Chapter 5 Sadaré #3
My stomach sinks, bitterness rising to the back of my throat.
I’m not surprised, though I can’t help but feel the loss of my power keenly, like a deep hole inside of me.
So many things would be so much easier if I could use my witch’s bargain and trade pain for aether.
Now all I have is pain and my wits—both of which I can still use against Isha in my own way.
My will to fight, even if it looks to him like I’m surrendering, is the only thing that will keep me from feeling utterly naked and helpless and dissolving into panic.
I must hold on to that, even if I have nothing else.
The thorn might not lend me power, but it does make me bleed.
I hold out my hand to her, palm up. “How about trying this to help you remember?”
I fully expect her to refuse or recoil in disgust, but instead her eyes fix upon the bright red bead welling above my skin. Her lips part, and an absolutely ravenous expression contorts her features. She bares her teeth.
Perhaps I didn’t think this through.
Before I can retract my hand, she lunges for it, snatching my wrist and dragging my palm to her mouth. Instead of simply tasting, she sinks her teeth into the meat of my hand. Far less pleasant pain rips through me.
I can’t help it—I scream. But that doesn’t stop her. Horrified, I try to wrench my hand away, but she’s clamped on to it like a cat on a kill. Her wild, ferocious eyes find mine and dare me to pull away. She even snarls into my flesh before sucking on it hungrily.
I don’t want to hit Daesra’s mother despite what she’s doing to me, so I shout for help as I try to pry her off my arm, my voice echoing through the salon in a screech.
Pounding footsteps seem to rise in response, and I turn in desperation toward the sound.
A few men, outfitted in armor and carrying swords, have come running from the south wing, probably at my initial scream.
I expect them to go for Melé, but when they see us, they abruptly halt and only stare.
Their weapons clatter on the ground where they drop them.
And then a change overtakes them, too, their lips peeling back in terrifying snarls, their eyes alight with hunger. And they charge me.
When the first of the guard’s hands grip my shoulder hard enough to bruise, dragging me toward his bared teeth snapping for my throat, I realize they’re going to tear me apart.
A shadow falls over me. No, over the entire room as the air seems to thicken, slowing everyone’s motion. I smell salt and ice and deep-buried stone.
No one but me realizes Isha has appeared in our midst. They’re too busy trying to eat me to notice the terrifying presence of the god, his iron eyes flaring silver, his black robe billowing around him for once.
But not because he’s moving. He’s utterly still, and yet the material ripples away from him in waves as if reacting to him. His power.
He takes one glance around, and then lifts his hand. Absurdly, I notice the taut tendons and corded muscles of his pale forearm as his sleeve falls away, before the snap of his long fingers cuts the air like a scythe. Everyone but me vanishes in curls of dark smoke.
I stagger when the pressure lifts, both from the room and the bodies no longer pressing into me. But I’m crushed under the realization of what I might have done.
“They’re not—? You didn’t—?” I can’t seem to form the words, clutching my wrist, trying to stop the flow of blood. Melé, I think with a silent, anguished cry. But I can’t say her name, because I’m not supposed to know it.
“You’re concerned about them?” he asks, glaring down at me. He snatches up my bleeding hand before I can blink.
Not them. Only her.
“How did this happen?” he demands, scrutinizing my palm. His thumb smears through my blood, circling on my wrist as if trying to spot the truth in it, or perhaps only in agitation. But he stays clear of the wounds, as if he doesn’t want to hurt me.
“Someone bit me.” It’s rather obvious after the scene he interrupted and with the jagged rents in my skin. I hope those are enough to hide where I poked myself, because then I’ll have to try to explain. “I don’t know who did it first,” I lie right through my teeth.
His eyes narrow down at me in angry metallic slits. “No one here would do that unless you were already bleeding first.”
Shades must be drawn to blood, which means I can’t hide the entire truth from him. Confessing part of it might actually help Melé if she isn’t already… I can’t even think it.
I shrivel somewhat under his gaze, and nod sheepishly at where I dropped the thorn on the ground in my panic. “On the way back to my room, I plucked this off a tree. I pricked myself.”
“Why?” he growls. He jerks my arm, lurching me toward him and forcing me lower, almost into a bow before him. At least it saves me from answering. “Don’t you know how dangerous that was? Most shades will feed on blood if hungry, especially fresh blood from someone not yet fading, like you.”
