Chapter 18
Chasin Goldmoor Will Pay
Time was passing in a brutal, looping blur.
Everything began to taste like blood and dust, and everything began to smell like sweat and exhaustion—but what was worse was that she kind of liked it.
She didn’t like Cairn beating her up every day, but she liked that he allowed her to mouth off to him in a way the other recruits would never dare to speak to their section leaders.
She liked that he was rough and gruff and perpetually annoyed by every little thing.
It was easier for her to relate to than perfect, shiny, and fierce Alessandra and Ilara.
She didn’t like that being in Eclipse meant her training was twice as long, twice as bloody, and twice as likely to end in death, but she liked that the other Eclipse soldiers had decided to accept her, in their own, silent way.
In the washroom, they always left her the basin bathed in sunlight, and her preferred shower cubicle, as though they realised habit and consistency were key for people with certain disabilities.
They even barked at some Half-Moon bannermen to move after finding them at the table where Eiko usually had her meals with her friends.
They had claimed her as one of their own, and for the first time since coming to Goldmoor, she was beginning to feel just as accepted and claimed as her friends.
She didn’t like that she hadn’t touched her bed in weeks, but she was at least making headway with Chasin’s language. That had to count for something.
She didn’t particularly like the monotony of it all. Not when every morning began with her waking sore and exhausted, swallowing down her dread, and chasing it with enough food to feed at least two grown men.
She had still been forced into Chasin’s office like a dog called to heel for a few days after Rion’s family arrived.
Her hands guided into that humiliating oath before he poured her a cup of coffee, which she wasn’t even going to pretend to complain about.
It was awful for the highlight of her day to so closely be tied to the absolute bane of her existence.
But then, one morning, she knocked on his door and waited, but the commander made no sound for her to enter.
When she finally turned to leave, Alessandra’s voice drifted from further down the hallway.
“It appears the surveillance period is over,” she said, her tone apathetic.
Eiko froze, blinking rapidly in the captain’s direction. Alessandra knew about the poison. Or … about the fake poison?
Should I ask her? Eiko questioned Hymn.
Definitely not—he began.
“Was I really poisoned?” she blurted.
The Crescent captain didn’t answer right away. Her footsteps stopped close enough that Eiko could feel the other woman’s presence, clean and dangerous as a drawn blade.
“You’re alive, aren’t you?” Alessandra asked.
“That’s … what does that even mean?”
Alessandra made a small scoffing sound and walked away, apparently disappearing into her office, as she closed the door with an uppity snick.
And that was that.
The commander was done giving her coffee and forcing her to acknowledge his ownership. Eiko should have felt relief, but she wasn’t free of him. That would have been far too convenient.
Instead, he showed up to her training session that day with Cairn. And then the next. It wasn’t every day—he kept it sporadic enough to stir her jumpiness and paranoia, never knowing when to expect his silent, weighty presence.
Sometimes, he came in the mornings, quiet as a shadow, standing at the edge of the arena while Cairn warmed up his shoulder—Cairn always warmed up his shoulder, as he needed that arm to consistently beat her with his cane. It was his whacking arm.
Sometimes, Chasin came in the late afternoons, when the sun sat low enough to slash gold across the stone and make her second sight briefly twitch awake, just enough to sharpen the bright parts of the world and flash his shadowed stare and cold countenance into her mind before she forcibly made herself blind again.
Sometimes, he came in the middle of the day, and she felt his calm, calculating observation while she lay sprawled, knocked to the ground.
She hated his stare the most during those times: when Cairn had sent her stumbling and falling for the hundredth time, and the stone had bitten into her soft skin more than it could bear, and she was dragging in air through her teeth because her lungs didn’t know whether to breathe or scream.
She was becoming so paranoid that she was starting to feel Chasin watching her even when he wasn’t there.
The sensation was like a constant, cold touch of metal against her throat.
The most infuriating part was that he never said a word.
He didn’t sign any corrections or orders to Cairn or join the old man in beating her.
He just hovered there in that still, predatory quiet.
Watching.
Assessing.
Forcing her to remember those dark-damned words he had made her sign so many times.
