Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20
D ozens of men slosh into the room, like an unsteady tide. I hear one of them hiccup, and another laughs and smacks him on the arm.
“Don’t see no monster in here,” one of them says.
Another turns on his heel to properly inspect the whole of the room. When his face catches the moonlight, I recoil.
He’s harsher-looking than Argus. Apelike arms, full scraggly beard, stern face.
“Sarkis, does this look like the master suite to you?”
This is the man who has been blackmailing Eryx?
“Aye,” says Sarkis. “Yet there’s no master in here.” He burps loudly and strides toward my bed.
I leap off the other side, my stomach sinking as my heart tries to pound its way out of my chest. Why are these men here?
For the first time, I wish that Eryx didn’t sleep so far away from me. These men are here for him. Not me.
“Why are you in the duke’s bed?” Sarkis demands of me. “He been tupping you?”
“You do not get to barge into my room and ask lewd questions.”
The man takes another step forward. “I’ll ask anything I like of you.”
“Yeah,” another says, “cooperate or we’ll do you in like we did that butler fellow.”
Damasus. “Have you hurt my staff?”
I come around the bed, thinking to pass them all and check on Damasus and the rest of the household, but an arm snakes around my waist.
“Where do you think you’re going?” one of the men asks.
Another says, “You’re already dressed for bed. Best you climb back into it, and I’ll follow.”
I try to twist out of the arms that hold me, but they’re tight like a vise. A flare of panic rushes through me. I claw at the face of the man holding me.
“Ah,” he shrieks, finally letting go and raising a careful hand to his marred flesh. I back up to the far wall, putting as much distance as possible between them and me.
“Damasus!” I call out. “Damasus, can you hear me? Are you all right?”
“She scratched me!” the man I struck says, turning a bleeding face to Sarkis.
“You shouldn’t have touched the lady,” their leader returns. “That’s not why we’re here. We need to find the monster and deal with it.”
“Maybe this will help.” Another nameless man steps forward out of the crowd. I press myself against the wall of my room until my back hurts, but I can’t stop him from getting within reaching distance.
He slaps me across the face.
I gasp as I flinch away from the blow, my hand hovering over the stinging skin.
“You need to scream for us, lady,” he says.
“What?”
“I said scream.” He grabs my hair, pulls me up by my roots, and I whimper and gasp at the pain, trying to kick outward, but the angle is wrong, and I can’t make contact.
“Don’t think she cares for your methods,” another brute says. “Let’s try mine.”
I scream before the knife makes contact with my skin, but once it does, my voice turns more shrill. He starts at my wrist, raking the steel upward slowly and deliberately while the other man holds me in place.
I fight back with all I have, twisting and thrashing. When that doesn’t work, I try to go limp, but they’re too strong. My pained exclamations are the only constant as that knife makes a path upward, my voice increasing as he presses the metal ever deeper.
And then a shadow moves in front of me. The man with the knife goes flying against my wardrobe, wood cracking before he hits the floor. The man holding me is startled and turns, finally releasing my arms.
I’m too scared to look at the damage. The pain seems to come from everywhere on my forearm, and I feel the blood oozing downward, dripping from my fingers. My screaming has turned to sobbing, and I can barely see through my tears as another one of the brutes goes flying up into the ceiling, smashing through the hanging chandelier before denting the plaster. Another man breaks his fall when he comes careening back to the floor, and glass rains down atop them both.
The shadow continues to move impossibly fast. It flies toward the man who’d been holding me in a hard-to-follow streak. The next thing I know, he’s airborne and shattering the glass of my window before disappearing outside.
Now I’m not the only one in the room screaming.
Shots go off, and I drop to the floor, slipping in the puddle of my own blood. I want to cover my head with my hands, to turn my face into the plush rug, but I can’t seem to look away from the shadow and what it might do next.
Rationally, I know it’s Eryx disposing of the men one by one, but when I see men unload their revolvers into him without slowing him down, it’s easy to imagine him as something else entirely. The bullets ping to the ground uselessly once his healing abilities force them free from his flesh. I don’t hear the sound, but I see them rolling about the floor, dented on one side from the impact. I know because one stops just shy of the rug I lie atop. I pick it up and squeeze it within my grasp, giving myself something tangible to feel as I behold all the savagery around me.
