22. The Infirmary
THE INFIRMARY
Silver
I’ve seen bodies broken in every way imaginable.
Burned. Flayed. Crushed. Dismembered.
Shredded by magic so violent it leaves nothing behind but ash and the faint echo of screams.
I’ve even seen someone who’s wings have freshly been removed.
But somehow, none of it prepared me for the scars on the nephilim girl’s back.
None of it.
Those scars…
Fuck.
They stretch from the base of her neck to just below her shoulder blades. Two brutal, parallel yet messy trenches of ruined flesh, torn open again by Valtren’s blade.
Old wounds healed wrong. Healed too slow, by pain and time instead of magic and mercy, if any healing was done at all.
Whoever did it, their intention was suffering and humiliation.
They’d been hacked, not sliced cleanly.
Who had taken them?
Why?
My jaw locks so hard the bones grind.
I stupidly didn’t put my tunic back on after sparring with Thorne, so I keep my hands fisted in the fabric of my robe as I stalk through the Western corridors toward the infirmary, boots cracking over tile, too much fury coursing through my veins.
Vulcaris staff flatten themselves against the walls, soldiers enroute to stand watch on the eastern landing stall mid-step.
How has one of my cadets managed to keep something like this from me?
Something so huge.
Something far too close to home.
That’s what twists the dagger into my gut the hardest.
Sure, I’ve noticed she has an old injury. That her weak spot is her back, or shoulder, or somewhere in that region, from watching her train.
I do that a lot, watch her train like some fucking pre-pubescent idiot.
For weeks it’s been a mystery to me why she captures my attention so thoroughly, so often.
Until now.
I must have sensed something was off with her all along, since that first time I laid eyes on her in the alley and she’d acted like a brave little rabbit, terrified yet sacrificing herself for the girl hiding in the dumpster in spite of her fear.
Why?
And why did I let her?
The questions I still don’t have any answer to. And yet it’s the reason I let her think she’d had me duped that day in the not-so-fucking-holy Virtus.
Almost more intriguing had been the heavy scent of blood filling the alley too, despite her not having a scratch on her.
Not from what I could see anyway, and the white t-shirt and no pants combo she wore hadn’t left many places hidden from me to check.
But the sight of her bleeding in the ash covered yard triggered old memories I wasn’t ready for.
I force my pace to slow, every step I take becoming more measured and controlled. If I lose that control before I reach her, someone will die, and it won’t be the one who deserves it most.
Who would do that to someone?
Something so awful.
Fucking tragic.
There’s no doubt in my mind what brutality that young woman has suffered. Exactly what kind of torture she’s endured.
I have experience with her exact kind of injury. I know someone who went through the same damn thing.
Well, similar enough.
Removing someone’s wings takes an immeasurably sick individual.
Removing them the way hers were…
That’s where the similarities between the two wingless females I’ve met stop.
I am no stranger to enemies. I have many. Countless people wishing to do me great fucking harm and whom I wish to return the favor to tenfold.
But I don’t think I could do that.
Maybe it’s because I’ve helped someone through it that makes the idea so unthinkable.
I hadn’t just been the person to help her back to her former glory. I’d been the one to find her.
I’d fucking held her for those first few weeks of healing, only letting her go so I could help mend her wounds, channeling my flames for healing, not havoc.
For weeks I tried to find the right words, the ones she needed to hear, but nothing would get through.
She’d begged me to kill her.
I shiver at the memory, because Satan forgive me, I actually considered it.
I couldn’t imagine, if the shoe were on the other foot, how I’d survive having my wings taken from me.
They’ve gotten me through so much in life. Not just my life here, but my younger years in the castle in Luxuria.
Years I still can’t bear thinking about.
Times so rough that they made winding up on the Iron Isle, taking part in the first games with Yuvi and Z, seem like little more than a bit of fun with new friends.
The infirmary doors swing open at my touch.
“Out.” The word cracks like a whip and every head snaps up.
Healers freeze. Patients go still on their beds. One of the nurses, a foolish one who I’ve never much cared for, steps forward, lips pursed, about to tell me I can’t be here.
I don’t slow, or raise my voice, I take the nearest occupied gurney to her, spin it on its wheels, and shove it toward the door to the hall.
