Chapter 21
Karia
Sullen is watching me. I can’t see him, but his gaze is a physical, icy thing, a serpent wrapped around my throat. Yet when I claw at my neck, trying to ease the chill, I only cut my own skin. I open my mouth to scream but frigid air fills my lungs like ice, freezing any sound I might make.
My hands are their own, an entity no longer belonging to me. But it’s my nails scraping against my flesh.
I cannot stop clawing at my own throat.
It’s as if a shadow has infiltrated my body, my bones are breaking with the inky darkness of it, a snake shedding its skin only to climb into mine.
Warm gore oozes sludge along my collarbone.
I want it to stop.
I open my eyes wider, straining them against my sockets, desperate to see.
There is only darkness cut with razor-sharp pain.
But it’s me doing the desecration, all of it, everything, and Sullen watches from my cells.
Deep in the marrow of my bone. He isn’t the shadow of a snake, the flimsy blink of a specter.
He is more profound, buried under skin and blood.
Burrowing in my veins like a disease. He’s forcing me to mutilate my own throat and—
I choke on something wet. Hot. The taste of iron floods my mouth before white spots like ash burst in front of my unseeing eyes.
How could you? I thought we… I thought you…
“Don’t forget, you asked for this.”
I inhale.
I awaken.
My eyes are open to something more than black.
There’s blood all over the floor.
The only light is from the moon, slicing across smoky marble. Thick, wet streaks of crimson.
I see it all from a low vantage point. Hardness beneath my cheek. My chest. My thighs.
My mind drifts to Sullen, his mouth on mine. The way he held me in the bed at Dreary, neither of us showering the other off.
Sleep came easily.
Then there was something else. The taste of coffee on my tongue. Sullen’s eyes watching me drink it, his pupils brighter than I’d ever seen. A moment I thought he might kiss me again in the light of day but he didn’t and… there was a knock on the door.
Then… what?
My head hurts.
I realize it as my limbs begin to tingle. As the scent of iron and rot fills my nose. The silence pounds against my ears. The sensation of nausea rolls in my belly, pressed into the hard marble floors.
I try to push up, palms planted beside me, elbows bent. I’m too tired, too weak, too shaky.
I blink in the dark, noticing ornate baseboards carved with filigree. The gold in the white walls glints in the moonlight.
Something about this is familiar. Not the place, although it has a level of opulence like my own parents’. Like everyone belonging to Writhe lives in. But the familiarity is something else.
It’s this… sensation in my belly.
The pounding of my temples. Dry mouth, aching body, sluggish limbs.
I’ve been here before. Done this dance. I know this feeling.
And the moment before it clicks, I hear footsteps. Harsh and pounding, vibrating beneath my cheek along the floor. Fear blankets me but I can’t turn my head to see who is coming and nothing but high walls, a half-hidden window covered in golden curtains, and a bloody floor can help me now.
My heart races and I think of what I just dreamt: Sullen, buried in my skin. Tattooed along my bones.
If you’re in so deep, where are you now?
There’s no answer but a moment later, there’s pain.
Searing at my scalp, crunching along my vertebrae as my head is wrenched up, fingers speared in my hair, pulling at the roots.
There’s a shadow in my periphery as I open my mouth to scream, my fingernails uselessly clawing at a floor I can’t press away from.
But just like in my dream, I cannot make a sound, and a second later, a cold blade is pressed to my throat.
I know it for what it is as a knee comes to my spine, crushing my hip bones to the marble. What else would be cold, metallic, held by a hand snarled so viciously inside my hair?
I want to believe I’m still dreaming. But everything feels shockingly real without the distorted, wavy quality of sleep.
The blade slices into my flesh, but not in a quick swipe. It’s a cut of force, pressing deeper into my skin and not simply vertically across, like I’ve seen in movies. I do not know if this is good or bad, for my survival.
I try to move my limbs. Push upwards into my palms. But everything is clumsy and messy and sluggish from some sort of sedation and I cannot fight back.
