12. Sybilla
Chapter 12
Sybilla
A fter slipping into the only light-fabric nightdress I’d brought, I sat at the edge of the bed and combed my silken hair. My fingers grew full of blonde strands, and I shook the hair from my hands. They floated to the floor like feathers in the wind, and I cursed under my breath, wondering if eventually I’d have no hair at all.
Darvanda’s accusation ran through my mind.
It will be interesting to see which you try first
Filet. Absolutely filet.
The curls suit you better.
I’d choke him with my curls in his sleep, then.
“Who the fuck does he think he is?” I grumbled to myself as my brushing motion grew more aggressive; the bristles scratched against my sensitive scalp.
I blew a raspberry and rolled my eyes. The brushing didn’t relieve my pent-up aggression. Instead, my wrist began to ache in a telltale manner, so I stopped.
It dawned on me that I was hundreds of miles from home, in the company of complete strangers. No guards trailed me, no maids whose names I knew well lingered and no familiar views waited outside the windows.
There was no Healer Mortag to send up the right tonics to relieve the way I ached all the damned time. I would not admit to any other healer how my glow of health was merely a facade.
Worse yet—no Emmerick.
I sighed. He’d come around.
Dropping the brush, I shook out my wrists. That recognizable fog of fatigue had been plaguing me all evening.
Not now. Not here.
It was almost a relief. I could rely on old weaknesses to be present at the least convenient times, could rely on my body to flip a coin to determine whether I’d find comfort or pain.
I dropped to my knees in front of my oak trunk from Luz. After unlocking it, I felt between the too-heavy dresses and skirts for the slick feeling of the small wooden box. Once I plucked it from the depths of the trunk, I opened it, revealing dozens of green vials inside.
Only one healer in Luz knew that I struggled to remain well. I wondered if these tonics would suit me the way Mortag’s had. They would need to be enough for now—so long as the flares didn’t get progressively worse. I’d be fine. I’d conserve them.
My health had fared well without any slowdowns for months, but the stress of the attack on my Corridor had taken a toll. Holding one of the glass bottles in my hand, I slouched over the trunk.
I contemplated whether it was worth it to use a dose so soon.
A creak in the floorboards caught my attention. A figure moved in the corner of my vision.
I started to scream as I stood, but my wail was cut short.
A rope came around my neck from behind, and I was yanked backward against a hard chest. The wooden box of remedies fell from my hands and the vials shattered at my feet.
I gasped. “Get off m—”
The rope tightened, cutting off my voice. I gagged and heaved. Pulled to my tiptoes, I couldn’t find any leverage.
I hadn’t heard them coming. Hadn’t felt them coming.
Panic set in as another entered the room—a sandy-haired man with too few teeth, flipping a dagger in his hand. Every awful thing they imagined doing slammed into me as I lost control over my thoughts.
“ Cut her.”
“Bleed her out.”
“Kill her.”
The frenzy of their wrath painted my mind with rotting, wretched hatred. I choked on the mental onslaught as much as I choked for air.
“Be quick about it,” the one holding me growled. I tried to shake my head, tried to scream, tried to do anything.
I’d never felt so fucking hopeless. I dug my nails into the man’s arm, trying to claw him away. Time slowed; icy-cold terror spread through my veins.
No one was coming.
Darvanda had probably planned this after realizing I couldn’t help him.
A small boy stood frozen in the doorway, watching in horror. Hurley—the damned groom.
The sandy-haired man approached with a predatory expression. He grinned before pointing the dagger at my forehead.
I closed my pooling eyes, praying to any Source who would listen.
Please, please, please...
Make it stop.
“Open your eyes, Henosis whore. I want you to watch while I carve you up...”
When I refused, I felt a cool swipe across my cheek and then the burn of the cut he’d left there. My vision blurred.
This was how I would die?
Pathetic.
Weak.
I channeled all of my anger and let it fill the room; it clung to the curtains and dripped from the wooden chandelier. When I opened my eyes, my gaze sharpened and my face contorted. If I was going to die, then it wasn’t going to be while whimpering like a fucking fool.
The ruddy-faced dagger-wielder drew back the blade, lining it up to pierce my heart.
Then, I reached out.
But not with my hands...
It was as though all the fury, all the fears I’d let out were being pulled to me and then pushed out, like a tide.
Every painful memory.
Every night my mother had slept at my bedside, waiting for a fever to break.
Every bruise my father had left behind.
Every ache and pain my body imposed on me.
I unleashed it all.
The dagger dropped from the man’s hand. He fell, hitting the ground with a thud, and began to convulse.
The rope around my throat loosened. My skin itched where the coarse hairs had dug in.
As I gasped for air, the man behind me stumbled backward. When I glanced back, he landed on the ground, writhing and screaming. Both of their shrieks filled the room with agonized pleas.
“Stop! Stop!”
“Sources. Oh, Sources!”
I wanted them to hurt.
The boy groom—Hurley—watched, his mouth gaping. I had no voice, but I mouthed the word, “Run.”
The boy scrambled away from the door, tripping before he tore down the hall.
I didn’t know what I was doing to these men.
But a child shouldn’t witness it, even if that child likely had something to do with this attack.
A feral part of me felt fed—a part that craved violence. A side of me I’d never met nodded and encouraged me. “You can kill them...” the feminine fury whispered. “It would be so easy.”
Their fate lay in my hands.
I didn’t know how long I watched the two gasping, flailing men.
“Sybilla!”
Krait’s voice woke me from my wrath and pulled me from the web of pain I wielded. Standing over the two red-eyed, bawling men, I held my hands down toward them. I looked at Krait and then at the men. Piss had soaked through their pants. The dagger and rope lay on the ground.
What had I done?
Then, the world snapped back into focus.
It was a light and heady feeling—as though I hadn’t just twisted pain into the minds of others.
The men stopped screaming, but they stayed on the ground, twitching and trembling.
Krait looked me up and down before his Shadows snaked across the floor like dark vines and wrapped around the men’s necks. He slammed them both up against the far wall, away from me. The paintings that had hung there clattered to the ground, shelves snapping and breaking beneath the men’s weight.
He took a step toward me. “What did they do to you?” he shouted.