Chapter 14
Rumor
My heart sat heavy in my chest, and my ribs tightened. I stayed in that place where I wished for more sleep, more blessed oblivion, if only to avoid the horrors of my waking reality a little longer. A small reprieve from my failures, if only for a night.
My sister hated me.
She didn’t want to be anywhere near me.
Prism was all I had and I’d lost her.
I’d lost her just like I’d lost my moms before her.
Everything good around me just sort of… disappeared, didn’t it? No, that wasn’t quite right. Everything good was repelled by me. I tried—I tried so hard to keep everything together… only to watch it slip through my fingers over and over.
Riot had abandoned me, too, hadn’t he?
Twenty might as well have. Twenty the man retreated into his cat form so as not to actually have to converse with me. Even my own familiar wanted rid of his association with me.
Part of me thought, hoped, Riot would be different. Maybe it was the hex my sister put on me at work. Now that potential love was gone…
Spade had shown up, though. Maybe that counted for something.
I thumbed the sea glass necklace at my collar and half wondered if when I opened my eyes I’d be underground again.
The spider had struck again, rendering me helpless and useless.
But before that… did I want to consider what happened with the wither or what transpired between the eldest Blackthorne boy and me?
Which monster would I analyze first was the truer question.
Cracking open my eyes, a beige room sprawled out before me. Ivy curled up the walls, and several long vine plants draped their leaves over two wide windowsills. The room was plush and comforting… yet I had no idea where I was.
A knock sounded at the door, and I sat up—I sat up too fast. Dizzying stars shot across my vision as flashes of pain slapped against my temples.
I groaned, leaning back against the green velvet headboard.
The door opened, and the clanking of jostling bones into the room would be enough to haunt anyone for life, but it at least clued me into my location.
A skeleton waded past several leafy plants and bent at its waist, lowering a silver-domed tray at my side.
“Miss me?” I asked it sarcastically, not expecting a response.
However, to my surprise, the skeleton wobbled its hand as if to say, “Kind of yes, kind of no.”
A small laugh almost left my throat but the movement made my head pound further. I winced. “Well, thanks for the food. If you see the Blackthornes, tell them I said, ‘Good morning, and fuck you.’”
The skeleton paused in the doorway as if attempting to discern the seriousness of my request before silently deciding, giving a short bow, and exiting.
Who knew they could communicate? I guessed I’d never tried to speak with them before. Why hadn’t I?
I lifted the domed lid; the aroma of linked sausages, fried eggs, and sliced tomatoes wafted through the room. My stomach audibly growled. I hadn’t eaten since… I couldn’t remember. Not since meeting the girl in my cottage. Trinket.
Was she waiting for me to come back? She seemed industrious enough, but she was so young.
The fiery red-headed witch with a death touch and dead brother.
I don’t know why, but I felt compelled to go back to her and make sure she was okay.
I sure as hell wouldn't want to be an outcast in a strange cottage, waiting for the coven's crone to dole out my fate. She must feel so alone and scared.
I mean, I guess I was technically all of those things as well, though, but… I couldn’t care less. Empath had met me as a child and immediately furrowed her brow in silent disapproval.
She never called on me for questions at the solstice circle.
Never highlighted my gifts or abilities.
Never asked me to read the tea leaves with her in her bakery like she did with other witches.
The most I got from my coven’s crone was a blueberry muffin and orders to wash off the grave dirt I’d crawled out of before going to Willowspire’s gatherings.
I ate my fill, surprising myself with groans at how perfectly salty the meat tasted and how ripe the tomatoes were alongside the yolky eggs.
If there was anything good about the Blackthorne Castle, it was the food.
Well, the food and the—realization hit and I slid my tray aside.
Wrapping myself in a downy white blanket, I shimmied off the bed and shuffled towards an open door in the corner of the room and found—oh, dear. I leaned on the marble countertop.
I could have cried.
A large, white bath surrounded by little amber bottles of soaps and salts was before me. Quickly shedding my filthy clothes, I turned the golden knob and… I laughed. Magic. Pure magic. Steam and bubbles filled the tub, and I climbed in, moaning as the heat soothed my sore muscles.
