7. Kiera
Chapter 7
Kiera
“ G et. Out.”
Three seconds is an eternity when you anticipate bloodshed and dread it. They end with those two words, hissed between Ophelia’s pearl white teeth as she glowers at Ruen. I have to give her my respect for those words and her stance. Ruen is not a normal man. He’s not mortal and, I suspect, he could potentially end Ophelia—no matter how well trained she is—in an instant.
Kalix’s fingers on my upper arms ease ever so slightly. The scent of smoke permeates my nostrils causing my nose to twitch with discomfort. I glance down, seeking out the origins of that smell. A perfunctory once over of Kalix tells me it’s not him. I turn my attention to the scene before me. Ruen’s cold, dark gaze is still locked on Ophelia and despite her ordered words, he hasn’t moved a muscle. Finally, my gaze falls to Theos and what I see sends tendrils of shock through my core. His eyes are blazing, the black completely gone as the golden irises glow with unnatural power and his hands are sparking. Golden flashes erupt from his fingertips, searing up to his palm, and then disappear before starting all over again. The edges of his tunic sleeves are singed. My lips part and I take a step towards him, both confused and wanting to … what? Stop the strange flares of minuscule lightning? I don’t know. Yes. Maybe.
I’m drawn up short by Kalix’s hold.
“You will unleash her from your contract,” Ruen states, the only sound apart from the breaths that fill the room.
My head swivels back to the two of them.
Ophelia’s full lips curl up into the facsimile of a smile. It’s more of a baring of teeth than a true smile. “I will discuss this with Kiera,” she says by way of answer. “Not you.”
Ruen’s head is shaking before she’s even finished. His cool gaze turns into ice chips that threaten to form a sword and stab through her jugular.
“You will remove that stone from her neck or I will kill you here and now and do it myself.”
Those words should not soften me towards him. They don’t, I tell myself even knowing it’s a lie. When was the last time someone demanded freedom for me? When was the last time someone fought for me? My chest tightens. I know the answer.
Ten years ago.
“I wish a word with my ward, Darkhaven child ,” Ophelia sneers with insult. “You will leave or you will get nothing from me.”
I take another step forward, wishing to ease the storm brewing between them before it gets worse because, yes, it has already begun. Kalix doesn’t let me go but he does allow the movement as he, too, steps forward. I can see the truth of rage in the darkened night sky of Ruen’s gaze as he turns and glances over at me.
I know what he wants. My response. My decision. I could fucking forgive him for everything he’s done to wound me for that one seemingly insignificant little action. “I want to talk with her too,” I tell him.
To my utter surprise, he nods his understanding. He does so with no small amount of displeasure on his face, but then he takes a step back from Ophelia and I return my attention to the woman who raised me.
“We will be outside,” he says before casting a seething glare at Ophelia even as he continues to speak to me. “Don’t be long, and if you do not come out with that stone removed, I shall remove it myself and then cut this woman down.”
I don’t know if he’ll actually follow through on that threat, but I’m not sure I want to find out so I simply tilt my head in acknowledgment of his words and then stride forward, out of Kalix’s grip. Ophelia doesn’t move from her position in the doorway of the smaller room, but she does cant her head and jerk her chin.
“Out,” she snaps to Carcel and the man obeys, though he doesn’t look happy about it. Then again, Carcel has always been a shit to me and his mouth is little more than a constant pinched asshole so there’s nothing new in his expression.
Ophelia finally steps into the quiet, smaller room. Carcel shoulders past me, shoving into me so fast that it takes all of my self-control not to snatch him back by the collar and plant my fist in his gut. His childishness has long since lost its necessity considering that neither he nor I are children any longer. If he wants to continue to hold a grudge against the time his mother spends with me, that's his prerogative.
Just before the door closes behind me, I see Kalix take two strides forward, and as if he saw right into my mind, he grabs Carcel by his tunic and throws him into the wall with little effort before slamming his fist into his face. If Ophelia sees or hears Carcel’s grunt of pain, she says nothing. She doesn’t even return to the doorway as Carcel begins to curse.