I belong to you.
It made her want to scream. It made her want to break something.
And it made absolutely no difference, because the monotony of her routine didn’t care about her feelings.
The monotony kept things moving no matter what.
Cairn’s cane whistled through the air every day, a cruel little song that ended in monotonous, reliable pain.
“Again,” he always grunted after successfully knocking her over.
Again.
And again.
Sometimes he made her practise different stances with her wooden staff until her calves trembled and her knees wanted to fold.
Sometimes he struck the staff until her palms blistered and split with the shuddering force of his blows.
Sometimes he made her stand still and listen—just listen—until she could name every individual little sound she could hear in the arena.
“You’re too slow,” he told her one day, after he swept her feet out from under her so hard that her head snapped back, and she could have sworn that the world flashed white.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she spat, coughing up dust. He was a terrible instructor.
“You’d be useless even if I told you what to do,” he grumbled.
She sat up, glaring in his direction. “You’re such an old bastard.”
“I’ve been called worse by better,” Cairn replied, and kicked her staff towards her with just enough force that it clattered against her shin.
Hymn, ever helpful, whispered, He’s awful.
A light-licking dick, she agreed.
He’s also … not wrong, Hymn added reluctantly. He’s still easily beating you.
Eiko wanted to disagree out of principle, but she couldn’t, not when her body felt like it was shrinking.
Not when her uniform hung looser every day.
Not when she could feel her cheekbones sharpening, her ribs becoming too easy to count beneath her skin.
Not when her hunger had turned into something constant.
At first, the ravenousness had been shocking.
It was an ugly, greedy impulse that made her want to shove food into her mouth until her jaw fatigued from chewing.
Now, it was no longer shocking … it was just … there. Always. A constant ache in her belly that never went away. Like something inside her had taken up residence and demanded to be fed.
She ate before training.
She ate after training.
She ate between treating her bruises and cuts and scrapes.
She ate until she felt sick, and then she ate again anyway, because the sickness didn’t last, but the hunger did.
She even dreamed of food: bread so dense she could knock someone out with it, stew thick enough to stand a spoon in, berries crushed into syrup with sugar thick enough to make her entire mouth sticky.
She woke up with the taste of it on her tongue and nothing in her stomach but that gnawing, endless want.
One afternoon, after she had been knocked onto her ass so many times she couldn’t feel her tailbone anymore, Cairn finally called a halt.
“Sit,” he ordered.
Eiko sat, her body on autopilot. It was dangerous not to obey one of Cairn’s orders during training.
Not because he would punish her, but because he only ever gave her clear instruction when she was in the direct path of greater harm than he intended.
He needed her to be functioning enough that she would still get back up after being knocked down.
The arena sounded different without the constant impact of her falling—too open and too quiet. Perhaps the other recruits had finished for the day. They always finished before her.
Cairn’s cane clicked as he paced in front of her.
“You’re losing too much weight,” he said bluntly.
Eiko blinked, caught off guard by the observation. Not that it wasn’t true, she just didn’t expect him to comment on it.
“I’m eating plenty,” she defended.
“You’re burning through plenty,” Cairn snapped, and she flinched at the sharpness of it. “Whatever it is you’re doing with that monster of yours—whatever it costs—your body can’t keep up. You’ll snap in half before long. Simple as that.”
“Maybe that’s the goal,” she snarked back. “Maybe if I snap clean in half, the King of All will find someone else to breed.”
Cairn went still, the click of his cane dragged into silence.
She groaned, her head falling into her hands. She should not have said that. She waited for the repercussions of speaking out against the king. Instead, Cairn made a rough sound that might have been a laugh if he were less of a light-licking dick.
“That still happening, then? Thought the prince gave up on you when he didn’t come to visit again.”
Eiko shrugged a shoulder, deciding it would be best not to answer. Prince Ceran hadn’t tried to speak with her again, but Rion’s family remained within the castle, and Rion had been summoned to several more “teas” in the garden.
Eiko had not been summoned.
Cairn tapped against the stone a few times, and then he said, “Your bed is there for a reason. Use it. No more studying until you fall asleep in the library.”