17. Leah
Leah
“You’re not paying attention,” Syrus sighs as I lose my balance and hit the ground. We’re back in the courtyard, training, only today I can’t seem to do anything right.
“I am,” I grind out, biting my tongue so I don’t say something I’ll regret, throwing up my mental walls so I don’t think anything I’ll regret either.
“Then tell me exactly how ripping your attacker’s clothes apart is going to keep you alive?” he asks, holding out his arm where his shirt sleeve is hanging half-torn off his shoulder.
I drag myself back to my feet. He knows as well as I do it was an accident.
I’d been trying to yank his arm backward; instead, I only managed to grab a fistful of fabric.
I didn’t even pull that hard, but the sleeve ripped from its seam as easily as tissue paper.
Seems to me like that’s on him for wearing something so flimsy.
“I miscalculated,” I huff in my defense. In truth, I have been distracted. I woke up in a foul mood I can’t shake, and having Syrus barking orders at me and kicking my ass all morning hasn’t helped.
Last night, I dreamed of Evie for the first time in a while.
I don’t think it was a bad dream—I barely remember the details—but it gave me that horrible twist in my stomach whenever I remember I have no idea how she is.
Then this morning, I checked myself over in the mirror, looking for some sign that the possession is eating away at me.
There’s still nothing—no blackened veins or bloodshot eyes—but I don’t trust it.
The lack of visible signs only makes me more nervous about what might be happening under the skin.
“You ignored what I said about hand placement,” the Lord of Malice continues to lecture me as he crosses to the far side of the courtyard, shucking off his torn shirt and dropping it to the ground.
“Remember, grab from here and here,” he says as he turns around, tapping high on his forearm, near the elbow, and again on his bicep.
I swallow hard, startled by the sight of him.
It’s ridiculous. I’ve seen shirtless men before, but I can’t stop my eyes tracing the muscles up his arm, traveling across his broad shoulders until my gaze lands on the smattering of dark hair on his chest—the way it trails down in a neat line, past his toned abdominals, where it disappears beneath his waistband.
Yet his undeniable beauty only makes me angrier.
He already controls so much of me, he shouldn’t get any bit of my desire too, even if it’s unintentional on his part.
I don’t want to give even the idea of him access to that private part of me, that space where lust and want and a whole bunch of other overwhelming things lurk.
I tell myself it’s purely physical, an instinctual response, but I hate how it stirs at the sight of him now, offering up just one more facet of me to claim.
“When are we going back to Strata?” I demand, seizing onto that anger, asking it to blot out that thing coiling hot and hungry at my core. “Don’t you want to find out who killed those demons?”
“I do,” he says, tilting his head as if trying to understand the shift in my tone.
“But the lake is my priority. So far, there’ve been no more raids on the Morphos, and Quill hasn’t found any more evidence of intruders slipping past our wards.
That means there’s no reason to send you back before you’re ready. ”
I think about pointing out there’s a very good reason, but he’s already made it clear he doesn’t care about the effect the possession will have on me.
“If there’s no urgency, then just let me go,” I suggest instead. “Find someone else to possess for your Strata missions. Someone bigger and stronger than me you don’t have to waste your time training.”
His jaw tics, but he says nothing, because we both know why he won’t release me.
The binding spell is too convenient. It makes me the perfect puppet.
If it were any other human, he couldn’t just invade their mind whenever he wanted.
He’d have to be invited in and would need to trick and wheedle his way into getting permission every time he wanted to take control.
No one gives him what he wants like I do.
I shut my eyes, not wanting to look at him anymore. It means I hear Viz’s voice before I see him.
“An emissary from the soul snares has arrived. He’s asking for an audience with you.”
When I open them, the skull-faced demon is hovering by the archway.
“Tell them the same thing I said before,” Syrus says flatly.
Vizmodeus shifts, uncomfortable. “I don’t know if that will work this time.”
“Very well.” Syrus snatches up his shirt and makes to follow Viz out of the courtyard. “Keep running drills,” he throws at me on the way.
“For how long?” I ask.
