Chapter Four Shea
Growing up, Shea’s mother used to tell her to always leave a light burning, even in the dead of night.
It was one of her many rituals, same as most other families in Little Hill.
Tiny, meaningless sacraments to give children the illusion of safety.
A wreath of hawthorn on the door. A shallow bowl of purified water on the front steps. A silver cross around the neck.
A light, to kept the dark things at bay.
Sometimes, keeping a light on was easier said than done. So far north, it never took much to knock the power out. Ice on the wires. Wind from the mountain. A thick fall of snow. During a blackout, it usually took days for a lineman to reach them. Weeks, in deep winter.
Before Shea’s father left, they’d make an event of the power outages.
Her mother would start a fire in the hearth.
She’d light a candle in every window. She sang the old hymns as she went—humming canticles she’d learned back when the Everly family still filled a pew at church.
Before she became a Parker, and the congregation shut their doors.
Shea’s father would sit awake all night and tend to the flames, feeding kindling to the fire whenever it burned low. Unable to sleep with the wind rattling her windows, Shea would creep downstairs and coax her father into telling her a story.
Her memory of these nights is such a visceral thing, it’s difficult to remember if it’s one blackout in particular or an amalgamation of many.
She remembers her father in his chair, the lit embers setting him aglow.
A shotgun across his lap, the dark pressing its face against the frosted panes as he wove her a story with his hands.
When dawn crept in and the candles were extinguished, Shea would creep sleepily to the sill and stick her fingers into the melted wax. This memory is visceral, too. First came the sear of heat, then the feel of it congealing against her skin.
That’s what a bite feels like—a blinding locus of pain, followed by a hot-honey warmth.
Wax in her veins. A hard, smooth clot that chases out all other sensation.
Fear. Worry. Hurt. Each time she comes to Mercy Ridge, she’s left perfectly, pleasantly numb.
No thoughts at all of Little Hill to haunt her. Not even the good ones.
Tonight is no different. Tonight, the bliss sinks so deep into her bones that she can’t even recall why she came. Can’t remember what it was that made her race all the way here, rushing along the narrow switchbacks with her heart in her throat and a stitch in her side.
All she can think about is Lys. The way his eyes after a feed are cool and gray, the color of the sky in winter.
Tonight, he looked—for a moment, at least—like he might lean in and kiss her.
He’d been inches away, his breath shallow, when something at the door caught his attention.
His head snapped up. His grip on her turned vulturine.
Slowly, she became aware of a conversation taking place, snatches of it floating past her like flotsam.
“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” Lys says coldly.
“You didn’t have to.” Cyrus Talbot stands in the open door, steely-eyed. “It’s my job to be your eyes and ears.”
“I have eyes and ears of my own. Leave her out of it.”
“Lysander, think this through. If she brought him—”
Cyrus falls quiet, silenced by a look. A single bone-inked finger taps the underside of Shea’s chin, guiding her focus. She’s met with the pale ice of Lys’s stare. There’s no trace of the devil in him at all.
“Stay,” he says.
“Okay.”
She says it to make him happy—to let him know she can cooperate. He doesn’t look happy. His face falls, his disappointment apparent. His eyes cut away before she can try to fix it.
“Cy.”
“Yeah?”
“Make sure she doesn’t leave this room.”
A tepid pause follows. Then, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?” Lys tugs a clean shop towel from his back pocket, knotting it around Shea’s wrist. His gaze finds hers, but this time his face is carefully shuttered. “Put some pressure on that. I’ll come find you when it’s done.”
And then he’s gone.
She stands there, unmoving, twin pinpricks of red widening along the white cloth at her wrist. She’s determined to do as she’s told.
To prove that she can. That’s what she wants to do, isn’t it?
To make Lys happy? She can’t remember. She can’t think .
Her thoughts curdle, mushy and colorless.
She can’t shake the feeling that she’s forgotten something. Something important.
She shuts her eyes and tries to recall the journey here.
She pictures the marked road to Mercy, trunks blackened where they’d been burned back from the path.
The shift of unheard whispers in the faraway branches.
And there, muffled by the fading miasma of her euphoria, is a question, familiar: You’re sure you know the way?
