Chapter 3
Ishut my eyes with the intention of silently observing what’s going on around me. I figure the longer I can hold off the inquisition, the better, but my body must have taken the need for rest too seriously, because it feels like I’m alone and the room is much darker when I wake again.
I notice the softness of the mattress beneath me. At home, I could never get my pallet of worn blankets this smooth or comfortable while curled up on the floor. There’s also the freshness of the space. There isn’t any damp earth inches from my face or urine staling in a pot over in the corner from one of my asshole brothers who couldn’t be bothered to step outside.
I slit my eyes, trying to hide the fact that I’m actually awake in the event there is someone in the room, and assess my surroundings. There are several empty beds in the quiet area, all made up neatly with matching gray blankets and crisp white sheets. I bet if I had access to this many blankets, I could make one hell of a nest. Taking a chance, I lift my head from the pillow, and a bone-deep soreness makes my entire body feel as if I’m covered in bruises from head to toe as I test my muscles.
It isn’t the worst shape I’ve ever woken up in, but I’m definitely not in a hurry to get out of this bed. My stomach lets out a loud growl, accompanied by a sharp pang, reminding me how famished I am, but food will have to wait until I figure out where I am and how I got here. The where part seems pretty simple. I must be in the institute, but the how is much more elusive. The last thing I truly remember is walking up the road and my vision fading in and out. Everything after that feels like a dream.
Fear dulls the ache of hunger. Not knowing what happened to me is a different kind of torture. It’s bad enough when I have to witness what’s being done to me, but knowing anything could have happened while I was out of it is somehow worse. I pat the small pocket secretly sewn near my hip, feeling for the only item I brought with me, other than the clothes on my back. The little lump gives me a sense of relief. At least I know I wasn’t searched, not thoroughly anyway. It isn’t like the thing would do me a lick of good. It’s just the only thing that has ever been mine—hence why I don’t even have an extra set of clothes—and I plan on keeping my treasure.
My stomach rumbles again, followed by a cramp that has me shifting to the side for relief that doesn’t come. My mind decides now would be a good time to wonder how long it takes to starve to death, and I contemplate how close I am to that. Maybe I’ve been out longer than I thought, and the next time I close my eyes, I won’t wake up. The abyss of blackness that I find when I sleep would be welcome. The moment the idea sinks in and I realize it isn’t just an intrusive thought, I snap my already closed eyes open and look around. I’ve fought too hard for every damn breath I’ve taken to just lie here and die like I’m helpless.
Something in the corner of the room shifts, drawing my focus to the darkness gathered there, but the sound of the door opening on the other side of the room steals my immediate attention.
A massive male enters with purpose in his stride, and he seems to be heading right for me. I learned a long time ago not to cower. Weakness is like blood in the water, calling the prey to feast on your carcass, but damn, it’s hard not to sink farther into the mattress at his approach. His skin is fair, so I don’t think he’s a troll or an ogre, but judging by the size of him, he could be half. When he crosses into a shaft of light from the moon and I actually see his features, I know I was wrong—he’s far too perfect, even with the scars, to be half beast.
Lying down with him marching toward me seems like a really bad idea, leaving me nearly defenseless if he attacks, but I can’t seem to muster up an appropriate response to his advance either.
“You’re awake,” he rumbles in a gravelly voice, as if he hasn’t spoken in a while, or maybe that deep timbre is normal for him.
“Yes.” My croak is as weak as a mewling kitten, so I clear my throat and try to sit up. As soon as I plant my palms on the bed to move into a seated position, he takes hold of my upper arms and assists me by propping me against the pillows and slim metal headboard, as if I’m as light as a feather. I watch his features for some sign of curiosity or frustration, but his mien remains unwavering. I’m not used to people touching me unless they are trying to use their power against me or hoping to figure out how to absorb my ability, which thankfully, never happened. My father actually charged people for the opportunity to touch me, which is probably how this school found out about me in the first place—he got too greedy.
I don’t meet the man’s eyes when he backs away from the bed after righting me. Instead, I keep my gaze firmly locked on his broad chest, but I still note his silver hair, which is at odds with the darker shade of his short beard. Maybe he’s a shifter of some kind. If that were the case, he wouldn’t necessarily have a power to test against me, and it could explain his size. Not that I’ve met many shifters, since they tend to stay in their own territory and away from the villages, especially where we lived near the border of the Osier Realm. Most folks called where we lived the slums or a myriad of other such names, but it was the only home I’ve ever known.
My stomach grumbles again, and I fold my arm across my lower belly in a useless effort to hide the sound.
“I sent someone out to find your things, but they returned empty-handed. Did you conceal your bags?” His eyes narrow just enough that it’s noticeable when he poses the question.
“No, I don’t have any bags.”
His lips move as if he’s about to speak, but he holds his tongue for a long moment. “You came with nothing?” he finally asks, as if he can’t believe the possibility.
I don’t know him or his temper, so instead of telling him I have the clothes on my back and the boots on my feet, I simply say, “I came with what I was permitted.”
He changes topics swiftly. “Why were you walking up the mountain?”