I quickly enter the room and the door swings shut behind me, leaving the two of us alone for the first time in … months. Since long before I ever came to Riviere.
My heartbeat doubles as I stand, silent and still, watching Ophelia round the table that takes up the majority of the small room’s space. The walls, covered in the same ornate, but dusty, wallpaper as the larger room make the space feel more confined somehow and the skin at the back of my neck begins to burn and itch. I refuse to reach up or acknowledge it in any way so I simply stare at the woman that I’ve seen as both a jailer and … a parent for the last ten years.
Once she’s on the other side of the table and has placed it between us, Ophelia braces her hands, palms down on the edges, and lets her shoulders sink down.
“I did not wish to see you again like this, Kiera.” Her voice is quiet, tight.
My skin draws tighter against my skull as I clench my jaw. “Like what?”
Her head lifts, and the lines of her face, the wrinkles that truly reveal her age seem to deepen. Before she can speak, I move across the floor towards her, not stopping until I’m standing in front of her and the only thing separating our bodies is the table before us.
She doesn’t answer my question, so I ask a different one. “How long have you been working with Caedmon?”
Ophelia lifts up and thrusts her shoulders back. “I’ve known him for quite some time,” she tells me. The words are both an answer and a non-answer. Her green eyes, flecked with bits and pieces of gold, linger on my face. Her expression is unreadable and I hate it. I want so badly to know what she’s thinking, to know what her plans are for me, and if she’ll actually cave to Ruen’s demands to remove the brimstone from my neck.
She doesn’t seem all that afraid of what he might do to her if she doesn’t do as he commands, but then again, Ophelia is a master at hiding what she truly feels. I’ve known her for ten years and even I have never been certain of her feelings on most subjects. She could be terrified of Ruen, but even if she is, I doubt she’d ever show it.
That’s the fate of an assassin. Emotions are a weakness so they remove them. It’s a miracle Regis and I have done so well, but I suspect it’s more so the fact that we both had little choice. We both had goals that were more important than the lives of others and now we’re cursed to live with the blood we’ve shed staining our hands.
Such is the fate of killers and survivors.
Silence stretches between us, filling the hollow empty places in the room. I shake my head. “Did you send me here knowing that Caedmon was the client? Did you know this whole mission was a fucking lie? Did you know that I would—” I cut my words off, unsure how to finish the question. What should I even say? Did she know that I would meet the Darkhavens? Was that, too, planned?
“No one can know all things, Kiera,” Ophelia says, her tone quiet, almost tired. “Not even the God of Prophecy.”
I laugh, but the sound is anything but amused. Instead, it hovers over the two of us, caustic and too sharp. “You heard him,” I say. “Caedmon is no God.” He is Atlantean, a being from another world. A liar like the rest of them. “He’s just as mortal as the rest of us.”
Just as killable, I realize, though the thought of taking such an action had never entered my mind until this moment.
“Do you want me to remove the brimstone in your neck?” Ophelia asks, returning me to the reason we’re locked in this room alone in the first place.
I jerk my head up and stare at her. “Of course I do.”
It’s what I’ve wanted since the moment she inserted it. The stone feels wrong under my skin. Though the pain has lessened over the years—no, that’s not right. The pain hasn’t lessened, I’ve just grown accustomed to it. I’ve dealt with it every moment of every day for ten years. I’ve just fought through it. Spent nights sobbing into my pillows and hands until the rivers of tears had dried.
No one ever thought to help me out of the agony. They just expected me to act as if it wasn’t there. So I did what was expected.
The stone, itself, is like a low lying ache—an old wound that will never fully heal—that I’ve learned to live with not because I want to but because I have to. I tried to ignore the existence of it and even on occasion managed to forget it entirely, but that never lasted. When you’re constantly in pain, enduring becomes the only constant. You fight not to relieve that pain, but to survive it. It’s only when you become good at enduring the pain that people forget it exists.
Ophelia tilts her head to the side, watching me. Her eyes sharpen, pupils shrinking until all I really see in her gaze are green and gold. “And what do you plan to do once I remove it? Do you plan to leave the Underworld—your debt unpaid?”
