22. MOON! #3
“You and your little boyfriend took our failsafe, and then you sold us out. Do you want to know what he did to my Brenyn, sister?” Her voice wavers for a moment before she clears her throat and continues in a lifeless tone, “Scaphism.”
Bile rises in my throat, threatening to choke me.
Saskia plows on in that haunting, monotonous timbre, “You remember that large fountain on the lawn near the courtyard? Darro had a custom-spelled water coffin charmed to float at the forefront of the fountain. He had Brenyn dragged out of our bed, without even the decency of clothes. Paraded through the court naked, and then forced into that cursed coffin. He couldn’t move.
Couldn’t fight—part of the spell work was a magic dampener.
So Brenyn’s considerable power was useless.
And no one could help him—not that any of those pussies would have.
I tried, under cover of night and magic, but Darro had it charmed to resist tampering. ”
The hum of the organic printer fills the silence, almost as terrifying as Saskia's tale. What happens when she has a golem ready for live transfer?
“Twelve days. That’s how long it took–how long he suffered. My beautiful, loyal, powerful prince—eaten alive by bugs and rodents, smothered with milk and honey, and withering in his own shit and sick. There, in front of the whole fucking court.”
The cool bead of a tear slips down my cheek as bile sits heavy in my throat until I’m jolted by the hot sting of another open-palmed slap across my face.
“You don’t get to cry, you traitorous bitch. You did this! You and that fucking psychopomp of yours.”
I want to argue, but beyond not knowing what to say, I can’t actually speak. I should have been asleep by now. Sleeping smoke rarely inhibits one's ability to speak, either. Fear, real visceral fear, floods my hazy mind. Saskia must have altered it.
“You took my lover—ruined my life. And now, I’m going to return the favor, with your own creation.”
The organic printer chimes with a completion sequence, and Saskia hums as I listen to the sound of the printer-hatch opening.
She mumbles something that I can’t quite make out, and flashes of light paint red hues across the inside of my closed eyelids.
There’s a thump, and then the sound of Velcro being unfastened.
My body is trembling in place, and despite her earlier warning not to cry, I can’t help the tears of distress that leak down my still-burning cheeks.
Saskia’s cool hands straighten my head, and she waves something under my nose. I’m still effectively paralyzed, but I can blink open my eyes now. As my vision clears, it takes me a minute to understand what I’m looking at—because it’s me.
I choke, blinking rapidly to erase what I’m seeing. Her words from a few minutes ago clang around in my head, and I try to scream, but nothing comes out.
She smiles—but it's my lips curling into a malevolent grin on a doppelg?nger's face. When she speaks and my voice fills the air, I wince, despite knowing that’s how the organic golems work.
It makes sense now why she strapped me to this procedure table.
She would have had to run a body scan on me, in addition to the blood sample.
But how the hell did she transfer to the golem by herself?
“As I was saying, you’re the reason the man I loved is dead.
But he's the reason I'll be able to exact revenge.
" She holds up a soul-stone, only this one looks different from all of the other samples we've collected.
It's fitted into an ornate casing, but that's all I can make out before she tucks it back into her pocket.
"There’s a target on ‘Saskia’s’ back now—Darro would never let me walk freely in the Unseelie world after finding out my true motives.
You and that psychopomp have stolen everything from me.
” She leans in over me, stroking my cheek as she smiles, “And now that I have your body, I’m going to steal everything from you.
I’m going to fuck your boyfriend and use him to my advantage.
And then, after I’ve convinced him we need to kill Darro to keep his precious little lover safe, I’ll set him up and end things.
Let him rot in reaper prison with nothing but a broken heart until he withers away into nothing.
Not physically tortured like my Brenyn, but tortured nonetheless.
At least Brenyn had the small comfort of knowing he was loved until the end.
By the time I’m finished with Seth, his spirit will be so shattered, scaphism will look like child's play.”
My body is its own sort of prison—unbearably still despite my commands to move!
Inside my head, my mind is thrashing against invisible bars.
No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Seth! MOON!
Moon, moon, moon, MOON! I let my heart pound without trying to calm myself down, praying that somehow, despite my paralysis, he can sense my distress through our bond.
Saskia tsks and shoves something under my nose, and this time, everything fades to black.