Chapter 15 #3
“W-what?” she stuttered.
What? Hymn shouted. He stopped his zipping immediately, barely even daring to peek out at Chasin.
The commander pulled a small vial from his pocket, a clear liquid visible within. He pressed the tiny cork to her bottom lip. “Antidote,” he rasped.
What. The. Fuck?
Did he just poison you? Hymn was trying to dart around in panic again, but mostly failing, as he refused to travel far from the safety of her ribcage.
She swallowed, raising a shaking hand for the vial.
Chasin pulled it away. Of course he did.
She wondered how fast his reflexes were.
If he had no idea about her second sight, she might be able to surprise him.
She could grab that shiny black axe on the wall and put it through his skull before he had time to react.
That will release his monster, Hymn said. The one that’s hunting us.
I’ll only lodge it halfway. The monster stays inside if he stays alive, right?
Right, Hymn replied dryly. Let’s keep skull splitting as a backup plan. Something tells me you’re not going to be able to take him by surprise.
“What is this?” she demanded. “Some sort of … hazing ritual? An Eclipse thing?”
The antidote vial made a disappearing act so fast she didn’t even catch where he put it. He picked up one of her hands and placed it over his, as he made a gesture.
Yes.
She knew that one; she had learned it the day before.
Wait … it was an Eclipse thing?
“You do this to everyone?” she asked, frowning even deeper.
Yes, he signed, his gloved hand forming the word beneath her hovering touch. It was a strange and intimidating kind of intimacy, and she had no idea how to stop the slight tremble in her fingers, which he could now feel as well as see, making it doubly embarrassing.
“Is this a test?” she asked nervously.
Yes, he signed again.
Great. Because she was so good at tests. It wasn’t like she had failed every single one she had been given since arriving in Goldmoor. Fighting to keep her temper under control—and mostly losing—she blurted, “What in the bloody dark do you want me to do?”
He made a series of gestures with his hands that she had no hope of translating, and then grabbed her cane, leaning it against the wall.
He took both of her hands, his touch still surprisingly gentle, almost like he thought he might accidentally hurt her with his sheer size and strength compared to her … lack of such things.
Bit full of himself, isn’t he? she asked Hymn.
You mean the large warrior-prince who looks like he could eat you for breakfast? Hymn returned dryly.
Chasin was forming the same series of gestures he had made, but this time, with her hands.
She frowned, feeling out the shape of the unspoken words. As soon as he was finished, his gloved hands slipped away, and he waited.
She was starting to grow dizzy.
“T-that’s it?” she asked. “I just … say whatever that is? Like an oath or something?”
He set a single, gloved finger to her chest and signed a now-familiar gesture against her undershirt, right above her leather breastplate. The mesh material of her undershirt was so thin that she could feel the shape of the word against her skin, despite the gentle pressure of his finger.
Yes.
He was so gentle with her despite having just poisoned her coffee. It was utterly unsettling.
“What does it mean?” she hedged, hoping he would use his voice to explain to her.
He didn’t.
He didn’t even bother signing it.
He dug the vial from his pocket and tapped the tiny cork stopper against her bottom lip again.
She was starting to sweat, her stomach cramping.
For the love of light.
She signed the unknown words he had taught her, and he unstoppered the vial, straightening to his full height.
Suddenly, he loomed over her, all gentleness gone; he became a maelstrom bearing down on a spindly sapling, the press of his power threatening to bow her body, the sharp intelligence in his eyes darkening into cutting authority.
He tipped the vial up, forcing her to quickly tilt her head back so that none of the clear liquid spilled.
It ran across her tongue, tasting nutty and syrupy.
He rolled his eyes at her as she desperately drank down the entire vial, and then he returned to his desk and leaned against the edge. He picked up his own coffee cup, and … drank?
Okay, now I’m really confused, she told Hymn.
“You failed,” Chasin whispered, drawing a frown to her face as she crept unwillingly closer, hoping she had misheard him.
When she was right before him, he reached out, his gloved hand flexing.
It paused in the air between them before he plucked up her hands like they were contagious.
And then he spoke again, but this time, he signed the words he spoke, her fingers moving with his, shaping to the words he formed with a mix of fear, confusion, and curiosity.
“I know you’re blind, but there are other ways to tell when someone is lying. ”
It was the most he had ever spoken aloud, and the spasm in his jaw hinted that even that much might have caused him pain—but she was a little too preoccupied with failing another test to really focus on feeling sorry for him.
