24. Kiera
Chapter 24
Kiera
N othing. There is absolutely nothing in the records of the library that is even marginally useful. With frustration, I slam closed the book in front of me, sending a waft of dust out from between the pages. I cough and swipe a hand in front of my face to clear away the last vestiges of the particles that have become airborne. The cover itself hadn’t been covered in dust, which is more of a testament to the work of the Terra and caretakers of the books than its time off its shelf. Even now, a subtle glance around the stacks of shelves and the darkened corners of the quiet space reveals that I’m one of the few Mortal Gods here.
When I was forced to work here, it had felt more like a retreat away from the Mortal Gods than the actual punishment it was meant to be. Few students venture into this space. If they need the volumes within, they usually send Terra with notes on which ones to pull and deliver to them.
A familiar figure appears around the corner of one of the shelves, her pallid face half hidden by the wash of brown and gray hair over her shoulder. Sylvis moves quickly and quietly through the arching shelves like a ghost and I wonder at how much longer she has. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been, in essence, one of my prison guards when I was forced to work here. She had never been unkind though.
Absently, I find myself scratching the inside of my wrist as I watch her go. The memory of her secretive discussion with Caedmon prickles at the back of my mind. She looks more tired than she had before and I know it’s not all because of age. Mortals don’t age that quickly in the span of a few short months. Whatever Caedmon had given her is obviously not helping her as much as either of them had hoped.
My eyes fall to my wrist again. For a moment, I contemplate slicing open a vein and finding a vial to fill it with my blood. It would help her, I know. It would be a kindness for her lack of cruelty when to the rest of the Academy I’d been nobody, just another mortal Terra whose life was subject to the whims of the Mortal Gods and their sires.
Almost as soon as the thought takes over, I shake it away. Even if I could afford to risk giving my blood to her, there’s no telling if she would accidentally reveal the gift to another Terra, someone who might go tattling to the Gods. A Mortal God who’d lived her life as an unknowing human wouldn’t have the idea of sharing their blood to heal a lowly servant.
I push the volume in front of me away, standing up from the table and wincing as my back throbs in protest. Stretching up on my toes, I start to gather the books I’d taken down from the shelves of past graduates of the Academy, pausing when I spot a book beneath the others that I’ve already reviewed.
Sitting back down, I flip it open and scan the index. This is last year’s list of Riviere attendees and graduates—whereas the others were older. This is the one I’d been looking for to begin with. I scan back to where it had been— why hadn’t I placed it on top? Why hadn’t it been the first one I’d looked at?
Frowning, I return my focus to the tome and then start to go through it. Minutes later, my pulse begins to race. Excitement pours through me and my hands hover over the names with a fine, barely there tremble. I hurriedly flip the page and start scanning the next. Then the next and the next, until I find them all.
Demetria Gyllmare—transferred.
Atticus Varlane—transferred.
Philomena Deveras—transferred.
Cecil Marr—transferred.
Seline Xarxis—transferred.
Abeyance Wellbriar—transferred.
They’re all there. Every. Last. Name. Each one is marked with a transfer, but to where? These are the list of the ones my book had given me. All save for Malachi.
I continue reading and after a few more minutes, I’m rewarded for my efforts with the answer. The Mortal Gods Academy of Ortus.
A shudder works through my body. The image of sharp, glistening ebony spikes that appear more like jagged knives spearing up through the land and ocean flickers in my memory. Upon further review, each of the names of the Mortal Gods listed come up as either First or Second Tiers.
I’m not entirely sure why so many strong Mortal Gods with powerful backgrounds would be transferred to the Academy of Ortus, but without stopping to think about these findings, I write them all down on the last page of the book, an empty extra. With a hurried glance around, I quickly rip the page from the volume and fold it before stuffing it into my pocket and standing once more.
My mind is awhirl with the knowledge, though I’m not sure yet what to make of it, I do know one person who might be able to help. Of all the Darkhavens, Ruen is the most studious. His wicked intelligence is one of the few things I admire about him. Even if I’m still smarting from our spar weeks prior, I know that he’ll be the best to help me figure out the meaning behind it all.
I leave the books behind where they lay, shooed away by the Terra of the library when I even attempt to put them away myself. I don’t argue. I’m in a hurry to get back to the North Tower anyway. The paper in my pocket is burning a hole right through the fabric of my trousers.
My legs eat up the distance and when I see the stairs inside the door of the Tower, I take them two at a time. My body buzzes with excitement and the fresh wave of adrenaline that’s flowing through my veins. It’s been a while since I felt quite this enthusiastic and the minor physical exercise is a good way to release the extra energy.
In a burst of energy, I fly up the rest of the stairs, straight past my old room until I’m standing in front of the door of the Darkhaven quarters. I don’t bother to knock. I don’t anymore. Turning the handle and letting myself inside, I scan the room, finding no one else. Ruen’s reading table is empty too.
Damn it. It’s the middle of classes. I’d completely forgotten. They’re all likely away and wondering where I am. I pause and release an annoyed breath, but as the door swings shut behind me a sound reaches my ears.
Hope blossoms in my chest when I turn my head and notice that Ruen’s bedroom door is slightly ajar and a shadow moves around inside. I don’t even stop to wonder why he’s back early when it’s obvious the others aren’t. I’m across the room before my mind can catch up with my body, pushing the door further open and stepping inside.
“Ruen, I found something that I want to ask?—”
The sight that greets me freezes all movements and the words that had been on my lips fall away, forgotten. The silence that follows my sudden intrusion stretches into what feels like centuries, but I know, logically, it can only be a few seconds. Ruen is shirtless. His body chiseled to the perfection only capable of being immortalized in statues and art. Each muscle of his chest and shoulders is cut like granite and the most stony of all is his face. Drawn into a complete mask of nothingness—no anger, no happiness. Every minuscule inch of his expression is devoid of the emotion that breathes essence into living beings.
