by Melissa Grey
Are you sure that’s a good idea? Like, really, really, really sure?
A familiar voice cut in. Oh, for the love of the gods, Echo, just do it, Rose all but shouted in Echo’s skull. Phantom voice or not, it reverberated through Echo’s head, rattling her bones.
“Okay, fine. I’m doing it!”
Echo didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until Jasper shot her a quizzical glance and inquired, “Who are you talking to?”
“No one,” said Echo. Now was not the time for that conversation. She stepped closer to the bed, focusing on the sensation of magic coursing through her blood. It was always there, humming faintly like the rumble of a subway far below a city. It had been distracting at first, but one got used to it eventually.
Jasper didn’t look like he believed her, but any other questions he might have had were interrupted by Caius’s sudden thrashing.
It can feel you approaching, said the unidentified vessel. It knows what you intend to do.
The kuçedra. It may not have been in the room with them, but it knew. It had a presence, and all because of the blight besieging Caius. The Ala had told Echo that she believed the kuçedra was using its victims as a power source, as a way to charge its own magic. It fed on them, but Echo had not believed that the infection was sentient. If the voice speaking to Echo now was correct, then there was far more going on beneath the surface of Caius’s skin than any of them had realized.
The closer Echo got, the more Caius struggled. He fought Dorian and Jasper, thrashing against their braced arms with all his might. He was not simply infected; he was a man possessed.
The last of Echo’s reluctance fled at the sight of Caius’s panicked frenzy. There was nothing she would not do to save him from the hell in which he was ensnared.
Unlike Jasper’s and Dorian’s, her hands were bare. She crawled onto the bed, dodging wild kicks from Caius’s flailing legs. A few blows landed on Echo’s shins. She would have impressive bruises to show for it later.
The moment her hands connected with Caius’s chest, she felt the kuçedra dancing below the surface of his skin. Though Caius was sweating and flushed, he was not feverish; his skin was cool to the touch. Dangerously so. Echo knew what he should have felt like: pleasantly warmer than average. But his flesh was clammy and cold beneath her fingers, and it bruised immediately, no matter how light her touch. A pained utterance escaped Caius’s lips.
No, not bruised. Burned. Echo yanked her hands back as Caius’s skin began to blister.
“You’re hurting him,” Dorian said, voice strained as he wrestled down Caius, who had half risen in an attempt to buck Echo off.
The blistered flesh smoothed the second she ceased touching him. His skin was unmarred, save for the dark swollen veins crisscrossing his torso.
It’s a ruse, said the voice in Echo’s head. It wants you to stop. It wants you to give up and go away. You mustn’t.
That was all Echo needed to hear. She pushed down on Caius’s chest as firmly as she could, using her legs to leverage her weight as he continued to struggle against the three people holding him.
The veins stopped spreading.
“Was that you?” Jasper asked, as awestruck as he ever allowed himself to sound.
“I think so,” Echo said.
But there was already so much darkness in Caius. She felt the power circulating in her own blood rise to the surface. A positive force and a negative force, attracted to one another as the laws of the universe dictated. There was a patch of dense blackness on Caius’s chest, just north of his left pectoral muscle. It was right above his heart. Echo zeroed in on it.
Out, damned spot.
Just as she had done in the Black Forest and then again at Avalon, Echo let the magic flow through her as it wished. She was a vessel. A conduit. The magic of the firebird was a river running over her, through her, from her. It wanted to be let out, and so she released it in a great, rushing wave.
She thought not of heat and fire and blinding light, but of warmth. Of purity. Of the gentle shining of the sun at dawn and starlight on the surface of the ocean. She thought of the songs sung by birds at the break of day and the crisp, clear scent of an autumn breeze. In her mind, she crafted an image that stood in absolute opposition to the stain she felt pulsating in Caius’s heart.
Out, damn you.
Echo took everything she felt and pushed it into Caius. A sharp stab of pain flared at the base of her skull, right where she always felt the physical cost of magic first. The agony crested to a skull-splitting roar, but she forced herself to maintain the stream of light and magic emanating from her palms and soaking into Caius’s skin.
