Chapter 42
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Ihave never met anyone so intently focused on ensuring their own demise. Do you think before you act? Or do you just operate on impulses? Like some sort of mollusk.”
The first thing I became aware of was the sound of Septimus’s voice. And even though it was insulting me, it still made me feel warm and protected, like a blanket.
A violent clap of thunder trembled through the earth. I opened my eyes blearily to see lightning arc across the sky, visible through several layers of torn fabric and broken beams and cracked glass. I was lying against something warm and firm. A bitter taste coated my mouth.
“A mollusk?” I croaked.
The sound of my own voice—weak and raspy—scared me.
Septimus’s face came into my field of vision.
I realized that the surface I was lying against was, in fact, him.
He was cradling me against his lap. He set down a glass flask, and I wondered if the strange aftertaste was because he had been treating me with whatever had once been in it.
The wound in my side, I realized, had been treated—and with powerful medicine, because it now barely even ached.
“Mollusks don’t have brains,” he said. “Seemed like an apt comparison.”
I wondered dimly if a mollusk was some kind of aggressive Obitraen rodent. But I said nothing, just stared into Septimus’s face.
He looked normal again. Normal-ish, at least. He’d cleaned himself up somewhat, and apparently had managed to retrieve our supplies.
His eyes had returned to that familiar cool mix of amber and silver, though the red ring remained around both irises, thicker on the left side.
If I looked closely, I could see the threads of red swirling toward his pupil.
I didn’t realize I had reached out until I found myself touching his face.
His skin was now cool to the touch. My fingers trailed over his cheekbone, and his hand fell to mine, wrapping around my wrist, so quickly that it seemed like second instinct.
His thumb swept over the sliver of exposed flesh at the edge of my sleeve, and it sent a jolt up my spine.
With it came a shockingly vivid memory of the orgasm I’d had grinding against him, his teeth buried in my throat.
My face, embarrassingly, heated. I was fucking blushing. I couldn’t remember the last time I had blushed.
But it was easy enough to avoid dwelling on that when I instead dwelled on the way Septimus had looked before it. A stranger wearing a familiar face. A step too close to the Bloodborn I had seen lost to their curses.
I licked my lips. Cleared my throat.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
A twitch at the corner of his mouth, barely there. But with it came a flash of fury that somehow seemed even more terrifying than the version of him I’d seen before.
“Sit up,” he barked.
I did. My head was spinning, and I felt weak, but otherwise normalcy was rapidly returning.
He crouched down before me. Before I could speak, his fingers pressed to my cheeks, holding my head still with a firm, gentle grip.
His brow was low and focused as he stared into my face, eyes searching; for what, I wasn’t sure.
My skin prickled with the force of his attention. More intimate, somehow, than the countless faceless trysts I’d had on the road. It was one thing to expose my body to a stranger. Another to have a vampire looking so deep into my soul.
Then he let out a long, low breath, his head dropping, as if in sheer relief.
I finally made myself speak. “What are you—”
“What the ever-loving fuck were you thinking?” When his head snapped back up, his eyes were fiery again, furious. He stood and began pacing. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that was? Did you stop to think before you offered up your goddess-damned throat?”
“And here I was thinking you were about to thank me.”
“I explicitly told you to leave. I shouldn’t have let that happen. I would have gotten it under control.”
I scoffed and got unsteadily to my feet. “Told me? You could barely speak. What, you would have preferred that I just let you wander off to go chase around soulless? And besides, I knew you weren’t going to kill me.” I hesitated. Then added, “Because I can’t die without Zefiah, anyway. And—”
“You don’t understand, Kyrene.” He snapped upright, eyes brighter than I’d ever seen them. Thunder clapped against the horizon with a deafening bang. “You don’t understand what could have happened to you. One thing to let some vampire feast on you. Fine. But I’m not any vampire.”
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Please, Septimus. Are we not past this ‘I’m such a terrifying—’ ”
“You could have been Turned,” he snapped. “Do you understand?”
I blinked. It was not what I had been expecting him to say.
“That’s not how Turning works,” I said, and even as the words left my lips, I realized how stupid they sounded. Still, they were the truth as I knew it. There was no such thing as an accidental Turning. It was a specific, intentional process.