She hadn’t been alone. There’d been someone else. But who?
She thinks harder, wax crackling as she applies pressure.
“Some of the boys have started a rumor that you’ve got blood like honey.”
She startles, glancing toward the door. Cyrus stares unabashedly back at her.
“Honey,” she echoes thickly.
“Yeah.” Cyrus’s pale skin is pink from a feed. His eyes shine in the dark. “They think that’s why Lysander won’t share you with the rest of them.”
The mere suggestion curdles something deep within her.
It’s not like she hasn’t seen the communal way they live at Mercy Ridge—like snakes in a nest, roping themselves into a ball in the dead of winter.
That isn’t her. She’s not one of them. She’s not a blood bunny, far from home, or a runaway, desperate to Turn.
They’re here because they have nothing left.
Because they’ve given up. She hasn’t. She still lights her mother’s candles at night.
The thought of her mother brings another memory careening into the forefront: Ivy Parker scrabbling up the stairs, the door slamming shut on her face.
The hard pump of a shotgun. She flicks her gaze to Cyrus.
He’s watching her struggle to regain control, a smile creeping slowly across his face. Blood like honey , he’d said.
“And what do you think?” she asks.
“I think you’re nothing special. Just a passing fixation.”
“Nice.”
“It’s not meant to be nice,” he assures her, drawing nearer. “It’s honest. That’s what Lysander does. He hyperfixates. He obsesses .”
The word thrums through her. “He’s not obsessed.”
“You don’t think so?”
“I know so. He and I have a deal, that’s all.”
Cyrus’s smile widens. “A deal is something struck between equals. You’re not even close to playing on Lysander’s level. You are small and weak, and one day soon, you’ll lose your shine.” His eyes glimmer as he throws in a hopeful, “Maybe even tonight.”
Some of her bravura finds her through the haze. “Are you threatening me?”
“Oh, I don’t need to threaten you,” says Cyrus. “You’ve done a beautiful job screwing yourself over already. I told you—Lysander doesn’t like to share. Thoughtless move, bringing someone else.”
His words bring clarity pummeling into her. Asher. The shotgun full of wooden bullets. Their fight in the foyer. The long trek here, his ears stuffed with cotton, the forest preening around them like a living thing.
“Where is he?”
“Lysander?” asks Cyrus. “Or your boyfriend?”
She doesn’t bother correcting him. “Never mind. I’ll find them myself.”
Shoving past him, she makes it all the way to the door before he cuts her off. He sidles out from the shadows as if he’d been one step ahead of her all along.
“Get out of my way.”
He doesn’t. “Do you ever wonder why you feel so numb after a feed?”
“No. Move.”
She can’t hear anything out in the great hall. No music. No chatter. No sounds of a struggle. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
Asher, you idiot , she thinks. I told you to wait.
“Everything in you slows,” says Cyrus, planting himself squarely before her. “Your heart. Your pulse. Your brain. You forget to panic. You forget why you were even afraid in the first place. After a while, you even start to like it. It’s why you keep coming back. Over and over. Night after night.”
She takes a step back, uneasy. “If you’re trying to make a point, then make it.”
“He doesn’t like you, Parker. This is just how he hunts.”
There’s a crash out in the hall. She feels it in the pads of her feet. This time, when she tries to shove past Cyrus, he grabs hold of her throat. With a firm shove, she’s slammed hard into the wall. The back of her head hits brick as she scrabbles at his forearm, blinking away stars.
“Let go .”
“Can’t. I have orders to keep you here.”
“I doubt he told you to hurt me.”
“I’m improvising,” drawls Cyrus.
Ignoring every instinct inside her that tells her to fight back, she forces herself to go perfectly slack. His eyes narrow, fingers tightening. Not enough to cut off her oxygen, but enough to let her know he could if he wanted to.
“Go ahead,” she challenges him. “Squeeze.”
“So brave. You think I won’t?”
“I think Lys will gut you when he finds out.”
Her voice comes out strangled, and Cyrus’s mouth curls into a sneer.
She’s drawn up onto the tips of her toes as his fingers constrict.
Her airway pinches shut, black spots scudding across her vision.
For a terrible moment, she thinks he means to call her bluff.