He screamed, and she echoed it. They were both burning from within, but still, she did not stop. She could not—would not—stop until she had cleansed him of the kuçedra’s venomous influence.
She held on and burned with him until there was nothing left.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The cabin’s modest living room was disappointingly empty. What Jasper would’ve given for a distraction, any distraction, so long as it got his mind off Dorian. As it stood, the only company Jasper had to keep from wallowing in self-pity were two ancient armchairs upholstered in a fabric that would have made a grandmother weep, a grandfather clock so loud and annoying he was ready to pull out its gears, and a rotund black cat that hissed with astonishing viciousness when Jasper dared approach it. He didn’t know where the cat had come from. It had just wandered in through the kitchen window like it owned the place. Jasper slumped onto the slightly less hideous sofa in the middle of the room and stared into the fire crackling cheerfully in the hearth. Dorian and Echo were still fawning over Caius, who seemed the worse for wear and would require the attention of a proper healer soon.
Jasper considered making a break for it. Not permanently, just long enough to have some distance, some perspective. Emotions were messy. That was why he usually preferred not to traffic with them, but this time his own messy emotions had refused to be denied. He felt powerless to stop the swell of jealousy he felt when Dorian had so tenderly reached for Caius, when that blue eye had softened and then filled with tears, tears Dorian had not been too proud to shed at the way Caius had unself-consciously reached to lay a hand on the back of Dorian’s head and muttered something in soft Drakhar to him that Jasper did not understand. The moment had belonged to them, filled with the years worth of history to which Jasper was not privy.
The sound of a door creaking open pulled Jasper from his thoughts. He angled his head to see who was coming, sure to keep his expression neutral. Dorian, however, did no such thing. He looked haggard, his shoulders sagging with something Jasper suspected was relief. It was a noticeable change from his demeanor of the past several weeks, which had been marked with tension so strong that Jasper had thought Dorian might snap at any moment.
For his part, Dorian did not even look at Jasper as he entered the room. He made straight for the ancient bar tucked in the corner, popped open a decanter of what looked like whiskey, and poured a generous amount into a glass. He downed the entire thing in one smooth motion. He grimaced at the burn of alcohol down his throat before pouring himself another glass. “Want one?” Dorian asked.
The offer was tempting, but the last thing Jasper wanted or needed was to have alcohol loosen his tongue and give it license to spill every embarrassing thought in his head. “Nah, I’m good.”
Dorian grunted. Drink in hand, he made his way to the sofa and slumped onto the cushion beside Jasper. He sipped at his drink, staring listlessly into the fire. With his free hand he rubbed at the scarred skin beneath his eye patch. Dorian may have been relieved to have found Caius, but that little gesture told Jasper something was still bothering him. Dorian had his tells just like anybody else, and Jasper had always excelled at reading tells.
The silence wasn’t awkward—not exactly—but Jasper still felt the need to fill it. “How is he?”
Dorian heaved a weary sigh. “He is…unwell.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Jasper said. He wondered if Dorian would look like this should something happen to him. It was not a generous thought, and not one Jasper was proud of, but he couldn’t help but wonder.
“I never liked Tanith,” Dorian said. “I can’t say I was surprised when she betrayed Caius for the throne or when she tried to have us tossed in the dungeon, but I never truly believed that she would do him harm. Not like that.” Another sigh, this one even wearier than the first. “Her own brother. Her own blood.”
And just like that Jasper’s horrible, petty thoughts seemed even pettier, even more horrible. He would have felt ashamed if shame were something he ever bothered to waste time on. Even so, a tiny inkling of it escaped his otherwise sturdy defenses.
“What I want to know is how Echo kept him from falling into a coma like everyone else who’s come into contact with the kuçedra’s poison or venom or whatever the hell it is,” said Jasper.
Talking about this was so much easier than dealing with the riot of emotions that assaulted Jasper when left to his own devices.
