Chapter 39 Revenant
REVENANT
Ilowered my hood so the guard could see my face. It was Peter. Recognition flickered first—he had known me since I was a child—then shock, and finally, fear.
I reached into his mind—not roughly, but with deliberate precision—brushing the edges of his thoughts until I found the tight coil of duty and eased it loose.
His resistance did not shatter; it softened.
Curled inward. Then it gave way. Of all the abilities awakening inside me, this was the one that felt the most dangerous—and the most intoxicating. Not strength. Not speed. Control.
I did not speak. The main street lay too near, too exposed for careless risks. Instead, I pressed a single, silent command into the center of him.
“Open the gate.”
He obeyed without question, his hands moving as if the thought had always been his own. The latch lifted. The hinges sighed. And I slipped inside.
I crossed the walkway and entered the courtyard, my steps unhurried, as though I had every right to be there. The servants' door—the same one I had slipped through beside the cook the day Drago Burián first summoned me—gave beneath my touch without protest.
A young servant girl stood just inside. She couldn't have been more than fifteen. The color drained from her face the moment she saw me. Her fear was uncomplicated, innocent: I was a stranger where no stranger should be, and she would be the one blamed for it.
“I won't tell,” I murmured softly, as if we shared some small conspiracy.
Before her panic could sharpen into a cry, I reached for her thoughts.
Not to break them. Not to take anything she would miss.
I only smoothed the rising edges, gentled the spike of alarm, let her believe—just for a moment—that everything was as it should be.
Her shoulders loosened. Her mouth closed. The fear dissolved before it could take shape. And I walked past her as though I belonged.
She nodded, relief softening her features.
A small, grateful smile flickered across her mouth.
Before she could turn the moment over in her mind, before it could settle into memory, I reached back in and stirred the surface of her thoughts.
Just a blur. Edges dissolving. Details smudging into the ordinary haze of a forgettable afternoon.
By the time she turned away, I was already fading from her recollection. I moved down the corridor, unhurried, listening. The great wooden doors of the library loomed ahead. I did not know which room would hold the boyar—but I did not need to.
There it was—a heartbeat—steady, measured, strong.
I paused just long enough to savor it—the calm cadence that always preceded the moment of recognition.
The fragile illusion of control. I had learned how quickly it shattered once my face came into view.
I pressed my palm against the heavy door and pushed.
It opened with a low groan. He sat behind his vast desk, head bowed over a scatter of papers, ink staining his fingers. Unaware.
He did not look up. Did not so much as shift in his chair.
In his sanctuary, a servant was no more than a draft beneath the door—felt, perhaps, but never acknowledged.
I closed the door softly behind me and walked farther into the room, stopping directly before his desk.
I did not speak. I simply stood there. And waited.
An irritated sigh broke the silence. He rolled his eyes before he even lifted his head, already prepared to reprimand whatever fool had dared disturb him.
The shock struck him the instant his gaze found me—before the thought could fully form, before my name could surface.
It flashed through his pulse, a violent stutter in the steady rhythm I had heard outside the door.
But to his credit, he mastered it quickly.
By the time his eyes narrowed, the surprise had been buried beneath something caustic, assessing.
His lips twisted, turning his face into something ruinous—something that might once have been a grandfather, but was now only bile and bone.
How a man could despise me so completely—despise me enough to wish death on his own granddaughter for my crime of loving poorly—was beyond reason. Beyond mercy.
I had come to the castle for truth. That was the story I told myself as the iron gates shut behind me and the old stones of Castle Burián watched my approach.
Truth. Answers. Closure. But beneath that tidy lie, something uglier uncurled.
A question—thin as smoke, black and treacherous—slipped into my mind before I could crush it.
Did I carry hatred the same way? It would be easy.
So easy. To let it root. To let it bloom.
My desire to make him suffer pulsed through me, fierce and intoxicating.
I wanted him to feel the terror he had sown in others.
Wanted to see his composure fracture, his pride split open.
I imagined stepping closer, speaking softly, letting him glimpse precisely how powerful I had become.
Letting him understand—too late—that he had not destroyed me.
