Chapter 4 #2
I shuddered, and my body halted of its own accord in front of the sign. “What does it say?” I asked. I both did and didn’t want to know, but I couldn’t help asking.
“It says, ‘Don’t feed the demoni,’” Hettie answered.
I blinked at her. Her face was completely serious.
“What…what do demoni eat?” I asked.
“Nightmares,” Hettie said, a smile crooking up her lips.
“So the sign is telling prisoners not to have nightmares?” I asked.
“I was told it said, ‘Sleep soundly if you can,’” Bressen said. “Or ‘if you dare.’ It depends who you ask. Everyone seems to have their own theory about what it says. I should have Phaedrus translate it sometime to find out for sure.”
“And spoil a good mystery, my lord?” Hettie said, sounding aghast. “Surely we’re better off not knowing for certain.”
Bressen frowned. “Why would we be better off not knowing?”
“Because right now it can say anything we want it to say,” Hettie said.
“It can be a warning, a threat, or a promise of eternal pain and suffering. If we don’t know for certain, it can be all those things and more.
If you translate it, you take away the enigma.
Its uncertainty is what makes it frightening.
” She put her hands on her hips. “What if its real meaning is unbearably disappointing?”
Bressen raised a brow. “Disappointing how?”
Hettie turned a serious gaze on him. “My lord, for all you know, that’s a recipe for soup hanging above the door.”
I couldn’t help the laugh that jumped up my throat, and I clamped a hand over my mouth to stifle any further sound. Hettie didn’t take her eyes from Bressen, though, who was trying to suppress his own laughter.
“Now that you mention it,” Bressen said, fighting back a smile, “Some of the writing does resemble the word for ‘onion’ in a text Phaedrus once showed me.”
Hettie twirled her hand in a gesture that said, ‘Well, there you go.’
I’m sorry I asked, I said into Bressen’s mind, and his mouth twitched.
“I suppose we can let it remain a mystery for now,” Bressen said. “Lead the way to Glenora please, Hettie.”
Hettie turned and touched the iron gate, which swung open to admit her, and we followed.
I jumped as the gate swung shut behind us with a resounding clang, but Bressen slipped his hand in mine and gave it a reassuring squeeze as Hettie led us across the huge atrium, then through a doorway and into the depths of the prison.
The stonework on the inside of the prison was just as ornate and impressive as it was on the outside, although the meager torchlight did little to illuminate the intricacies of its carvings. I leaned in to look closer, but I caught movement on the wall in my periphery and pulled up short.
“What is it, Cyra?” Bressen asked, stopping as well.
“I thought I saw something,” I said as I examined the wall.
“You likely see the demoni,” he said.
Just as the words left his lips, two red eyes blinked at me from within the wall, and a small gray face with sharp teeth emerged from the stone in a swirl of black smoke. I jumped back in surprise, but the creature melted into the wall again almost as quickly as it appeared.
“How…” I started to ask as another face appeared then disappeared into the wall a foot or so from where the first had been. Movement on my other side drew my attention back that way.
“Gods above,” I whispered as I realized that the entire wall writhed with monstrous little faces that phased in and out of view before my eyes.
I stepped back quickly. “How do they do that?” I asked.
“The demoni exist in a state somewhere between phantasmal and corporeal,” Bressen said.
“They can move through shadow or smoke and become solid when they need to be. There are thousands of them hiding in these walls, waiting to be called forth, but it’s unusual for them to show themselves so readily.
I suspect they’re intrigued to have a visitor. ”
As if in answer, several faces emerged out of the wall, red eyes glowing, only to retreat back into it a moment later.
I jumped as Hettie appeared next to me.
“Shoo! Go on now!” she said, waving her hand at the wall.
The space in front of me quivered as the demoni presumably scattered at her admonishment.
“Pests, the lot of them,” Hettie said. “Worse than the rats.”
She started walking again, and we followed, but now that I’d seen the demoni, I couldn’t help noticing the way the walls rippled ahead.
I turned to look behind us, and my stomach lurched to see them undulate as what seemed like a hundred demoni trailed along in our wake, their eyes flashing now and then as they poked their heads out to get a better look.
We came to a staircase, and Hettie began to climb. Again, we followed.