“I received an invitation.” I didn’t think to check if I still had that in my back pocket when I first woke up. In all honesty, I’ve been trying to lose the thing since it was handed to me last week, so I could pretend none of this was happening and I wouldn’t have to come here. It’s not as if I’ve deluded myself into believing I had a good life back home, it’s just the devil you know, right? I’ve been with my father for the past twenty years, and while it sucked most of the time, I’m still alive, and I had a purpose to him. I was his cash cow, his dirty little secret that could take everything thrown at her and keep ticking.
Ivy Institute trains the elite, the most dangerous of our kind in Osier, and uses them. I know how I will be used, and it’s only a matter of time before it either kills me or worse.
“I’m aware you were summoned. I asked why you were walking.” His droll tone suggests I’m an idiot, but I’m used to that, so I ignore the insult.
“My father dropped me off at the bottom of the hill,” I inform him. Was there some other conveyance I missed? I think back to him practically kicking my backside from the carriage and snapping the reins, leaving me at the mouth of the road. I waited for a few minutes to see if someone would arrive for me, but when they didn’t, I decided it was best to walk. Maybe I should have looked harder. Had I known how steep and long the trail was, I might have, but I was trying to make it to the school on time because my father waited until the last possible minute to leave our village, making sure he got the last coin he could before I was forced to leave and make the two-day trek here.
The three days prior to us riding out were a blur of testing my ability. My father never pushed me as far or as often as he had in those final days. I wasn’t even sure there would be anything of me left when it was time to make our way to the institute. My power never failed me in that time, but that didn’t mean I didn’t suffer. While I may not be harmed by magic, there are consequences when it’s used on me. The harder someone tries to use their abilities against me, the more I disappear from this world and become an intangible ghost of myself—an unseen, unheard force that dwells between this plane and the next, until I eventually reappear, hungry in a way that food can never sate. Most of the time, I wasn’t pushed that far, but a few times over the years, there were people who just couldn’t understand how I could resist their talents, so they wouldn’t give up until I disappeared entirely. Either that, or they just wanted to see what it took to break me.
The thought of that final day makes my pitiful excuse for fangs ache. In an act of total desperation, I actually bit my father after becoming corporeal, thinking I could get a reprieve from the agony of hunger, but the blood did nothing to slake my longing for sustenance, and it really pissed him off.
As soon as the shock of what I did wore off, my father backhanded me so hard, I spit the remaining blood in my mouth out in an arc, splattering the room with gore that seemed like a fitting end to our relationship.
Frankly, I think it stunned us both. Hands-on physical abuse wasn’t really his style, nor did he allow others to hit me very often. I’d once heard him tell Philip—one of his older sons—when asked why he protected me from the anger of his customers that, “She’s already a pathetic little thing. How do you think it feels when she can withstand things no one else could dream of? It would only add salt to the wound if they could see her physically break so easily. Besides, they don’t pay to abuse her body, you can go to any brothel on the strip for that. They pay to see if the rumors are true and to test themselves against her.”
I hated the note of pride in his tone when he talked about me and the complete apathy for the others he spoke so poorly of. Most of those trapped in brothels had about as much choice in being there as I did in what happened to me. Just because they had the misfortune to be born with a useless ability or were untrained didn’t mean he was better than them.
“Interesting.” The male in front of me hums, and I snap back to the present, making the mistake of meeting his liquid silver eyes for a brief moment before averting my gaze again. It takes a conscious effort not to examine him again. I’ve never seen anyone with eyes the color and fluidity of mercury, but self-preservation wins out, and I pretend I didn’t notice the shifting silver color. “You’re rather lucky Kage found you.”
“Oh yeah…” I act like I know exactly what he’s talking about when I have no clue who or what Kage is, or when they found me. The moment the thought registers, so does the image of shadows in the forest and the vague idea of a male with beautiful blue skin and hair as dark as pitch looking at me from a doorway. Training to keep my mouth shut and not ask questions is the only thing that keeps me from inquiring if Kage is the male in my thoughts or if I dreamed about him.
The silence in which we sit now feels like a vacuum, sucking air from the room. With every passing second, the pressure to break the quiet tension eats at my resolve, until my skin almost feels like it’s buzzing with the need to do something or get up and run. I bite down on the tip of my tongue just enough to keep my thoughts grounded. If I didn’t know better, I would think he was using some kind of power to compel me to speak, but there’s no evidence he’s using any ability on me at all. An all too familiar panic wells in my chest. I hate these moments, when my lack of control truly sinks in, reminding me how true my father’s statement is—I am weak, no matter how much I wish it weren’t so.
After I finally accepted there was no getting out of coming to the institute—my father wouldn’t dream of defying them or even questioning their edict—I unintentionally gathered hope. Every time I felt anticipation that maybe things could change for me, that maybe I had a future that wasn’t filled with countless people who wanted nothing more than for my ability to fail so they could hurt me or to find a way to use it for themselves, I would hear my father’s words in my head, reminding me he owned me, and I should be grateful because things could always get much worse. I knew he was telling the truth. It could and had gotten worse, but I never spoke about those times and tried as hard as I could not to even think about them, but sometimes, like now, it would creep up on me before I could deflect my thoughts… I slam the door, hiding those memories in my mind, and brave meeting the stranger’s eyes to distract myself.
