37. Vasium
Vasium
F ear stabbed through Mila like a knife as she began to sprint after him. She tried to keep up, to match his horse’s brisk pace, but with each second of distance that grew between them, she felt the despicable tug of the necklace, pulling her toward the ground.
It was no use. The horse bore Frank swiftly away, and eventually, the pressure around her neck forced Mila to bow her head and resort to moving on her hands and knees, her legs alone unable to withstand the increasing weight.
Frank’s parting words, I’m not entirely sure what will happen to you, echoed mockingly in her head as she crawled. She scrabbled along desperately, crying in panic, heaving for breath that wouldn’t come.
No, no, no. Not like this.
She knew what would happen to her if she got too far away from the sister stone, remembering the power of the necklace she’d felt back in the Highlands.
She’d die out here if she couldn’t keep moving, if no one came for her .
Her palms and knees turned bloody as she frantically crawled in the direction Frank had gone. But, despite her fight, inevitably, the weight grew too intense. It made its way from her neck and seeped down into her arms, legs, and spine.
Eventually, exhausted, Mila simply collapsed. And once she was down, there was no hope of her getting back up again.
She lay crushed against the farmed soil in the midday sun and cried in frustration and fear.
She couldn’t move.
It was impossible not to panic.
She lay there for hours, weeping and heaving ragged, frenzied breaths of dirt, with her mouth pressed firmly against the ground. Eventually, she tried to prop herself up onto her elbows, so she could wiggle forward, but it was useless. The vasium made it feel as though someone had placed a horse on top of her.
Finally, it was only her extreme thirst and the cool promise of the falling night that prompted her to try something new.
Rather than focusing on what she could not move, she focused on what she still could move. She could move her fingers, yes, and her hands. In fact, she could move her arms, so long as she slid them forward through the soil, and didn’t try to lift them from the ground. She could do the same with her legs, and she could move her feet back and forth. These realisations strengthened her.
She wasn’t trapped. She would be able to move – it just wouldn’t be very efficient…or graceful.
Thus, she began the excruciating process of trying to propel herself forward. She drew her arms through the dirt and pushed them above her head, tucking her toes up under her feet, and then, in somewhat of a swimming motion, pushed down with her toes and pulled herself forward with her arms. It only yielded her about ten inches at a time, but she forced herself to focus on the small victory. Ten pulls like that, and she’d be half a body-length closer to the manor.
And every body-length closer would marginally lighten the invisible weights that rode her bones. This was a task that would get less arduous over time, she tried to reassure herself.
She was desperately thirsty, but to dwell on that was to waste precious energy. It was either lie in that field and die, or keep moving, and Mila wanted to live.
* * *
More than once, she thought she might die that night; however, when she found herself still alive as the sun began to rise and tenderly pool its light across the morning sky, she felt a renewed sense of hope.
It had been the loneliest and longest night of her life, with the bugs and some curious hares being the only witnesses to her misery. She’d pulled herself inch by painful inch through the field, with the only break in the monotony being when she found a running irrigation creek at the end of the paddock, where she could drink her desperate fill.
She tried to reassure herself that Frank would surely leave the sister stone at the manor for Culis now that the punishment had been implemented. It appeared that she was right, for by the time the sun began to rise, she’d closed the distance in that direction enough for her to lift her head up off the dirt and pull herself up onto her elbows. This was a huge victory, as it made movement significantly easier.
Mila found herself making half-decent progress for a few hours. At midmorning, she eventually reached the shade of a tree, where she decided to finally rest.
Full exposure to the sun in the heat of the day, despite the autumn cool air, would still be punishing, and she had no water. Also, she was afraid of humans at the best of times, but in her current state, she was terrified of someone finding her. Ahead, she could see the fuzzy outline of the town. She figured if she started pulling herself from this tree in the early afternoon, she’d reach town by nightfall, giving her the cover of darkness to disguise her condition as she navigated it.
She slept soundly under the tree, exhausted by her efforts, and cursed herself when she finally awoke, having accidentally slept far longer than she’d intended. Dusk was now well upon her.
She sighed and recommenced the frustratingly slow movement towards town, muscles aching after her sleep, protesting the repetitive, unnatural and punishing actions. She tore the sleeves off her shirt to wrap around her elbows, which were fast transitioning from hot, red grazes into open wounds. Despite her agony, she continued, steeling her mind against the pain. With every pull, the town came slightly closer, and she focused all her energy on cursing Culis.
