Chapter 30 Clawed
CLAWED
A wound only leaves a scar when its lesson went ignored.
Caedisterra, God of Blood and Balance
Claudia has to see Dorian.
Tonight.
He might hurt her, but he can’t kill her. He wants his freedom too badly, and he’s said it himself: She is his last hope.
For the first night since she danced off the ledge, she does not take any essence of dreams.
She tries to conjure a Doorway, but it won’t work. She’s doing everything right, but it just won’t show up. She doesn’t mean to, but she falls into a dreamless sleep, opening her eyes only at the first shard of morning light cutting through her window.
Fuck. Dorian really meant it—he will not let her in.
But Claudia won’t give up without a fight.
The next night, she tries a new method. If she can’t get through with desire alone, she’ll add fear. Both of them in equal weight will be enough to open the door. She steps onto her balcony and leans over the edge, teasing her body with the threat of a fall.
She’s counting the stars, searching for familiar constellations and—
Wait.
Wait.
She blinks. Squints. Rubs her eyes and shakes her head. But still, she sees something else among the stars.
Eyes. Glowing green eyes.
“Dorian,” she whispers. He said he was trapped by cursed stars—could that be him, peering down at her from his celestial prison?
Certainty steels her spine. That’s Dorian. She can feel it. Feel him.
The Realm of Nightmares must be right there, hidden in plain sight, in the dark between stars.
Leaning forward, she slips and barely catches herself on the balustrade. Heart racing, she leaps back, pressed to her doors, fighting to catch her breath.
This fear is bone-deep and perfect. This is exactly how she entered the Realm of Nightmares the first time. Why shouldn’t it work again?
Eagerly, she rushes inside and slams her head to the pillow, shutting her eyes tightly.
Then she uses every drop of desire in her body to manifest the Doorway. It’s shadowy, hardly able to withstand the heavy darkness around it.
But it’s there.
Relief swells in her chest. It’s there. Dorian is letting her come back. He’ll help her. He has to.
Just when she steps through, something strikes her.
No—claws her.
With a scream, she wakes up gasping and choking on her own panic. Her heart burns. Her chest aches. Her breastbone feels as though it’s been cleaved in two.
She leaps from the bed and peels off her sweat-drenched clothes, then stares at her bruised chest in the mirror.
Between her breasts are three fresh, oozing gashes.
The torn flesh burns as though it’s been charred.
Her heart stutters and stalls. Panicked, she flattens her hands against her chest and tries to stop the bleeding, but she only makes it worse.
It spurts and rivers down her belly. She needs medicine.
She needs Alistair.
But his room is so far away. How can she—
Wait. Bishop. Bishop can go get him. Stumbling, Claudia opens his enclosure. “Bishop, I need help. I need…” Her breath runs out. She drops to her knees. “Alistair. Get Alistair,” she says before slipping back into the dark.
In a daze, she skirts the edge of the Realm of Nightmares, not quite lucid enough to step inside. The world is one big blur of black. She sees flashes of Dorian, of glowing green eyes, of claws dripping with her star-soaked blood. All while the wind screams her name.
Madness is no longer creeping in—it is taking hold.
Dorian truly is punishing her for what she did with Cassius. He’s angry enough to leave her to die. She decides it’s too dangerous to stay on his bad side.
“Dorian,” she whimpers. “Forgive me. I’m so sorry.” Her voice feels foreign in her mouth. Too small. Too meek. “Please come back.”
A dark figure approaches through the whirring snow. It has to be Dorian, finally. He’s here. He’s going to save her. Forgive her.
But before he becomes clear, Claudia is thrust back to consciousness as Alistair pours something disgusting into her mouth and rubs a gummy poultice into her wound.
“Come on,” he begs. “Don’t die on me. I can’t lose you, too.”
Sitting up, she coughs violently until she pukes all over herself. Her vomit is black as night. It takes a long time for her to catch her breath, and she’s lost all control of her tongue. As the panic ebbs, all she can do is cry.
“What the fuck happened?” Alistair’s face is stained with tears, his eyes wide with panic.
How can she explain it? Even she doesn’t know the full scope or the entire truth. All she knows is that she got on her knees for Cassius, and now she has been punished.
“I—I don’t know,” she says, which is half true. “Something clawed me in my sleep. I didn’t—” She buries her face in her hands. “I didn’t see it. I don’t know.” She can’t stop herself from sobbing. Delirious from the sight of so much blood, she says, “I deserved it.”
“What?” Alistair asks, bewildered while he continues to apply the poultice to her chest.
It’s true; not just for giving away pieces of her soul like a fool, but for everything. For killing her father. For losing focus on the bargain. For taking Odette’s rightful place. For coming here at all.
Her emotions swell inside her until she explodes into a storm of angry tears. Alistair holds her through it all, not once relaxing his grip, not once letting her feel alone.
“I’ve got you. I’m here. And you don’t deserve anything bad. Okay?”
She shakes her head against his shoulder. “Yes I do—”
“No, you don’t.” He picks her head up and cups her cheeks, smearing the poultice into her face.
It smells earthy and floral. She stares into his big brown eyes, wet with sincerity.
“You listen to me, Claudia Jolicoeur. You are good, and you deserve good things.” His words eat away at her panic.
