33. Vesper
VESPER
My eyes are so heavy when I try to crack them open, for a moment, I think Dox put grease on them again. I reach up to weakly wipe at my eyes, but there’s nothing there.
“Dox,” I grumble. “What did you do?”
“Dox is not here,” a heavily accented voice responds.
I force my eyes open as much as I’m able to—which isn’t much—and peer at the large praying mantis standing on my chest. Oh. Right. This is the Harrow. Dox hasn’t made it in yet.
Svetlana died.
My eyes pop the rest of the way open and I get a good look at the familiar currently looking at me like I’m insane. “You’re alive!”
“Of course, I am alive,” she says, her little arms shimmying back and forth. “If you are alive, I am alive.”
I scowl. “You were so dramatic. You told me to remember you!”
She giggles. “Do not be angry with me for seizing an opportunity, Umnitsa,” she chides, but then she reaches up and touches my face. “However, your tears for me are noted.”
She looks at me fondly, and though I can’t really tell if a praying mantis is smiling, I feel like she is. The link between us certainly feels like a smile versus the typical anger and bloodthirsty urges.
I blow out a puff of air. “You scared me. If I wasn’t worried about crushing you, I’d be hugging you right about now.”
She stands taller and skitters down to my lap as I sit up. “I will settle for a blade bump,” she says, offering her razor arm up to me.
Smiling I hold my fist in front of her so she can bump her arm against my knuckles. Only then do I notice the raw meat of my arm and my eyes widen.
“You were passed out,” Svetlana says. “But you called out to me in your sleep and I was able to spawn.” She tilts her head. “Sorry about your arm, but you did not wake from the pain, so it is a win, dah?”
“Will you two shut up?” Locke grumbles.
He’s lying on the bed beside me, his back turned to us so that he faces the wall. I reach out and move my hand along his side, almost as if to reassure myself that he’s alive. At my touch, he turns and looks over his shoulder at me. Our eyes lock, and something passes between us.
Relief? Fondness? I don’t know. But it’s something.
My body still aches, a reminder of the Minor Boss battle with the orca pod. The water had been numbing, but my fingers and toes are all normal-looking. There’s no way we weren’t effected by the icy water. We should be covered in frostbite. How are we so . . . okay?
“The warming potion,” Locke comments. “They forced us to drink potions when they dragged us on board.” He flexes his own fingers, as if he’d been thinking the same thing. “Apparently, they all but cured us. What it didn’t fix, the healing room did.”
I rub at my thighs. “I wish they could cure this ache,” I murmur.
“My thigh muscles are killing me.” How long had we swum for before the horned creature appeared?
I don’t know, but apparently, the safehouse healing room doesn’t work for fatigued muscles, only actual injuries.
At least the ache isn’t so bad that I can’t walk. It’ll just be annoying.
I glance at Svetlana, sizing her up. “So . . . a praying mantis can’t survive in the cold?”
“Of course not,” she replies. “I am a summer girl.”
“You’re getting blood on the sheets,” Locke murmurs.
I’d laid my arm on my knee and hadn’t even realized.
The white sheets are stained red where my arm had been sitting and I wince.
I hope that won’t be a problem. I’m gonna need to wrap the wound up.
I don’t have any more of the minor healing ointment from before, but I do have a strip of cotton cloth that will work as a bandage.
Maybe there will be a trader at this safehouse, too.
“Why doesn’t it heal, too?” I muse. “Everything else does.”
“A familiar wound is not the same as a regular wound,” Svetlana declares.
“It is purer, magical in some ways, and it can only be healed with time or an equally magical ointment.” She shrugs.
“Or perhaps, safehouses take issue with Beast Bound’s and their familiars.
I don’t actually know.” She snickers. “I sounded like an expert there for a moment though, didn’t I? ”
I snort. “You did. It’s okay though. Whatever the reason, I’ll address it later.”
I’m not wearing any clothing. Neither one of us are.
Everything had been soaked, so there was no way we could have slept in them.
Luckily, the clothes I’d been wearing in the ocean are hanging up around the room where they’d been able to dry.
Locke’s are scattered around as well, hanging wherever they were able to.
I press a hand to my forehead and rub, trying to remember what had happened after we were dragged from the water.
“How long were we out?” I ask. Everything is fuzzy. I can’t remember anything after watching Svetlana die in my hands.
“Three days, eighteen hours, twelve minutes, and forty-one seconds.”
My shoulders ease. “Cipher,” I breathe.
“I’m here, Vespera,” he answers. “I am always here.”
“We were out of it for three days?” I clarify.