A scowl overtakes me. I slam a fist down on the table. “How much denza have you made off my labor, Ophelia?” I snap. “As much as I’ve taken from my jobs, you’ve taken more. Each kill. Each mission. You take and you take.”
“I trained you,” she states simply. “I spared your life. I am owed what I am due.”
“I was a child.”
Rage burns hot coals in the back of my eyes. I fight back the tears that wish to unleash torrents over my cheeks. “Do not act like you spared me out of the goodness of your heart,” I hiss. “You wished to use me and you did. I’m sure you made Caedmon give over half of this farce of a job’s fee. That, combined with what I have made you over the last decade, should suffice for my debt.”
End this, I want to beg her. Set me free . I want it, crave it. The desire for my freedom is like a living, breathing entity in my breast. It curls around my heart and squeezes in long, drugging pulls as if it can keep the organ beating for as long as it needs to in order to attain its desire.
For a moment, Ophelia doesn’t speak. Her hands curl around the lip of the table, fingers digging into the wood as if they can burrow past the planks and break them free. She’s angry, but I don’t see why. Because she’s losing a blood servant? Tough. Fucking. Luck. I’ve suffered enough, haven’t I?
Children aren’t meant to be killers.
Wisps of shadows fall from my fingertips, curling up my wrist and circling like shackles. They do no more than that, but I can feel the power of them singing in my blood, moving through me and wanting more. My head pounds, the ache of the stone as it represses my powers as much as it can vibrating up the back of my skull. I bite down against the pain and glare at the woman standing across from me. All around us, in the walls and beyond, there are hundreds of little creatures responding to the call of my blood.
Whether I am half God or half monster, I don’t care anymore. All I desire is my freedom. The right to make my own choices, but I will not beg for what I have earned.
“You talk about what is owed.” My words come stilted, slowly, as I grit through the pain. “But what about what I am owed.” I lift my eyes and stare at her through my dark lowered lashes. “I have been nothing but loyal,” I remind her. “I took your education, I took your jobs. I did everything you asked.”
Please. I silently plead. No. I bite down on my tongue. I. Will. Not. Beg.
The shadows shiver against my skin, melding tighter. They are liquid darkness, unyielding, and yet, I do not find them restrictive. Instead, they feel like bands of strength, propping me up, urging me to face the woman I have both admired and feared for so long.
Ophelia’s nails retract from the tabletop and she straightens, pulling her hands away. “What will you do if I release you from your contract?”
“I won’t betray you,” I say, assuring her. “I have no intention of revealing the Underworld.”
“Will you continue to work for me?”
My lips part, but I have no words, only shock. Continue to work for her? I stare past her, over her shoulder, my eyes sinking into the frayed edges of the wallpaper, crinkling and pealing in the upper corner where the wall meets the ceiling. Beneath my booted feet, the floorboards creak. Particles of dirt float through the air, thickening the stale smell in the room that is both rotted wood and old ink.
Ophelia’s attention sears into my cheek, but still, I don’t look at her. If I thought she had massive balls to face Ruen and act unafraid, she has even larger ones to ask me that. I never wanted to be an assassin. I never wanted to be wrapped up in Anatol’s hierarchy of power struggles.
It had been my dream to return to the Hinterlands, to rebuild the cabin that had been burned down all those years ago. A part of me still wants that. Yet, the thought of staying out in the darkness of the forest, with no one around for miles, no lights, no streets, no taverns or coffeehouses, no sounds save for the creatures that inhabit the woods—it leaves me feeling somewhat hollow. As if someone has scooped out my insides, organs and all, and deposited them on the ground before me.
What would be the point of living a solitary life now?
I turn back and glance over my shoulder at the door where, beyond it, three great men wait for me. How many minutes has it been? How many more will they allow? I’m half worried that if we spend much longer in here Ruen will break down the door and demand to know what’s taking so long. Then again, he’s already surprised me so much today—they all have—maybe they’ll allow me this freedom too.
