27. Karia
Karia
“There is a part of this house I like.”
“And does it have rabbits in jars?”
“Why do I feel as if I am never going to live that down?”
“Take me there.”
Isee precisely why he likes it, when we arrive after what feels like hours traversing the dark corridors of the house, little words exchanged between us.
Everything was unnaturally quiet, every creak of hardwood or scuff of his boots along marble rang loud in my ears.
But after we descended three flights of stairs, his hand on my elbow, guiding me along in a way I would despise from Cosmo but loved from him, we step through a gauzy purple curtain and into a wide space that is half-library and half-fever dream.
Both of us stop just past the threshold, but I feel him looking at me as I look at everything else.
Towering fresco ceilings etched with shades of lavender and gray and white, illustrations of round angels and heavenly skies drenched in storms, lightning bolts of deep purple dividing up the room just above our heads.
Silver enamel crowns the walls, themselves painted in deep violet, mirrors cluttered haphazardly here and there in spaces not filled with rows and rows of towering black bookshelves, tightly packed with a variation of volumes.
Small tables are clustered by leather chairs, others flanking velvet green couches.
There are blankets piled high on the latter, oozing shades of black and lilac, green and pink.
The hardwood floors are littered with rugs in all shades, but none bright.
There are no windows, the only light from a few lit lamps on the circular tables, glowing in low, lavender tones.
I wonder if they are always on here, permanently casting shadows on the reverie of the room.
There are no other entrances or exits—none visible, anyway—and although there is only the purple curtain behind us and high ceilings towering above us, it feels as if this expansive room is a shelter of some sort.
He might like it, but I feel an obsession growing deep inside my bones, staring at all the shades of a color I wasn’t even sure I enjoyed.
Perhaps it’s the pink blankets thrown in that really grab me, or maybe all the books.
The sense of calm, or the fact that when I inhale deeply, catching the scent of old pages and fresh earth, I turn my head and find Sullen—despite all there is to see here—staring only at me.
“Stein rarely entered this room. My mother decorated it. When she was here, she was in it. But now, it kind of reminds me of you.” He watches me from the black velvet chair, too much space between us.
I clutch the wine glass in my hand, legs curled up to my chest, pink throw over my body as I stare at him in the ethereal room, the two of us tucked into a corner near the back, books lining the space behind me.
“How?” I ask him, grateful we skipped talking about anything that came before this.
It is late, or early—I don’t know, and I don’t care—and there are so many things to discuss and question and dissect, and for one hour or one moment or maybe even, if we’re lucky, the remainder of the night, I want to talk about none of them.
I swallow a mouthful of the red Cosmo picked out and wonder if he has Sanford Rule under control. I wonder, too, if others are here. Maude and the rest from the Emporium. Did Cosmo command them here?
But it’s another thing I don’t want an answer to.
Not yet.
Sullen lifts his chin, staring down at me, his gloved hands on the arms of the high-backed chair.
He looks like a king, and he has no idea.
But when he speaks, I think he sounds more like a brat. “Can you stay away?” His dark eyes drift to the wine in my hand at the exact moment I take another drink, relishing in the way it burns down my throat.
I tip the glass up higher just to irritate him, arching my brow as I do. Finally, I lower it, fingering the stem of the glass, resisting the urge to reach for the bottle perched on the end table beside me, the soft lavender glow turning the black sofa a shade of deep blue midnight.
“I can,” I answer him as I hold his gaze. “But why should I want to? I have had a miserable day.”
He only stares at me blankly, expression unreadable.
“You drugged me,” I say quietly, feeling suppressed anger rising to the surface. Before, when he led me to a room to rest, I was too overcome with artificial exhaustion to question or accuse. Now, I am drained yet wide awake. “Again.”
“No,” he says, his voice strangely soft as he stares at me. It’s hard now to see the man who held a knife to his own throat, bowed naked on the floor. He looks colder. Distant. Different. “I didn’t.” There is a warning in his tone, but I don’t know who or what for.
“I woke up on the floor.” I make my own voice icy, despite the flush coursing through me now, causing my pulse to beat in my ears. Cosmo was right. I do need fucking water. How irritating. “I don’t sleep that heavily, Sullen.”
