Chapter 40 | Sephania
Sephania
The flower petals flutter away from the bloody rain in the reflection of the window. Where I usually see my terrified face in the reflection, I now see crimson eyes belonging to a blonde-haired girl with a rictus grin splashed across her mug. Wicked, wrong. She seems wrong.
Her head twists and turns, studying me through the window like I’m nothing more than an alchemist’s experiment. I can’t escape her incessant fingernails on the glass.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Come out and play, Sephania,” the fair-faced girl mutters. “Come out, Mistress.”
The tapping becomes more insistent. A new face joins the first, also pale and gaunt, red-eyed, yet with a dark mane over bony shoulders instead of tawny hair. I can see neither of their bodies, only their floating heads.
Floating heads . . . Like the ones placed on the four-poster bed of Sister Cyprilis.
In fact, this second girl looks just like my old friend, except wicked and wrong like the first. Always wrong. The smiles are misshapen, just a little off-center. Now they’re both tapping the window.
I squeal in a girlish, young voice. “Please go away! Mother! Help me!”
There is no mother here. Not in this room, this dark box. The rain drenches the girls on the other side of the window. The sunflower is gone, wilted.
When the rain turns to blood, I expect it.
But I don’t expect the reactions from the girls, who raise their chins back and widen their maws to disproportionate sizes, drinking the raining blood as it slathers their faces.
They turn to the window again, where I’m hiding. Bloody lips, trickling and oozing red down their chins. They move to tap the glass, which is showing a spiderweb of cracks—
And their tapping becomes banging. Fists now, rather than fingernails.
The glass shatters—
I screech as shards rain down on me, trying to reel back but with nowhere to go. Their hands stream into the room, grabbing at me.
“Come and play, Mistress!” they roar—
I bolt awake. My heart slams in my throat. Grabbing at my face, I make sure I’m intact and unharmed. Sweat soaks the bedsheets beneath me.
“Mistress?”
A sound somewhere between a sob and a wail wrenches from my throat as I flip on the bed to face the door. It’s just the remnants of my awful nightmare!
My eyes widen. It’s no dream.
Palacia stands at the foot of my bed. Her eyes are small, half-lidded, wreathed in red. She must have stumbled here from her recovery room. The vampirex wears a thin shift and nothing else. I don’t want to look anywhere but her face, fearing what I might find lower on her body.
“P-Pala?” I croak. “I’m sorry, my friend. I didn’t hear you come in.”
Palacia’s small hands fall on the blanket, gently tugging. “Please, Mistress,” she whines. “Can I join you? I can’t sleep.”
Fear ripples up my spine. It’s eerily similar to my dream, and I hate it. “Having nightmares?”
She nods glumly.
“Same.” Against my better judgment, I pull the sheets back. “Mattress might be a bit damp”—from my sweat—“but you can join me, if you’d like.”
My eyes flicker over her bony shoulders, to the window. It’s still bright out, with sunset not far off. It’ll only be for a little while. Then the night will show and she will wake from this strange sleepwalk.
It’s been three days since Palacia recovered. A full week since Lukain handed her to Skar. My dreams have gotten worse, combining my former traumas with those of hers and Cyprilis.
My two former friends, turned vampires. They’ve both had my blood, and now their thoughts are mingling with mine. It’s driving me mad, as expected—as Skar warned.
But what was I to do when I saw my friend in such painful, dire straits, and knew I had means to ease her suffering?
My dreams have been fragmented and reshaped.
After learning from my mother what the yellow sunflower dream signified—my time in the recovery bed as an infant, staring out the window after being transfused with the Loreblood—the recurring dream has been different every time. More urgent, dangerous, and terrifying.
I no longer see my face in that reflection, turning into a vampire.
I see the faces of those who have turned, and have tasted my blood.
Why isn’t Skar or Vall or Garro in those dreams?
Where are my protectors when I need them in dreamland?
Perhaps it’s only the girls—the ones closest in age to me, closest in appearance—who show up.
Palacia crawls into the bed. She quickly curls around me, head on my shoulder as I face away from her. When her eyes close, I hear the gentle breathing from her soft, lavender lips, trickling and tickling against my nape.
I hear no heartbeat. There’s no sign of a rising chest when she breathes, as if she’s only making the motions out of familiarity rather than any need to actually breathe.
My friend is dead. She’s been replaced by this . . . half-monster. And yet she curls up against me like a child, almost. Like she has just wet the bed in her own room and ran to her mother because she was scared.
Is turning like being reborn all over again?