Her instincts had been right. He couldn’t be trusted. She was so glad she’d not told him about the rubane, hadn’t let that glimpse into his energy soften her towards him too much.
She felt so betrayed. The fact that Frank had both the key to her cell and the sister stone was evidence enough that Culis had told his father to do this to her, or had at least agreed with Frank that this torture was a suitable punishment for her attack on Baird. To know he could feel that deep, protective energy that she’d sensed from him in Traders Bay, and could still do this to her? It was terrifying. He was indeed the monster she’d once thought him to be.
When she reached the edge of the town, it was blissfully dark. She still wasn’t quite able to move on hands and knees yet, but the weight upon her body had lightened enough that she could alternate between reaching forward on her injured forearms, and occasionally using the palms of her hands. The ability to vary her technique and rest one part of her body at a time was a small blessing .
The town roads were another challenge. Initially, she almost cried with relief when she transitioned from the brutal soil with its small rocks and thorns, to the smooth cobbles of the road. It felt like velvet in comparison.
For a moment, she lay on her back and breathed heavily, luxuriating in the success of having made it this far, but it didn’t take long for her to realise that the roads would bring a new issue.
The streets ran through the town like tunnels in a rabbit warren, and picking her way through the winding, nonsensical layout was a whole new different kind of torture. Too many times, she fought her way down a long street, only to find that it was a cul-de-sac, and she could go no further. It was both utterly infuriating and also drove deeper the dagger of hopeless despair.
She’d never be out of the town before sunrise, and what would happen to her when the people of the town saw her in this condition? What if she was detained and couldn’t complete her task?
She was just about to give up when, somehow, she stumbled onto the main street of the town – a completely straight road that ran north as far as the eye could see.
This was it. She might have cried with relief if her body had any water to spare.
Mila pulled herself eagerly along it, anxious to have the town far behind her before sunbreak.
Her hopes were rewarded by the incremental lightening of the necklace around her neck. It was with great joy that she found after a short while that she could finally push herself completely up onto her hands and knees to crawl properly.
Finally, an efficient method of movement.
She didn’t care for a moment if she looked ungainly. She crawled as swiftly along the street as a rat scarpers through a sewer pipe, and with relief, it occurred to her that, once she was out of this town, the worst would probably be behind her.
She was going to make it. She was going to survive this!
And then she heard a voice.
“Enough! Get out of here, Kevin!” It was a young woman’s shrill tone, followed by the slam of a door that echoed down the road.
Mila froze. A young man tumbled out onto the street, wiping his mouth, as though recovering from a slap. He staggered a little, and Mila didn’t need her power to discern that he was spectacularly drunk.
“You whoreeee,” he yelled out, facing the window of the house he’d just been ejected from. “We all know you’ll get it on with any man who so much as winks at ya…so why not meeee? You whoooooreeee.” He turned away from the house, muttering to himself furiously. “Why not me?”
Then he spotted Mila.
“And what do we ’ave here?”
Her blood froze. Even if he hadn’t been a jilted drunk, she still would have been wary around him. His energy was cocksure, arrogant and mean.
“Why ya crawling around over here, miss?” He sauntered over to her like a stalking hyena. “Ya dropped something?” He came closer and saw her bloody forearms. “Ya crippled or somethin’?”
Mila ignored him, hoping her lack of attention would make him go away. But she could sense his sly curiosity, and also his eagerness for some entertainment.
She trembled when he walked up beside her and placed his cold hand on her back.
“Reckon you might stand up now, if yer able to.”
“Don’t touch me,” she said sternly, with as much authority as she could muster .
This was a nightmare. She couldn’t run away. She’d barely be able to fight him. She was more helpless than she’d ever been in her life.
“Not able to then, eh? Ya stuck like this?” He laughed.
“I’m playing a game,” she lied bravely. “With my brothers. And if they find you harassing me, you’ll be sorry.”
For half a second, she felt his resolve falter, but then he looked around the dead-silent street and gave a little chuckle before unzipping his trousers.
“Nah, I reckon yer lying. An’ if yer not? Well, all the more reason for us ter get this over with quickly, eh?”
His stinking hand came over her mouth in an attempt to cut off her scream. She bit it hard, drawing blood. He smacked her in the face in retaliation, and she struck her head hard on the cobbles.
He swore loudly and shook his hand, as if to shake away the pain. “Come ’ere!” he roared, reaching for her again.
