I yelped and jolted on the spot. Wide eyes swerved to Jasper’s furious face. His hold was too tight on my hand for me to pull back.
“I know your thoughts are drifting. I can smell the shift around you.”
Oh.
“I have a lot on my mind.” I threw as much sarcasm as I could afford into my tone. Pushing my limits.
Still, I was alive.
“You’ll have more concerns to obsess over if you fail.” His eyes were as dark as his threat.
I sucked my teeth, drawing on scraps of patience that felt sawed down to dust, and set my shoulders.
I could do this. Jasper was right—I just had to focus.
Honey slicked my clammy palm that held Jasper’s hand. Only this time, it didn’t race out of him and through me. There was no urgency behind his power.
I shifted my focus to the necklace. Hollowness. Empty. Not unlike the corridor where I met Damianos, or the touch of his lips on my knuckles.
An empty void that I can fill.
The honey-power fought me. With that invisible hand within me, I reached down and clutched, hard.
His essence struggled, fighting against my pull, but then its warmth started to lift up my arm.
“That’s it.” Jasper spoke softly, as if careful not to spook or distract me. “Keep doing that.”
I will if you shut the hell up.
Heavy power dragged along my collarbone. Now that I had to force it, I was aware of just how sticky it felt. My veins thickened from the weight.
“Almost there.”
Like I needed him to commentate.
Shoving Jasper’s annoying voice out of mind, I wrestled the honeyed power down my arm. My veins throbbed against my translucent skin. This power was strong—stronger than it had ever been before.
And so was I.
The closer it got to the necklace, the harder it fought. Soon, the power felt like a fistful of blades scraping down the inside of my arm and a cry choked out of me.
“Do not stop,” Jasper warned.
The cry grew louder, fiercer, until—
I gasped a stunned sound as all of the power slapped into the necklace, and I stumbled forward into the table between us.
Looking up at Jasper, I saw his glow dim somewhat, but it was outshined by the brilliant look on his face.
My world was spinning. The portraits stretched and wobbled all around me.
I held onto the table for support and heaved.
Jasper withdrew his hand and picked up the necklace that fell from my grip. “Well done.”
I thanked him with another wretched heave that reached all the way down to my clenching gut. Whatever it was he just forced me to do, didn’t bode too well with my body. It was unnatural.
“Stealing from me again?”
I recognised that icy voice like a blade to the gut.
10
Prince Poison’s cruel voice came from the entrance.
Lashes drooping, I lifted my gaze enough to spot him by the column, a cool look on his face.
Shivers wracked my entire body, and still, I tried to bow my head. But then a heave struck me, so violent that it threw me forward into the table, and I spewed my lunch all over the ancient artefacts.
Jasper’s face pinched. He held the precious necklace closer to him and recoiled, as though my sick would sneak its way over to him.
The Prince pushed from the column and, slowly, advanced on us.
Whimpers slipped from my damp lips.
As the dizziness ebbed away, I could better see the proud God moving in on me; he didn’t so much as glance at Jasper, who dropped into a deep bow.
The table was the only thing holding me up. If I tried to bow for the Prince again, I hadn’t the slightest doubt that I would’ve collapsed to the floor.
Shifting my weight, I managed to lean my side on the table and face the Prince.
Behind him, I faintly noticed his portrait smirking at me.
The real Prince stood in front of me, looking at me as though I was the very vomit splattered all over the table.
His glare only worsened my shivers.
“Almighty.” Jasper’s voice was as small as my dwindling energy. “She made no progress with the book. I hoped that if she practiced and mastered corporal-essence into an object, she might learn to do the same with the relics—”
Prince Poison silenced him as he held up his gloved hand, and he kept his toxic gaze on me.
So, Jasper had broken the rules. The Prince had clearly told him that I should have worked only with the objects on the table, not an aniel’s power.
I found I didn’t care much. At least I was progressing, and that meant staying alive another day. Or did it—
The Prince reached out his hand for my face.