I can’t imagine this girl turning into an evil monster.
A wicked murderer. Palacia was never that, even during our dark days in the Firehold.
Then again, I couldn’t have imagined Sister Cyprilis turning out the way she’s turned out.
And now she’s impaling severed heads on her bedposts like they’re macabre dolls.
I shiver.
“Mistress,” Palacia says in a soft croak.
“Please don’t call me that. Call me Seph, like you always have.”
“Seph. I like that.”
I gulp. “What is it, Palacia?”
“May I . . . drink?”
I blink rapidly. Cyprilis asked me the same thing the other day.
My heart riots freely in my chest, with this small, cold body framing me.
If I think too hard about our position, I’ll notice what else is going on back there, further south, with Pala unconsciously pressing longingly against my body, starting to grind into my back.
I’m ashamed it makes me damp between my legs where I wasn’t before. Not for her—I wish my mates were here. I wish I listened to Skartovius and didn’t give her my blood when she was Awakening!
Swallowing hard, I shake my head. Drinking my Loreblood is how we got in this mess in the first place. I can’t give her more or she’ll become wholly dependent on me. Truehearts know what else she’s capable of when my blood awakens . . . her urges.
I can’t be here for that. Can’t be here for her.
Gently, I shake my head. “Not now, Palacia. Maybe when we wake. Go to sleep now, yes?”
She murmurs something muffled against my shoulder blade. She’s already out, forgetting her inquiry, which makes me thank the Truehearts and Damned.
I close my eyes, worried I won’t be able to fall back asleep. Not with her clinging to me like this, impossibly close . . .
“Well. This is not what I expected to find to start the evening.”
I jolt from the deep voice, which sounds vaguely curious and amused. Palacia still rests near me, curled against my body as if seeking warmth she’s been denied in her undead state.
Skartovius stands in the doorway of the room, perched against the frame with his arms crossed. He’s in a lax position, inspecting me and my friend intently.
Goosebumps run along my arms. For some reason, I yank the blankets up to my neck, even though I’m not naked beneath—thank the True for that. “It’s not what it looks like!” I squeal, glancing down at Pala’s dainty form. “N-Nothing happened!”
“I know.”
I slant my head. “You do?”
“We would have heard it down the hall, I’m sure, given what we know the girl is capable of.”
My cheeks flush pink. “I’ve, uh, never been that way with Palacia. Far as I know, she’s always been interested in men.”
Skar lets out a sigh as he stands upright from the doorway. “You don’t have to explain yourself, little temptress. There’s another way I know there was no frolicking in here.”
“How?”
“The smell. I scent your vague arousal . . . but not the aftermath.”
His words make me blush even harder, if that’s possible. Gently, I twist out from under Palacia’s possessive arm and scoot out of bed. I join Skar at the door. Together, we stare at the human-shaped lump.
“She’ll wake ravenous,” Skar explains. “In more ways than one.”
His innuendo is well-noted. “I don’t plan to be here when that happens.”
Skar sniffs the air. His shoulder-length auburn hair, so close to my cheek, seems especially lustrous and full today.
“What are you smelling?” I ask.
“You. You’ve been sweating. Bad dreams again?”
I nod. “I’ll bathe.”
“Good. You’re ripe, love.”
I bite my lower lip and shake my head. “Stop looking at me like that. And don’t ask how you’re looking at me—you know how. Like your eyes can drill through me.”
“After an evening with your interfolk friend here, I don’t even want to know what twisted things are on your mind.”
“Good, because I’m not going to tell you,” I say, lifting my chin.
His eyes smolder. He leans forward and I close my eyes, ready for him to kiss me.
He simply pecks me on the forehead, and my eyes shoot open, affronted that I don’t get to feel his lips on mine. Teasing me, like I so often do to him.
“Bathe,” he says, turning to leave the room, “and then join us in the conference room. It’s time we figure out what’s going on in the Firehold.”
“It’s been a week,” Vallan grumbles from where he sits on the table. He leans on his chin, bored. “And no word.”
“That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” Skar scolds him. “Now be quiet and let the cub work.”
Garroway sits on the floor, cross-legged, eyes closed. Skartovius stands over him, putting a palm on his bald pate, the spindly fingers draping over every direction of his nicely shaped skull.
I can’t help but imagine an image of those severed heads around Cyprilis’ room. The gifts of her attackers, turned into trophies for her to parade around and play a grotesque game of dolls with. I can’t wait until my mind is my own. Please tell me you and Old Endolf have had a breakthrough, Mother!