He had just pretended to poison her. And then pretended to cure her.
And now he was rubbing it in her face. He had convinced her so thoroughly that her body had begun to react to a poison it hadn’t even ingested.
How embarrassing.
“Half-Moon are the w-warriors.” His voice cracked painfully, and a spasm travelled across his face.
His fingers flexed beneath hers, like he was fighting off the urge to shove her away, or shove her out the window behind his desk.
“Crescent are the spies. We are the killers. To be an efficient killer, you have to b-blend in. We’re quiet.
We watch. We listen. We know when we’re b-being lied to. ”
The way his voice kept crackling and breaking had her dumb heart threatening to break.
She wouldn’t ever be able to shake the memory of him as a boy, and it was that memory that fuelled her sympathy now.
She knew how much he had endured to get those scars.
She knew he should never have survived them. She knew it hadn’t been his choice.
She tried to shove away the memory, the sympathy, the ache in her chest.
He just pretended to poison you, Hymn reminded her, trying to be helpful.
“And one more thing,” Chasin continued, with his damaged voice and deft hands. “Every killer should have a vast knowledge of poison.”
He dug the empty vial out of his pocket, tracing the cool edge of glass across her cheek. There was the tiniest little glimmer of satisfaction sparking to life in the infinite black of his eyes. A hint of … triumph.
She turned towards the sensation of the cold glass against her cheek, utterly dumbfounded, dread settling with a heavy weight in her stomach.
He didn’t …
I think he did, Hymn hissed, his confusion dropping away into anger. He poisoned you. With the fake antidote. The coffee was just … coffee.
The selectively mute commander had just rendered her speechless for the third time that morning. She had never bitten her tongue so much before in her life. Maybe that was why all the Eclipse soldiers were so tacit. It had been scared into them through endless psychological torture.
“No,” she croaked, touching her throat. Right now might be a good time to throw up.
I’m resistant to poison, Hymn grumbled. Maybe you are now too? This has to be another trick. Another test.
“Mute’s Mercy,” Chasin said, tucking the empty vial away again. “One of my own creations.”
Cute. It has a name.
“I’m impressed,” she forced out, her voice sounding like pure honey compared to his, even squeezed through anger. “I’d be even more impressed if there was … you know … a point to all of this? Or did you just wake up bored this morning?”
His lips twitched. He picked up her unwilling hands again, forcing her to feel the signs for the words he spoke, his voice quiet as a whisper. “You will need an antidote every morning for a week. Here. Sunrise.”
She was breathing heavily, anger simmering and boiling up from the pit of her stomach.
Hymn was buzzing around furiously—not brave enough to rant too loudly or leave his hiding place, but he wasn’t happy.
Eiko understood that this was just the way of the Godsguard.
Survival wasn’t guaranteed—it wasn’t even likely—but something about all of this just felt … personal. Off.
Pretending to poison her? Pretending to cure her? Actually poisoning her with the fake cure?
It was … messed up.
“Is this because of last night?” she asked stiffly, “Because—”
No, he signed against her chest, this time not bothering to also speak the word. Luckily, “no” was one of the signs she remembered from the night before. He signed something else, too, but she really only knew yes, no, and all the most violent descriptors for killing a person.
He pointed at the door and signed a short gesture that she decided probably meant “fuck off,” or something, and she stumbled from his office, her throat squeezing in a painful panic.
She found her friends in the mess hall, craning their necks as they nervously searched the room, ignoring their plates of food.
There was an untouched tray sitting beside Rion, before an empty seat.
Eiko began walking that way but then realised she couldn’t exactly make a beeline for her friends in a vast hall full of strangers.
Not as an apparently blind woman. So instead, she gritted her teeth and made her way to the serving buffet, hoping one of her friends would spot her quickly.
Just as she reached for a tray, she felt a strong grip wrap around her elbow. “We got you food already.” Kaito led her to their table with a stiff jaw and hard eyes.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered, because his voice had also sounded off.
The others watched their approach. Ren looked guilty. That wasn’t a good sign.
“What were you doing last night?” Kaito demanded, as he guided her to the empty seat beside Rion and sank down opposite her.
“Last night?” she forced a confused frown. “Uh … I don’t remember, so anyway, uh, the commander just poisoned me, and the King of All has decided to sacrifice me and Rion’s wombs to his sons.”