Sullen? Where are you?
A horrible thought chokes inside my brain.
What if this is him?
He is always threatening to kill me. Maybe I got it wrong. Perhaps he was never going to let me survive long, after he had a true taste of me.
But we didn’t even get that.
What we did at Dreary Inn, that was child’s play. I could show him more. Take him higher. I could fuck him harder.
I open my mouth to tell him just that, but I am still not certain he would hold me this savagely.
I am stupid, for thinking so.
Fucking. Stupid. Just like he said. Just like everyone believes me to be. I should have been more obedient. I should have let Cosmo take him, back at the hotel chain. I should have—
The blade digs in deeper. I feel wetness curl down my throat.
I have no sense of what I’m wearing, and with the knife where it is, I cannot look down to see, but the warmth of my own blood snakes over my sternum, lower still, rolling over my belly.
I gag, making a wretched sound. It is humiliating that it is the only audible noise I can force out.
The bodily reaction forces the knife the smallest measure deeper into my skin.
Will he decapitate me? Am I another animal to add into his jars?
“Sullen.” I say it aloud this time, and my voice is hoarse and thin and pathetic but at least it comes out as I claw my nails against the marble floor. “Why?”
The knee pressed to my spine deepens and a whimper leaves my lips. I am bent in the most painful way, my head wrenched up, my body prone, back curved.
A voice whispers in my ear, “Why not?”
It is not Sullen.
Relief blooms in my chest.
A ragged cry chokes from my mouth, and I do not care anymore if this person kills me. At least it wasn’t him. At least he did not betray me.
Warm breath caresses my lobe.
I close my eyes.
I don’t know if this is real, but I force Sullen Bram Rule into my head.
In my mind, I hear the noises he made last night—was it last night?—the way he looked at me as if I was god.
I could have made you feel even better than that, you stupid boy. A smile curves my lips. Warmth oozes to the hollow of my throat.
This was never going to end well anyway.
Pressure builds behind my eyes.
I think I might love you.
I want to tell him, but it seems as if it is too late.
Perhaps this is a dream after all, and when I wake, I will scream it at him. I think I might love you, you stupid, frustrating, demented, annoying Monster Boy.
Mine.
You are.
I inhale through my nose. The tang of my own blood—and maybe the smear on the floor—floods my nostrils.
What a shitty scent to die to.
I think of how Sullen smells instead. Black roses, earth, sandalwood.
He is so fucking divine.
Stein is only jealous he cannot reach the level of godhood his son already possesses.
The smile curves higher.
The blade digs deeper.
My pulse pounds all over my body, but I don’t try to fight anymore. Either this is real, or it isn’t, and soon, I suppose I will find out.
“Stein told me to keep you alive,” my attacker whispers. “But I have no use for such breakable things.” He presses the blade deeper.
More blood flows. It feels like a gush now.
I think I am going to die.
I force myself to imagine Sullen’s eyes in my head.
I will end with him in my mind.
I will never forget you.
My own beating pulse grows deeper. Louder.
It sounds like footsteps.
How strange.
I almost want to laugh. I try, but it is a strangled sort of sound that leaves my lips instead.
Then my heart stops beating altogether.
Or is it the footfalls?
Something is jostled at my back.
I am unceremoniously released, my cheekbone colliding with the marble floor, the pressure on my spine at once gone.
Adrenaline surges through my veins.
I turn over, my body obeying me once more as I lean up on my elbows, straining my gaze in the moonlight.
Sullen is on top of a man who is now holding the blade to his throat, just over his white bandana.
Sullen’s hand is pressed over the man’s face entirely, his fingertips curled in, palm jutting against the man’s nose.
My monster boy has his chin lifted, eyes downcast in a blank, dark stare, other hand wrapped around the man’s wrist, trying to prevent his own throat from getting cut.
