Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Holy fucking gods, everything hurt.
That was the first coherent thought to materialize.
I was on a hard floor. I rolled over, much to the very loud disapproval of my poor, mangled arm.
But I appreciated the pain. It made it easier not to think about the image that leaked through my closed eyes—a monstrous amalgamation of too many different burning fortresses and too many different dead innocents.
My fingers found Zefiah’s hilt easily and folded around it so tight they trembled.
There you are.
{I am always here.}
“Mother’s sake, what happened to you?” a shocked, unfamiliar male voice said.
“Not an exciting tale, it turns out,” Septimus’s voice replied.
A pause. The voice, lower, more worried, said, “Are you—”
“Leave us.”
Hesitation.
“Leave us,” Septimus repeated, more sharply.
I opened my eyes and sat up just in time to see a fair-haired man casting us a curious, skeptical look over his shoulder as he reluctantly closed the door behind him.
We were in a small circular room, clean but clearly old—a tile floor with a few cracks running through it, a desk at the center with a few pieces of parchment neatly stacked atop it, and a single small bookcase against the wall.
There was one wooden door, which our companion had just closed, and three metal arches lined the room, each covered by curtains. The one behind me still rippled.
Aethergates. But they looked different than the ones back home. More similar to the door Septimus worked on in the House of Shadow.
{We are not in Obitraes,} Zefiah said. {But we are also not in Oketia. Nor in any human kingdom I know of.}
Septimus stood. His back was to me, and his head bowed. He was working at a button on his sleeve.
“Where are we?” I asked.
My voice sounded pathetically weak.
“A small island, far off the coast of Obitraes.”
“A Bloodborn island?”
Septimus didn’t answer.
{It is Bloodborn,} Zefiah said. {An island to act as their hub of transport. They must do this often. Hijack aethergates. Befitting of leeches, I suppose.}
One of my eyes stung fiercely. I laid Zefiah on the ground and touched my brow. My fingers came away coated in blood and . . .
I stared down, brow furrowed, numb, at the fleshy substance on my fingertips.
Brains, I realized. That girl’s brains.
Vomit careened up my throat. I clamped my teeth hard to keep it down.
I didn’t want to speak. Yet the words came before I could stop them.
“What will happen to them?” I said. “The people back there? Are they all dead?”
Septimus didn’t turn around. “Likely. The Shadowborn will kill them all before the Nightborn take pity on them.”
He said it so casually. As if there was nothing at all notable about the deaths of a thousand innocents.
{This is no surprise,} Zefiah said. {The fallen ones do not respect life. Not even the lives of their own. This is the darkness of the world they have created.}
She, too, was matter-of-fact about it. And not long ago, that wouldn’t have fazed me. I was matter-of-fact about it, too. When Val had wanted to save those people chained up in the cultists’ manor, I had rolled my eyes as if she had been railing against the movement of clouds in the sky.
People suffer. People die. No part of it is fair. But it is how it is.
But perhaps my friends’ deaths had knocked loose whatever seal I’d built against that anger. Because I felt it now—fierce and uncontrollable, ripped apart like that child’s body.
I stood up, head spinning with the force of the movement.
“Just like that? Likely. Like you’re talking about the chance of rain tonight.”
His head turned, just enough to show me a sliver of his profile. “Would you expect me to be more emotional about it?”
The words were smooth, quiet. And yet they sliced through the air sharper than I’d ever heard his voice before, like he too had unsheathed something violent and raw that he’d been keeping at bay.
A feral part of me leaped at that, like a dog presented with a piece of rotten meat. Yes. Fight me. Let’s make it hurt. Make me angry at someone other than myself.
“I suppose not,” I said. “Humans are only livestock in the eyes of murderous animals, right?”
The words, as some part of me had known they would, struck their target precisely.
Septimus whirled around. His entire form was taut, his back straight, his eyes sharp, his expression still as glass. His once pristine white suit was now covered in blood—the black of vampire, the red of humans, intermingling like paint on a canvas.
“You know, Kyrene,” he said, “I have been watching you for a very long time. I’ve seen the way you butcher your own people while they regard you like you’re some kind of savior.
We don’t have to pretend with each other.
Monsters recognize monsters.” His lips twisted into a snarl as he approached me, step by measured step.