Eryx picks up a man and snaps him in half over his knee. He pulls another’s arms out of their sockets. He sends a punch into another man’s knee, and I hear the patella shattering before the man goes limp on the ground. Eryx crushes his skull underfoot, and the intruder doesn’t move again.
One by one they fall to him, and I lie there with my head turned to the side, watching it all as if I were still dreaming, only this is surely a nightmare.
Eryx cracks the neck of the last standing man, and everything goes impossibly still.
The lights turn on, though they’re dimmer than before with the chandelier partially ruined above us. Still, the true horror of the situation dawns on me as I see everything in excruciating detail.
The broken furniture, broken bones, broken glass. The oozing blood, oozing brain matter, oozing spittle. At least one man pissed himself before he died, or after perhaps, and another’s face is frozen in a scream in death.
And yet, amid all that carnage, there is beauty, too.
Because I can see him .
Amber eyes, pointed ears, sharp canines, horns protruding from his skull. He looks so big from where I lie on the floor. He managed only a pair of pants and boots before trudging up all of those stairs. How did he even know I was in danger? He’s so far away, clear down in the cellar…
Bullet holes spatter down his front, but instead of blood dripping—
It’s shadow. Black shadows seep from his wounds, pooling at the floor before he tramples them underfoot. Because, yes, he’s moving.
Moving toward me.
He falls to his knees, hands shaking as he looks down at me with amber eyes. I think I might still be whimpering with pain.
Softly, he says, “Can you stand?”
I shake my head vehemently.
“That’s all right. You stay right there, then.” His hand reaches for my injured arm. His horns and fangs retreat as he shifts back to human.
I flinch before he even comes close to making contact.
“Easy,” he says. “I’m not going to hurt you, Chrysantha. You don’t need to be afraid of me.”
And, despite everything, I let out a snort. “Me? Afraid of you? Please.”
His puzzled expression looks absolutely comical with his wolf eyes on display. “Then, why—”
“My arm hurts, dammit. I don’t want you touching it!”
He sways backward as though in astonishment at my answer. As he shakes his head at me, as though he can’t believe what he’s seeing, I catch sight of something behind him.
It’s Sarkis. He must have hidden behind the door before Eryx appeared in the room, waiting for his chance. Now he approaches Eryx while his back is turned, the man carrying the thickest sword I’ve ever seen.
More than that, Sarkis looks different than he did before. Are those pointed ears peeking out from his hair? And the barest hint of horns. Not like Eryx’s. No, they’re half the size and an eerie yellow.
I don’t think before the words are out. “Behind you!”
Eryx spins around, his hand seizing Sarkis by the throat.
That sword moves, slashing across Eryx’s chest. More shadows pour from him. Eryx throws Sarkis away from him, and the second man somehow manages to land on his feet, though he loses his sword.
“This ends here,” Eryx shouts as he throws himself onto the other man. Sarkis should be dead. How can he handle all of Eryx’s unnatural strength? But the man blocks his blows and returns some that have Eryx reeling.
At the first injury that should draw blood from Sarkis, shadows flow from him instead.
“You did this to me,” Sarkis yells as he wipes at the wispy blackness.
“I saved your life!”
“No, you made me into a monster.”
“No, I accidentally gave you my abilities. You became a monster all on your own.”
Sarkis lunges, throwing Eryx onto his back. He lands not far from the sword, but he can’t quite reach it.
Forgetting my own pain, I rush over and kick the sword the rest of the way. When his fingers curl around the hilt, Eryx brings it up and swipes it across the other man’s throat, severing head from shoulders.
No shadows seep from the wound.
There is nothing but dead flesh atop of Eryx. Because that’s a wound even the shadows cannot heal.
Decapitation is the only way to kill him.
I can’t do that.
Not that you want to , a smaller voice intones. You just actively helped him escape death.
Yes, because an unknown monster was in my room and might have killed me next.
Eryx shoves the dead weight off himself before standing.
“Thank you,” he says before scrutinizing my arm.
I dare to look. The knife made it halfway up my forearm; my skin is split wide, blood still seeps from the cut. Something white peeks at me from around some of the red muscle—
I nearly faint when I realize it’s my own bone.