“Yes. Almost four.”
I have enjoyed our banter . . .
He’d pulled back when we’d needed him most, and now here he is as if nothing had happened. My face hardens and the relief I’d felt at hearing his voice disappears.
“You left us,” I accuse. “You left me.”
He hesitates. “You had a point-zero-zero-three percent chance of survival—”
“It doesn’t matter,” I growl. “If I was going to die there, you didn’t have to leave. You didn’t have to abandon us for your statistics.”
Locke studies me. “Vesper,” he murmurs, getting my attention. I glance at him. “Cipher is just a machine,” he reminds me. “He isn’t human. We shouldn’t forget what he is.”
My throat tightens. I want to argue, to point out that Cipher is more than that and I expected more from him, but then I’d sound insane. Cipher doesn’t talk to Locke like he talks to me, and I’d thought . . .I’d thought . . .
“You’re right,” I murmur, shutting Cipher out of my mind. I think of a wall, layering it up piece by piece, until I can no longer feel him there. “I shouldn’t expect him to be there with me when I die.” I tip up my chin. “Cipher? Have the Harrow Gates opened?”
“No,” he answers out loud for us all to hear since he can’t speak in my mind. “The Harrow Gates are scheduled to open—”
“Good,” I say cutting him off. I stand and start pulling on my clothes. Locke watches me as I move, as I cover up my scars and mangled arm. “We should get something to eat and find something to heal my arm.”
When Locke doesn’t immediately stand, I raise my brow at him.
“Oh, right,” he says, climbing from the bed himself. I force myself to look away even though the temptation to look as he pulls the sheet off is strong. I give him my back and listen to the sound of fabric brushing against skin. “You can look now.”
I turn and find Locke still without a shirt.
My eyes trail over his broad shoulders and heavily muscled arms as he starts to drop the shirt over it.
It’s just a little shorter now after having used strips of it for bandages, so I get a glimpse of skin across his stomach every so often. I won’t lie. I live for that glimpse.
“Let’s go,” Svetlana orders as she flutters across the room and lands on my shoulder. Locke twitches at the sound and shoots her a glare. “I am starving.”
The room we’re in is sealed with a large metal door.
We have to spin a wheel to unlock it and then we have to step over a tall ledge out into a narrow hallway.
As we walk through the hall of doors, I can feel the sway of the sea beneath us, making my steps jerky as I try to keep my balance.
We round the corner and the ship opens out into a large room where tables are set up.
There’s an area where crewmen serve food, but unlike the other safehouses, there doesn’t seem to be a bar, not in this room.
Despite that, the same man from the previous safehouses stands behind the counter, a large white hat on his head, as he serves food on trays.
“That fucker has to be following us,” Locke whispers. “There ain’t no way it’s not the same guy.”
I shrug. “He wouldn’t be the only one following us,” I say, reminding him that we have a Leech on our trail.
We both grab a large segmented plate and get in line for food.
The first crewman slaps a strange meaty mixture on my plate and I stare at it.
When the second one gives me a Harrow Bar, I scowl.
I thought this place was supposed to have better food?
If I never saw another Harrow Bar again, it would be too soon.
“Excuse me,” I say to the man behind the counter. “Are you Billy or—”
“Billy?” he responds angrily. “I’m clearly Larry. Don’t confuse me with my brother. We look nothing alike!”
“Uh . . . Larry,” I say, raising my brow. “Sorry for the confusion. Could you tell us why the food is . . . well, why it’s not as amazing as other safehouses?”
Larry stares at me. “This is the peasant line, player. If you want fancy-smancy meals, you can go on up to the rich levels and see if they’ll let you in.” He sniffs, looking between the three of us. “Don’t hold your breath. They don’t let anyone below a Tier Three in.”
I scowl. “So, they get the fancy food and we get Harrow Bars?”
“That’s how it works, don’t it?” Larry grunts. “Be happy you weren’t here last week. We didn’t even have the Harrow Bars.”
At the end of the line, I get a single apple slammed onto my plate, bruised, but still edible. At least I can still have fruit.
Locke and I find a seat at an empty long table and sit on the tiny stools. Both of us stare at our plates hesitantly. Apparently, we’ve been spoiled by the other safehouses.
“What is this garbage?” Svetlana asks, hopping down onto the table and picking up one end of the Harrow Bar. “It stinks.”
“Harrow Bars,” I answer. “Luxe sends them to Dross for us to fight over.”
“Those bastards,” she grumbles, tearing the bar open. She takes a hesitant bite, and then makes a surprise sound. “Oh. This is not so bad, actually.”