“At least I have reasons for what I do. I didn’t make the Shadowborn murder those people.
I didn’t make them torture them or breed them like cattle.
If you want to hate someone, hate them. Or maybe hate yourself for making the foolish decisions that put us in that room.
Don’t hate me for making the ones that got us out of it. ”
I let out a rough laugh, practically a growl.
“I’m supposed to say thank you when you tell me you engineered a war that took a million lives?”
Another step. His pupils were dilated, nearly swallowing the ring of silvery-amber color around them, and I noticed with a start that his left eye was flooding dark red—as if a blood vessel in it had burst, overtaking the whites of his eyes, spreading from his tear duct.
“Yes,” he hissed. “Yes. You would be on your fucking knees thanking me if you knew. I’ve saved this world from horrors you can’t even dream.”
“What a hero you are,” I sneered. “I don’t need to dream. I’ve seen it all. I’ve witnessed what Bloodborn vampires do to their prey. If you want me to stop calling you animals, stop acting like them.”
Suddenly, he was right in front of me, hand planted on the wall over my shoulder.
My heart beat quick in my chest, spurred on by a tantalizing mix of anger and fear.
His face was only inches from my own. He didn’t touch me at all.
And yet, I was more aware than I ever had been of my own human weakness.
For all my goading, I had never witnessed Septimus like this, feral and bloodthirsty.
Until now.
His lip was curled, his teeth bared. Red now filled his left eye, and had started on his right.
“You are such a petulant child.” I could feel his breath on my face.
“Blind to the pain of anyone but yourself. Blind to how much worse that pain could be. How old are you? Twenty-seven? You weep over ten years of suffering. My people have been suffering for thousands of years. We have made sacrifices that you cannot possibly understand. Friends, family, died so that we can undertake this mission. Do you know how many people sacrificed to put that weapon in our hands? That weapon you so carelessly let Srana take away from us? Every decision I have made is calculated. Thousands of them.”
His teeth were inches from my throat. Zefiah was in my hands, but if he’d decided to kill me, I wouldn’t be able to raise her quickly enough. I lifted my chin, a dare.
“So fucking noble of you,” I spat. “You want me to mourn your sacrifices? Mine were the ones in your collateral damage. The faceless sacrifices that you deemed acceptable. Mine.” My voice broke around the word, and in that breath, I saw them all.
Every dead body. Every tragedy that we were supposed to just accept as another harsh reality of this world.
He scoffed, the violent noise harsh against my skin. “Don’t pretend that you have moral qualms about it, Vindica Ultis. You only wish you cared, because then perhaps it would make you as good as the ones you let die.”
He leaned closer, pinning me against the wall. His mouth was a hair from my throat as he ran it slowly up, until his lips brushed my ear. And for a moment, it hovered there, his breath catching slightly, and my muscles tensed.
{Strike him!} Zefiah commanded, raging against my stillness.
But Septimus only hissed, “It won’t. Not for either of us. So let’s not pretend.”
And then, all at once, he was gone, the open door swaying behind him and his footsteps echoing down the hall.
I breathed a string of curses as I attempted to peel off my shirt.
It was so crusted with blood and guts and who-knew-what-else that it stuck to my every wound, breaking scabs and re-opening cuts.
My arm was so brutally mangled that I could barely move it at all, and certainly could not lift it enough to get my shirt off over my head.
I stared at myself in the mirror. One long, jagged crack sliced my reflection into two halves that didn’t quite match up. There was probably a metaphor in there somewhere.
I looked pathetic.
I had taken off my pants—equally repugnant—but the shirt remained a problem.
My body was so covered in wounds and gore that there was no way to tell which blood belonged to me and which belonged to others.
The sole of my left foot, the one that had been apparently stomping on a sharp rock for the entirety of my entranced walk to Kastivai, was caked in brown-red.
Scratches and bruises snaked up my legs like some kind of grotesque blossom tree.
My hair was half undone, my braid snarled and knotted and, of course, covered in brains.
I was disgusting.
This thought flitted through my mind, and then, for some reason, as I stared at myself, it echoed again:
I am disgusting.
{Yes,} Zefiah said sweetly, {but all things considered, it cannot be helped, can it?}
I had no snarky retort for her.