I bite the inside of my cheek to stay awake, not daring to move my arm. “Damasus,” I mutter. “They said they hurt him. You need to—”
“Take care of you,” he says. “I’ll be back with supplies.”
“No, please. Check on him. On the rest of the staff. No, wait, I’ll do it.” I sway forward before I can even take a step. Eryx catches me by the shoulders, and I’m so close to him that the shadows pouring from his wounds brush against me.
They’re neither cool nor hot to the touch. Merely wisps of movement, as though the slightest breeze were brushing my skin before continuing to the floor.
“Easy,” he says. When he looks at my arm, his fangs drop down from his teeth again, making him look feral. “They cut you.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“In my own damn house.”
“Not a house. Not yours.” The words come out weak.
His eyes flutter closed, his jaw tensing, but for once, I don’t think it’s because of something I said. “This is my fault,” he whispers.
“Fine, then. Stand there in self-pity. I have my staff to look out for.”
“I’ll do it if you promise to sit still until I can call a doctor.”
“You can’t do it.”
“Why not?”
I gesture to the pools of shadow at his feet.
“That’ll stop in a moment.”
I stare at the spectacle, at the impossibility of what I’m seeing. The shadows look so much like the Shadow King’s, and yet they clearly work differently.
I’ve still got the bullet grasped tightly in my fist.
Running footsteps come from down the hall. I throw myself in front of Eryx, as though I can shield him from the staff seeing his abilities, but it is only Argus and Dyson.
“What do you need?” Argus asks.
“Send for a doctor. Chrysantha is hurt badly.”
Argus looks like that’s the last thing he wants to do, but Dyson says, “I’m on it.”
When I look back to Eryx, his wounds close up, and the shadows dissipate. His eyes fade to a deep brown.
“Damasus,” I prompt as my vision starts to fade in and out.
“Right,” Eryx says, “Argus, go find all the staff. Assess who needs the most help. Then go—”
I don’t catch the rest.
W HEN I OPEN MY EYES, it’s to the feeling of a sharp pinch in my already-throbbing arm.
The wound hurts worse than when it was first administered. It smells of alcohol, and as I turn, I find a needle in my flesh, the start of a single stitch. I’m no longer in my bedroom but back in the duchess suite yet again, presumably because there are fewer dead men in here.
When I look up, I find some kindly old doctor observing me. “Good, you’re awake,” he says, pulling the needle the rest of the way through my skin. “I’m sorry for the pain, Your Grace, but I couldn’t have you drink this until you were conscious.” He holds out a glass for me.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Laudanum. For the pain.”
“I can’t have it. I have a terrible reaction to it.” I have since I was a child.
“Then I’m afraid this is going to hurt quite a lot. At least you were out of it for the cleaning portion of my administrations.”
The longer I’m awake, the more my memories surface. “Damasus,” I blurt. “Have you seen my butler?”
“Not yet, Your Grace. The duke was very clear that you were the priority.”
I snatch my arm away and then grimace at the bout of pain that brings on. “Go to him,” I demand.
“Your Grace, you have an open wound.”
“Which you just said you’ve already cleaned. I can wait. You will see to all of my staff first.”
“But the duke—”
“Will be upset by the delay. Now move. I assure you I will not allow you to work on me until my staff have all been seen to.”
His faces bunches up tight, but he finally says, “Yes, Your Grace, but I’ll have to inform the duke you are refusing care.”
“You do that. Just go.”
I try not to look at my arm as I gently settle it on the bed beside me. It throbs sharply with every beat of my heart. I let out a soft groan, but I stand by my decision. Damasus can’t die. No one is allowed to die. They can’t—
The door slams open, and I startle, then gasp in more air at the pain.
“You’re refusing treatment?” Eryx barks.
“I told you I wanted Damasus to see the doctor first. You didn’t listen.”
“Damasus’s injuries are not as serious as yours!”
“I don’t care.”
Though I can’t move much, I turn my head away from him, ending the conversation.
“Fine,” he says, and I expect him to leave the room. Instead, I hear the splashing of water. What is he doing now? I turn to find him in the washroom, soaping his hands thoroughly.
“What do you think you are doing?”