The patient, an injured cadet I recognize from Aes Company, yelps.
The healer scrambles after him.
One by one, they clear the room, and thankfully, no one argues again.
By the time I reach the far end, I’m greeted with a choice of four doors leading to private wards.
My nostrils flare.
She smells of the amber found in her soul piercing eyes, mixed with a field of wildflowers under the moon, trying to lure with blooms of honeysuckle and meadow-fucking-sweet.
It’s impossible, heavenly, yet real enough I can follow it anywhere.
I select the second door from the right.
Hers.
I forget to knock, barging in and closing the door behind me with enough force to rattle the walls.
Silence meets me.
Seraphina Scarvo, if that’s even her real name, sits upright on the infirmary bed, those amber eyes empty of that fierce spark I can’t seem to get enough of now I’ve seen it.
Her shoulders are bare, and there are fresh bandages where clothes should be clinging to torn skin, and I know if I could see her back, the bandages there would already be turning pink with blood where they couldn’t fully close the wounds.
She’s uncomfortable. Rigid and defensive, furious in that quiet, coiled way of hers she tries to quash.
I cross the room slowly, like approaching a wounded predator that doesn’t yet know whether to bite or flee. Because that’s what she is. Predator, not prey.
I read her wrong at first, but I know better now.
She doesn’t trust me, she never has. In fact, I’m pretty sure she hates me more than any cadet has ever hated their instructor.
“Look at me,” I demand.
She doesn’t.
Her fingers curl into the sheets instead.
“I said,” My voice is low and edged with iron. “Look at me.”
She tilts her chin but brings her eyes up slowly to meet mine. There’s defiance in them. Pain, too. And something else that punches clean through my ribs.
Shame.
I reach out before I can stop myself, then force my hand to still in midair and fall.
“Who did this to you?”
Her jaw tightens.
“Who.” I repeat, stepping closer with each word. “Did. This. To. You?”
Her gaze flickers.
There it is.
She knows, she’s just refusing to tell me.
Not yet.
She will though.
I turn away, pacing once, twice, then plant my hands on the end of the bed, curling my fingers around the metal frame.
“I will find them,” I say. “I don’t care if they’re angel, demon, or something in between. I will find them, and I will end them.”
“You are ten years too late,” she snarks. “Besides, no offence Overlord, but it’s really not your business or concern."
“You were mutilated,” I growl and she flinches. “And now you are one of my cadet’s. That makes it both my business and my concern.”
“Why?”
“Because you hid it from me!”
“Of course I hid it from you! I’ve been hiding it from everyone. In fact, what was it you said? Oh yes, ‘monsters will only respect you if you show them you can bite.’ Think monsters will respect me now that they know I’m broken?”
“You’re not broken.”
“Oh, save me your lies. Seriously, what did you just call me? Scarred, hideous, oh no, mutilated.”
“I didn’t mean… fuck.” I drag a hand through my hair. “Look, Valtren shouldn’t have done that.”
“Valtren is a bitch and a cheat,” she blurts before covering her mouth with her hand like she just swore for the first time in her life.
Then again, it probably was.
“You also declared victory before it was earned,” I correct. “And paid for it.”
Her gaze drops, and the room hums with unspoken things.
She knows she was naive. She hates herself for it.
“To play with monsters like Lilliana Valtren, you have to stop expecting them to fight fair.”
I walk around the bed to her side and lift my hand.
She tenses but doesn’t pull away when I brush my knuckles along her jaw.
Feather-light and barely there. But still unable to help myself.
“Look at me, Scarvo.” The name tastes different in my mouth now. Not right. Still, she does as I ask instantly this time and meets my gaze. “I’m not here to give you a roasting,” I tell her. “You are not weak. You are not broken. And you are not alone with this.” I nod toward the bandages.
It was stupid to say it back then to Eurya, it’s beyond reckless to promise it now to the nephilim.
But as I look into her piercing amber eyes, pooling with tears that she’s praying to her angels I won’t notice, I do the same thing I did last time.
Back when it had been the Red General, Eurya of Wrath, laying in front of me.
“I can help you,” I promise, and her breath shudders again.
