
I grab his face, pull him close, and plant a kiss on his wet, salty cheek, making his eyes glaze the way they do when I’m offering him an apple or something coveted. “I love your gift, Kai. I really do. Now, tell me the tale of when you got a fishing hook caught in your ear again?”
A slow, watery smile lights up his face. “You like that one, don’t you?”
“I really do. And you tell it so well.”
I manage to make it to the end of the story, back to the castle, and through a side door that spits me out by a bed of ivy before I vomit. When Baze finds me knotted on the ground with bile strung from my lips and asks if it’s the withdrawals, another lie slips off my tongue.
Truth is, withdrawals have nothing on the extra weight tucked in my knapsack. A weapon that may or may not carry the weight of many lives taken. Slain. Destroyed.
The weight of families torn to bits and feasted upon, scattered across the soil.
And now it’s mine ...
I’m trapped.
Flames spit and shadows churn, moving in wild jerks that cleave the air with ease.
Striking. Slashing.
I cover my ears with clawed hands, my body a ball of bunched muscle and protruding tendons threatening to snap.
Will I unravel, then? Will my skin split as my body ceases to hold together?
Will everything spill?
A cold seed is pitted inside me, turning my organs solid. My heart is heavier, weighted by the sludge of a pulse I resent. What happens when it can no longer push blood through my veins? Will a strike land? Will the beasts chew on me, just like they chewed on them?
Death is gripping my insides with hands so cold they burn, but there’s a comfort in it. A safety that feels eternal.
Don’t let me go.
The scene shifts, the ground falls away, and I’m perched on the edge of a chasm, looking into a well of darkness that echoes with muted screams, making me want to crack open and weep.
Something grabs me, jerking back and forth, threatening to toss me over—
Baze pets me with smoothing strokes that fail to tamp the pressure filling my skull. The scream pouring from my throat rips with the force of a withdrawing blade—sharp like the talon stuffed in the back of my drawer of jars.
Rhordyn’s presence crams the space full, pushing all the air from the room and leaving nothing for my lungs to grab.
Nothing for them to shove.
I gasp, wrestling for shards of breath ...
“Leave, Baze.” Rhordyn’s thundering voice battles my unbridled pulse, every beat a bolt of wood shot at my bulging brain.
Deadly.
Destructive.
Baze’s sudden absence allows more space for him to fill.
Less air for me to breathe.
Rhordyn’s rifling through the bottles atop my bedside table, cursing as cork after cork is popped. “Is this all you have left?”
His sharp words gouge my temples, and I groan, wishing he’d judge me with his inside voice.
“Orlaith, where is the rest of it?”
My legs churn, bunching the blanket at my feet. “That’s all there is ...”
“Fuck.”
The atmosphere seems to squirm, trying to wriggle free from the crushing maw of his outrage.
My body is an inferno, every surge of blood shooting through my veins another lashing of liquid fire. I pull at my clothes, attempting to shred them, desperate for cool air to blot my sizzling skin.
If I rip, will flames spill out? Will my tower turn to ash?
The bed dips, and something cold slides beneath my knees, something else banding around my waist and gripping tight. I’m eased into a sitting position, perched against the glacial plains of Rhordyn’s body—a winter sea that lugs me into its icy pall.
I’m lava in his grip. There is no sizzling sound, but I feel it in my blood.
We rock, smooth and docile, so at odds with my fire.
Another cork pops, and the sound almost splits me down the middle.
The pain—
“I know. I need you to tip your head and open your mouth.”
No.
If I do that, my brain will bulge and burst.
A warm wetness dribbles from my nose, sluices over my mouth, and drips off my chin.
“I won’t ask again, Milaje. Now.”
The depthless command has my lips parting; a weak, pathetic sound gushing out with the motion. But I don’t have the power to tip my head.
He does it for me with a firm hand clamped around my jaw. A cool liquid splashes my tongue, and I choke it back.
“One more.”
When the next drop lands, my tousled mind unravels enough for me to register the cold eddy swelling inside me, tempering the fire in my veins.
My treasured ease. My release from this ... this angry, swollen thing that’s trapped inside a layer of too-tight skin.
I leave my tongue out, waiting for more.
“Enough.”
It’s so far from enough.
I need to drink until this volcanic hand no longer has my heart in its fiery fist. Until my brain no longer feels like it’s stuffed into a tiny space where it doesn’t belong.
I pop my eyes open, snatch the bottle, and tilt—mouth open, tongue lolling.
Nothing lands.
It’s empty.
I toss it to the side, hear it shatter. Hands bunched against my ears, I wait for the pain to ease; for me to feel less like blown glass ready to burst.
“I’ll send for more caspun,” he says, blotting my chin, my lips, my nose. Pressing his frosty hand across my forehead.
I lean into his touch like it’s the only thing tethering me to this world.
“It could take a few weeks to get here. You should have told me.”
“You’re never here ...”
He makes a sound akin to a rumbling thunder storm, molding my body so I’m curled to the side in a comfortable position that offers no content.
I’m still broken. Still splitting at the seams.
Still trapped on the edge of a cliff, trying to see past the endless sea of darkness at my feet.
I know I have to jump, but I have no idea what’s down there. No idea what I’ll see.
