Chapter 49
THE CREATURE
Up ahead was an elevated trail of smoke extending out into the overcast sky above. I assumed that it would be our inn. By the time we handed off our horse to the stable boy, my legs were stiff from the long ride. I helped Alina down and offered my arm for support.
The inn was attached to a local tavern. There was a cluster of buildings around the wooded area, but it was the densest town before we would reach the colony. All the buildings were the same shade of wet brown wood, topped with mildewed shingles on the roof.
The inside was much more welcoming than the outside. Despite the low light, there was a fire crackling away to keep the guests comfortable. The flickering of the flames reflected on the rows of bottles behind the bar counter.
I needed a drink.
The room wasn’t dissimilar to the tavern. A rugged wooden room with a small carpet and bed. A feature I didn’t expect was the small burning stove in the corner for extra heat, with a small basket of wood placed beside it. I assumed any extra would be costly.
“Go rest, get comfortable.” I gestured to the bed as I set our bags down.
I tossed some wood in the fire, lighting it with some matches left on top of the burner. The smell of pine crackled and snapped within the chamber, steadily glowing behind the sooty glass window.
Within the closet, there were a few stray hangers and some shelving below. I spotted two extra wool blankets that I gathered and brought over to the bed.
Alina was undoing her coat, gingerly removing it as she stiffened from soreness.
As she removed her top, the corset cover peeked through. The thin fabric was light, comfortable on skin flushed in fever. Something so small, yet I couldn’t help but be one of the lucky few who got to see even a glimpse underneath her staunch exterior in tailoring and personality.
I sat down next to her, wrapping her in one of the blankets. This time was most certainly delicate. A wrong move could mean she distanced herself from me again.
“Let me change your bandages.” I knelt in front of her.
I lifted her skirt and took her leg, slipping off her boots and sliding the wool stockings off her limb carefully.
Slowly, I unwrapped the bandages. Her leg was tender, her skin pink around the wound.
The bite was mostly healed. I assumed Edith had used one of their many tinctures made from their victims to speed up the process.
As cruel as their crusade was, it was kind of brilliant.
“I think we can let it breathe tonight.” I smoothed my hands over her skin, checking each of the scarring marks.
“Quid pro quo,” she said, staring down at me.
“Oh? You still have the energy for games?”
She shrugged, picking at the lint on the bedding. “I thought you wanted to start over. There are things I don’t know, and it bothers me.”
I nodded, taking a seat next to her. “Sometimes you have to be comfortable with the idea of never being able to know it all.”
“Don’t get philosophical.” She pinched my arm. “I meant about you.”
“I’m an enigma; what can I say?”
“Silas.”
I tipped my head to look at her. She didn’t look well, if I were being honest, but I wouldn’t tell her that. The loss of color in her skin made her eyes look a bit pink around the edges, feverish. It reminded me of how she used to look: frail and unwell.
“Why do you avoid talking about your father?”
“I don’t know what you mean; I already told you about him.”
“Yes, you’ve given me a surname and not a detail more.” She waved her hand dismissively. “You couldn’t help me back then because there was something you weren’t telling me. Even with your excuses, I feel like I was missing something about why it had to be me specifically that had to suffer.”
“I didn’t think it was important.” I took a deep breath, glaring ahead at the fire as if I could will it to burn brighter.
“My father,” she began, clasping her hands in her lap, “my father was not a bad man nor good, but he was respectable and true, which is all you can really ask for. An indifferent parent creates strong-willed children with an iron-clad sense of self.” She shook her head and laughed.
“That’s what he used to say, at least. He wasn’t much different with his students, though I argue he spent more time with them than me. ”
“He was a professor, you said.”
“A great mentor, just not to a daughter.” She shrugged.
“Then why did you cry for him when you killed him?”
“Because there was still hope that he would look at me the way he looked at Isaac.” She picked at the skin around her nails, and I reached out to hold them, to comfort, but she pulled away.