The hunger sharpened at the thought. Not just for blood. For dominance. For fear. For the exquisite moment when the light would gutter in his eyes and he would finally understand what he had made.
My grandmother's voice rose in my memory, steady as prayer. Do not let the darkness choose for you, child. And Serban's warning threaded through it—quieter, heavier, to remember what it was to be human.
The two voices stood between me and the abyss, fragile as glass. I could feel the new thing inside me testing its wings. It whispered that cruelty would taste sweet. That vengeance would be cleansing. That I had earned it.
I straightened, forcing my hands to still at my sides. Let him see the war in me. Let him wonder which side would win.
“How did you escape?” he asked, insolent. “My men said they'd taken care of you.”
How fitting that he assumed only incompetence. “Your men did take care of me,” I said, my voice steady—almost conversational. “They killed my husband and daughter. They dragged me into the forest. They beat me. They violated me. They stabbed me and threw me from a cliff.”
I watched his face as I spoke, searching for it—remorse, shame, even discomfort. There was none.
“I died, Drago Burián.” I let the words settle between us like ash. “Died as surely as if it had been your own hand around my throat. No…they did not fail in the task you gave them.”
Silence thickened the air. For a heartbeat, I considered describing it in greater detail.
The cold of the river at the bottom of the ravine.
The way the sky had dimmed. The terrible, helpless awareness of my own blood leaving me.
I could have forced him to see it. Forced him to sit inside the horror he had ordered.
The darker part of me urged it. Make him choke on it. Make him taste it. My grandmother's warning brushed the inside of my skull like a rosary bead passing through fingers. Do not become what you hate.
I took a step closer instead. “You see,” I continued, my gaze never leaving his, “I did not escape.” A faint smile curved my lips—not warm, not kind. “I was remade.”
My hunger stirred at the word, stretching languidly inside me. I could end him here. I could make his death slow. But I wanted something else first. I wanted the truth. And I wanted him afraid long enough to give it.
I summoned every ounce of power I possessed and let it rise. Rage answered first—hot, tidal, intoxicating. It surged through my veins and into the air between us, thickening it, bending it. The candles along the wall guttered. The shadows lengthened toward me as if in allegiance.
His smug expression faltered. It did not vanish all at once. Realization dawned slowly—his mouth closing mid-breath, color draining from his cheeks. A chill rippled visibly across his skin; the fine hairs on his forearms lifted beneath the sleeves he had so arrogantly rolled to his elbows.
Now you understand, I thought. “I killed Ivar and his men last night,” I said, and the calm in my voice was more terrible than any snarl.
“I made it slow.” The memory flickered behind my eyes—moonlight on steel, pleading voices, the copper scent of terror saturating the air.
“I drank their fear first,” I continued.
“Let it steep. Let it ripen. I wanted them to know exactly why they were dying.”
The darker thing inside me purred at the recollection.
“I opened their throats and drained them dry. I thought it might ease the ache in me…” My lips curved faintly.
“But it didn't.” Not even close. I leaned forward, planting my palms flat against his desk.
He had always used that slab of wood as a barrier, a stage from which to dispense judgment.
To me, it was nothing more than a suggestion.
A line scratched in dirt I could erase with a breath.
“But Ivar…” I tilted my head, as though savoring a fond memory. “Ivar was my favorite.”
I watched the pulse in Drago Burián's throat quicken.
“He begged.” I leaned closer still, until he could see the inhuman stillness in my eyes.
“He pissed himself before I opened him from belly to spine.” Silence roared between us.
The devil within urged me to reach across that desk, to demonstrate.
To let him feel the first slice, the first bloom of helplessness.
My grandmother's voice trembled at the edge of my thoughts. This was the precipice.
The color drained from the boyar's face when he realized who was in control now.
“Why?” I asked, needing to know. ‘Was it worth it?” The boyar's lip twitched, the stink of his fear making saliva pool beneath my tongue. Yet despite that fear, I sensed no lie in what he said.
“You weren't what I wanted for Caius. I wanted a politically ad—advanta—advantageous marriage…” He stumbled over the word, and in that instant something inside him gave way.