Mila tried to scream, but he kicked her soundly in the gut, winding her so fiercely that she saw black spots appear before her eyes.
Fighting for breath, she was vaguely aware of his hands ripping away the last of the fabric of her ruined trousers. She heard a high-pitched keening sound, but she couldn’t orientate to where it was coming from. The crack of her head against the cobbles, following the day of fear, pain and exhaustion, was too much.
Blearily, slowly, she realised that the keening sound was coming from her own mouth, and she managed to make it stop.
At about the same time, she became aware that something else was now going on above her.
The drunk man had stopped touching her, and someone else was talking.
“I think that’s quite enough, even for such a foul excuse of a man,” came the hard, angry voice .
“Aye, yer her brother, eh? She said ya’d be around. I didna mean no – ”
“Leave. Now.”
“I didna mean – Aaargh!”
Mila saw a flash and realised it was a sword. The drunk man screamed and fled, clearly injured.
Her saviour bent down. “Mila…Mila are you alright?”
She blinked the fuzziness away from her eyes, and for an instant thought she must be hallucinating.
It was Culis, kneeling next to her with grave concern written all over his face.
She groaned and tried to sit up but couldn’t with the crushing pressure of the necklace around her throat, despite his closeness.
“How?” she croaked, touching her throat. Shouldn’t he have the sister stone with him?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t have it,” Culis’s voice was flat and low with barely restrained fury. “Frank knew I’d come for you when I found out, so he’s hidden it somewhere in the manor. Mila, I’m so sorry. This – ” he surveyed her, “ – this is horrific.”
“I hate you,” she managed to choke out.
He nodded seriously. “That’s okay. When you’re safely home, you can hate me all you need, unobstructed. But, for the moment, let me help you. The vasium only affects your sense of your own weight. It won’t affect my strength.”
He bent down, reached for her, and before she could resist, he carefully picked her up and carried her towards his horse, a bay gelding standing patiently to the side. His determined energy assaulted her senses with his sudden contact.
“Culis!” she shrieked in mortification, beginning to cry, her shame and exhaustion overtaking her. “I have no trousers.”
“Oh, Mila. Oh no, I’m so sorry.” He put her down and without hesitation, swiftly stripped off his own. He stood before her in the street, in just his underwear, and handed them to her. “Here. Put these on."
"What a gentleman.” She tried not to sneer, still crying as she pulled them on, feeling hysterical.
“Now come, let me get you up onto Orion.”
“Don’t touch me.”
“Please, Mila, let me help.”
“Don’t touch me!” she screamed at him, overwhelmed.
How dare he be here now, with concern written all over his face? How dare he be distressed about this punishment he’d ordered? She felt so betrayed, so foolish, so terrified of him and the way he could feel one thing for her and still do something so awful.
“I trusted you,” she said, hating the fact that she couldn’t stop crying.
“I came for you the moment I heard what he’d done,” Culis said softly, kneeling beside her but not daring to touch her, even though it looked like he desperately wanted to. “I’ve been searching for you all night, as soon as I got it out of Nemecca.”
It took a long while for his words to make sense to her brain.
“So this wasn’t…you didn’t…you didn’t order this?” she garbled.
“Mila,” Culis said, “this is sadistic. I would never have demanded this. I intended to keep you locked in the cell for a few days. That’s it, I swear. Please, read me. You know what I’m saying is true.”
“I can’t,” she growled softly, hating that this was how this secret was coming out.
“You can’t what?”
She let a long breath out. “I can’t read you. I don’t know if you’re lying or telling the truth. ”
His eyes widened. “You can’t sense my energy?”
“I can. But…only when I’m touching you. You and your father are exceptions to my power. I’m not sure why. A unique trait of a horrid, deceitful family, I assume.”
Culis closed his eyes and then, to her utter surprise, began to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” she demanded.
“Are you telling me that, for months, I’ve been assuming we were having something akin to a silent, one-way conversation? That while I’ve thought you were reading my energy and understanding my true intentions, in reality, I’ve been doing the equivalent of talking to a brick wall?”
“I…yes. I guess I am.”
Culis’s deep belly laugh rolled through the quiet street. Mila just stared at him as though he’d gone mad.
“Oh my,” he finally heaved. “This explains so much.” He held out his hand and looked imploringly at her. “Mila, please. For the love of all things good, please take my hand.”