For all I can tell, Ruen Darkhaven has simply ceased to exist as anything more than a memorial of the Mortal God I’ve both come to hate and unwillingly trust.
My eyes fall to where his hands are locked in place with a wet cloth coated in what looks like green and brown mush. They hover over his forearms, both of which are lined with sharp wounds.
I take a step further into the room and then quietly shut the door. My back touches the wood a moment later as I lean against it, needing the help to hold myself up. The physicality of touching an object grounds me as old memories swarm the back of my mind. Each cut is a perfect line. No wavering signs of hesitation. Precise. Cold. Callous.
The light outside the window appears to dim as I take a breath and push away from the door. Ruen doesn’t move a muscle as I approach and I don’t stop until I’m standing over where he’s perched on the side of his bed with the nightstand acting as a placemat for the bowl of water and what looks like a bag of herbs. The scent of soil and the tang of turmeric along with the softer aroma of lavender hover between us.
“What are you doing here?” Ruen’s voice is husky.
I peer from his arms to his face. “What did you do?” I demand instead.
To his credit, he doesn’t flinch. My question does, however, seem to give him the energy to move. He lowers the cloth until it covers one of his forearms, and then he rubs it back and forth over the scabs that have now formed.
I eye those markings. They’re dark, suggesting that they aren’t new wounds. There are only two things that can harm a God or Mortal God and keep it from healing so completely. I don’t detect a hint of poison in the air, which can only mean that he used brimstone.
Several minutes pass as Ruen strokes the medicine covered cloth up and down his forearms and still, he doesn’t respond. I narrow my gaze on him. “ Why? ” I ask instead of repeating my earlier question.
Ruen pauses his actions with his head bowed. His breath shudders out of him, lifting his shoulders and lowering them once more. This close to him, I can see the fine details of scars marking his shoulders as well, the lines disappearing over his back.
“Ruen. Answer me.”
“It’s none of your concern.” I’m not surprised by his gruff response. What I am, is angry.
“Those cuts aren’t jagged.” I lick my dry cracked lips, feeling devoid of anything but wrath and pain. “You didn’t get them from someone else.”
He doesn’t reply, just continues scrubbing at the scabs. My gaze lands on his chest, the dips and hollows of a well-trained and muscled body. I bite down, grinding my teeth together.
I want to circle him to see where the lines along his shoulders and back end. Deep down, I know they don’t. The scars might come to a point somewhere along his spine, but they go far deeper than the flesh. I know because no matter how many times I’ve healed from my own scars, sometimes, I still wake up from old nightmares covered in their ghosts.
Ruen curses and my eyes jerk down to find that he’s scrubbed himself so hard that one of the scabs has peeled away completely and blood flows freely from the freshly opened wound. I don’t think. I just react. Capturing his hand and stopping him from slapping the cut across the opening, I reach for the extra cloth lying on the nightstand. I ignore the herb concoction and dip the fresh cloth into the waiting water, wetting it before bringing it to his skin.
“Irritating the scabs won’t help them heal,” I state. “But you know that, don’t you?” My tone is even, my words clinical as I press the wet fabric to his wound and watch the blood seep through in a way that it wouldn’t were these wounds made by anything other than brimstone.
My motions are moderate. I don’t press down too hard, but meticulously clean the wound before I set the cloth to the side and steal his from him. He doesn’t fight me, much to my astonishment, but I don’t comment as I press the herbs into the opening of his skin. A hiss escapes from him a moment later and the forearm under my grip tenses as I assume pain flares through him.
“I don’t know why you’re acting like this,” I finally say. “Didn’t you want to feel the pain?”
He doesn’t answer and my gaze flickers up to meet his. Midnight eyes with pupils blown wide nearly encompassing the color of his irises are locked on me.
“Or is there another reason why you flayed yourself open like this?” I continue. My voice leaves behind the cold, clinical tone and delves back into anger.
Of all the Darkhavens, I didn’t expect this of him. Then again, Ruen is the Darkhaven I know the least about. Perhaps, had I been paying closer attention, I would’ve noticed that he rarely undressed in front of others. That I’d never seen him without a shirt—not even in sparring practice when so many other men had stripped to just their trousers.
“It’s not always about pain,” he murmurs.
“No?” I continue my ministrations with his forearm, finishing smearing the herbs over the wound before moving onto the next scab. “Then what is it about?”
Ruen doesn’t answer. His expression doesn’t change, but I suspect he doesn’t have an answer—at least not one that he wants to admit to. The grinding of my jaw persists and I finish with one forearm, reaching for the next. Ruen lets me take it, lifting it as I spread more of the herbs that seem to sink into his flesh until merely a thin sheen of the gooey liquid is seen over his skin.
There are older lines here, so pale that they’re difficult to see. My fingers pause over an older line, at the end of his wrist, right over the twin veins that meet. This line is different from the rest. It’s deeper, cut vertically along where the blood thrums a consistent pulse. It’s older, but it tells a story. This cut had meant to kill, not harm.
I release Ruen’s forearm and drop the cloth into the bowl on his nightstand. Finding the wrappings discarded behind it all, I lift his arms once more and start the process of circling his forearms and dressing the wounds to keep them from getting infected. Ruen doesn't speak when I finish the first and move to the second. In fact, he remains completely still and quiet as I perform the task.
My gaze lifts to meet his, and I see nothing of the man and everything of a barely restrained beast reflected back at me. Ruen Darkhaven may not have the same abilities as his brother Kalix, but that doesn’t make him any less deadly.
I cinch the last of the dressing, completing the task, before taking a step back and fixing him with a look. “We need to talk.”