Chapter 12
Alina
He stared at me in the dark, his eyes so gold, they almost shone despite their filmy protection. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I knew his eyes turned this way when he felt intensely.
When I caught him touching himself earlier, his eyes were completely swallowed by the gold.
I had no idea why I offered what I offered. I wasn’t even sure exactly what I was offering. All I knew was that he was hurt, he hurt himself through his sleep, and gods damn him, but I believed him. I trusted his every word was true.
“A mated basilisk grows feral when separated from their mate,”I read in the book today. “It is not, as was suspected in the past, caused by violence. The anger and rabid need to maim and destroy come later and are only brought on by the profound, impossible to soothe, agony of loss.”
Somehow, what he said about his dream hit the very same place in my heart those words from the book did. I believed him, I felt for him, and I hated to be the cause of his suffering.
And yet, I had my own bruised heart to protect, too.
“Not in my bed,” I blurted out when he moved to stand. “Just in the room.”
I got to my feet as well, and Voss nodded solemnly. “Thank you. I understand. I won’t abuse your hospitality.”
A nervous laughter tore out of my throat. “What hospitality? It’s your house. I’m just a guest here.”
The look he gave me was so sad, I suddenly felt ashamed for saying what I did, even though it was the truth.
“This house is yours if you want it,” he said after a moment. “I’ll give you anything, Alina. All you have to do is ask.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just cleared my throat and went inside. He followed me, his claws clicking softly against the floor.
When I reached my bed, I looked around worriedly, suddenly uneasy. It was all good and fine to invite him in, but where the hell was he supposed to sleep? On the floor? I cringed at the thought. It was one thing when he chose to do that by my door, but quite another when I asked him to come here.
Voss spared me further embarrassment by settling down in a wide, comfortable armchair. It was built to accommodate basilisk tails, with a recess in the backrest right over the seat. While not a bed, it had to be better than the floor.
“Will it help?” I asked, stepping from foot to foot as I watched him uneasily.
I already regretted inviting him in. This was an important boundary, and now that I crossed it, I suddenly saw the enticing, terrifying, forbidden possibilities before me.
My body warmed at the implication of him being in my bedroom at night. I did my best to suppress it.
“Yes.” Voss’s voice was deep and quiet in the dark. “Thank you.”
“Goodnight, then,” I muttered, climbing into bed.
I settled in my spot in the middle of the sagging mattress, bundled in my blankets. But my eyes wouldn’t close, my breath wouldn’t deepen, and my heart didn’t stop hammering. It wasn’t fear, exactly, that I felt. More like a sort of—thrill.
Anticipation.
The armchair creaked softly when Voss moved. I was completely certain he was as wide awake as me. Darkness pressed in, my heart beat faster, my throat tightening. His question from earlier kept bouncing around my skull, itching and nagging for an answer.
Why do I care for him? What’s this strange thing between us?
Voss shifted again, his clothes rustling, and I breathed out with force.
“I do trust you, I think,” I blurted out. My voice was too loud for the stifling darkness of the bedroom. “But I shouldn’t. I beat myself up for being gullible. It’s exhausting.”
He was quiet for a moment, and I clenched my fists, wondering if I finally did it. Maybe he’d finally get angry now.
But Voss shifted again and spoke, more quietly than I did. “Why shouldn’t you trust me? Did I give you any reasons not to?”
I blew out a frustrated breath. “I wish you would.”
He snorted out a surprised laugh. I frowned, trying to collect my thoughts so I could tell him clearly how I felt.
“The man you killed,” I began, plaiting the blanket between my fingers as a tightness of barely scarred over fear rose in my chest, choking me. “I trusted him, too. And he was such a good friend. So kind. So generous. In hindsight, there were signs. People warned me about him in careful words. He’d snap at those who depended on him, or he might say cruel things. But he was never cruel to me and always had a good excuse.”
Voss was quiet, and I broke off, clearing my throat. It felt tight and painful.
“I was engaged to David, another man who worked on the same farm as I.”
The armchair creaked and fabric rustled, but Voss didn’t say anything to my revelation. I took a deep breath and decided to tell him everything.
“I didn’t love him, he didn’t love me. It was just that the farm gave better wages to married couples. We’d have some privileges, too, because people who settled down were thought to be more reliable and more likely to stay in one place. So it was encouraged. David was a good friend and when he asked if I’d marry him, I said yes. It was a year ago and I was twenty-two. All girls my age were already married.”
“What happened to him?” Voss asked quietly.
I stilled, the image of David’s lifeless body swinging from an oak branch by the road replaying in my mind. His corpse looked so gray and accusing in the murky light of the dawn when Liam dragged me there to show me.
“I did this,”he hissed in my ear while I choked on disbelief and grief. “And I’ll do it again. For every time you reject me, someone will hang.”
