Chapter 23
Karia
There is a man standing in my doorway as I slowly sit up in an unfamiliar bed.
Tendrils of moonlight glint off something silver in the man’s hand.
My own flies to my throat and I feel the smooth sponginess of a bandage.
Recognition comes on the heels of memories: Watching Sullen lose himself in stabbing a man to death.
His body covering my own. The way he carried me into this room and tended to my wounds.
The sleepiness that drifted over my mind as he stroked my hair back from my face but would tell me nothing and I couldn’t find it in myself to keep asking for answers I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
Cosmo.
It is Cosmo peeling an apple with a knife as he stands in the doorway, his green gaze locked onto mine.
Distantly, around me, I see marble flooring, closed curtains, white sheets, a door leading into what I think might be a bathroom. Vast space, no paintings on the walls, no dresser, a narrow, golden door that must be a closet.
But Cosmo… Even in the strangeness of this room, he is the thing that does not belong. I left him behind, at Serpent’s Emporium.
“What are you doing here?” I find my voice works even if my mouth is dry and my throat hurts. I clench my fingers in the silken sheets, just to prove I can. Just to root myself down.
“Eating an apple.” Cosmo uses his fingers and the knife to deposit a slice into his mouth.
The crunch of the fruit is loud.
Everything else in this place is so silent and cold.
I am shivering and when I look down, I see the black T-shirt I fell asleep in, after Sullen and I…
Sullen.
I look up at Cosmo once more.
“Where is—”
“Do not say his fucking name to me.” Cosmo’s voice is edged with promised violence. He lowers his hand, the one holding both knife and apple, and I take in his white pants, black jacket, collar flipped up toward his face.
“Sullen.” I say it carefully. Spitefully. Nothing makes sense and everything feels like a fever dream, but if I could find him, he would wake me up.
Cosmo enters the room.
He is tall and broad and his chin is dipped and his eyes gleam in what I suppose should be a warning—what, with the knife in his hand and his presence here at all—but I am fucking tired of warnings.
I flip back the covers on the bed, swinging my legs over the edge, my toes just grazing the icy flooring.
“Don’t,” he warns me, stalking closer.
I glance at the blade, no longer catching the moonlight from the hall. It doesn’t seem so dangerous in the darkness.
And what is Cosmo going to do?
Kill me?
I roll my eyes and start to slide from the bed, but he moves faster, dropping both apple and knife to the floor. I have a glimpse of the former rolling unevenly toward the door before Cosmo plants his fists on either side of me in the mattress, looming in my face, his nose inches from my own.
His presence feels warm, his cologne familiar, but his appearance in this bizarre night is like the prelude to another murder.
But did I dream that? Sullen, with the knife? Sullen, his gaze latched onto mine as he gutted a man who nearly gutted me?
“Cosmo.” I curl my fingers over the edge of the bed, holding on. “What is going on?” I try to keep my voice even, but even I hear the tremor.
Cosmo lifts his brows. “Why don’t you tell me, Princess?”
“Where is—”
“Who cut your throat?”
“It wasn’t him if that’s what you—”
“And your shoulder? Let me guess. He didn’t do that either?”
I frown, confused, but when I tighten my hold on the firm mattress beneath me, I feel the bruises light up, the ones from trying to tear down the door separating Sullen and I.
It feels like a lifetime ago. Time is wavy, bending, and so is place.
I don’t know where I am. Why Cosmo is here.
Is Maude, too? The others from the Emporium? What the fuck is happening?
“He won’t stop until you’re dead,” Cosmo says carefully, as if continuing a conversation I cannot follow along with.
“And now Mads Bentzen wants him a corpse, too. Let’s pretend he didn’t hurt you.
Let’s pretend you aren’t brainwashed. Your father won’t let him live and he certainly would never let you be with him.
In fact, he told me explicitly if I convinced you to let this all go, you could marry me. ”
I want to scream. This can’t be real. But all I say is, “That’s hilarious.”
Cosmo’s green eyes narrow. “I’m not laughing.”
“I don’t want to marry you.”
“And I don’t want you at all.”
It feels like he punched me in the gut with that, but it’s good we’re on the same page at least. “Then why are you here?”
“Because you were my friend. Because you were a girl I fucked. Because I give a shit whether you live or die, and that little freak isn’t going to put you in the ground.”
I swallow hard, trying to hide my anger. “Where is he?”
Cosmo doesn’t answer. He just smiles coldly at me.
“Where is Sanford?” I try. Was it his blood I saw first in the hallway?
“The old man? Did you know he is fucking insane?”
I blink slowly, pulling back a little.
Cosmo stays leaning over me, trapping me to the bed.
“What?”
His smile widens cruelly. “Did you know it was him who taught little FrankenStein that he should carve up his son to become a god?”
I shake my head once. The story Sanford told us, about Juliet, and the window, and how he didn’t bite the apple… “No, that’s not—”
“It makes sense, of course. For a while there, Sanford Rule believed he truly was Burbank Gates.” Cosmo snorts like it’s hilarious while my head fucking spins.
“Like father, like son, huh? It’s a good thing I’m here to save you before the grandson knocked you up.
” Cosmo glances at my stomach. “You didn’t let him, right?
” he asks, his voice lower as he drags his gaze back up to mine.
“I mean, he certainly seemed okay when I stripped him down naked, so I assume he already fucked you and let you see him. But surely you weren’t so stupid as to—”
“No.” I whisper it at first, but Cosmo stops talking.
“No,” I say again, staring down at my lap.