There’s a prickle up my neck, and a voice like silk slips into my mind. “Until you can’t lift your arms anymore, or until I return. Whatever comes sooner.”
I do as he says, but when my arms are screaming for relief and he still hasn’t come back, I sneak away before he can return and piss me off again.
I shuffle back to my room, my frustration still simmering.
Maybe going to the library later will distract me.
Last time I was there, I saw some books that looked like they could be from Strata, and I want to investigate.
“Darling, you look like you need a night off,” Asterim says when I open the door and find her perched on the futon, flicking through one of my plant books.
I laugh, though the sound has a bitter edge. “Sure, let me know if that can be arranged.”
Triya is snoozing on my bed. Her right head opens its green eyes to briefly survey me before closing them again.
“You really do have a gift for sarcasm, my dear.” Asterim closes the book, leaning one elbow on my bedspread and propping her chin on it as she looks up at me with big, brown eyes.
“But I’m serious. Come into the city with me tonight.
I was planning on going to this dance hall that has the best music, and something tells me you could do with blowing off some steam. ”
I stare at her. “You really think Syrus would allow that?”
“Let me worry about him,” Asterim says, waving her hand as if the incredibly powerful Lord of Malice is no more than an annoying fly she can easily shoo away.
I want to laugh again at the idea of taking an indentured servant out for a night on the town, yet Asterim makes it sound not only possible but a little appealing too. I’ve spent so long listening to her talk about how great the nightlife is in Malice, I kind of want to see it with my own two eyes.
And there’s a little part of me that still wonders about the rifts in the city. I know there’s no permanent rift from Infernum to Strata, but it’s possible there’s a few that get opened semi-regularly. It could be useful knowledge for the future.
“I suppose I could come with you,” I say.
She smiles and claps her hands together. “Wonderful. I knew you’d turn out to be fun eventually.”
Is it really any wonder why I haven’t been a barrel of laughs before now? I don’t say anything out loud though, because Asterim is the closest thing I have to a friend in this place, aside from Triya, who I’m pretty sure only likes me for my bed.
Asterim jumps up from the futon. “I’ll bring you something to wear.” She fingers the fabric of my shirt. “These things are fine to mope about the castle in, but if you’re going to fit in, you’ll need to look the part.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” I say.
“What’s that, darling?” she asks, staring at my waist like she’s already mentally styling me.
“I’ll need more than new clothes to fit in. I’m obviously human, and last time I checked, there aren’t many of us hanging around Malice.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. People will just assume you’re a snare that’s been drinking from the lake,” she says.
“Is that how demons disguise themselves?”
“Disguise feels like a dirty way to put it,” Asterim says, wrinkling her nose. “What you mean is: Is that how we get around Pax without humans panicking the moment they lay eyes on us because they think an Infernum monster has got loose? And to that question, the answer is yes.”
I see her point, but that doesn’t change the fact that demons use it to trick humans.
It’s part of what makes the idea of them so frightening, that at any moment you could be standing next to a demon in a tavern or pass one on the street, and there’s no way for you to know.
It would be much harder for snares to get people to trust them if their demonic nature was written all over their face.
“So you drink from the lake, and just like that, you look human?” I ask, wondering how it works. I guess the essence of the human souls in the water has something to do with it.
“Well, it depends on how inhuman you look in the first place,” she says. “And the effects are only temporary, but if your magic is naturally strong, that helps things along. You get a little more control over things then.”
It hits me then that there’s one demon around here who looks almost completely human. Is Syrus drinking from the Morphos? And if yes, what does he really look like? Why would he hide his true form?
I consider asking Asterim, but she’s always cagey talking about him, and I don’t want her to change her mind about tonight.
I’m not sure where she finds the dress she brings me later, because she’s far too small for it to be one of hers.
Still, it’s pretty tight—which she insists is the point—and she’s very excited about the green color, claiming it will match my eyes.
I dutifully put it on and am relieved when she tells me we’re going to take a carriage down to the city.
I’ve decided I don’t like flying very much.
We’re just passing the mirror by the castle entrance when Syrus appears at the end of the hall.