“Liam killed him.” I swallowed thickly, trying to dislodge the hard ball of emotion in my throat. “He became obsessed with me. I think he was unwell. Mad. And when I told him no, he first threatened to kill me and then did in David. He made it look like a suicide and went around telling people David killed himself because of me. He wanted me to be friendless and alone.”
My hand was on my collarbone now, scratching viciously. It was a bad habit I picked up after Liam took the only thing I had of my grandmother’s. She brought me up.
“He took everything,” I said quietly, the grief so deep, it felt like a spike piercing right through my chest. “I had this necklace that my grandma gave me. It was simple, just a rune made out of wood, hanging from a sturdy string. It was herfaz, the rune for protection. Liam tore it off my throat and burned it.”
It was just a thing, I knew. And yet, I sorely missed that rune, the piece of magic and my grandmother’s love. I used to play with it when I felt threatened or uncertain. Now, my fingers only found bare skin.
Voss’s armchair creaked as he got up. I froze, wondering if he was about to approach me. If he did, I wasn’t sure how I would react. I should’ve brought back our strict boundaries, I knew I should’ve. And yet, there was only so much loneliness I could handle.
He didn’t try to crawl into bed with me, though. Instead, he stood by the window, his face a black silhouette against the pale yellow light of the moon.
“I was terrified,” I whispered, that fear still fresh and queasy in my gut. “I had no one to turn to. And he… He didn’t really touch me but he told me… things. What he’d do to me once we were married.”
A low hiss made me flinch, but it was only Voss, standing rigid by the window, his tongue flicking out.
“One worker on the farm, an older woman, read to us in the evenings when we plucked feathers from geese or hens. And it was at that time that she started reading a sort of, well, romantic story. About a woman who married a monster through the temple. And it gave me this idea to apply.”
“Weren’t you afraid you’d get someone worse than Liam?” he asked quietly after a beat of heavy silence.
I snorted. “No one’s worse than Liam.”
My words still hung in the air when my ribs suddenly relaxed, my chest filling with the easy glow of certainty. Because I was completely sure it was true. No one was worse than Liam, and certainly not the quiet, patient Voss.
His voice was low and gentle when he asked, “So what exactly are you afraid of?”
I sighed, wishing I could just shine a light on the tangled mess inside me and unknot it once and for all. Instead, I had to pry each thread loose, one by one. It was painful, hard work.
“I’m not sure anymore,” I admitted. “At first… You killed him and, I don’t know. I had this reaction when everything inside me screamed, ‘It’s happening again’, and I went right into terror. But now… I just don’t know.”
Voss went back to his armchair, sitting heavily. A lonely, fragile part of me wished he’d try to come to bed, now. I wanted comfort. But that would blur the lines further and I’d be even more confused.
“I will never hurt you,” he said after a pause. “Have you read the book? I think it goes at length about how basilisks cherish and protect their mates. It’s in my genome, Alina.”
“Yes, I read that part.” And it seemed too good to be true.
Voss hissed out a sigh. “But I can’t promise not to get violent if someone threatens you. I don’t regret killing that man, especially now that I know what he did. I’d do it again, only, not as fast. I’d make him suffer.”
And there it was, the source of my confusion, two emotions mixing together. Fear, because the quiet menace in his voice echoed Liam’s, and yet also security, because the anger wasn’t directed at me. It wanted to wrap around me like a protective cocoon.
“I don’t really mind he’s dead,” I admitted. “It makes me feel safer.”
“Good.”
We were silent for a long while, but neither of us slept. I looked at the ceiling, thinking about why I really thought I should fear Voss. After all, he saved me, he married me, he brought me to his home. He gave me gifts and respected my wishes. What more could I want?
He seemed perfect.
And yet there was this fury living under his skin that I sometimes glimpsed in the jerks of his tail. There was that hunger in his eyes when he looked at me with rabid intensity. The book explained some of it, but I still had trouble understanding what it meant.
But it didn’t have to be so hard, did it? Voss was right here. I could ask him. Somehow, it was easier in the dark, when the warm blackness of the night hid us both. Night was the time for sharing secrets.
“There was this thing I read in the book yesterday,” I said softly, turning to face him, even though he was just a vague shape in the dark. “About how basilisks, um, mate right after meeting their, well, mate.”
I closed my eyes, embarrassed because the words felt clumsy and immature in my mouth. Normally, I had no problem talking about sex and I loved my bawdy songs, but with him, it was different.
Voss didn’t comment on my awkward language, making a low sound to encourage me.
“The book described a case of a basilisk who was separated from his mate before they could… have sex. And he went completely mad. Killed everyone who came near him, and then himself. The book said it was because of the incomplete mating. So I was wondering… what’s that about?”
Voss shook his head. “I’m not sure I should tell you.”