Plumbing, they called it. Not magic, they said.
Liars. This was the most enchanting thing in all the realms. I’d take a hot, on-demand bath over meat, over sex even.
Well, maybe not sex. The kind of sex I’d now had with each of the Blackthorne Boys was…
well… not like anything I’d experienced before.
Maybe it was commonplace to them, but for me…
it only served to confuse me further. Spade’s mystery unfolded before me like the endless expanse of a starry night sky.
When I’d somehow transferred into his consciousness, I could hardly endure the war within his mind.
No wonder he acted so angry all the time.
Riot, however, couldn’t have been more different from his broody brother.
When we’d had sex, the atmosphere had changed.
Hell, my hair changed. I massaged lavender-scented soap through my scalp, lingering over the half-white and half-black of my new hair.
The white reminded me of his familiar. The white stag.
Wolf snarls and antler jabs invaded many of my nightmares since that day.
A soundtrack of melancholy in the back of my mind.
A loop of watching the stag die and Riot’s solemn voice when I asked, “Doesn’t it hurt? ” And he replied, “It hurts like hell.”
There was more beneath his sarcastic mask than he let on.
There was pain there, hurt… but he hadn’t even come for me.
I was in his own castle and he’d yet to come looking for me.
Riot didn’t care. Maybe he’d never cared.
Our moment in the woods, the stupid mating dagger he gave me, it was all one of his stupid games.
The thought of Riot in his daimon form crossed my mind.
His icy luminescence. The feel of his magic toying across my skin.
I wondered what his daimon horns would feel like grazing my inner thigh…
Heat curled in my belly despite myself. Maybe I was a dark witch, because those were twisted and depraved desires. To have sex with a daimon? Had anyone ever even tried such a thing and made it out alive?
It didn’t matter. It would never happen for me.
Then there was Twenty. The surly silver familiar of mine.
The curious Blackthorne brother who would now only be around me in his cat form.
Great, just great. At least I hoped he was at the cottage looking after Trinket.
She needed him more than I did right now.
I was too busy being taken out by my spider and soaking uselessly in a hot bath.
When the water grew cold, I refilled it twice, avoiding the inevitable reality that I’d have to get out and wander this cursed castle again.
I’d have to talk to them, the Blackthorne Boys.
The disappearance of Prism, the startling exchange I’d had with the crimson wither, and what to do next, weren’t problems I could solve on my own.
Admitting that to myself made me wince. My coven and crone hadn’t prepared me for dark magic, daimons, and withers.
Even with the small amount of magic I’d wielded, the more I learned, the less I felt I knew.
Dark magic, or maybe magic in general, was a hedge maze.
The moment I thought I knew where I was—I walked into a thorny wall.
Reluctantly, I climbed out of my bath and wrapped myself in a robe.
By the bed was a wardrobe, just like in the room I’d stayed in previously.
Would this one be magical, too? Hopeful, I yanked open the doors.
Only a long-sleeved black winter dress sat folded on the wardrobe’s floor.
At least it was clean, draped in dark lace and silky ribbons.
And it was my size, so magic or not, I was thankful.
After slipping it on and lacing my boots, I steeled my resolve to leave the room.
He didn’t come find me again.
Even with me within his own castle, he didn’t come find me.
The thoughts stung more than they probably should have. Spade must have brought me to a spare room and bailed, because he didn’t come check on me either.
None of these things should have bothered me. I was tougher than this. Rumor Malefic didn’t care about boys, or lords, or even daimons and what they thought of her.
Yet… all of it did bother me. I couldn’t decide which mattered more—just like I was unsure of which Blackthorne boy was tugging at my dark heart the hardest. They were each enigmas…
frustrating and terrible—beautiful and cruel.
It was a devastating thrill trying to sort it all out.
A game that would almost certainly leave me ruined and heartbroken.
If I were smart, I would have ended it there.
If I were smart, I’d walk out the gates of the Blackthorne estate and never look back.
Too bad my intelligence couldn’t seem to override my growing feelings.
At the very least, I deserved to know why.
What was more important to Riot than coming to see me after all I’d endured?
My last memory of him in his human form was when he was standing over my grave, looking down, and tossing in dirt.