Dorian shook his head, looking just as perplexed by Caius’s condition as Jasper felt. “She figured out a way to counteract that effect, but it drained him even more, as if his body was fighting a battle on two fronts. None of the afflicted who responded to the elixir at Avalon appeared quite so…”
“Mostly dead?” Tact had never been Jasper’s strong suit.
Dorian winced, and Jasper immediately felt apologetic. Emotions were sloppy, Jasper reminded himself, and they made you do stupid things and say even stupider ones.
“Bluntly stated,” said Dorian, “but not incorrect.” He ran a hand through his silver hair, tousling it even more than it already was. Unkempt was a good look on him. “He’ll need the attentions of a true healer soon. We’ve done all we can, but I’m afraid it’s not enough.”
Jasper watched Dorian in silence for a few moments. “And you? How are you holding up?” He tried to keep his tone light, and failed spectacularly.
“I’m fine,” Dorian said into his drink, voice muffled by the glass.
“Liar.” Jasper reached over to pluck the glass from Dorian’s unresisting hand. Why was it that dealing with someone else’s emotions was so much easier than dealing with your own? “I think that’s enough for now, don’t you?”
“You’re right,” Dorian said. “We may have found Caius, but that doesn’t mean I can afford to let my guard down. There’s always the possibility that we were followed and that someone is going to burst through that door, sword in hand, eager to take him back to that monster’s clutches.” He made as if to stand up, but Jasper placed a firm hand on Dorian’s knee.
Obtuse, thy name is Dorian.
“That isn’t what I meant,” said Jasper. “I just don’t think drowning your sorrows ever really works.”
“You sound like you’re speaking from personal experience,” Dorian said.
Jasper realized then that he had been lying to himself when he imagined himself as a stranger to shame. He was indeed speaking from personal experience, but those were not experiences he wanted to share with Dorian. Despite a storied history of disdaining the good opinion of others, Jasper found himself wanting Dorian to believe the best of him, in the face of all evidence to the contrary. A strong and undeniable longing unfurled in Jasper’s stomach. He wanted so strongly for Dorian to look at him like he had hung the moon, wanted it in a way that manifested itself as an almost physical ache. More than anything, he wanted to be worthy of that look.
Jasper hadn’t become one of the most notorious contacts in Echo’s roster of criminally inclined individuals by making admirable life decisions.
“After Quinn…” The glass of whiskey was suddenly heavy in Jasper’s hand. He thought about downing what was left in it, but that would have been the height of hypocrisy. He set the glass down on the rickety end table and started again. “After I left Quinn, I was a bit of a mess.”
Dorian’s hand twitched where it rested on his own thigh, as if he were considering reaching out to touch Jasper, to offer some form of physical comfort, but the hand did not move any farther. And, oh, what torture that was. A memory came to Jasper, rendered in Technicolor clarity, of a kiss shared in the darkness of the wine cellar, of those hands in his hair-feathers, of those hands soft and reverent against his skin. One night was all they had had before the world came crashing down around them, and Jasper had played that series of moments over and over and over again in his mind to the point where he half suspected them to be the product of a painfully realistic fever dream.
“You were so young then,” Dorian said softly. “You are still so young. You’re allowed to be a little messy.”
Jasper let out a mirthless little laugh. “I was a lot messy. It’s kind of what happens after someone completely destroys your sense of self.” Another pang of shame. “But we’re not talking about me now, we’re talking about you. Don’t think I didn’t notice that you avoided answering the question.” Jasper asked again, just for good measure: “How are you doing? And no deflecting this time. I won’t stand for it.”
Dorian made a noise that was almost a chuckle but was too soft, too quiet to qualify as one. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re infuriatingly perceptive?”
“Yes, shockingly enough, more than once, but it didn’t take any Holmesian levels of deduction to see that you are very much not okay right now,” Jasper said. “And correct me if I’m mistaken, but I think you’re used to no one asking you if you’re all right. And I think maybe that question flummoxed you a little bit.”
