Chapter 19 #3
“What you have seen is sin, and far too much of it.” Gabriel drew the poker out from the fireplace, scrutinizing its searing orange tip like a blacksmith marveling at his handiwork.
Steam coiled up from the poker, trailing dim gray streaks across Gabriel’s face.
“But worry not, brother. Soon you shall see it no longer.”
Roy went to call out for Briar, to shriek her name, but his voice was shot. How long had he been screaming for?
But Gabriel was already walking toward him, the poker clasped so tightly in his fist that blood dripped from the gaps between his fingers and splattered onto the floor, near where Roy had bled.
Either the room or his vision was growing hazy.
He glanced to the left and, to his horror, found that the library beyond the two chairs and the fireplace was blurred and shadowy as if seen through a pane of frosted glass.
And farther beyond, indistinct figures roamed the space, their eyes big as lamps and red as fresh fury.
Screams and mournful lamentations drifted out to Roy from afar, chilling his heart.
But nothing was as clear to him as Gabriel.
He was bending over Roy now, winding his fingers through Roy’s hair and pulling his head back.
The poker trembled in his upraised fist. Roy could glimpse the kitchen knife jutting from the back of Gabriel’s trousers, but even if it was within his reach, he knew from experience that he didn’t have the nerve to grab it or the strength to use it.
He was quick enough, however, to raise one hand over one eye, looking at Gabriel with the other.
“Gabriel, please! Name your price!” Roy blubbered, a thick loop of snot hanging out of his nostril. Agony drummed through the middle of his forehead, as if he was being branded. “Please—”
Gabriel drove the heated poker through Roy’s hand; it proved to be no obstacle to him at all.
The thin membrane of skin on the back of Roy’s hand sizzled and bubbled, then gradually melted away.
The scent of cooking meat curled through the air and into his nose.
His stomach turned over. Blisters formed rapidly across his flesh, spread and then burst, spraying clods of curdled and burnt skin across his forehead.
Somewhere, past his own screams, a faintly familiar melody floated through the air. He heard screams and exclamations. He heard whispers and cries. And far beyond these, a voice, fraught with distress. He couldn’t decipher what it was saying, but it was there.
Percival was there. He had come for Roy, to pull him from the clutches of his brother.
But he had come much too late.
Gabriel seized the base of Roy’s skull, clamping down on the spaces beside the upper notches of his spine.
He rotated the poker, widening the gory hole he had made in Roy’s hand, and pushed it deeper, thrusting it through his eye.
Syrupy white liquid leaked out from under his hand, which was pinned to his face by the poker.
“Your bravery was my price,” Gabriel whispered in Roy’s ear, “but you’re beyond bravery, and you have lived in fear too long.” He plunged the poker deeper, and Roy felt something bend, then break, in his skull. “My price is your mind.”
Darkness rushed in over Roy’s eyes, rising high over his head like a churning black tide. He made an effort to wade through it, but with no luck. The darkness thickened, surrounding him, drowning him . . .
* * *
It was a voice, that same voice from before, that shot through the blackness like an arrow of light.
“Sit up, darling,” Percival said. “Sit up. Sit up against the chair.”
Roy moved his lips around the shape of Gabriel’s name, but there was no sound to it, no air.
“Roy.” Percival placed a hand lightly on his shoulder, and Roy flung himself back, gasping, sobbing, his eyes sewn shut. “Look at me, Dawnseve, damn you.” Percival grasped his shoulders again, shaking him. “Look at me.”
Swallowing hard against the knot that had grown in his throat, Roy pried his eyes open.
Percival was kneeling before him, holding a wineglass by its stem. He handed it to Roy, who pursed his lips when the cold glass brushed his mouth, but Percival appeared indifferent. “You took quite the fall, darling,” he said. “I’ll coddle you as much as I please.”
Hesitantly, Roy took the glass from Percival and drank the wine down to its dregs.