“Those boys,” Ophelia starts, the sound of her footsteps nearing as she rounds the table. I turn to look at her, watching, unmoving, as she strides closer. “They might be kinder than some, more trustworthy than others, but do not forget, Kiera, a sword can cut more than flesh, but death is always its original purpose.”
I stare back at her. “You don’t want me to trust them.” It’s not a question.
Ophelia’s mouth curves, though the smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “You have sought peace your entire life.” She withdraws a blade from a pocket in her breaches. With a flick, the sharp silver edge unsheathes from the handle, snapping out with a deft twist of her wrist. I don’t flinch as I continue to hold her gaze. “But now, you will need to go to war before you ever find that peace.”
“Did you know that this would happen?”
With firm fingers, Ophelia grabs ahold of my arm and turns me to face the wall and the door. Her fingers are cold as they gather the strands of my hair and hold them out of the way to reveal the back of my neck. The muscles in my shoulders pull taut.
The first bite of the blade’s sharp edge in my skin doesn’t hurt, but it does make all of the muscles in my back tense further. The well of warm blood bubbles up and I feel a bead slide from the opening Ophelia creates as she draws the knife down further. I close my eyes, falling back into that safe place I’ve grown accustomed to—the place she forced me to create for myself.
“No one knows how the future will turn out,” she answers my question as her fingers make swift work of her task. The blade withdraws from my flesh and I hear it clatter onto the table a moment before her fingers—cooler than most—peel the cut open wider. I bite down on my lower lip to keep silent. “No mother knows how her children will turn out either.”
Now, I speak. “You’re not my mother.” The words spew from my lips despite my earlier thoughts. Yes, once, I had thought of her that way. She is, after all, the only adult woman who’d ever remained a constant in my life, but no mother forces her children into the dark for coin. No mother tortures them to keep others safe.
Her fingers dig beneath my flesh. “I won’t apologize for ensuring that you would survive a world intent on killing you.”
“Is that what you would call it?” I demand, hissing out a breath as her fingers brush against the stone in my neck and more blood flows down my back, soaking into the back collar of my tunic.
“Everyone has an evil side, Kiera. You might think that all of my sides are evil, but it was never my wish to hurt you.”
“Yet you did.” The words slice out from between my teeth as I clamp my hands into fists, digging the edges of my dulled nails into my palms until they feel as sharp as any sword.
Ophelia's lips twist into a scowl. Damn her. Harder and harder still, my heart solidifies. Fear. I feared this woman. Some part of me still does. Another part, however, freed somehow by the last few months I’ve experienced within the Academy no longer does. I see her for who she truly is.
A woman. Just a woman.
“It takes a great amount of violence to become gentle,” she whispers even as her fingers push into my neck, pinching that sliver of brimstone. My spine catches on fire and blood fills my mouth, spilling over my tongue and down the back of my throat before I realize I’ve bitten the inside of my cheek hard enough to tear it open.
Those scorching tears return. The very air in my lungs evaporates, disappearing completely as I become breathless. My body shakes. My legs weaken. The pain … it’s more than I remember. I’m suddenly so viscerally aware of that tiny piece of brimstone inside me that it feels fused to my very skeleton and she is prying it out.
Black dots dance in front of my vision. Colliding into one another, they shake and tremble and waver in and out of sight as the breath held deep within me releases all at once with a great big whoosh. Suddenly, I can’t breathe anymore. Suddenly, the thin light of the sconces on the walls is completely gone, all that lies before me is darkness.
My knees crack as they bow inward, the only thing keeping me from collapsing on the floor. The soft whisper of Ophelia’s voice, talking … talking … what is she saying? I can’t hear her well as the pain overwhelms my other senses. Molten agony spreads from the place in my neck where the brimstone is slowly being pulled free. Vomit threatens to tear a path up my throat. I clench my teeth and hold it at bay with nothing but my desire not to show how fucking much this hurts.
After what feels like an eternity, Ophelia’s voice comes to me once more, halfway through whatever she’d been saying.
“—wished for someone to come for me, always did, and feared that I always would. I never had a daughter, and no, I understand that you don’t wish to consider yourself mine.”