My exposed thighs, shorts shoved up from the way I’m sitting.
“No, Sanford said you were diverting Stein. You were going to tell them we took a flight to Florida. He said you were helping us and he… he spoke to you, didn’t he? ”
“Oh, he did, yes. That’s how I know all about his erection for Burbank Gates.
I demanded information for information. The man is very resourceful but I suppose everyone leaves their phones lying around now and then, don’t they, and calling me from your father’s was extremely intelligent because of course I picked up.
Gramps spies on everyone in Septem, did you know that?
He knew all about you and I. How I was going to fuck you before everything went to shit.
And I did agree that getting you away from Stein Rule was paramount.
I don’t trust Writhe not to give into Stein’s demands for your head, which will eventually come.
My priority is keeping you safe, no matter how you fucked me over.
But I’m not working with Writhe.” He laughs, shaking his head.
“My diversion was as much for me, as for you. I can’t compete with a whole ass cult, but no one knows you’re here, everyone is heading to Orlando like they’re taking some big family vacation.
It’s hilarious, really, how easy it was.
Or maybe I’m just that good at performing.
” He smiles, showing white teeth. Then he leans in closer. “I cried for you, in front of them.”
I don’t care about that.
I only think of Sullen, naked.
Alone.
More than scared, he would be humiliated.
“And what do you think of his scars?” I ask Cosmo, keeping my tone low, my voice strong, even as my head hurts, trying to understand his angle.
His end goal. “Sullen’s wounds? The words carved into his chest?
You saw them before, at the hotel, what did you think?
How can you say he’s the monster when you know what his father has done to him? ”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he did it all to himself, and I do think it’s a tragedy, either way. But if you think a person like that could ever be well-adjusted, ever treat you with any sort of respect, then you’re even stupider and more pathetic than I thought you were.”
My heart leaps to my throat and I slap him.
His head turns with the force, my palm stinging, but the smile hooked on his lips stays.
Then slowly, calmly, he turns back to face me again. Even in the darkness, I swear I can see the red on his cheekbone.
“You’re my friend,” I say quietly, curling my fingers into a tight fist, my arm still lifted between us. “For years, you’ve been my friend.” In my head, I hear Sullen. Friend? What the fuck is that? I push it aside and ask Cosmo, “What are you doing to us?”
He doesn’t answer for a moment.
Something shadows over his face.
His brows pull together, a muscle in his neck seems to jump.
He blinks once, twice. Then he says, “I think you did this all on your own, Karia.” His voice is softer.
Nearly breaking. “When you chose him, over me. After he hurt us both.” The pain in his words is real. I know him enough to understand that.
But I wouldn’t take any of it back.
Cosmo was a substitute. Sullen is real.
“So now what? You’re going to kill him?”
Cosmo frowns, as if he hadn’t thought of the idea before but despite what he may think, I am not stupid. “Well I had only planned to kiss you in front of him, maybe fuck you if I’m lucky, but now that you mention it…”
I narrow my gaze. “Stop fucking around. What was your plan when you came here? To rescue me? You keep telling me how stupid and pathetic I am, so I’m unclear on just what it is you drove all this way for?”
Cosmo straightens.
I feel as if I can breathe as he does, but I don’t move at all, watching as he stares down at me, hands in the pockets of his pants now.
His green eyes seem to glow in the dark the longer we look at one another, and finally he shrugs his shoulders and answers me with a lie. “One should never waste an opportunity for good art. I don’t know if you’ve seen this place yet, but it is incredible.”
It amazes me, how he makes the last word sound so awful.
He takes a step back, then another, until finally he turns his back to me, headed toward the door.
Does he truly expect I’ll just follow?
Maybe in another life I would have.
Maybe before Sullen, I was just a puppet.
But now…
I see the knife on the floor.
He left me with the weapon because he expects so little of me.
When he’s standing in the doorway, that’s when I move to grab it.
By the time he turns around, it’s already in my hand. A kitchen knife, nothing more, smaller even than a steak knife, but it’s something.
His gaze goes from it, to me, and I will myself to stay steady on my feet despite the fact I feel dizzy and nauseous after standing and moving so suddenly.
“You take me to Sullen now, or you’re going to have to hurt me.”
He cocks his head. “Is this foreplay? Because if I had known all this time you like it so rough, I would have really fucked you up.”
I clench my teeth but don’t speak.
Everything is a weapon. Even silence.
He smiles, lifting his hands then, as if to show me he means no harm. “Oh, come on, Karia. You know I wouldn’t hurt you.”
I don’t know anything anymore.
“Come on,” he says again softly, sounding more like the boy I used to trust. “I’ll show you.
I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want any of this.
I came all this way to save you. And I have so many things to tell you.
After you hear me out, then you decide what you want, okay?
” He speaks to me as if I’m a child and I loathe him for it.
But I don’t even know where I am, even if I can assume. I don’t know how I got here. Whose blood was in the hall. Who the man was that attacked me. The one Sullen murdered. I don’t know if I’ve woken up in a trap of my own making, of Sullen’s, Cosmo’s.
Duplicity.
Nothing makes sense and I desperately want at least one good answer.
“Karia,” Cosmo whispers, bursting through my thoughts. “I promise I won’t kill him, and I won’t hurt you. Just… Come to me, okay?” He extends his hand.
I think about swiping the blade across it.
I think about stabbing him how Sullen stabbed my attacker.
But I swallow down my nerves.
And I take a step closer.
And I reach for Cosmo’s hand.