Chapter 10
Sullen
Alight flickers on in the room beyond my hell, illuminating this malaise of a crypt.
It doesn’t matter.
In fact, it’s preferable.
As I wrap the silver necklace with the purple vial around Stein’s throat, jerking him back into me, it’s beautiful to watch his fingers reach up to struggle, attempting to get the metal away from his strangulation.
I rotate my own hands, digging the chain in deeper. No sound leaves his mouth, but a groan of agony comes from my own.
The pain along my abdomen is indescribable.
Strangely cold and aching, as if I have been hit with a fist wrapped in ice more times than I could bear to count.
Stein didn’t sink the blade all the way in; I only know because a man in a plague mask—I refuse to think his name—treated the wound while I was fully awake, lying on my back in the dungeon I have just stepped out of.
Glue, antiseptic. “You need antibiotics, a full course, and stitches, too, but…” The black beak lifted in the air, visible from the candles he lit to poorly stuff me back together, his gloved fingers along my wound as blood curved around my ribs, dripping to the floor.
“You will soon be dead as is. What is the point?”
My father laughed from the corner as he examined the splotch of crimson on his shoulder, where he touched the blade to his shirt, as if to remember his son in a stain.
The glue is not enough. The doctor knew. I can feel it, too.
It is as if my internal organs are pressing against my frozen skin, and now, as I try to murder my nightmare, my teeth clench together and an awful, terrifying dizziness seeps through my brain.
My eyes flutter closed.
No.
Do not become weak now.
I inhale through my nose as Stein twitches in my grasp, his body pressed to mine, his spine against my wound.
My hoodie is discarded somewhere behind me, my shirt, too, from the doctor’s added humiliation of keeping them just out of reach.
I could have found them after he left—he had to unshackle me, to care for me, after all—but it did not seem worth the effort in the darkness.
I am in pants, socks, my damp, high-top sneakers, nothing else, and in a sickening way, I am grateful for Stein’s useless corpus form shielding me from her.
I don’t know if she found the switch along the far wall to open my cell door, or if Stein wanted this confrontation to play out in front of his puppets, but she cannot see me like this, no matter the cost.
“If you do not move, I will pull this trigger.” Constance’s calm voice forces my gaze open.
Karia is standing with her back to the entranceway of the sitting room. The fire is out, but the pale yellow glow flooding the dungeon has its source there.
She is still in my shirt, the collar up to her jaw, the fabric loose and hanging on her frame.
Her chin is lifted as she stares at me, a brow raised, but just like with the guard from our first escape at the other version of this place, she doesn’t stop me, and she doesn’t speak.
Beyond her, Von and Isadora both form a human wall, preventing Constance—with his gun aimed at Von’s temple, only a few feet between them—and Arthur, at Constance’s back, from entering the cement and dark-walled rooms of terror.
I assume Rex is on guard elsewhere, maybe even sent to murder Karia himself.
I grit my teeth and force myself to focus.
I note Von has a gun by his side.
He tilts his head, the red of his hair bright from the light flooding before him. “You do that,” he says quietly to Constance, amusement in his words.
Isadora glances over her shoulder, her dark eyes shifting from Karia, to me.
We hold one another’s gazes for a moment.
I think of all the times I saw her with Karia, growing up.
She was never outright cruel to me—neither was Von—but unlike Karia, they didn’t try to bridge the divide.
I cannot blame them; I am forever ostracized.
But seeing her now, standing beside Von, preventing two of my tormentors from stepping closer for reasons I assume all fall back to Karia Waveria Ven, it fills me with a strange feeling.
Warm, heady, heavy.
Or perhaps that’s simply my previous blood loss and current predicament.
Because a moment later I hear Karia say my name and take a step forward, at the same time something seems to give way in the chain I am using to choke Stein.
His body shifts, I watch his arm arc back as Karia crosses the space between us, then something comes too close to my face and a sharpness drags along my cheekbone.
I startle but I don’t release the chain.
Still, my grip must become slack. Stein twists from my hold, turning to face me, then ducking under the necklace, his blue gaze holding a world of hell inside, brows pulled together, his complexion tinged with cyan, a red line around his throat, but he is still steady on his feet.
I am left holding the necklace in my bare fingers, the release of the metal stinging along my skin, as tightly and as earnestly as I tried to murder him. The pain across my cheek no longer registers.
What does is Karia.
She leaps for Stein.
Her arms come around his neck.
She is clinging to his back, dragging him away from me, a hoarse sound of frustration and rage and agony, all three, leaving her lips.
Stein staggers back a step, but I see it a moment before he moves.
He still holds the small scalpel’s edge in his hand, from the purple vial along my throat. It’s what I used to poison Cosmo. Thinking of his blood mingling with mine, along my face, causes my skin to itch, but imagining it mixing with Karia’s…
As Stein attempts to shrug Karia off, his free hand circling around her arm, bones beneath his fingers straining under his skin as a scowl of madness crosses his face, I stagger forward.
My steps are uneven, I push the necklace into my pocket, spots pop in front of my eyes, the dizziness grips me like the devil’s claws, and Isadora is lunging for Karia, too, but that gives Constance less of a barrier.
While Von turns to track Isadora’s movements, Constance smacks the gun in his hand against the side of Von’s temple.
A groan leaves his lips but he doesn’t stumble away.
He pivots instead, drawing his weapon and pushing it into Constance’s stomach.
But Constance has his own poised at Von’s head, the barrel digging into his temple.
Isadora freezes, no doubt sensing the movement behind her.
I don’t care.
I don’t give a fuck about any of them except for my girl, now darting backward, out of Stein’s reach, taunting him and luring him away from me.
Fuck, you stupid, beautiful, intelligent girl.
I grab the back of his neck, digging in what’s left of my nails.
“No!” Karia’s voice, raspy from fear.
She darts forward.
Stein’s devilish laughter licks the air.
He raises his arm even as I bar my own around his fucking throat, tugging him into me.
I marvel over the strangeness of it; I never fought back before.
Even now, it feels wrong. As if I am a cowardly child once more and he will soon shove my nose to the ground as he steps on my fingers, pinning me into place in that submissive, humiliating position.
My cheeks burn at the thought. The sensation contrasts sharply with the cold in my wound.
I think I might throw up.
Keeping my arm pressed to his windpipe, I reach for his lifted hand, knowing he will cut Karia with the scalpel if I don’t stop him, and that cannot happen.
Any imperfections she might believe herself to have are nothing but magnificence to me.
A scar would change none of that. But if I could give my life to stop her from experiencing any future pain in hers, I would.
Yet as I grab for Stein’s arm, my fingers crushing around his wrist, the light in the sitting room beyond goes out.
Abruptly, all at once, no flicker of a warning.
Then, in the heartbeat of stillness that follows, the utter darkness, a loud pop rings through the air, echoing in the underground, causing my pulse to skyrocket.
No one screams.
This is a room full of demons, used to hell.
There is only one angel among us.
But more important than the lack of a scream, though, a body doesn’t thud to the floor.
A gun went off, but no one was shot.
Not yet.
I need Karia.
I have to let go of Stein to get to her.
As I lift my gaze, still keeping my grip on him, his arm in the air as if he is waiting for some final crescendo, I see the blue of her irises.
She says nothing.
Does nothing.
But our gazes lock.
A shuddering of relief floods through me, warming the frigidness of my wound.
But a moment later, there is a slithering sound at my back. It’s enough to make me let go of Stein, thinking of another threat behind me. And if I go down, I do not know what Stein will do to Karia.
Fingertips graze along my exposed spine.
A hint of nails, digging in.
And a voice in my ear whispering, “Curre.”
Latin.
Run.