“Sullen.” I scramble upright, unsteadily getting to my feet. The blood seems to leave my head in a rush and I am forced to crouch over, hands on shaky knees. I think I might pass out, the way black spots burst before my closed eyes as I try to breathe so I can help Sullen.
“Do not,” he snarls, and I know he’s talking to me. “Do. Not.”
I can’t help but smile, despite all of this. “I don’t listen to you,” I whisper.
A grunt comes from the man on the floor.
I take another deep breath, inhaling iron, feeling my own blood roll down my throat, but it does not seem I have suffered a fatal injury.
I stagger toward the struggle on the floor, only a foot away.
The man beneath Sullen is straining to cut him, veins stark against his white skin under his short, dark sleeves.
Sullen’s palm is still over his face, then Sullen lifts his knee and slams it into the man’s groin.
His body jolts beneath my boy, a muffled cry of agony leaving his hidden mouth, but he lifts his upper body, bringing the shaky blade in his hand closer to Sullen’s throat, Sullen’s strength torn between crushing the man’s face and gripping his wrist.
I take another step but my body is trembling from shock or fear or confusion and I ungracefully sink to my hands and knees. It doesn’t matter. I will crawl.
I start to do just that, only inches from the man’s head of dark hair now, when Sullen’s gaze lifts to mine.
My breath catches at the emptiness of his expression.
But he doesn’t reprimand me.
Instead, he takes a breath and releases the man. Drops his hold from his wrist, his hand from his face.
Immediately, this allows the man’s reach for Sullen’s throat to connect.
The blade slices along the bandana, a white strip of fabric drifting lazily to the man’s torso in slow motion, eerily at odds with the situation.
I open my mouth to scream, frustration and horror mounting like fire in my body. My arm lifts as if of its own accord toward Sullen, but before I can tell him to stop being fucking stupid, he smiles at me.
Then he grabs the blade from the man’s hand, on the sharp side.
He is wearing gloves, and I do not know if the knife cuts him, but either way, the man is surprised enough that Sullen is able to yank the weapon away.
He flips it deftly in one hand, so he’s holding it correctly, and then he arcs his arm in the air as the man attempts to get out from under Sullen straddling him. But before he can do much more than lift his torso, Sullen drives the blade downward.
It connects to the man’s stomach.
His body jolts as his hands come to the wound.
I don’t look down.
I stare at Sullen, staring at me.
He pulls the knife out.
The man is screaming, but it’s hoarse. Strange and warped.
Sullen stabs him again, through his hand this time.
My mouth goes dry as I stay on my palms and knees, my hair in my face, blood curling down my throat while I watch Sullen stab the man a third time. He does not look away from me.
And again.
The thunk of the blade into the body is disturbing, and it only grows more eerie with each attack.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
The labored breathing of Sullen’s victim fills the air. It sounds wet, dreadful, strained.
Sullen stabs him again.
And again.
The man is flat on his back, hands still over his abdomen, but I don’t let myself take in any more detail than that.
Besides, I’m trapped in my monster’s gaze.
I lose count of the wounds.
It doesn’t seem as if Sullen is cutting into unbroken flesh anymore. I imagine this is what a butcher shop sounds like. There is nothing but meat beneath Sullen now.
He keeps going.
He doesn’t stop.
Blood flecks along his face, but it’s more visible over the white bandana.
He doesn’t look away.
After what feels like days, he suddenly drops the knife. It clatters to the marble floor with a crescendo.
He crawls over the man, dragging his own knees through blood and guts without care, no reverence for the corpse.
He crawls to me.
His gloved hand comes to my chest, shoving me back.
He is not gentle.
Whatever he is feeling, it isn’t careful.
Willingly, I lie on my spine.
The charnel scent around us is sickly-sweet, iron and salt and death.
And Sullen collapses on top of me, as if he is shielding my body with his own.
My face is hidden under his chest.
He covers every inch of me, with how much bigger he is than I am.
I don’t move.
He is breathing hard over me, his body trembling.
I close my eyes.
I stay still for him.
I do not think this is a dream.