Chapter 3
DECALCOMANIA
When Rin woke up again, it was to a drifting sense of peace filling her body, four men watching her, and a surreal note to the air—as if this were all a dream.
"Vesperin." Lucien sat on the edge of the bed, shadows under his eyes.
Rin smiled dazedly. "I missed you." Her words were achingly quiet.
She felt like there was something she was supposed to know, somewhere she was supposed to be. She started to get up, but there were hands on her again, stilling her. She let herself sink back down.
"Don’t move." Lucien’s thumb soothed over her forearm. She felt a tug and glanced down, finding tape over her wrist, a wire filled with a soft blue liquid, flowing from a bag attached to the wall, streaming straight into her veins. She knew she should be worried, but she didn’t care.
"I feel nice… like a cloud. I wish I could feel this way forever." It was so much easier to feel this way. Rin’s eyes slipped shut. Peaceful darkness.
In that darkness, she remembered flashes of light, brown eyes, pain.
"I think I need to go somewhere—do something. There’s something…" she trailed off as she started to stand once more.
Lucien shushed her. "You’re okay. There’s nothing you need to do right now but rest."
A throat was cleared. Rin looked up with blurry, dazed vision to find Rhyden standing near the kitchen counter. As she met his eyes, a surge of memories made her brain throb.
Hands on her skin, diamonds draped around her neck.
Rope on his wrist, punishing, teasing thrusts.
Rhyden held her stare as he said, "I thought you said the drug would make her complacent enough for us to have a conversation with her. She doesn’t look calm to me."
"I won’t up the dosage," Lucien said firmly.
"It can be addictive. She needs to process enough to talk, but I’m not going to drug her into incoherence or vulnerability.
She is vulnerable enough as is—she needs us right now.
If you cared about her, you would agree, Rhyden.
" Lucien said his name with a firmness Rin had never heard from him before.
Rin tapped Lucien’s hand, drawing his attention back to her—but she wondered if it had ever left. "You drugged me?" she blurted.
Lucien hesitated. "I hope you can understand. We need to talk. You were in no state to talk. Your heart is delicate. We cannot risk straining it. We have no idea what else"—his throat worked, and his dark hair fell into his eyes as he looked down—"they did to you."
Rin knew she should be mad, but she didn’t care right now. "Okay."
Her body ached, thrumming as if she’d tried to meet her training hours in one go and didn’t cool down after.
She stretched, feet kicking out beneath the blankets.
Her toes brushed something firm, and her dazed eyes traveled down, finding Cyrus sitting at her feet.
His hands cupped her ankles over the blanket.
"Ves, my little doll. How do you feel?" Cyrus rested his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, just watching her.
She thought about it… "Floaty."
A wide smile stretched his plump lips. "Good. I missed you. I tried to hold you when you were sleeping, but the doctor got mad. He threw me out for a few hours after that. It’s not my fault, I was hungry.
I only sipped a little. And it was just your nightmares—don’t get mad.
I thought I could take them from you so you’d rest easier. "
The floating feeling cut off anything else but the present moment. And all she felt presently was soft and tired. She nodded faintly.
Cyrus’s hands smoothed up to her calves, fingers tapping over her knees. "You’re sweet like this. Reminds me of how you used to be."
The effects of the drug quelled her thoughts before they could form, but she remembered.
Rosy nightgowns in coastal closets. The faint fizz of sugar rocks as she dropped it into a cup of tea, the clink of a silver stir stick against the side of the cup as she stirred. Cyrus’s arms around her as they swayed before the large, open doors. The crash of waves against the rocks.
His pleas as he starved himself to earn her trust:
Make me stop. If you can. Hit me, knock me out—anything.
She hadn’t.
Rin had let him feed from her, and she had loved every moment of it, even when panic surged. He’d always treated her so carefully. Like a doll.
Rin met his purple eyes. "I missed you, Cyrus. Thank you for waiting for me for so long."
Cyrus’s eyes grew wide as he leaned forward, nearly falling into her lap. "What—"
"Later," Auren cut in calmly.
At the sound of his voice, Rin searched for him. The Soul Searcher leaned against the wall, scythe near, as always. He reached forward and tangled his fingers in the back of Cyrus’s hoodie, yanking him away from Rin.
Cyrus sat back with a huff of indignation, hands reclaiming their spot on Rin’s legs.
"Vesperin, what did you mean, earlier, when you said Kiton—tortured you?" Lucien’s voice trembled with restrained pain.