To kill her and hope Lys forgives him for it.
Instead, he releases her with a hard shove.
She staggers out from under him, taking several big swallows of air.
“One day, Parker,” he promises. “One day soon, he’ll come to his senses. When that happens, I’ll be right there waiting.”
There’s no time to let the full weight of his threat sink in. There’s another resounding crash out in the great hall—a thud that judders the floorboards underfoot.
She takes off running, her legs like lead.
Cyrus keeps pace beside her, taking one long stride for every two of hers.
They skid to a stop in the great hall, jostled together by the hungry throng of bodies.
Drawn from their party by the promise of a show, the crowd has gathered in a tight knot around the room’s lit hearth.
Shea elbows her way through the mass, Cyrus on her heels.
She emerges into the heart of the circle to find Asher Thorley on his knees.
He cuts an imposing figure against the firelight, his shoulders squared and his jaw defiant.
His wrists have been restrained in the small of his back and he looks as if he’s already taken a few hits.
His left eye boasts a red, ugly weal. A thin line of blood trickles down his chin, gathers in the beating hollow of his throat.
Directly in front of him stands the Gravewood Devil.
Lit by the embers of a dying fire, Lys looks just like a boy—cheeks pinked and eyes clear, the predator driven out of him by the rush of Shea’s blood to his head.
Just how she wanted him. Just how she planned.
She’s learned, in the past six months in his company, that he’s always his sweetest after a feed.
She’d planned to ask him then—to negotiate a new deal, one that didn’t end up with Asher dead.
It won’t be enough. Not like this, with an audience leering in at them.
Not when he’s putting on a show.
“I can’t decide,” he muses, “if you’re very brave or very stupid.”
“I guess we’ll find out.” One eye swelling steadily shut, Asher peers up at Lys. “ You’re the guy who has everyone around here so scared? You’re a little scrawny for a devil.”
A rustle goes through the crowd. Lys’s smile isn’t friendly.
“You’re funny.”
Asher doesn’t smile back. “I can be.”
“We’ll see how long that lasts.” Lys drops into a squat, elbows braced over his knees. With his hands inked in blackwork bones, he looks positively skeletal in the firelight. A nightmare from the forest deep. “Let’s try this one more time. Tell me who sent you.”
“No one.” Asher shifts as best he can, restrained by his bindings. “I’m not acting on anyone’s orders, I came on my own.”
Lys’s head tips to the side. “That makes you a fugitive.”
“It does.”
“I’ve seen what the watch does to deserters. It’s not pretty.”
“It isn’t.”
“You won’t survive being caught.”
“I won’t.”
“And yet here you are anyway.” Lys rises to his feet, cuffing the sleeves of his jacket. “Highly unusual behavior for a watchdog. You can’t blame me for not believing you. Hit him again.”
A figure breaks away from the crowd. A Mercy Boy, his eyes overeager. He makes his way toward Asher, popping already bloodied knuckles against the flat of his palm. On his knees, Asher braces himself for another blow.
Shea knows better than to intervene. She knows Asher is only in this situation because of his own obstinance. He’d threatened her to bring him here. He’d ignored her instructions to wait out of sight. But the way Lys is looking down at him makes her feel accountable.
And so, she steps out into the circle, breaking from the crowd.
“He’s telling the truth.” Her voice draws every glittering eye in the room. Lys’s stare is hard enough to pit her stomach. “Don’t hurt him.”
The ensuing silence rings like a struck bell. Nobody moves. Nobody breathes. Lit from behind, Lys looks less like a boy and more like a god. Ageless and imposing, the lines of him sharp enough to impale. He says nothing. Does nothing. He only stares right at her, haughty and cold.
She can’t look away, even now, when she wants to be furious with him. She’s drawn to him—so thoroughly captivated that she can no longer discern what’s natural and what’s chemical. Which feelings are a byproduct of her own brain, and which are a lingering effect of the feed.
She thinks of Cyrus’s sneering face, his threat in the ballroom: He doesn’t like you, Parker. This is just how he hunts.
Upon the hearth, the last of the embers cool to black.
There’s no light left in Lys at all.
“Everyone out,” he orders. “I’d prefer to continue this meeting in private.”