With his tight embrace, he warms her sorrow until it melts into peace.
“Thank you,” she whimpers, leaning into his touch.
He stays with her until the sun rises, cleaning her up, calming her down, and ensuring that nothing bad can touch her for the rest of the night.
She checks her timepiece when she wakes, finding that she’s had only two hours of sleep. When she sits up in her bed, it hurts to move. The gashes on her chest burn. Her mouth is dangerously dry. She stumbles out of bed, searching for water.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees something slide into her room from under her door. She winces when she bends down to grab it.
It’s… a diary entry? But how? Bishop is the one who has been bringing these to her, but he’s tucked away in his enclosure.
Who brought this for her?
November 17th
Last night, I had a nightmare, though it felt like a prophecy.
I saw myself die.
I was standing in the observatory alone.
It looked different. Darker. The air was wet and cold, as though a crack in the glass ceiling let in a draft.
I plucked a book from the shelf, and when I opened it, the words slipped off the page, crawled like ants onto my hands and arms. I shrieked, slicing them off me with the side of my hand. They hit the floor and skittered away.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of an ornate mirror.
I looked tired—sunken eyes, undone hair, wind-chapped lips.
Behind me, a shadow lurched forward. I turned and saw nothing, but seconds later, I felt it breathe across my throat.
Seconds ticked by, and the shadow reappeared in my periphery.
I couldn’t catch it head-on, no matter how fast I moved or how hard I narrowed my gaze.
Then I heard something rumbling. A phantom voice calling from above. It was deep and menacing, almost like a reptile’s warning—a low growl that comes from the belly instead of the throat.
When I looked up, I saw the constellation of Dracoemagyl, and hovering in its heart were two bright green stars I had never seen before. In the center of the room, I looked through the telescope and focused on them.
Upon closer look, I realized they were not stars at all.
They blinked.
They were eyes.
When I came away from the telescope, I gasped, and the glass dome of the observatory turned to water.
It gushed and poured down the tower. Seconds later, I heard it splash against the ground.
Then the walls around me crumbled to dust. The telescope grew hotter, burning bright white before melting into a puddle of liquid gold.
It dribbled across the floor and off the side. The stone floor was all that was left.
It was just me and open air, nothing stopping me from diving headfirst into the night.
I didn’t want to. I just wanted to run, but behind me, there was no longer a door or a staircase that led back down to the warm halls of Cygnus. There was no way out. I turned forward again, staring up at the stars.
And something—or someone—pushed me.
I smiled as I fell. For one small second, falling felt like flying. I’d never been so free.
Then there was a sort of severance—my body kept falling, but my consciousness slipped out just before the fatal crunch against the ground.
From high above, I saw myself cracked in two on the stone below, starry blood rivering out. That is when the fear finally came rushing in. It was all I felt, all I knew.
I was dead. And I knew that when I woke up, the same fate awaited me. Lamour said this was how one of his friends died—pushed from the top of the tower, cleaved on the pavement below.
I was next. I knew it.
“Is this the fate you want?” the phantom voice called.
I woke up screaming for Sidarphion.
He is the only one who can protect me, but my searches for him have been fruitless. I’ve torn through every book in the library, every tome in the tower, and come away with nothing.
What more can I do?
Claudia adds the entry to her collection in the top drawer of her desk. She checks her timepiece again, and—
No, that can’t be right. Right before she started reading the diary, it was six in the morning. Now it says it’s nearly midnight. She turns to her window and throws open the curtains, wincing when the quick movement tugs at her wounds.
It’s pitch black. Across the courtyard, the clock tower spears the sky. It’s the same as her timepiece—fifteen minutes to midnight.
How did she lose an entire day in a matter of minutes?
There’s a knock at the door.
“Claud?” Alistair calls.
She opens the door to find him and Angel waiting there, and the two sigh with relief upon seeing her.
“Have you been in here all day?” Alistair asks.
“I think so,” she says. He touches her forehead, checking her temperature.
“We brought more medicine and new bandages,” Angel says. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out something wrapped in parchment. “And some strawberry tarts from the Treaty.”
She steps out of the way and lets the two inside. “Is it really midnight?”
“Yes. You must’ve slept through the whole day,” Alistair says, guiding her to the bed and readying his bandaging supplies next to him. Claudia splits her robe to expose her chest, and Alistair gets to work on changing the bandages.
“I wasn’t asleep. I was just reading and… ow, fuck.” She groans when he pulls the bandage away. It feels like he’s peeling her skin clean off. “I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible I lost track of time.”
Angel leans over to Alistair and murmurs, “Love, what was in that medicine you gave her?”
“Nothing that would cause an effect like this,” he says, spreading thick clear goo over the gashes before applying a fresh bandage.
Claudia clenches every muscle in her body while Alistair finishes tending to her wound. What is happening? Where did all that time go?
“What day is it?” she asks. They’ve all blurred together at this point, and now she’s worried she’s lost even more days to this strange fugue state.
The men give each other concerned looks.
“Technically, it’s now Friday,” Angel says.
Friday.
The day for detention with a dying man.
She reaches for the strawberry tarts that Angel brought her and takes a massive bite. She’s going to need way more sweets to get through this.