Because my blood is the next best thing to yours? I wonder, but of course I don’t ask.
“The guards wouldn’t have lost their heads otherwise,” he adds, “not with the training they receive here.”
I hope he doesn’t mean they literally lost their heads.
“You could have told me all of this,” I snap, tugging against him as I try to straighten.
He actually looks taken aback—perhaps even taken aback at being taken aback. “I should have. I occasionally forget what new arrivals don’t understand. Which in your case is everything,” he adds with more acidity.
My voice rises in increasing desperation. “So it wasn’t their fault. It was mine, even though I swear I didn’t know what would happen. Please, don’t hurt them.”
“I didn’t,” he says flatly, and I nearly sag in relief. Thank the gods. Or at least this god. “Though, like I said, it’s yourself you should be worried about.”
His tone grows dangerously threatening. My mouth goes dry, and I abruptly stop struggling as he stares me down.
The only sound, the only movement, is my blood dripping on the floor between us.
Finally, his narrowed gaze turns to that, and the red splatter evaporates in a sizzling coil of smoke.
So do my wounds, leaving my hand clean and painless. But he doesn’t release me.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he says, his voice low and deadly. “Why did you make yourself bleed?”
It was only a fool’s hope I had in talking to Melé, fit for the fool who gave herself to the god of death.
I give him a different excuse that’s nearly as ridiculous, and yet it’s the partial truth. “It’s how I channeled aether in the mortal realm,” I whisper, my eyes downcast in shame, if not for the reason he might think. “I thought I might try it.”
“You don’t have access to the gods’ aether here,” he says, exasperation breaking through his cold, stony fury. I take that as a good sign. “Breath’s contract with mortals is nullified in my realm. Only my rules stand.”
“I know. But”—I lift my hand helplessly in his grip—“it still feels good.”
His fingers tighten on my wrist, hard enough to make me gasp and meet his icy glare. “So you weren’t trying to leave this afterlife by getting ripped to shreds?”
You weren’t trying to leave me? I can’t help but hear. Probably only because it would irk him to lose his prized pet.
I’m still surprised enough to answer truthfully, unfeigned revulsion in my voice. “No! Of course not. Trust me, I have a will to live. Or at least I did,” I amend, and then add more quietly, “I hurt myself because it makes me feel alive. The pain.”
His dark eyes brighten—with something hungrier kindling to light. At that look, my knees go watery for all the wrong reasons.
He gives me a wicked smile, as if he knows what I’m thinking. “Perfect. Come with me.”
Without waiting for a response, he tugs me stumbling after him, his stride almost too long and fast for me to gain my feet.
“Where are we going?” I ask, breathless not only with fear but anticipation.
He doesn’t spare me a glance as he marches me along, lifting his other hand to raise one finger.
“I told you to go directly to your room, no dallying. You disobeyed and put yourself in extreme danger. I can’t have that.
” A second finger joins the first. “I also can’t have you hurting yourself, since I’m the only one who is allowed to hurt you.
” A third finger. “And then you attempted to lie about it. There will be no lying to me, in case that wasn’t obvious.
” He flashes the tally of my wrongdoings in my face.
“And so now it’s time to face the consequences of your actions. ” His hand fists before dropping.
“I didn’t know the rule about hurting myself!” I protest, even though I could have guessed with how controlling he is. I don’t bother mentioning the lying, since that will be an impossible rule to follow. He’ll have to catch me at it to expose me. “It’s not fair to punish me for what I don’t know.”
Except I want to be punished. My belligerent tone is practically begging for it. My body is aching for it after how much danger I put Melé in. I care far less about how I risked myself in the process, even if that’s all he seems to be concerned about.
“If you’re unsure of anything, ask me before you do it.” Now he shoots me a sharp look that pierces through me. “Only I get to decide, Arinae.”
“Sadaré,” I hiss up at him, digging in my heels. Knowing I’m going to pay for it.
But he doesn’t answer me with anger.
“Delightful.” I spot the grin curving the hard edges of his face as he only continues to tow me in his wake without any extra effort. “Your stubbornness is one more thing I can punish you for.”
Perhaps it’s my nerves, or perhaps I’ve gone mad, but a laugh burbles out of me.
I must be mad. The god of death is telling me he’s going to punish me for a multitude of misdeeds, and I’m laughing.