The glove swathing his long fingers wore no razor-sharp nails. Instead, the fabric looked soft to the touch as though made from the clouds that hung above the palace.
“You have pleased me, Valissa.”
His icy-toned praise stopped my heart for a beat.
I swallowed and dared to lift my gaze to his clear-quartz eyes shadowed by thick lashes.
He was as beautiful as he was deadly. And though pale in a marble way, his striking beauty didn’t pale next to Damianos’s. They were opposites, and both flicked my heart into a rapid race against time.
Mentally drooling over a murderous God and a mysterious, dangerous stranger from the shadows was risky. I was in desperate need of a fumble before I threw myself at the wrong immortal and ended up dead.
The Prince’s gloved fingers reached the line of my sharp jaw and caressed.
My lashes fluttered against his touch and a quiet rush of breath escaped my lips.
With his thumb, he wiped away a drop of sick stuck to my chin. I suddenly wanted the marble floor to drag me under it and bury me in shame.
If he was disgusted, he didn’t show it—not anymore. His fingers slipped to the back of my head and threaded through my loose hair.
I sighed a soft, blissful sound.
Definitely been too long between fumbles.
“Enough for the day,” the Prince said.
Wasn’t much of a prize, though. The day was almost over anyway.
Prince Poison guided me closer with a gentle pull. I staggered, under the spell of his moon-eyes.
His face inched closer to mine. “You have earned a reprieve.”
My heart was punching my ribs with as much panic as what swirled in my gut. I wondered if I might be sick again or if my legs would fail under me and I would drop to the God’s feet.
All I could do was stay as stiff as a board with my hands clenched at my sides.
Even Jasper had turned himself into a ghost; so quiet and unnoticeable that he might as well have been invisible.
Then the Prince flickered his gaze down at my lips.
Please kiss me.
Please don’t kiss me.
I couldn’t make my own mind up. But even in my frazzled fright, I was too aware of the sick still coating my tongue. I bet Gods were never ill.
The Prince brought his face closer to mine. Peppermint. His breath smelled like peppermint.
My heart sank.
No, no, no.
Prince Poison couldn’t kiss me. He was poison. If his lips touched mine, I’d be done for. Dead. In seconds.
With a frightened sound, I jerked back, out of his hold.
Fury lit up his frosty eyes for a beat. But then I blinked, and he was as composed as the stony-faced portrait on the wall.
“Another time,” the Prince promised with as much poison as what stained his touch.
I watched him stride out of the worship hall, a heavy lump tightening in my chest.
I’d just made the gravest mistake of my life. No one rejected a God, even if it meant to die at their touch. It simply wasn’t done.
And Jasper’s stark-white face agreed.
Seconds of silence passed between us. Even after the Prince had left, neither Jasper or I spoke f
or a while.
Eventually, Jasper set the necklace aside, careful not to touch the puddle of vomit, and said, “You heard him. You’re finished for the day.”
I hesitated by the table. “Should I …”
Awkwardly, I gestured to the sick-covered relics.
Jasper shook his head. “I’ll have someone clean it.”
My lips pursed and I nodded.
I wasn’t too anxious to get back to the room. Ava would be out all day in the common room or dining hall—those were the places she spoke about more often of late.
Since the Prince allowed us a slice of freedom to leave the room, Ava spent most of her time away. If it wasn’t for the lessons I had with Jasper, I might have started to fall lonely.
Jasper studied me for a moment.
“You have garden privileges,” he said finally. “Night is not yet upon us.”
I shrugged. “Wouldn’t know how to find it even if I wanted to.”
“You do want to.” He plucked out a folded piece of parchment from the inside pocket of his coat. “Here—it is a sketched map of unrestricted areas of the palace.”
Before I could take it from him, he pulled it out of arm’s reach. “Do not go out of bounds,” he warned.