As soon as her skin touched his, the flood gates opened, and his powerful energy bombarded her again. She marvelled at the way her power didn’t need to scan or hunt through him for answers as it did with others. With him, when they touched, it was as though she could simply absorb him.
And right now, his energy was thick with awe , appreciation , and respect . He liked her…liked her a lot , and he certainly hadn’t ordered this punishment. He was horrified and furious, his heart literally aching to see her in this state. His concern and depth of emotion were nearly overriding his good sense. It was taking every inch of his self-control to not reach for her and pull her into his arms.
But he didn’t. He didn’t want to scare her, didn’t want to force her into an embrace she did not want, would surely reject …
“You see?” he said gently. “I might be an accomplished liar, but…I’m not lying about this.”
She chuckled wearily and withdrew her hand. “I believe that you didn’t know.”
“Can I please…can I help? Let me put you on the horse.”
Mila finally nodded and let him lift her.
He walked beside them in silence for a few minutes, still touching her thigh with his hand to both steady her and ensure she could read him. Mila did not have the strength to fight the vasium and sit up on Orion, so she lay forward, and the weight of his supporting hand to help her balance was welcome.
After a while, he said, “I underestimated the staff’s anger toward you. Not even Nemecca wanted to help me find you. You really couldn’t have picked a nicer person to bludgeon than Baird.”
“I am sorry for that,” Mila murmured. “Not for trying to save Natalee, but for thinking I had to hurt someone else to do it. I panicked.”
“I understand,” Culis said gravely. “It’s Baird and the rest of the household you’ll have to convince when we return.” There were a few more quiet steps, and then he said, “Actually, the more I think about it, the more it seems possible that my father did this to you because he was trying to help me…maybe help you too.”
“What in hell do you mean?” Mila’s anger began to rise again. “Culis…I was nearly raped. I’ve nearly died countless times since he left me in that field. I am wounded and exhausted and starving and thirsty.”
“I know, I know,” he said quickly. “But you attacked a well-loved member of my household, and I was never going to punish you in a manner that the staff, especially his friends, would accept as satisfactory.” He mulled this over for a moment, then said, “Now that I think about it, they almost certainly would have sought retribution on you. Father realised this.” And then said, even more quietly, “He devised this brutal, and very public, scenario to punish you in a manner that would appease them.”
“He credited you,” Mila realised. “In front of all the staff, he said this was your judgement.”
Culis was silent as he processed this, and Mila felt his energy respond with a pang of sadness.
“He could have undermined me in my own household,” he said slowly. “Could have proclaimed my judgement was clouded by you, or called me weak. But he didn’t. He took it upon himself to do this to you in my name, to reinforce my notoriety.”
Mila felt the aching pain within him as he spoke, the long-abandoned hope of a boy that his father might love him without conditions, without playing games to make him earn it, or decipher it.
“He’s a…complicated man,” she finally said. It was the most gracious descriptor she could manage just then.
“He is,” Culis agreed, and for a few long minutes, they were silent.
When they passed a tavern, Culis left her for a moment as he ducked in and came out holding a few pints of water for her to drink.
Nothing had ever tasted sweeter.
He waited until she had drunk her fill and then they resumed their trudge again.
“Mila,” he eventually said, cautiously. “When we get back to the manor...”
“Your brain is always ticking, isn’t it?”
“Never still,” he agreed. “And if I’ve surmised my father’s intent correctly, then it’d be a crying shame for my staff to see me bringing you home and have all your suffering account for nothing. So, forgive my ceaselessly scheming brain for just one moment and listen. Once you’ve recovered some strength and can stand again, what if I was to leave you outside the manor grounds and ride back alone? That way, a few hours later, you can bring yourself home and present yourself to me, ensuring you look suitably bedraggled and contrite. You’ll tell your story. Baird’s friends will be appeased by the hardship you endured. The staff will gossip about you. There’ll be good and bad stories. Mostly, you’ll be pitied, but there may even be some admiration. Importantly, no one will feel as though you got off lightly. They may even eventually forgive you.”
Mila pondered the idea. “Why can’t you just punish me by sending me to the ball in Natalee’s stead?” she asked eventually.
“You know why,” he replied, his energy shifting from contemplative to something far softer as he gripped her leg more firmly and his thoughts focused on her.
“I don’t actually,” Mila said. “Not really.”
“Fates, Mila.” He ran his free hand through his hair in exasperation. “For a demon whose power supposedly makes her the most intuitive, empathetic being on this continent, you’re sure being deliberately obtuse. Apparently, you want me to spell it out? Okay.” He reached up and Mila let herself be pulled from Orion and back to the ground. Culis knelt with her, looking into her face with determination.