What I won’t be able to unsee.
“And you’re taking too much at once. Is that why you’ve been relying on the Exothryl?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, figuring my silence is answer enough.
He growls, the sound a tangible flutter against my skin. “I’ll be rationing you from now on.”
I open my mouth, but he pins it shut with the stamp of his hand. “Don’t argue with me on this. You will lose. I’ve obviously been far too complacent.”
Complacent? How about nonexistent. A shadow in a room. A specter that only shows when you least expect it to.
Like now.
Why is he here? He never climbs Stony Stem for any reason other than to receive my blood or confiscate my heart-popping narcotics.
I’m about to ask, but he tugs the wool blanket up and tucks it over me, then nails it down with a powerful arm wrapped over my body.
“You’re h-h-hugging me,” I chatter out, feeling as if I’ve been dropped into an icy lake with stones tied to my ankles.
Caspun may be effective, but it has its repercussions.
“Yes,” he grits out, like he had to force the word past the bars of his teeth.
I peep over my shoulder, throwing myself into wells of quicksilver lit by the gleam of a slow-dancing candle flame.
“Why?” I rasp, and I hate how pathetic my voice sounds.
Something dark slides over his face—a mask slipping down—and I know I’m getting nothing else from him.
He might as well be behind that door. Down in his den. Anywhere but here.
“Go to sleep, Orlaith.”
Sometimes his orders make my hackles rise. Other times they make me fold at the stem like a flower crushed by the weight of a gusty wind.
Tonight, I have no energy left in me to fight, and ... I don’t even think I want to.
He’s hugging me.
He’s gone by the time I wake, leaving no sign he was here aside from the hearty musk of his lingering scent infused with my pillow slip. Stuffing my nose in the silk, I draw a deep breath, filling my lungs and easing the painful eddy in my temples.
A memory of me tipping an empty bottle to my lips hits me like a plank, and a nervous flutter bursts in my belly ...
I’m all out of caspun.
Crap.
I’ve been dependent on the arcane bulb for so long. If I knew it was going to take forever to source more, perhaps I’d have plucked up the courage and come clean weeks ago. The repercussion of Rhordyn discovering I’ve been exceeding the recommended dose wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it’d be.
He was angry, yes ... but he still hugged me, then stayed until I fell asleep.
Closing my eyes, I remember his arm—big and strong like a shield. Remember the feel of his presence at my back, his weight dipping the mattress.
It was impossible not to roll into the small cleft between us. Bridge the space.
A shiver rakes through me.
I draw another calming breath, pulling my face from the pillow before I exhale, not wanting to muddy the slip with my own scent. Then frown when I realize it’s laundry day.
Tanith will be up in a couple of hours to strip my bed ...
She can’t have it.
Dragging the slip free, I bounce my gaze around the room, seeking the perfect hiding spot.
Easier said than done.
Tanith is thorough, never leaving a single dust particle unaccounted for, and I don’t doubt she’ll find this treasure no matter where I hide it. Except maybe one place ...
Rhordyn knows about my hidden compartment, but he’s the only one. And it’s not like he has any more reasons to dig around in
there.
I peel the rug, shift the stone, stuff the compartment full of him, then slide the lid back into place. Something inside me calms to a light simmer, and I sigh, posture buckling.
After changing into my training gear, I run a brush through my calamity of hair and work it into a loose braid. Bag slung over my shoulder, I take on Stony Stem with delicate footfalls, trying to glide down each step so as to nurture my tender brain. By the time I step into the dining room, white dots are clouding my vision.
I’m half tempted to turn around and head straight back to bed.
“If you wanted to train, you’re two hours late,” is my morning welcome from a frosty Baze lounged in his regular spot, sipping from a steaming cup of tea.
“I slept in.”
He looks up from the scroll spread beside his breakfast plate, weighted by a glass of juice and a large black stone I’d love to paint. He draws another mouthful, eyes meeting me over the rim. “And you still look tired.”
“You’re the one who tipped him off, aren’t you? Told Rhordyn about the Exothryl?”
It’s the only plausible explanation. Last night aside, Rhordyn never sees me, especially not in the morning when I’m jacked. If we bump into each other in a hall, nine times out of ten the chance encounter swiftly dissolves.
A guilty glint sparkles in Baze’s eyes, that right dimple appearing. He sets his cup on the saucer with a delicate clink that belies who he is. How he looks.
There’s nothing delicate about Baze aside from the way he tapers down like a finely crafted wooden weapon. When used correctly, and in the right situation, he’s lethal.
“I take that as a yes. How’d you work it out?”
Baze shrugs, sets his elbows on the table, and fits his hands together. “How do you think, Orlaith?”
The question is crooned—bait for my fraying patience.
I massage my temples. “Can’t you just tell me?”
“No,” he says, motioning for me to sit. “Think I’ll keep that information to myself.” He takes a large bite of his apple and tosses me a wink that plucks at my nerves.
In other words, if I somehow manage to gather all thirty-four ingredients required to make more Exothryl ... he’ll know.
I plod to my seat and ease into it, looking through the open doors to the window-lined hallway. There’s no morning sun spilling through—nothing to fill the murky innards of Castle Noir with light.
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