With a nod, I snatched the map and stuffed it in the feathery pocket of my too-poufy skirt. Not one of my favourites.
“Can I bring Ava with me?” I asked.
Jasper’s smile was full of secrets and poison, not unlike his maker’s. “You are not a prisoner. At least, not in the cage-and-iron bars sense of the word. While Prince Poison has taken an interest in you, the other Gods around here might not be so kind in their interest.”
“So…” I lifted my eyebrow, “don’t take Ava with me?”
“She is not protected.”
I hummed curtly, then made to leave the worship hall.
Before I reached the doors, Jasper called out after me—
“Do not worry about Ava. In this palace, she has plenty of friends and entertainment.”
It wasn’t Ava I was worried about.
11
Even with a map, the corridors and countless foyers of the palace were as tangled as an old ball of string in a cat’s paws. And—not that I looked for it or anything—I couldn’t find a trace of the shadow corridor on the map, either.
I waited for Ava in the room as dinner was brought, but she didn’t show. The mouse-faced maid that often washed my hair and whose name I learned to be Nalla, told me that Ava was eating in the vilas dining hall that day.
‘Do not worry about Ava. In this palace, she has plenty of friends and entertainment.’
A spike of jealousy shot through me, and it fed me into a simmering anger that had me marching through the corridors after dinner.
The map was tucked safely in the pocket of my feathery skirt. I’d studied it enough to know the way. All I had to do was make it to the main atrium, move around the staircase, and follow the corridor whose walls on one side were slated with glass, overlooking the stunning garden I’d first seen when I arrived at the Palace of the Gods.
I was on my way to the atrium when a cackle of girls came up the stairs. I veered around them just as they stumbled onto the landing, the potent stench of liquor in the air.
They stopped when they spotted me, waiting to squeeze by them.
Vilas. I could tell by the ordinary cruelty in their eyes, the way they poorly handled their drink (not unlike some of the new dancers back at the balneum), and the dull very-mortal gleam of their skin.
Also, they were staggering around the vilas halls, so…
One of the foursome pushed forward.
More like staggered.
The tone of her skin brought Damianos to mind. Only, her eyes weren’t sharp diamonds like his. Hers sparkled pits of tar or the sky at night, and there was no muscle in her slender frame.
She brought the stink of expensive liquor with her, the kind that Zwayk only got on imports once or twice a year. Our village was too small for many more visits.
“You’re her.” No greeting or introduction. Her accusation came with a jab to my breastbone. “Prince Poison’s new doll.”
Jealousy overpowered booze; it reeked from all four of them and their glares locked onto me.
A trickle of anger crept up my chest. I looked down at the red spot of skin she’d prodded, barely a thread away from my silky bodice.
Slowly, I lifted my darkening eyes back to her. “Don’t touch me.”
What’s one more enemy in a pit of snakes?
A blond, pale-skinned girl laughed. She looked like she didn’t come that far from an isle near mine, where it was mostly mist and rain.
The other girls sang a symphony of ooohh’s.
“Roxhana.” It was the pale-skinned girl who spoke. She shoved the tall slender one closer to me. “Are you going to let her speak to you that way?”
“Come on, Roxhana!” “Show her!”
The cackles rose back up. The louder they got, the tighter my fists clenched.
Roxhana took a menacing step closer to me, and a nasty smile twisted her face. “What do you think, Sarah? Should we teach her a lesson?”
Sarah—the blond one—grinned savagely.
“Roxhana, right?” I cocked my eyebrow, a bored look settling on my stony face. But inside, I was boiling. Ready to throw myself at her and her goading entourage.
“Listen,” I sighed. “My name isn’t The Prince’s New Doll, or Prince Poison’s Pet, or Thief. It’s Valissa. Lissa, if you like.” I took a steady step closer to her. “In this palace, I can’t exactly correct everyone who gets my name wrong. Too many aniels and Gods, you see. But what I can do, is correct you. And, unlike with others who push me around all day, I can knock your teeth out if you touch me again.”