“Look me in the eye, because I don’t want you to miss this.” He did not take his hands away from her shoulders, needing her to feel the truth of his words. His face was taut. “I am… so drawn to you, Mila.” His voice was low, but the words were firm and clear. “I have been from the second I met you in that crypt. Like the horizon to a sunset, your pull on me is…frighteningly relentless.”
Mila’s heart pounded hard in her chest at his words. Was this really happening? Was he really saying this to her with sincerity?
She could sense his energy clearly.
He was .
“I admired your quiet strength in Jezebel’s court. The way you never seemed to panic, no matter what was demanded of you. The way you held yourself in the face of your rapidly approaching death. I…I just couldn’t look away, and I couldn’t bear to see your light extinguished. I told you before we left for Traders Bay that I’d felt compelled to save you from Jezebel for the sake of my conscience. What I didn’t tell you was that I knew in my heart that if she hurt you again, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself hurting her in return. So, I devised this…insane plan to rescue you and bring you to come live with me at my manor, and although you didn’t like me and didn’t trust me, you agreed. I told myself that this was good. That I’d use you to start this demon trade and then I’d leave you alone and let you live out your life in peace.
“But the more I learned about you, the less I could keep away. When I saw you all dressed up to come with me to Central, no longer looking like the starved and abused waif, your beauty finally starting to shine through…it took my breath away. And when we went to the Highlands, when you let your protective shell lower and I began to see you, it was all over. I was just…lost, enraptured, watching the way you frolicked through that hellscape in sheer delight, the look on your face when you saw Brewich and realised you were home.
“I ruined it all with that terrible decision about Natalee, and even though you hated me and made my life miserable in response, I still couldn’t stop thinking about you. I needed to fix things somehow. So, I sent Natalee away with Baird, hoping against all hope that this would mend some of the wrong I’d done by you both. And when you agreed to come to Traders Bay with me...I…”
The intensity of his beautiful eyes was burning. Mila couldn’t pull away. The tidal wave of his emotion washed into her, encompassing her .
“I don’t know what it is about you,” he said, “but being in your presence makes me… it doesn’t feel arduous to want to live up to your expectations of me. It feels liberating. So please, please, don’t ask me to let you be the sacrifice at the ball again. There’s not a bone in my body that would obey that command. I’d let them take my entire household, myself included, before I’d let them take you.”
“Culis…” she whispered, running her fingers through his hair, something she’d wanted to do since she met him. Her heart felt so full, but still so unsure of how to respond to such an unexpected declaration. She was indeed drawn to him, but she also had months of deep-rooted distrust weighing her down. Opening herself up to the idea of something deeper would take a level of bravery that she did not have the energy to muster within herself at the moment.
“It’s okay,” he said quietly. “You don’t need to say anything. I understand, more than you know, how difficult it is to trust someone like me. I just needed you to know, you’re perfect for me. And I…I want to put in the work to be the same for you. I want you to read me and know the truth, over and over.” He smiled at her, and it was a beautiful, open, sad smile.
“Perfect?” she teased with a little smile in response. “So, I’m not just a pain in your arse?”
“Speaking of arses…” Culis’s tone lightened as he stood up and hauled her up onto Orion again. “Have you ever seen what you look like from behind? Look, Mila, I could go on about how much I like your humour and your intelligence, and how your sparkling company is worth a room full of gold. But it also doesn’t hurt that you look like a priceless sculpture when you’re bending down, even when you’re shovelling horse shit.”
Mila burst out laughing at that image .
“I’m serious!” Culis said, laughing too. “It’s an arse that could be carved from marble.”
“Stop,” she wheezed.
“I’m not kidding!”
“Okay, okay. Enough.”
“No, no,” he insisted. “You wanted to hear it, so now you must.”
And so it went on like this for hours. With Culis flattering every ridiculous angle he’d ever seen of her since he first met her, and Mila protesting and laughing until breath became painful and she literally had to beg him to stop.
She knew he was doing it, in part, to help her forget the horror of her past day, and damn him, it worked. But knowing this didn’t diminish the huge ball of light that had grown inside her at his words.
You’re perfect for me.
When the sun finally rose fully and Culis left her again to go steal some trousers from a nearby clothesline, Mila found herself feeling, despite everything, happy.