Up and up we climbed, passing landing after landing until my legs burned with the effort. I was just about to request a break when Hettie stepped out of the stairwell and started down a long corridor.
We were about halfway down the hall when I realized the clamor behind us was growing louder, and I shivered as needles pricked up my spine. I glanced behind me, then sucked in a gasp and grabbed Bressen’s arm as my eyes widened in horror.
“Bressen!” I cried.
The entire corridor behind us was a mass of thrashing demoni, their eyes flickering like fiery red stars in the darkness.
They came at us in a wave, a swell in a storm-tossed surf, and Bressen stepped in front of me ready to take the brunt of their crash.
Dark bodies rolled over each other as they fought to get to us, and I braced for their impact, my hands gripping as tightly as I could to the back of Bressen’s jacket.
Just as they reached us, the demoni dissipated, the wave that had threatened to break over us dissolving instead into a mist that wafted by.
I let out a soft whimper as cool curls of smoke brushed past on a gentle wind. My hair fluttered around my face and shoulders, and I looked up when the impact I’d been expecting never came.
Bressen turned and gathered me in his arms. I let out a deep breath as I buried my face in his chest and curled my hands in his jacket again.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
I let out another breath and nodded against him.
I couldn’t help remembering the way the demoni had engulfed Glenora months ago, how I assumed they’d torn her to pieces until Bressen told me they’d only taken her here to Revenmyer.
The demoni were frequent visitors in my nightmares when I had them, and my heart knocked in my chest as if it were asking to be let out.
I lifted my head and met Bressen’s eyes. His expression was full of concern, and I tried to smile at him.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I…they just brought back memories of Gendris.”
The day we’d both almost been killed. The day I’d almost lost Bressen to his darkness.
I stepped away from Bressen, but he kept an arm around my waist as I turned to find Hettie watching me with interest.
“I’m sorry,” I said to her. “They’re just a little unnerving.”
“What’s wrong with the demoni today?” Bressen asked Hettie, his arm still holding me. “They’re not usually this…rambunctious.”
Hettie held my gaze another moment before looking at Bressen. “They know who she is,” she said.
Bressen stiffened and drew an arm across my shoulders to pull me protectively against him.
“And who do you think she is?” he asked her. There was a growl of warning in his voice.
Hettie only blinked as if the answer was obvious. “She belongs to the Nemesis,” she said, nodding her head at me.
I inhaled sharply. How did she know?
“She belongs to me,” Bressen corrected her coldly, and I knew his eyes had flashed red like those of the demoni.
My stomach flipped at the dominance and possessiveness in his voice, and I knew he’d claim me when we returned home. He’d accepted his penance last night – sort of – but I knew he ached to remind me that I was his, and the muscles at my core pulsed in anticipation.
Hettie only smiled indulgently at Bressen. “Of course, my lord.”
Bressen’s arm tightened around me as Hettie turned and continued down the hall.
She stopped in front of a door almost at the end and pulled a ring of keys from her pocket.
She unlocked the door, opened it, then looked back down the corridor to where Bressen and I still stood, his arm tensed across my shoulders.
Bressen let his arm slip back to his side, and he stepped around me to stride down the corridor to Hettie. I hurried after him but nearly ran into his back as he stopped abruptly before her.
“Take care that you never share that observation with anyone else,” Bressen said to her, and there was something ominous in his voice.
His back was to me, so I had no idea what Hettie saw in his expression, but for the first time since we arrived, fear crossed her face as she looked up at him. It was gone a moment later.
“No, my lord,” she said, all levity gone. “Of course not.”
Bressen turned back to me, and I stepped toward the cell Hettie had opened. He grasped my arm to stop me before I entered.
“The cell is lined with caronium,” he reminded me. “I’ll lose my powers when we step in.”
I nodded my understanding. He’d lose his powers, but I wouldn’t lose mine. I was immune to caronium, I assumed, because I was a syphon.
“Are you sure?” Bressen asked me.
“Yes.”
He hesitated, then moved aside so I could enter. I stepped past him and got my first glimpse in months of the woman who’d drugged me, kidnapped my family, and nearly killed both me and Bressen.
I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this.