Chapter 13 #2
“A game will soon be played,” she croaks.
“Where winning is not and losers are flayed. For the strings of death are not meant to be tugged, yet a Master of fraught will find the plug.” A shimmering white light swallows the entirety of the woman’s eyes, and her words grow more erratic, her voice shifting into a shrill song.
“Dark. Light. A jagged mark. To you, dear girl, a good place to start. Restore. Reborn. Reignite. Relight. Remember, child, there is joy in the Night. A father. A king. A murderer. A son. The two who walk now will never run.”
I rear back, but the woman grips me with her other hand, digging her nails into both my shoulders, drawing blood.
“What are you saying?” Pain sparks down my spine from her puncture marks, and I clutch her wrist and attempt to pry her off me. Yet her fingers dig deeper into my flesh, refusing to let go.
“My tongue is tied not to my Master, but to… to…” A groan gargles in her throat.
“Dispel. Attacker. Lord. Master. Actor. Restore.” The glowing dims in her eyes, the silver flickering before fully saturating her irises once more.
She pants in wheezing breaths, and her gaze widens as if she has only just now realized where she is—like she has suddenly come through a hazy fog of some sort.
Her eyes dart wildly around the area before settling on me.
The lines of fear wrinkle her expression.
She digs her nails deeper into my skin, and I suck air between my teeth from the shooting pain.
As the tips of her fingers saturate with crimson, her stare drifts farther and farther away—like she is viewing something miles in the distance.
“My curse is I See free but speak in chains.” She whispers the sentence, a sudden sadness clinging to her manic words.
“And bound I have been, which has made me insane. I have Seen it all, yet am spelled by silence; it is not who you think perpetuating violence.” Her features scrunch together, as though pained yet defiant.
“Your blood has now stained my skin; I told you more which is my sin.” Clicking noises echo in her throat, and she begins gasping for air.
“Begin in a room where illusions lie. Preferably an item that has gotten you by. There the clock will begin to tick down. In the heart of darkness, you will be found.”
The black veins framing her eyes suddenly crawl forward, until they spill over into her scleras, overtaking the bloodshot stain as darkness leaks from ruptured blood vessels, pooling her gaze into an obsidian slate.
She pulls a dagger from somewhere beneath her dress, and without a sliver of hesitation, she cuts her tongue from her mouth and drops the spongy pink muscle to the ground as if it is nothing more than a discarded piece of trash.
Black blood spews from her lips at an alarming rate, and shock rears through my muscles, paralyzing them like a poison.
I shake my head violently as I attempt to grasp the situation in front of me, but my shaky hands aren’t sure what to do.
As I watch her body overflow with black veins and collapse onto the ground—her limbs freezing mid-movement as an inhuman stillness falls over her—all I can do is stare at her corrupted wielder’s mark.
“Tell me again what the woman said to you before she cut out her tongue.” Casimir paces in front of me, anger pouring from his body like rain from a stormcloud.
Once the woman passed, everything sort of happened in a blur.
Casimir appeared seemingly out of nowhere, his eyes lined with a terrifying rage and marked by a wild gleam.
He told me he sensed magic that didn’t belong in his home, and given the elaborate protection spells supposedly in place, he informed me that should have been an impossibility.
The sequence of events following his arrival all seemed to have happened within a blink. Guards staggering in. The body being inspected. Casimir escorting me to some atrium nearby so he can interrogate me. I’ve barely been able to process a thing.
I huff a sigh and strategically repeat my conversation, only offering him bits and pieces.
“A game will soon be played,” I repeat. “Where winning is not and losers are flayed. For the strings of death are not meant to be tugged, yet a Master of fraught will find the plug.” Casimir’s pacing quickens, and my eyes glide back and forth, following his movements as I continue.
“My curse is I See free but speak in chains. And bound I have been, which has made me insane. I have Seen it all, yet am spelled by silence; it is not who you think perpetuating violence.”
He halts, squaring his shoulders to me. “And that is all? You are being truthful?”
I dip my chin. “That’s all she said.”
Casimir drags a hand down his face. “So many questions,” he mutters under his breath, seeming to be talking to himself. “So much to unravel.”
“Tell me about it,” I grumble pointedly. “In fact…” I kick off the wall I was leaning against and stride for Casimir, plunging my finger into his chest the moment I’m close enough to touch him. “Now would be a great time for you to explain this place and its people to me.”
Casimir tilts his chin to stare at me, his amber eyes bright and piercing as flecks of gold swirl through the rich color.
“You mean for me to explain the place and the people you so begrudgingly look down upon?” His voice bites like an animal as his gaze screams with silent exhaustion.
“You wish for me to divulge their history because now that someone has sacrificed their life to help you, now you wish to understand them?”
My brows twitch at his choice of words. To help me? Still, I don’t comment on that further. “No,” I argue instead, caught off guard by his sharp, abrasive tone. “It’s not like that. I just—”
“You just what? Suddenly have an entirely unrelated interest in the people I have been asking you to speak with?” His chest rises and falls as he glares at me.
“Only when we bleed do we think to stop cutting. Only when the world is choking does it take a moment to breathe.” Casimir shakes his head, his upper lip curling.