“I may not be a doctor, but I had to do this dozens of times in the army. If you won’t let the professional see to you, then you get me.”
He dries off his hands before seating next to me. He reaches for the discarded medical thread and needle.
When I meet his eyes, they flash amber, daring me to argue.
It’s not as though I could run. And I have a feeling Eryx will just knock me out if I don’t cooperate this time.
“Fine.” I turn back away, leaving my arm exposed.
When I feel the chair beside me move again, I brace myself for pain. But the suspense is too much, so I turn back toward the spiteful man.
“What happened back there?” I ask. “You fought those men off, and then we were talking. Argus and Dyson showed up. I don’t remember anything after that.”
The needle hovers over my skin, and a guilty look crosses Eryx’s features. “You swooned,” he says.
“Swooned?”
“Yes, got too close to me, I expect.”
At the furrowing of my brow, the needle goes in. I wince, jerking at the contact, preventing me from reacting to his ridiculous statement.
“That hurts!”
“I know, but you have at least ten more stitches to go.”
I feel a tremble start to work its way out, so I try to keep myself talking. “How wounded is Damasus?”
“They roughed him up pretty good. He has countless bruises, but nothing was broken except his nose, which the doctor will need to right. The butler was in good spirits when I saw him, and I’m sure he’s handling his administrations much better than you are.”
He pulls the medical thread through my skin and pulls it tight. I bite down, just barely missing my tongue.
“You bled much more than I originally realized,” Eryx says conversationally. “It’s remarkable you were alert for as long as you were. Finally got your arm elevated, and that helped to slow things down considerably. All the staff wanted to be in here by your side, especially that footman Kyros. But I ordered them all away.” He dips the needle in again, and I just barely manage not to cry out.
I glare at him. He’s donned a fresh shirt since the attack, and there’s not a scratch on him.
And the levity with which he speaks, I don’t know why, but I feel as though I cannot trust it.
“How did you know I was in trouble?” I ask.
“I heard you scream.”
“All the way from the cellar?”
Now it’s Eryx’s turn to wince. “Yes, from the cellar. How long have you known?”
“Not long. I finally figured it out with the proximity to the library.”
“Too smart for your own good, as usual.”
“I had to snoop. You’re a mystery, and I don’t like mysteries. I like knowing everything.”
“I can see why I’m so frustrating to you, then.”
“You can’t begin to glean the list of your frustrating qualities, Eryx. Shall I state them for you? I— Ack!”
He ties off another stitch and closes his eyes against my shriek of pain. His face bunches tightly, as though he were trying to fight off a bout of something. Anger? Fury?
At me?
“Tell me why,” I say, needing another distraction.
“Why?”
“Yes, why did you come?”
He doesn’t say anything, so I continue. “They would have killed me. Then you would have been rid of me finally. No more prodding you to tell me your secrets. No more worrying if I’ll reveal what I know. You would have been free of me, had the dukedom all to yourself. I thought perhaps you brought those men here to do the job for you.”
He raises those eyes to mine, stilling the needle before the next stitch. “I am the reason they came, but it was no invitation to do you harm.”
“Then it should have been a fortunate turn of events for you. So I’ll ask again, why stop them? Why expose your abilities to me yet again? You would have had everything you wanted.”
I watch as his eyes turn amber once more. “Not everything.”
I don’t say a word as he does the next stitch, hoping he’ll continue. He says nothing until another whimper of pain escapes me despite my best efforts to hold it in.
“If you don’t know, then you’re not as clever as you think you are,” he says finally.
Is there something he needs from me? Something he can have only so long as the dowager duchess is alive? What am I missing here?
Eryx leans over my arm and blows a long, cool breath over my stinging, raw flesh. “Tell me why you called out a warning, Chrysantha.”
“Excuse me?”
“You told me about the man who’d snuck up behind me. I was already wounded, bleeding shadows everywhere. Did you think to stop me from more pain? Or did you think he might have been able to kill me and want to spare me? He could have, you know. I’m not entirely invulnerable. He could have killed me, and you would have had everything. The manor, the estate, the servants, the money.” A pause. “Your lover returned. It all would have been yours again. The thought had to have crossed your mind, so why call out a warning?”