“I don’t need saving,” she whispers.
“Lucky for you I’m no knight in shining armor. But I am going to help you get your wings back. And then you are going to tell me who took them in the first place.”
“Wha—Why?”
I go back to pacing the room, then shrug, like this isn’t so important to me it’s going to be keeping me awake at night until her attackers are dealt with.
“So I can teach them some manners.”
“Manners?”
“Yes, manners. Especially when it comes to putting their hands where they have no business being. Or their blades where only the worst people burning in Hell would go. These people deserve to be among those personally tortured by Lucifer.”
I wait for her reply. With Eurya, this was when I’d started to get through.
She’d acquired a thirst for vengeance, snapped out of her pity party, and vowed to kill every seraphim who’d held a blade to her back. Every nephilim who’d helped get her on their table or held her down.
“Why?” she eventually asks.
“Why what?” Shit, I’m snapping more than I should be.
“Why do you care? We have another game two days from now. Chances are high that I’ll be one of those mourned in the Valley of Fallen Blades.
Especially now my weakness has been exposed.
They’ll be gunning for me, you Overlord’s told us as much when you announced the triad.
And you personally told me as much yourself a few nights ago in the stew. "
Her eyes betray her then. It’s brief, but I don’t miss how they flit up and down my body at the memory, and her cheeks pinken.
Shit, I know I shouldn’t have let her know I was there that night, but it felt wrong to watch someone without them knowing you’re there.
Besides, how could I not call her out?
She’d been a damn vision doing that kata.
Something different and new, like nothing I’ve seen before, aside from maybe when training in the early mornings with the Sisters.
I tilt my head. “Let’s stop pretending shall we, Little Nephilim?”
I walk back to the bed and sit on the edge of her mattress. She tries to pull herself away from me, but winces and gives up. Not wanting to aggravate the wounds, or show more weakness in front of me? Likely both.
“You aren’t going to let these games take you down without a fucking good fight, are you?”
She shakes her head reluctantly. “Unless the game requires wings to complete it.”
“You’re okay on that front until the last one.”
“What?”
Fuck.
The seventh game is the only one that is guaranteed to kill her without the use of wings.
But she has no right knowing that.
And I have no right telling her.
Fuck.
“Who was Valtren talking about?” I ask, hoping the drastic change of subject wipes that look off her face.
The one that’s showing she heard every word and knows full well I told her too damn much.
“Who told her you were wingless?” I clarify.
She accepts the change of subject, but shakes her head, denying me an answer as her chestnut hair cascades down over her face and shoulders, the last strands falling out of the braid.
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me,” I insist.
“Why?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She laughs, but it’s dripping with sarcasm. The irony at my double standards isn't lost on me. Still, her laugh sounds like how I imagine a choir of angels might sound when they start to harmonize together. She should laugh more often. “Check,” she says.
“You play?”
“Chess? I used to. What did you mean when you said you will help me get my wings back?”
“Oh, so you did hear that? I meant exactly what I said. That I will help you get your wings back. That I am going to teach you how and you are going to be a good student, do as you are told and be a happy little angel about it when you are no longer wingless.”
“It’s not possible. They’re gone. They took them.”
“Who, exactly, took them, Scar?”
I hadn’t meant to drop the ‘vo’ from the end of her name, but Scar suits her better.
Her eyes flash with anger at the name.
“What’s the matter, Scar?” I taunt.
“I am more than my scars.”
Problem is, she clearly doesn’t believe it.
The shame is written all over her face, the most unmistakable expression to ever cross her features.
“I know you are. But until you start believing that I’m going to call you Scar.”
“To be cruel?”
“No.” Never to be cruel. “I’ve helped someone with this before,” I admit. And for Eurya’s new wings to appear, she had to believe herself worthy of them again.
The little nephilim looking up at me now, with confusion in every hard line of her pretty face, does not believe herself worthy.
She believes herself broken.
“You have?” She's sitting forward now, leaning toward me and hanging off every word. “What happened?”
“She got her wings back, obviously.”
“No. Not possible.” She’s shaking her head.
“Very possible. And I’m going to enjoy proving you wrong. Tomorrow, nightfall. Meet me in the foyer and we’ll start.”