“Irreplaceable is the price, and a sacrificed life always seems to be the currency.”
“You spew words against humanity as if you are so far above us all. But you’re no different.
You have kidnapped me. Held me captive against my will.
Murdered my friends. Committed unspeakable atrocities.
You even betrayed Sitara, the woman you claimed to love so dearly in that damn journal of yours.
Stole her happiness away by sabotaging her love for another.
” Anger roars to life in my chest. “You are the worst parts of humanity given flesh. Why would I do anything you ask?”
Casimir’s expression is unreadable as he studies me.
Without averting his gaze, he takes a slow, prowling step toward me.
Then another. And another. He pinches my jaw roughly between his fingers and jerks it up toward him, leaning down until I can feel his breath against my cheek.
Still, I do not balk, nor do I let the fear slowly crawling up my spine reveal itself on my face.
I will not cower. I will not yield. I will not falter.
And I certainly will not let him win.
“I have plenty of demons within me,” he says in a low voice, his fingers tightening their grip on my jawbone. “But I assure you, there are far worse demons out there than the ones living inside me.”
Unsure of how to respond to his words—a nagging feeling in my chest telling me he isn’t wrong—I hold his eyes in silent defiance while a scowl creeps over my lips.
We remain gridlocked like that until our heartbeats fall out of rhythm.
He uncurls his fingers from my skin, dropping his hand back down to his side.
Casimir recedes a step, running a hand through his dark hair and jerking his chin away from me.
“You look at me like some monster who needs to be caged.”
“Sometimes you behave like a monster in need of caging.”
He only glances at me, his eyes softening into their normal tired expression once more. “I am no threat to you.”
“But does that mean you’re a threat to everyone else?”
His silence sings the song of the guilty.
Finally, after our anger has melted away and nothing but hunched shoulders remain, Casimir lifts his gaze from the floor. “Let’s be on our way,” he says, his voice settling back into its gentle, regal sound. “You still have to enter the Veil this evening.”
“Why are you so determined I enter the Veil for you?” It is a question I’ve been wondering since he first told me I would be entering the Veil once a week. A question made more prominent over this past week as he continuously dropped reminders and comments about it in passing.
He offers me his hand, but I reject the gesture by merely staring pointedly at it. He drops it back down to his side with a sigh. “There are many reasons you must enter the Veil. Some are for my own selfish purposes; others are not. You will learn them all in due time.”
“Allegedly,” I grumble.
“You will,” he reaffirms. “The Veil is an incredibly powerful place that abides by laws transcending our own. There is a reason Veilreaders are highly sought after by kings and upper noble houses. Though the art of it can be more fickle than visions given by Seers or Diviners, Veilreaders can see matters of the past, present, and future if they are skilled enough. But the mark of an especially gifted Veilreader is one who can bend the Veil to their will. It is a once-in-every-century gift.”
“Do you have that ability?”
“No,” he answers. “But you do. I’ve already seen it; the Veil responding to you in uncommon ways.”
I remember the second time I encountered that voice in the Veil.
The voice ultimately belonging to Casimir.
The Blue-Horned Adder’s venom was seeping into my veins, spinning my mind into a haze of delirium.
As I wandered deeper into the world of smoke and mist, I remember images emerging like light through a cloud.
The Veil responds to you, he had said to me at the sight of it.
I tug my bottom lip between my teeth, not sure what to make of that. “Is it…does it have anything to do with the magic you and I possess?”
He shakes his head. “We can manipulate our magic in such a way that allows us to enter the Veil, but that does not guarantee the Veil will show us anything. Does not mean we can make its colors intelligible. It especially does not imply it will respond to either one of us.”
“Yet it does to me…”
“It does. So, I will make sure you know how to use that gift. Are properly trained, so that one day you might use it to your benefit.”
“Why?”
“Because it is what I’ve decided.”
I suck on my tooth. Why must conversations with him always be so cryptic?
“How is it you know so much about the Veil?” I ask, pivoting. “I thought Veilreaders kept the art mostly secret, passing knowledge down only to those who show signs of the ability.”
“Once upon a time, I became close with a woman from the Izavarda bloodline, and she provided me with extensive knowledge. She…” His eyes soften. “She was a remarkable woman, and one of the greatest Veilreaders this world will ever know.”
“A legacy bloodline,” I point out, despite being sure he is well aware of the bloodline’s status. Still, the tender sincerity of his voice forces me to pause. “What happened to her?”
The poignant curves of his smile grow more prominent. “I’m not sure,” he murmurs. “But whatever it was, I hope it was gentle and quick.”
I study him, finding myself filled with more questions, far different than the ones I’ve been overflowing with. “How long ago was this?” My voice escapes in a whisper for some reason.
He slides his amber eyes to me; they are filled with quiet torment. “Over four-hundred years ago.”
The shock of hearing how long he has lived still jolts my system. “How? How are you still alive? And immortalized as a twenty-something-year old man at that?”
He tips his chin into the air, glancing out the glass domed roof above our heads. “Because a scorned heart does not wither,” he answers, a contradicting softness coating his words. “It burns.”