“Why am I here?” It’s a dumb question, one I should know better than to ask, but I’m desperate to get out of the spiraling thoughts threatening to pull me under. There’s a chance I could provoke this male into using his powers on me. I’m pretty sure he’s a fallen god, with those eyes, which means even the smallest push of his talent could send me into oblivion for hours or even longer. Turning into a ghost, where I can’t feel anything, sounds pretty fucking good right now.
The male’s scarred eyebrow rises, but the rest of his features remain unchanged. I wonder what sort of beast was able to mark up his face and neck, and if it survived the encounter. My shoulders loosen as I force other inane thoughts into my mind. Why is his beard so much darker than his hair? Are his eyes swirling quicker, or did I not get a good enough look earlier?
“That is not a question for me,” he intones, seemingly unbothered by my stare as he meets my eyes.
“Then who is it a question for?” I make a show of looking around the otherwise empty room for no other reason than to have an excuse not to be caught in his gaze any longer. Just because I’m desperate doesn’t mean I’m dumb.
“Syrinx.” He takes a single, fluid step backward and lowers himself onto the cot beside my bed with an uncanny awareness of himself and the things around him. It’s a little eerie. It makes me wonder just how much those godly eyes can really see. “She is the headmistress,” he divulges, while I still feel him examining me.
“I recognized the name from my invitation.” We both know it was more of a demand than an invitation, and I may sound a little bitter about it.
“I’m surprised the summons hadn’t been extended sooner, but I suppose your efforts to hide aided in that.”
I don’t bother to deny his claim. I was warned about this place from the moment my ability manifested and there was the slightest understanding of what my power was. My father told me horror stories about Ivy Institute and its inhabitants, and even the woods it makes its home. He threatened to send me here more than once if I didn’t do as I was told, but I wound up here anyway. I should have run away or tried to escape somehow, but I was too afraid—more evidence of my weakness.
“I’m here now,” I concede dejectedly.
“That you are, Miss Blissa.”
The use of my last name startles me a little, and the prefix even more. I’ve done nothing to deserve the formality, and respect isn’t just freely given. I’m immediately suspicious and must not do a good job at hiding it since he questions, “That is your name, correct?”
“Briar,” I reply, unsure how I should address the fact that he elevated me so.
“Yes, much like the wild rose.” He’s unapologetic about the way his silver gaze trails over the exposed, thorny vines tattooed on my hand and up my covered arm, as if he knows what’s hidden under my shirt. I shrug my shoulders to dissuade him from his perusal, but it doesn’t. My skin crawls, sending shivers of gooseflesh down my back. Philip once told me that feeling comes from someone walking over your grave, but I never believed him…until now.
“Are you well enough to walk?” he asks, and his lingering attention takes on a new meaning. He’s assessing to see if I’m feeble. Instead of feeling relief, the bitter tang of embarrassment has me questioning why I would assume it was for any other reason.
“Yes,” I agree eagerly, already swinging my legs off the side of the bed.
“As I’m sure you’re aware, the healer was unable to aid in your recovery. Her skills were useless.” He remains seated, even as I stand, but his head tilts to watch me rise. A blush heats my cheeks. This is not a position I’ve ever been in. The males in my life would never permit me to speak down to them. I bend my knees to lower myself out of instinct, and the man across from me moves so quickly, I can scarcely track him as he rises. He reaches out, brushing his fingers along my hand before he grasps my arms to hold me up as if he thought I was going to collapse.
A strange feeling erupts in my belly, like it’s been upended, and my breath catches at the very same moment. Our eyes lock, and recognition flares. He must be so powerful that I’m not immune to his ability. He jerks his hands from my arms, but the strange feeling doesn’t abate with his touch.
Jitters rack my body, prompting me to shake out my hands in an effort to dispel the oddity coursing through me. “Sorry, I’ve been sitting still for too long.” I try to cover my reactions, because I’m afraid to acknowledge what just happened. If he knows I’m not resistant to him, does that mean he will experiment on me to see how far that goes? Have I somehow lost my protection completely? Will I be permitted to leave this place? Where would I go? Certainly not back to my father. I shake my head to shove the useless hope from my mind. I’m getting way ahead of myself. I’m not even sure what just happened, but I sincerely doubt it would translate into me getting away from the institute.
“I will show you to your room,” he says somberly, and I swear there’s a hint of displeasure in his tone. The instinct to lie low and avoid his ire is strong, so I lower my gaze to the floor and wait for his instruction.
Seconds pass with only the sound of my beating heart echoing in my ears before he expels a heavy breath, then takes a step. Even with my head down, it takes no effort to trail him. He’s easily one of the largest males I’ve ever seen in both presence and stature. I’m still unsure if my assessment of him being at least half beast is true, but the thought of him being a fallen offers a better explanation as to why he was able to affect me. I could at least find some comfort in that. There couldn’t be that many gods here, could there? It seems I have far larger things to worry about than simply becoming an eternal ghost.