"Kit was there, when I was taken. I was strapped down to a chair in a dark room… He hurt me. Over and over and over. I begged him to stop, but he didn’t stop. He didn’t even care when I asked him—when I begged him to—to just kill me already."
Rin swallowed thickly, mouth suddenly dry. She coughed. Auren moved to the kitchen, shoulder brushing Rhyden’s as he did. The soft thunk of a cabinet opening and the trickle of the tap water as it fell into the sink echoed her words.
"He wasn’t… himself," Rin settled on. "He didn’t care that I begged and cried. He was cold. Like a machine."
Auren appeared at Lucien’s back, handing her a glass of water.
"Here, Hunter. You need to ensure your strength grows. I do not wish for you to succumb to this. Promise me you will not let yourself?" The Star beneath his left eye seemed to glow. "Be strong."
Rin looked at Auren and saw flashes of him, images overlaid upon the immortal male standing before her, begging her to be strong.
She saw him on a dirty path, staring down at her with a bloodied handprint left on his cheek as cuts on her chest bled her lifeforce onto the cold ground.
She saw him in a village, stealing into her cottage and standing over her sickbed—so much like he was now.
Except then, he bore his scythe, hood concealing his features as he waited for her to succumb to her illness so he could reap her Soul.
She saw him again, for their very first life, when she’d been attacked by a pack of wolves, intestines and gore spilling out from the hole in her stomach, dress ripped, her wicker basket of picked berries and herbs overturned.
He’d been called to reap her Soul, but right before she’d succumbed to death, he’d brushed the brown hair away from her cheeks. Bare fingertips drifting over her face, and they’d both realized, just before death had claimed her, they were Soulbonds.
Auren had tried to save her, but she was far beyond rescue. He’d sobbed, lamenting to the Celestials that his Soulbond should be on death’s precipice for him to find her.
Rin had used her very last breath to say, Let me go now.
Rin, the Soul he had been destined to reap for three lives. The only way Rin could be found by him was if she were ready to be taken to the Stars—
Except that night… in Nova Zone 21.
Wistful melancholy filled her, making her wish to drift up and float through the ceiling as she was lost in his stare. "I know you’ll see me safely." The words came from some place deep inside her.
Auren’s hand trembled on the glass, making the water ripple within it.
Rin took it from him, her pinky brushing his. He made a tortured sound.
She drank until the cup was empty.
"Kit is a shell of his former self. He’s not Kit anymore." Rin ran her fingernail over the beveled edges of the glass.
She was glad for the drug. It made everything so peaceful and calm, as if she were detached. At least now she could remember without being clouded by fear and shock.
She was left with only the truth of what had happened.
Kit was alive. Only, he might as well have been dead for all the life in his eyes.
"You’re not surprised by what I’m telling you… Why?" Rin questioned softly.
Lucien wiped beneath his eyes, staring at his broken Soulbond.
She was dazed, drugged.
It was wrong—but the perfect opportunity to tell her about Project Phoenix. At least now he didn’t have to tell her that Kiton was not only alive, but also an experiment. She knew.
And Lucien hated that she did.
He seized the moment, telling her everything while the drugs kept her dazed.
Stealing into the deeper levels of the lab, the file, Project Phoenix…
He held back only the last, final truth—one that he knew might shatter her.
Kit and Lucien were her Soulbonds.
Rin shifted onto her side, exhaustion weighing her down. Lucien’s voice washed over her. She understood his words, but when she tried to focus on how they made her feel, she couldn’t.
Sitting on the bed, Cyrus rested his back against the wall, one leg outstretched, his bare toes brushing her elbow.
Lucien held her hand, while her other was tucked beneath her chin.
Auren had gone silent after she’d taken the water glass, but his unnaturally bright blue eyes tracked her every move.
And Rhyden…
He stared and stared.
"I’m sorry," Rin said finally.
The silence had gone on long enough in the wake of Lucien’s admissions.
His hands were cupping hers, a finger tracing over her palm. "What could you be sorry for, my V girl?"
"For leaving. I thought I was doing something good by helping." Again, Rin’s words came from a deep, profound place. As the blue liquid in the bag dwindled, her peace grew scarcer, her tiredness grew pressing, and the memories of her past grew fuzzier.
She knew where the words came from.
That memory with Kit—fogged windows and Nightfell roses in her hands.
Was Kit her Soulbond, too?
No.