Bile thickens my throat. My tongue swells. Is it over? No. Her fingers are still against the back of my neck, slipping in the blood there. More coats my flesh and the wet feeling of my tunic sticks to my upper back.
“The more time we spend on this land, the more we realize that few things are in our control,” Ophelia continues.
My body sways slightly and I feel more blood drip from my hands where my nails have finally dug past the layers of skin there. I can’t pass out here, I tell myself. Yet, I don’t quite remember how this thing had been put inside me to begin with. I know I hadn’t been standing but lying down.
“Peace is not for ones such as you, Kiera. Caedmon knows this. I know this. With what you can do, with the hand that the world has dealt you, you were always meant to do more than run from responsibility.”
Responsibility? The urge to turn and slap her rises like a tidal wave. Unfortunately, even as the desire swells, it crashes against cliffs that stop it from doing any damage and I remain right where I am. Sight darkened and unchanged, my body completely ramrod straight as pain darts through me.
As if she finally—blessedly senses my spasming torment—Ophelia’s fingers are gentle as she slips a nail under the brimstone and the damn thing comes free. All her prying and wiggling has paid off. The stone slips from my neck, from beneath my skin, and the wash of warmth that encompasses me a second after it’s gone spreads from the wound in my neck and down my limbs.
The image of the room flares back to life and I can see—truly see—once more. I blink and frown. In fact, my eyesight is far better than it’s ever been. The peeling wallpaper that was once a flat, grotesque design becomes thousands of tiny little fibers woven into one another and stretched into the material that covers the wall. I can pinpoint each individual tear and the wood beyond, scarred by deep grooves.
Slowly, confused by the strange sensations coursing through me and aware of my own skin knitting back together and healing far faster than ever before, I turn to face the woman at my back. Her fingers are coated in blood, but she doesn’t move to wipe them.
Whereas before I never noticed, now I can see the soft marks of makeup dotting her skin—covering … more lines I realize. Far more than I’ve ever detected previously. The dust is a light coating but still there, and it no longer masks the shadows beneath Ophelia’s eyes or her sunken sockets. Her lips, once full, I now recognize are dry and cracked beneath the gleam of some sort of glossy lipstick.
For the first time, I see. See it all in a way that I hadn’t in a decade, in a way that I had forgotten was possible. It makes my head throb with all of the information being thrown at my sight at once.
“I will do whatever it takes to not become you,” I find myself saying.
“You don’t mean that,” she says on a sigh as if the words are so obvious that she’s annoyed she has to say them at all.
I look at her, and when my eyes meet hers, I repeat myself. “Whatever. It. Takes.”
Her lips part and her eyes narrow. “Kiera.” She says my name like a mother ready to castigate a recalcitrant child, but I am no child, and I have not been one for a very long time.
“I mean it,” I say, my tone quiet. I feel no need to shout or scream. Making the words louder won’t make them any truer. “I am done.”
Ophelia’s brows crease and her lips curl down into a frown. “What do you?—”
“I am done letting everyone else make decisions for me,” I say. A cold sort of chill comes over me. It starts at my fingertips and slowly crawls up my hand, over my knuckles to my wrists.
“I think it took me this long to realize that I’ve never made a choice for myself, not really,” I continue. “I didn’t choose to be born?—”
Ophelia scoffs, a sharp sardonic chuckle rising from her throat as she cuts me off. She rolls her eyes and then waves her hand, the frown and confusion easing slightly. One look at her face. That’s all it takes and I know she doesn’t understand what I mean. Then she speaks, and my assumption is confirmed.
“You didn’t choose to be born?” She shakes her head again. “You still have benefited from it. You were given opportunities others would have killed for.”
I tilt my head to the side and stare at her for a moment. She won’t understand. It doesn’t matter what I say or do. Perhaps I’m just now realizing it, but there are some people you cannot convince of anything. They will go their entire lives believing the sky is purple and fuck anyone who says otherwise. I know that … yet somehow my next words come out anyway.