“You slept deeply enough last night,” he observes as my face grows hotter. “I touched you, traced your ribs, your arm.” He glances at my shoulder. The injured one. “I could have fucked you in your sleep. I don’t think you would’ve woken.”
“Why didn’t you?” I challenge, meeting his crassness head-on. Despite the ways I stood up for him and fought for him and cleaned up his mess, there are questions he owes me answers to. Maybe some truths I do want tonight, after all.
He doesn’t flinch with my words. “I was satisfied,” he says simply, a soft smile tugging at his mouth.
I feel my throat grow tight as I let my gaze drop to the black bandana on his throat, the red hoodie revealing the outline of his muscular body. “Who drugged me?” I force myself to ask.
A bone jumps in his jaw. “Sanford,” he admits, and it sounds like the truth.
A spike of irritation cuts through me but instead of speaking anything, I throw back the wine, then lean over to pour more.
“Karia,” Sullen whispers, and the ache in the way he says my name pulls at my heart.
But I don’t care. He can’t Karia me out of this.
I have woken up on the floor to a puddle of blood, nearly been decapitated, visited by someone I don’t think is a friend any longer—holding a knife in his hand, no less—and cleaned up piss from the man I think I might love, all in the span of one night.
I deserve to get wasted. I slosh the contents of nearly the entire bottle into my glass, then cradle it between my fingers like it’s precious, before I resume my position on the couch.
The scent of dark fruit clouds with the earthy, bookish air of the room and I keep my gaze on the blood-red liquid, but I don’t drink. Not yet.
He has sway over me even when I despise it.
I’m still going to swallow all of this though—I don’t waste alcohol—but maybe I can pause, if only for a moment.
“Why did you decide to come here? What did the two of you speak of across the room from me? Did he tell you he was going to drug me?”
Silence stretches, save for a groan of floorboards in the cold, quiet house.
I glance upward at the high ceiling, the lightning bolt and night sky arching over us in shades of plum and violet and lilac. Is someone moving up there? Or does this peak over our heads reach to the roofline?
I think it is probably extremely late night and early morning both, but with no windows, I have no sense of time, and in the purple glow of light as floorboards from somewhere creak once more, everything feels eerie.
Sullen’s silence adds to that.
I dip my head and take a drink. I close my eyes and don’t stop.
I hear Sullen shift on his throne, then he says, “Karia, enough.”
I smile with my mouth still around my glass, but I don’t listen to him. He is not my father, and that man didn’t choose me anyway. No one did in the room Sanford vanished from. Not even Sullen himself.
I keep drinking, the burn nearly undetectable now. It warms my lower belly, but what I savor most is the freedom I find in it.
Silence rings out around me.
Only the sound of me is audible in the room, swallowing poison. But this time, at least it’s with my own consent and power.
“Are you doing this because now you’ve seen me, I am too disgusting to spend any time with unless you’re drunk?”
I nearly spit out the wine.
I lower the glass to my thigh, over the blanket, my eyes wide and lips parted as I curl my fingers into the pink, velvety-soft fabric. “Are you joking?”
But he doesn’t look as if he is, dark eyes locked onto mine, his ivory skin cast in hues of lavender, deep brown hair tinted with the color, too.
It suits him, purple highlights among his strands.
I almost want to tell him, a smile forming on my lips, but then I remember precisely what it is we’re talking about.
I roll my eyes when I realize he hasn’t answered me, then take another sip of wine, holding his gaze as I do. Taking pleasure in the way his eyes narrow as if he would love nothing more than to punish me.
I wish you would.
“Your insecurities bore me,” I say softly, although I don’t mean it. I find them endearing, if wholly unfounded.
He doesn’t react to my words as I twirl the mostly empty glass in my hand, watching him watch me.
“So you won’t tell me? What you discussed with your dear old grandfather? Is he still alive?” I make a show of glancing around the room, as if I will find Sanford Rule somewhere among the purple. “Did he leave? Or do you even know what Cosmo did to him?”
Still, no reaction.
It isn’t fair.
I want to fight.
I want to scream.
I want to kiss him.
I don’t want to know who he killed just as much as I do. I don’t want to discuss his room, the urine that warped the floors, his breakdown in the corner, the lock outside of his door; I want to discuss it all.
I want to claw out of my own skin just to slip into his.
I don’t know what happens from here, I don’t know where Cosmo is, or Sanford, or why the former even came at all.