“You called out for him,” Percival muttered, removing the glass from Roy’s hands and placing it on the table behind him. “Gabriel—”
“Don’t, Percival,” Roy said. He ran his fingers gingerly over his eye, and though there was no pain there, none of the excruciating agony he’d suffered in his trance, he couldn’t stop the tremor that went through him. “I don’t want to do this with you. I thought I could, but I . . . I—”
Percival tentatively kissed Roy’s forehead, and though Roy flinched, he did not pull away. “One word at a time, darling,” Percival murmured. “That’s all you need to do.”
Do it, then it’s done.
Every thought drew away from Roy’s mind, like waves retreating from the shore, but memories swept in, demanding him to relive them, to recall that which he’d tried so hard to bury, and like the ghosts in the crypt, they were given a second chance, resurrected by forces outside of his control.
They hadn’t been laid to rest in their graves; the coffins of his demons rattled like loosened chains, and he hadn’t the strength to tighten them.
Was Percival’s offer a sign? Roy wondered.
Was it fate urging him to move on, to endure the agony of recounting his trauma?
Or was it not so momentous as that? Was he looking too deeply into shallow waters?
Was it only that he had finally found someone outside of his own family who wanted to listen to his sorrow, his aches and hurts?
“He hated me, Percival,” Roy said, then decided there was no point sugarcoating the truth, varnishing old and rotted wood, and added, “He was repulsed by me, by my dreams, my hopes, who I wanted to become.”
“Out of jealousy?”
“No,” Roy said, “never that. To Gabriel, jealousy was weakness. It was poison. If you weren’t content with the role you were expected to play, then you were undeserving of any role and were better off dead.
I envied the Radiant Droves for that very reason, for though they may be ruthless, they have a purpose.
The Governor had given them a future, a portrait of glory they could step into if only they bent to his whim. ”
“And Gabriel interpreted your studiousness as a shortcoming,” Percival said, a knowing, dark look in his eyes. He, like many other secret students of his profession, had heard this old story before.
Roy shrugged. “Shortcoming, transgression; whatever you wish to call it. He couldn’t fathom a world in which I, the outsider, was unaware of my privilege.
He thought I believed our elevated status would make an exception for me, that I would be exempt from all of the obligations Northgard had forced its citizens to endure.
I wasn’t blind; I knew my defiance was treason.
I had escaped the repercussions of my proclivities for many years, but Gabriel wanted me to see differently, through whatever means necessary, so that I could accept my destiny, so that I could see my scholarship for the sin that it was.
I was sixteen the first time he found me reading under my covers, and he nineteen.
That night, I lost consciousness more times than I can remember.
I’m shocked I can remember that night at all. ”
Percival let out a soft, broken cry and bowed forward, wrapping his hands around Roy’s waist.
Roy spoke into the crown of Percival’s head, his voice slightly muffled.
“He hit me with his hands at first,” he went on.
“The palm, though sometimes he backhanded me.
Initially, I did not know why. I thought myself immune to the consequences of my actions.
I was wrong, so wrong it hurts now. Your family knows where it hurts most. Gabriel and I never got along too well to begin with, but he was the troubled one among the three of us, and I the timid one, so I took this to be why he went for me.
“He would most always stand when he used his fists on me. It gave him power over me, even though we both knew he didn’t need more to make me submit.
It was around then that I opted not to linger at our family dinners, always the first to leave the table.
Seeing him using a knife and cutting into his meat was more than I could bear, and it almost convinced me that death by my own hands would be swifter and gentler than by his. ”
Percival raised his head from Roy’s lap. “Didn’t your family do anything about it? They must’ve suspected something amiss.”
“My sister and my mother knew he was ill-tempered, and everyone—including the maids and butlers—knew he tended to misbehave. He wasn’t two-faced.
But as I grew older, things changed. He became more violent in his attacks, yes, but also more desperate to see evidence of his progress, while also more circumspect in his abuse.
One week, when my mother was away, he conducted an experiment and struck me to unconsciousness for every book I finished.
I didn’t realize what he was doing until the week was done.
Once I did realize it, I began to think it was my own way of showing him I was stronger, that the light of knowledge will always outshine the shadow cast by violence, but there’s no point idealizing what he did.
It was just easier to tolerate the pain. ”
Percival gripped Roy’s leg, brushing his thumb across his thigh.