“If you were told you could either lose your right hand or your left hand, which would you choose?” I ask suddenly.
Ophelia blinks. “Excuse me?” Her tone suggests that she thinks I’ve gone crazy.
“There’s an accident and you must give up one hand. Which do you choose, right or left?” I ask.
She pauses but after a beat, answers. “Left.”
I nod, unsurprised. She’s right-handed. Therefore, her choice makes sense. “Alright, then, by your own choice, you lose your left hand. Do you agree?”
Ophelia scowls. “This is ridiculous,” she snaps.
“You lose your left hand,” I repeat. “Do you agree?”
“Yes, damn it,” she seethes.
I take a breath. “What if, then, the Gods decide that no one is allowed to use their right hand? They make the law that everyone must use their left hand as it’s more Divine. Should anyone be caught using their right hand they will have it cut off. What do you do?”
More frowns from her. “I would go back and choose to cut off my right hand then.”
I shake my head. “You can’t go back,” I say. “It’s gone. The decision is made. You only have your right hand.”
“If the Gods decree that I cannot use it, though, then it’s useless. How was I supposed to know that they would make such a preposterous decree?”
“It doesn’t matter if you could tell the future or not. You made a decision in the moment, assuming one thing. Now, you cannot use either of your hands or, if you try to use the one you have left, you run the risk of losing it completely as well.”
Her frown turns into a scowl. “What is this?” she demands.
“Choices,” I tell her. “These are your choices. If you use your right hand, the only one you have left, you’ll have it cut off now. What do you do? Will you use it or not?”
“It doesn’t matter what I would decide,” she snaps. “It’s lost either way whether I use it or not.”
“Exactly,” I tell her. “Every choice I’ve ‘made’ for myself has somehow been controlled by others. First by my mother, then my father, then the bandits, then you, and now … as it always does, it comes down to the Gods. All I have had has been the illusion of choice and I’m telling you that I’m done with that.”
No more.
“The only thing I have left to wonder is, if all I was good for was destruction and death then why?” The question refers to our conversation, but I’m not entirely sure what I want to know. “Why me and not someone else?”
Why did she keep me? Train me? Hurt me? If she wanted a daughter, why did she treat me as she did? Why the servitude? Why the choices she made?
Ophelia’s expression—once so difficult to understand—twitches and all of the minute little changes from the dart of her eyes to the muscle that bunches and jumps in the side of her nose or beneath her right eye reveals all. She doesn’t like being questioned, but I won’t retract it. Whatever she wants to answer, I’ll let her. I want her to. I’m curious to see which question she’ll take and which she’ll respond to.
So, I wait.
Silence stretches between us, seemingly unending until it does, in fact, come to an end with a deep breath from her and the gaze she breaks by looking away. She picks up the switchblade, wipes it on her pants’ leg, and then folds it down, closing the sharp edge into the handle before slipping it back into her pocket.
“I will not pretend to be altruistic,” she says with a shrug. “You were a good investment and I’m a businesswoman.” I wait a beat and she continues, arms at her sides. “With that said, all that I did, I did it to prepare you for the world. When I was a child, no one fought for me, and so easily I could see you killed. I did not wish to do that. Your existence was a danger, but children deserve chances. I had to protect the Underworld, but that didn’t mean I had to kill you to do so.”
My fisted hands release and blood drips free from wounds that have already healed. The cuts made by my nails are gone, but the remains of them flow over my skin, and ping against the floor one after another. It’s ironic.
This woman saved me. Damaged me. I am alive because of her. I resent her kindness as much as her cruelty. Is that fair? Perhaps not, but if there’s anything she’s taught me, it’s that life is not fair.
Without a word, I turn away from her and face the door. I reach for the knob—the sounds of voices on the other side louder than they were minutes prior.
“You are a better woman because of what I did,” Ophelia says. “Better equipped to handle the next task set before you. You are stronger for what I did.”
I bite down on my tongue even as the words break free a moment later. “Children do not ask to be strong or better, but I guess, in this life, I have no other choice.” I don’t look back. “It’s conquer or die.”