What happened after that . . . well, that was less predictable. It was no small thing for a human body to go through that sort of transformation. Most died doing it. Not that most vampires, who only wanted their forever slaves, cared about that.
But the distress on Septimus’s face, suddenly clear as the stars on a cloudless night, was a far, far cry from indifference. He looked furious. No—he looked terrified.
“When are you going to understand,” he hissed, “that nothing about us is like other vampires? The curse changes us intrinsically. It makes our blood turn against us. And with that comes . . . unpredictability.”
“Are you telling me that your curse makes vampirism contagious?”
Gods, I hated how all those words sounded together.
His jaw clenched. He slid his hands in his pocket and turned to the broken window, watching the light and lightning and rain streak by.
“Think about it,” he said, with wry humor. He withdrew a cigarillo, lit it, and sucked in a resentful inhale. “Why do vampires Turn humans?”
This seemed like a trick question to me.
“For eternal slaves,” I said definitively.
He let out a scoff. “You are very cynical.”
“It’s not cynicism if it’s true.”
“Humans also love enslaving people, for what it’s worth.”
“Look, that wasn’t the question—”
He lifted one hand, a silver tendril of smoke trailing it.
“Fine, fine. Let’s say you’re correct. The benefit of a vampire slave over a human one is that they will live as long as you do.
They will remain eternally beautiful. But that isn’t true of a Bloodborn vampire, as you have seen.
What good is a pet that will one day become a monster?
Might as well keep them human. At least that way they can be food, too. ”
He turned around.
“And for the sake of argument,” he said, “let’s say there are other reasons that a vampire may Turn a human. Perhaps for love.”
I scoffed under my breath. Yes, I’d heard such stories. The kinds that drove foolish humans to chase infatuation with some beautiful vampire who was already licking their lips at the sight of them.
Still, after that thought came another. The memory of Sylina and Atrius, standing together in the sparring ring, arms around each other.
I said, “Atrius hasn’t Turned Sylina.”
“And he never will. He loves her too much. More than half of humans Turned die in the process. But even if it succeeds . . .” His face hardened. “No love should damn any soul to the fate that awaits the Bloodborn. And Atrius would die before he’d allow Sylina to suffer it.”
So instead, he would watch her die before him. Watch her age, while he remained eternally youthful. And in exchange, she would watch his curse consume him. I was no sap, but even I felt a pang of sadness at this tragedy.
“So, you understand, Bloodborn rarely Turn humans,” Septimus went on.
“Yes, we have more children than our Nightborn or Deathborn or Shadowborn counterparts. But hardly enough to satisfy the cruelty of a curse designed to inflict as much suffering as possible. The curse is hunger, Kyrene. It will take and take and take, sometimes without our consent.” He paused, then said, “Once it has progressed far enough.”
Those final words were heavy. I thought of the way he’d looked before he fed from me. Totally unlike himself.
He swallowed thickly and said, “My curse has progressed very far.”
Fear twisted in my stomach as the reality of what he was saying sank in. I looked down at my hands. They trembled slightly, and they were bruised and bloodstained. They still looked very human.
“So am I—”
“You’re fine.” He let out another long, smoky exhale. “No, you’re lucky.”
Relief crashed over me.
“I always am,” I muttered, and he whipped back around to face me.
“This is not a joke,” he said. “I take Turning very, very seriously, Kyrene. Because I will not drag another living being into the hell that we live. And you—” His teeth snapped shut, and he let out a breath between them. “You are too important.”
Those four words caressed my skin like his tongue had when he fed from me. Gentleness when I had expected hunger. Softness when I had expected pain.
He meant that I was too important for the task ahead, I told myself. So why did my chest feel this way?
I said quietly, “I didn’t know—”
He scoffed. “Words I never thought I’d hear from you.”
“—But I don’t regret it.”
“Ah. That’s more like it.”
I stepped closer, examining his face. I had been so relieved just to see him looking more like himself, but all the lingering effects of his curse now seemed so much more prominent.
The ring around each of his eyes. The red-black spiderweb crawl of his veins visible beneath the near-translucent pale of his skin.
They reached up his throat, brushing his jawline.
“Brought you back, didn’t I?” I said. “One might think you’d be more appreciative. Princes are so entitled.”