Chapter 43
LUCA DIRAVELLO
Every time I closed my eyes, all I heard was the screaming.
That, and a high, constant chittering, like nails on a chalkboard.
And when that stopped, the voice followed. Unrelenting. Cold. Cruel. So I stayed awake as long as I could, ignoring the unnatural cold crawling up my shoulder, then my neck, from the wound on my right arm that wouldn’t stop itching.
Stayed awake until my body ached from exhaustion, until darkness edged my vision, until I couldn’t keep my eyes open a moment longer.
And when I tumbled into that grasping pocket of darkness, when all I heard was the soft, cunning whisper that told me, over and over again, that I was born to serve him, I clawed at the sides of my nightmarish prison, trying to find a way out.
You belong to me, Luca DiRavello.
I belong to no one.
You’re weak. Soft. Like clay. You let your uncle mold you into something you knew was wrong, yet you never stopped him, you never told him no. You won’t stop me, either. I will temper you into steel, infuse my will into you so you are unbreakable. You will be my sword.
Leave me alone. I just want to sleep.
The voice left me shaking when I woke, weaker every day, no matter how much I slept or how much I ate—which, admittedly, was a lot. I was always hungry.
Always starving.
Even now, I knew food wasn’t enough.
More than anything, I had to feed. In fact, I craved the taste of blood, craved it until my body curled over on itself from the wanting. And every time I got close enough… Valeria smelled so… delicious.
And that voice inside my head… urged me to take a taste.
The cunning voice urged me to do more than taste, so I stayed here, in the dark, with the door locked because no matter how much that voice urged, or how thirsty I got, I refused to hurt Valeria.
I liked Valeria.
I liked how she smiled with that touch of sadness in her lovely face when she thought I wasn’t looking, the way she was strong as steel, and she’d cried in my arms, looking like one of those princesses from one of the old books that father used to read to us.
But now father was gone and…
I opened my eyes and sucked in a breath that smelled charred and oily and bitter.
There was another one.
On my ceiling.
I waited for the gruesome sight to fade, praying I’d imagined them, but… no. Every horrifying detail sharpened into perfect clarity.
Upon the ceiling, between the beams was another splat of gooey black tar, like I’d thrown handfuls of boggy lagoon mud up against the plaster and it had stuck. I counted them like I always did, every time I woke, fear coursing through my veins like acid.
Twenty-three.
Twenty-three nests. I scratched my arm, nails scraping through skin, digging even deeper. I didn’t know how they’d gotten there or why they were in my room. I had to tell Emberline.
I had to tell someone.
I lay there forever, staring at the door, willing myself to move. Praying that whatever outside force held me prisoner would just let me go. Outside my room, something sharp dragged across stone in the hallway right outside my room.
Almost like… I closed my eyes.
Almost like the scratching sound those spiders in the council room made.
I had to find my sister.
I had to warn her, I had to…
I grit my teeth, shoved the blankets down, and tried to move my leg toward the edge of the bed. The entire right side of my body contracted, as if I no longer controlled that part of myself, pain shooting through nerve endings and muscle, and then the screaming inside my head started again.
And no matter how hard I fought, the voice wouldn’t even let me open the door.