“You’d just saved me,” I say. “I owed you one.”
“So now we’re even? Next time I’m in danger, you’ll let me die?”
“Yes.”
He smiles, showing off those sharpened canines, and my heart skips a beat at the sight of them. But then he’s back to seriousness and focusing on my stitches once more.
“I’m so sorry that you are hurt, Chrysantha.” His voice cracks, surprising us both. “It shouldn’t have come to this. I never thought Sarkis capable. If I had thought for a second that you were in danger, I promise I would have done something more. I never meant to let my past harm you.”
“Who were those men? Why did they want you dead?”
“Sarkis was in my regiment in the army. There was an incident with the enemy. We were both injured. I threw him over my back and carried him to safety, but he had prolonged exposure to my shadows while my own wounds healed. They flowed into his open injuries.
My mouth rounds into an O.
“He inherited some of my abilities. The supernatural strength and healing. At first, he was glad of it. He liked how unstoppable we were in the army, but he wasn’t as cautious about being seen. The king had a warrant out for his arrest. I was worried that Sarkis would reveal me, too. I tried to put him down and failed. Naturally he turned against me after that. He’s been messing with me ever since.”
I grit my teeth through the next stitch. “And you didn’t think I should know about him?”
“I told you. I didn’t think he was a danger to you.”
“You need to start trusting me with things like this. We could have had hired hands on the property. We could have prevented this.”
“I’m… not used to putting my trust in others.”
I look pointedly at my arm. “When the consequences affect more than just yourself, you might want to consider it.”
He winces. “Noted.”
Eryx returns his attention to my arm, pulling a little too tightly on the next stitch.
“At the risk of seeming pathetic, this really hurts. Could you try to be gentle? Not all of us have supernatural healing.”
“You’re not pathetic. This is a very deep cut. You’re going to have an impressive scar.”
A scar? “I’ve never had a scar before.”
“Stop frowning. Scars are good. They mean you survived.”
“I only survived because of you.” I was helpless. Entirely outnumbered with nothing but my nightclothes on for protection. I cannot remember a time when I’d felt such terror.
“No human person could have taken on so many barehanded.”
“Then today, I am grateful you are not entirely human.”
I bite back a sob at yet another stab of the needle, and Eryx hardens his jaw. “Last one.” He ties off the stitch, spreads some sort of soothing ointment over the line of sewed flesh, and begins wrapping the wound.
Eryx returns to the washroom to clean himself up again. On his way to the bedroom door, he says, “Rest up, Duchess. Your body needs to heal.”
I’m already throwing the covers off me. “I will do no such thing. I need to check on Damasus. My room has been destroyed. It’ll need to be cleaned. Someone will need to speak with the constabulary when they arrive. I’ll need to order new furniture.”
“It’s always the bloody furniture with you.”
“If every little thing about me irritates you, you can always leave.”
“Every little thing about you does not irritate me.”
“All evidence to the contrary.” I try to step around him, but he steps with me, continuing to block my path.
“Do you respect me?” he asks suddenly.
“What?”
“Do you hate me so much because you recognize on some level that we’re equals?”
My stomach falls at the words. He was at book club listening in!
“We could never be equals. Not when you hold all the power,” I say.
“And if I didn’t?”
“Then I’d hardly have cause to hate you, now, would I?”
His eyes flash amber, and I try to parse what I’ve said to upset him. I can’t think of anything, so I fire back, “Do you see me as an equal?”
“I respect you.”
“But you don’t see me as an equal?”
“I see you as…” He trails off, but his eyes never leave mine.
“Something to hurt? To kill? So what? You said you could control the beast.”
“I can control the beast.”
“Then why are you glowing your eyes at me? You’re being strange. I—”
Eryx steps soundlessly toward me, and I back up as far as I can go when I see his canines descend. When I strike the wall, I hold my injured arm away from it so as not to hurt it further. Eryx runs a finger down my neck in the same path where the beast once ran his teeth.
“You’ve never been afraid of what I am. I like that. The beast thrills at that. I see you as something more than an equal, Chrysantha. You’re so much better than me.”
“I already knew that.”
And as though the sarcastic comment is more than he can bear, his eyes lower to my mouth before his lips are upon mine.