“No amount of wit and institutional accomplishment would have outshone the fact that I killed my mother at birth, and how cruel it was that I am her spitting image.”
There was a long pause, though I assumed it was because she was about to cry. I could smell the scent of tears building.
I stretched my legs out as I leaned back on my hands, “I’m the only son of a man who thinks the world dances in his palm,” I chuckled, “and as a child, I believed it too. I thought it would dance in mine next.”
She gave me a look, like I was humoring her. “Don’t we all think what’s theirs will be ours?”
I shook my head. “The difference is realizing that not all things inherited belong to us.”
“What do you mean?”
“You asked why I couldn’t help you before.
” I tilted my head at her. “I was stuck in a sort of stalemate with my father for a long time. Everything he built has a foundation of bones. He wanted me to continue, but I couldn’t do it.
And I was outnumbered. If he allowed them, they would tear me apart. ”
“And then my poison—”
“I don’t think you realize that what you did was historically thought to be impossible,” I told her sternly. “We are virtually made of poison. The fact that you could permanently maim one of us with no ability to heal was something we never saw before.”
“It was an accident—”
“Don’t lie,” I laughed. “It evened the playing field. About time someone did something about us.”
“What did you disagree with your father on?”
“I’m tired of losing people when the only explanation is ‘it’s just the way things are.
’ I’ve been taught it’s selfish to have everything, that there must be sacrifices.
To pursue exactly what you want in life or to change what they tell you your purpose is, is to betray yourself and your duty to your family. ”
“Is that what this is?” she asked quietly, our hands next to one another on the bed. She reached her pinky out, brushing it against mine. “Are you betraying yourself now, Silas?”
“I don’t . . .” The tingle of her finger skating across my hand sent such electricity through me. “I don’t want to hurt people anymore.”
“What epiphany brought you to that conclusion?” she teased.
“My father called it a necessary evil.” I glanced down at our hands cautiously. “But if necessary evil is what it takes to protect a birthright, maybe it should not be in the first place.”
“And what is this birthright?”
“The Nest.” I paused, unwilling to elaborate.
“It sounds like the Creature has finally developed empathy,” she whispered, placing her head on my shoulder as she played with the hem of my sleeve.
“Too much for my own good, I fear.”
“Empathy is a strength, a necessity to know thy enemy.”
“I don’t know how much longer I can empathize with my father.”
“Are you telling me you abandoned them for me?”
“I abandoned them at least a decade ago, and it was a long time coming. But it should have been sooner.”
“How much sooner?”
“Early enough where, just maybe, I would have been good for you when we met.”
She stared absently. She stopped playing with my sleeve, and her jaw tensed against my shoulder as she rested there, though she did not pull away.
Was it something I said? Did I do something wrong?
If only she were as easy to read as one of those books she fixated on.
“Why aren’t you speaking?”
“I am tired. It has been a long few days,” she whispered.
“Well, rest, we have more traveling tomorrow.” I stood, beginning to untuck the quilt, and gathered the extra blanket.
A wave of vertigo hit me, and my stomach pinched. I leaned against the frame of the bed to steady myself.
Her scent was strong, and it wasn’t from the blood on the bandages. The temperature outside made it easy to hide a scent like that, but now that we were inside, it was hard to ignore the hunger.
“Silas.” Her voice pulled me from my haze.
“Yes?”
“You look pale.”
“That is my complexion, much like yours.”
“No, you’re hungry.”
I raised a brow. “You can tell?”
“Of course,” she replied, like it was common knowledge. “You are an easy read, like a grammar school pamphlet.”
“You say that like it is an insult.”
The bickering brought a smile to her face before she shielded it from me.
I lifted her chin. “Don’t hide from me, you fox.” I smirked. “Let me see.”
“Don’t make this weird.” She stumbled over her words, unsure where to look, struggling to hide her emotions.
“Are you getting shy on me?”
She shook her head and grinned. “Why? Do you like it?”