Dorian rubbed his scars again, fingers lingering on the raised flesh as if that touch could ground him. “I just…” A frustrated grumble ate the rest of his words. “I don’t know how to talk about this. About him.”
About Caius, Jasper thought. But he didn’t push. He didn’t prod. This conversation had to happen at Dorian’s pace or it wouldn’t happen at all.
“It’s very easy,” Dorian said, “to grow accustomed to silence. If you deny yourself something long enough, you can start to ignore it, but it never really goes away. It’s just something you’ve seen so many times that you become almost blind to it. Until suddenly, something happens, and you can’t not see it. It is there, and it is undeniable, and there is no escaping the truth of it. And try as you might, you can’t hide from it. Even if you stubbornly refuse to name it, it’s there, with you, and you realize then that you were its hostage all along.”
This was getting far more introspective than Jasper had anticipated.
“You love him,” Jasper said, his voice soft in the dimly lit stillness.
The silence that followed that simple statement was complete and unyielding. The grandfather clock ticked away seconds that felt like hours. And then, the unexpected. A laugh bubbled up from deep within Dorian’s chest, a wild thing that careened into the quiet, shattering it.
“You know,” Dorian said, “I don’t think I’ve ever said that out loud.”
“Technically, you still haven’t,” Jasper said.
A strange resolve seemed to come over Dorian then. He kept his gaze forward, eye trained on the slowly dying fire as he spoke. “I loved him.”
Loved? The past tense did not escape Jasper’s notice.
“I still love him,” Dorian said.
And just like that, the fragile hope blossoming in Jasper’s chest began to shrivel up like a potted plant someone had forgotten to water. Without pausing to consider that maybe inebriation was not the best of plans, Jasper picked up the discarded glass of whiskey and knocked it back, refusing to wince as the alcohol burned his throat all the way down. He was not stone. If you pricked him, he would bleed. And Dorian had just wielded the blade guaranteed to cut the deepest.
Jasper was ready to flee, muscles in his legs tensing, his brain plotting the quickest escape route, when Dorian appeared to sense the shift in his mood. With aching slowness, the hand that had refused to reach ou
t to Jasper earlier made its move. Now it was Dorian’s turn to pluck the glass from Jasper’s hand and place it to the side. His fingers rested against Jasper’s knuckles as if unsure of their welcome. Slowly, ever so slowly, Jasper turned his hand over so that their fingers interlocked.
“I still love him,” Dorian repeated. “But not the way I used to.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Caius had spent enough time alone—more than enough, quite frankly—to begin to catalog different types of silence. There were myriad varieties, each possessing unique qualities. A tormented silence had filled his most recent days, full of the echoes of his own screams and the memory of fresh suffering.
He had found no comfort in that silence. It had been a way to mark time, between one agony and the next, as he waited. Waited for his sister’s madness to abate—an unlikely scenario, he knew, but one he could not stop hoping for, as if the very act of hope had become intrinsic to his survival. Waited for Tanith to return, pale skin marred by blackened veins, crimson eyes stained dark with corruption. A heavy coil of dread wound its way around him as he remembered the silence that heralded her return. Even the quiet murmur of the guards outside his door had died, voices hidden like woodland creatures waiting for a predator to pass by.
That silence had invariably been followed by the most exquisite pain imaginable. The feeling of his power—something he’d always believed was uniquely his, a notion proved tragically incorrect—being leached from his body like blood being drawn from a vein. But unlike freshly drawn blood, his power—that ineffable force that connected him to the in-between—did not want to leave his body. Tanith drew it out against its will, if it could be said to have one. The magic knew Caius. His body was its home. It had always been there, coursing through him like a subtle current. But Tanith—or whatever force was staring out of her eyes—had found a way to break the tether holding Caius and his magic together using brute force and enthusiastic beatings. Every second of separation was a study in torment. Every moment of silence between one leaching and the next was almost as bad. Tanith had waited for the well within Caius to refill itself, slowly, painfully, before returning to take more and more until he was sure it would run dry, leaving nothing for her to steal.