Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
Adelasia
The moon should light our room, but the night is unusually dark. Shadows press against the walls like untended vines in a forgotten garden, thick and unrelenting. I toss and turn as I try to force my mind to rest, the silk sheets twisting around my legs.
Sleep rarely finds me now, but rest? I long for it. For true, uninterrupted quiet and peace. But something crawls beneath my skin, itching and burning like claws in my muscles. I sit up in bed and rub my sore throat, breathing in the stale air that suddenly tastes sharp and bitter.
The rot inside me is slithering along my spine, creeping along my limbs and down my throat. It purrs with every inch of me it touches. A shiver so intense I feel I may shake my bones out of my skin as it creeps its way through my body.
I stand from my empty bed and slip on a robe to cover my nightgown, walking barefoot through the cold palace halls. Each step on the marble sends a cold ache through the soles of my feet.
Something inside of me, the part that remembers my humanity, begs me to turn back. It warns me of danger ahead, reverberates like a struck bell in my mind, but I can’t find it in me to listen. The wind dies, the trees hold their breath, the stars above seen to burn out.
From the balcony overlooking the valley, the Blackwood looms just beyond the jagged cliffs. The unwelcoming canopy of trees scrapes against the sky as if trying to swallow the stars themselves. Something deep in that forest calls to me, and I take a step forward to listen.
From the darkness behind me, a growl splits through the air. I freeze before turning in defense, a knife at the ready conjured in my hand. Standing in the open doorway, a Griefclaw stands tall. Sickly gray. Hollow-eyed.
Silently as to not disturb the beast, I step around its unnaturally proportioned body. When I cross the threshold, it turns to my direction as if it felt the shift in the air. When it does, a small metallic clang bounces off the marble.
A ring has fallen from the finger of the Priestesses’ perfect monster. I recognize that ring, for it cut my skin just a few short weeks ago.
Dravon.
Even in this ghastly, beastly form, his hate for Kaius and I lingers, bringing him before me.
A sense of authority surges through me then, something ancient and unfamiliar. I look at the Griefclaw where hollow sockets rest where its eyes should be, and I raise my chin.
“Leave.”
A voice that is not my own, yet sounds like me, slithers out of my throat with a hiss. The Griefclaw raises its sharp talons in my direction, slashing the air between us.
“You do not scare me,” the voice says from my throat. “For without me, you are nothing.” The Griefclaw chitters as if offended, snapping its teeth around in the air like a warning. “Leave this place. Do not return. Do not harm anyone in this palace.”
The beast wails, and I take a threatening step toward it, to which it cowers.
Cowers.
The mere thought of a servant of the Priestesses’ fearing me makes me tremble with power, and I watch with satisfaction, not fear, as the black rot claws further up my arms.
The creature leaps, but it doesn’t leap for me. Instead, it vaults over the balcony, and I watch as it runs like a nightmare through the streets of the vampire settlement before disappearing into the cliffs.
I let out a long breath, relief and power washing over me before the world goes silent and calm again. I sense a presence, and a moment later, Kaius rounds the corner, sauntering toward me with the grace I’ve grown accustomed to.
He does not ask questions. He doesn’t even look suspicious. I don’t even think he knows the Griefclaw that was once Dravon even entered these halls at all.
His fingers wrap around mine, and he carefully examines my forearms, now blackened with magic. “You’re trembling.”
Something inside me forces me to lie. I shake my head. “Just…remembering. What death felt like, and how it felt to be in that space without you.”
His arms are solid, cold, and familiar as he embraces me. I close my eyes and he whispers: “You shall never be without me again.”
When I open my eyes, across the room hall in the reflection of a golden flowerpot, I see my face, etched in black veins and smiling like I’m rotten to the core.
And while the Griefclaw cowers from my power, I will not.