“Not at all; I like it when you bite.” I leaned forward and placed a knee on the bed, and she pitched backward. She laid down on the bed, and I hovered over her. Visions of her in the garden paid my mind a visit, a delightful memory to make this taste even sweeter.
I leaned closer, nearly nose to nose with her. I touched over her corset cover, though she was using it now as nightwear. The lacy hem and thin material were a tease as to what was underneath.
“I don’t think you’d want me to bite you; just ask Luka,” she teased, biting at my bottom lip softly.
There was a fluttering inside me, like an animal was skittering around. I would say she gave me butterflies, but it was likely a different kind of hunger.
Her eyes fluttered up, concerned with my hesitance.
Don’t look at me like that.
I snaked my hands around her and placed my hand firmly on the back of her neck, lifting her slightly to me. It was taking everything in me not to tangle my fingers in her hair and ravish her here.
My heart was beating a thousand times faster than I knew it could, and I knew she could feel it too. My eyes trailed from her eyes to her neck. I could see every pulse, feel every pump of her heart send that crimson gold through her veins every second.
She reached up and circled her arms around my neck, pulling me closer. Her head reclined to the side, inviting me with her extended neck.
I lifted her toward me and traced my lips along the spot on her neck, feeling the pulse vibrate.
The low clicking bloomed in my throat like a cicada in late July.
With vigilant attention and care, my fangs flicked forward, flexing far as if to reach her sooner. I grazed them over her skin, scraping lightly. The anticipation was making me salivate. It was like a dream, the way I could be here with her, her attention dedicated only to me.
“Why do you hesitate?” she whispered, resurfacing me from my thoughts.
Alina seemed calm, but she couldn’t hide the twitch of her brow, then the tension in her jaw. This was fear, not like the trepidation from hunting her.
No, it was the fear of rejection.
Her heart skipped, her breath shallowing. Was she afraid I would refuse her? Or the thought of all this emotional labor being just a means to feed from her?
“You know I like to take my time.” I chuckled, my other hand stroking her cheek. She leaned into my touch, closing her eyes. The sight made me want to melt into a puddle, intoxicated from every reaction she would spare me.
She relaxed in my arms, and her hands smoothed up my shoulders and up the back of my neck, her fingers making a home tangled in my hair. With that, she pulled my head close.
A satisfied hum escaped me when she did that. Who knew the feeling of being desired could feel like this?
Without much delay, I gently kissed her neck, sucking at the skin tenderly. She tasted so sweet; I wanted to taste every inch of her. My fangs ached as they reached forward, poised above the milky flesh.
I sank my canines into her, biting down quickly so there wasn’t much time to feel the pain.
She held on to me, trembling after the initial bite. The reaction only made me bite down harder, hoping that soon the venom would calm her nerves.
The hot, decadent blood washed over my tongue and made my senses swim in its flavor. It was like tasting fine wine, the most unique and expensive notes hidden under the metallic surface, wrapped in an ivory casing that was my lovely Alina.
Her slender form eased into mine, either from blood loss or from the venom.
I took one long swallow before I removed my teeth from her, flattening my tongue over the wound.
It pained me to stop. My body wanted to throw itself at her just from the lingering taste of her on my tongue.
She was provocative enough that I would want to beg her to use me in any way she could, just so I could get another taste.
When I peered down, her eyes fluttered open like she was pretending her eyes were not closed just before.
“Are you well?” I whispered.
She nodded and stared sleepily at me.
Once again, I found myself wanting to disappear inside her head so I could see what was making her look at me like that. Such softness and endearment, I didn’t understand. How come she can look at me like this, like she had before in my garden, then flee from me?
“Rest; I will return with something to eat.” I collected her in my arms so I could position her comfortably in the bed. The wool blankets wrapped around her as she lulled off.
It physically pained me to separate from her. There was a screaming in the back of my head, an undeniable need to protect her and shield her. To curl around her until she safely woke.
Sometimes I feared that would never be a reality with me by her side.