I plastered a smile on my face, ear-to-ear. “Got it?”
Roxhana’s stunned face cracked into something ugly. The moment passed quicker than a blink and she shoved me square on the chest, so hard that I smacked into the wall behind me.
Rage flared my nostrils and cut my nails into my palms. It built up within me, seizing my thrumming heart with an icy fist.
Oh no…
Monster.
And—
Suddenly, I was calm.
My breaths softened into a harmonious breeze, and a sweet smile twisted my lips.
Roxhana blinked. Confusion flittered through her eyes. Even the other girls shared baffled looks.
Slowly, I craned my neck.
But Sarah cackled at my expense. “What is she doing?”
I turned my sweet smile on her and peeled strands of hair away from my face.
My answer came out in a chilling voice; “Showing you what I’m really like.”
I breathed a relaxed sight, smile still stuck onto my face, before I lunged at Roxhana.
I had her shoulders in my squeezing grip for only a moment before the first blow landed. I headbutted her right on the nose.
The bone cracked against my head, and I loved it.
It thrilled me. Excited me.
Most fun I’ve had in days.
Arms hooked all around me.
But I wasn’t satisfied, and struck again.
And again.
And again. Until all that swarmed my vision was crimson blood spilling out over beautiful olive skin.
Finally, the arms heaved me off the limp girl who was splayed on the bloody rug. I let them pull me off.
I fought for control in Monster’s brief soar of glee, and seized it tight.
I staggered back.
Three watery-eyed girls swarmed to the unconscious Roxhana on the floor. Blood pooled around her, leaking from her lips, nose and a huge gash across her eyebrow.
Monster really fucked her up.
Part of the reason I had to stay in control all the time. One slip of Monster, and somehow blood was always spilled.
“Just stay the hell away from me,” I muttered, then hurried by them, all crouched over
their ringleader.
I needed the garden more than ever, if only to get as far away from consequences as possible.
I had no idea who Roxhana was—or what she was to the Prince. I might have really messed everything up.
I needed air.
12
I never forgot where I was, but since meeting the Prince in all his cruelty and beauty, I did let myself forget the sheer wonder of where I was.
The Palace of the Gods.
Outside in the gardens, it was hard to forget what bloomed all around me. Even the stardust walls of the palace looked more glorious and magical than I remembered.
I sat on a mossy stone block that was close to joining the rubble at my feet. Wandering my gaze around the gardens, I toed a crumbled piece of stone.
Lilac and blue trees sprouted all over the gardens in what, at first glance, seemed like chaos of nature. But they were in order—blue, lilac, lilac, blue. It went on like that for as far as I could see in the midnight-blue light cast down from the glittering sky.
From this close, the stars looked as big as sun-bleached pebbles, planted in a navy velvet sheet. But no matter the beauty encasing me, I couldn’t tear my thoughts from the ugliness within the walls of the palace.
Not only did I have to manoeuvre my safety around a God and his loyal aniel, survive whatever gruelling path they had laid out in front of me, I had to face an entire cluck of girls who loathed me for no reason. Well, now they had a reason, but before they didn’t.
It wasn’t much different back home.
Who would have thought a time would come that I missed Zwayk? Not me.
Sure, I wanted to go home—since I was stolen from the shore, I wanted nothing more than to stay rooted on that isle. But I never missed it before that night.
I mean, there were times I wanted to rip out Tahmir’s throat, or leave Petal outside in the cold when he cried for too long. And there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that they were relieved to be rid of me. No more harbouring an avksy. That was all it would mean to them.
On Zwayk I almost always felt alone. The kicker was that here, in the Palace of Gods, I felt just the same. Alone. Out of place.
A familiar chilling voice wrenched me out of my thoughts—
“Valissa.”
Gods and Monsters, Books 1-3: A Dark Gods Bully Romance (Gods and Monsters Box Set) Page 10