23. Intruders #2
The other scythe nearest to Flora turned, its bright eyes narrowing as it let out a guttural growl, its lips curling in a hungry grin.
It crouched low with the snarling face of a demon, ready to pounce.
Flora’s fear was a fire in her chest, but it paled to the flame of how desperately she needed him to live. She leveled her grip and exhaled.
“You’re not doing this alone,” Flora said, her voice resolute like she knew what the fuck she was doing. As a breath of silence momentarily overtook the chaos, she squeezed the trigger.
“Oh, Noec, you shouldn’t have! It’s not even my birthday!” Aria cheered, clapping excitedly as she locked the cage with the silver and obsidian creature inside. It was heaving and bloody, with an arrow still ingrained into its chest.
“You look like…” Aria thought for a moment, tapping her chin, then concluded, “a Derek!” The creature groaned in response, blood dripping from its mouth. “Welcome, Derek! You and I are going to be great friends.”
With Romeo’s tragic passing, Aria was overjoyed to find that one of the three invading scythes had not yet perished. “Derek” hissed and grumbled, barely willing to pull himself off the ground.
“A fresh mind to pick,” Aria said with a dark enthrallment. “What secrets will you tell, little shapeshifter?”
The creature burst and crackled, morphing in a flurry into the shape of a young man, the arrow still deep in his abdomen.
“Perri, was it?” he said, with a familiar freckled grin beneath coiling black hair. He slowly pulled the arrow from his chest and spat, “I’m one of theirs now.”
Noec muffled a gasp behind closed lips as the arrow clinked against the stone floor.
Aria burst into hysterical laughter. “Oh, you scythes and your shifter tricks,” she said breathlessly. She laughed and laughed, but Flora saw there was a detached darkness in her eye.
“Noec,” she said, swatting at him. “Go, go, go—see if you can get the other two into the fountain while they’re still viable.
” She pushed him out the door and shushed him away.
Noec looked over her shoulder nervously, peering at the cage with the familiar figure.
“Quick, before they’ve decayed completely and there’s no blood left to save! ”
She spun him around and pushed him off. He caught himself before tumbling down the stairs and continued on, a visible unease on his face as he looked back at Flora.
When he finally had disappeared from sight, Aria laughed once more under her breath. “Flora,” Aria said as she shoved Flora against the wall. Her chuckles broke into a deep, aching sigh. Her voice lowered as she said, “He can’t know. Not if we want him to fight.”
“He can’t know what, Aria?”
Aria paused, severity in her glare as her eyes flicked to Flora.
“Oh, come now—you can’t be Sona’s protege and pretend you haven’t wondered.
” She pulled the door tight beside her, ensuring that her prisoner wouldn’t hear.
Aria sighed, then whispered, “He can’t know that these scythes were…
human. None of them can. Not until this is over. ”
Flora blinked, wide-eyed with disbelief. It was a thought she’d never dared speak into existence.
“People like him won’t fight if they know they’re fighting the people they once loved,” Aria muttered.
“The scythe blood in Noec was fresher than with our other volunteers, augmented by Lunara’s Blessing and...
whatever you did. He seems to be larger, and stronger than the rest.” She paused, then added, “We may not survive if he falters. Not if the Shadowkeeper makes an appearance.”
Still unable to process, Flora nodded weakly. “Aria, did... did you lie? About Noec being safe? About… this not being Perri,” she said, gesturing toward the door.
Aria sighed, finally crossing her arms and backing away from her overly intimate glare. “It’s impossible for me to know for sure.”
“All of them?” Flora asked, and Aria nodded. “Every single one of them is… ”
“Was,” Aria corrected. “Sona had noticed that many of the Scytherax, while able to transform into a number of human forms, often defaulted to one particular human form over and over again, often in preference to the griffin-like form we think of as a scythe. My original theory was that they acquire their human mimics by consumption of flesh, or some kind of tissue containing genetic material. But…”
“Elia…” Flora whispered. She then cut in, “That theory doesn’t work, because scythes can shift into forms of people who are still living.”
“Exactly! And just like that, my theory was rubbish. So, when I heard news of what they did to my Sona, I…” She huffed with a bitter grin, “I began rewriting my theories straight from the source—demanding answers from the scythes themselves. They may not feel fear, but they certainly feel something enough to beg when on the brink of death.” Aria shrugged.
“Of course, it's possible that their leader would rather they give me answers than kill one of his toys.”
Flora recalled Romeo’s ragged and scarred body. He had been Aria’s treasured blood donor for her medicine, and the first victim of her vengeful interrogations. Beyond those white eyes… he was human.
“And what a trove of information sweet Romeo was, with just a bit of motivation,” Aria said, wiping away a fake tear.
“I’ve since learned that the scythes can take the form of any human their leader learns through their eyes—amassing quite a collection.
Such a good boy, our Romeo. I can’t wait to see what knowledge I can pry out of this new visitor.
” She cracked open the door and began to step back into her lab.
“Aria, please…” Flora begged, reaching after her. “Please don’t hurt him. Not if that’s Perri somewhere in there.”
Aria stopped. “What I can surmise is that it used to be Perri, before he fell to the curse of the Moon’s Shadow.
” She turned back to face Flora, almost angry.
“And that the demon that occupies his body would benefit greatly if you believed, in any capacity, that your friend is still somewhere inside. But that’s dangerous thinking, exactly the kind of thinking that we can not afford.
That’s the kind of thinking that will cause the people you love to hold back in a fight for their lives.
” She stepped closer and hissed, “Is that what you want?”
Flora’s throat tightened. “No.”
“Good,” Aria sighed. “Now run along. Your brother will have hit his twenty-four hours soon, and if I recall, he was torturing the guards with his humor hours ago.”
“Florabelle,” the man in the cage said as she stepped out the door. She glanced back, and his dull eyes flickered with light. With his head cocked and a crooked grin he said, “A shadow is coming, you know. And there’s nowhere in this world, or any other, where you can hide.”
“Shut the door, if you would,” Aria instructed Flora, grabbing her pronged spear and adjusting her glasses. “I’ll be down there momentarily. Just as soon as Derek and I get acquainted.”
Noec sat at the edge of the violet fountain, glaring down at his hands. His arms and chest were wrapped in bandages, and his cheek was scraped deeply and stitched from the scuffle. They were nowhere near Lunara’s healing waters, and every injury he sustained would remain with him for now.
“Noec!” Flora shouted with a wave as she caught sight of him. “Noec, how are you feeling?”
He didn’t look up, rigidly flexing and releasing his fingers where he looked down at them.
“Hey,” she said, more cautiously as she approached. “You okay?”
Still not answering, his jaw seemed to tense. “Davy’s waiting,” he said shortly.
Flora fidgeted awkwardly. “Will you come with me?”
He huffed a scoff. “I think you’ll be just fine without me.”
Flora pivoted slowly away. She felt as if she had once again walked into the surprise of her ransacked bedroom, the way anger seethed out from him in much the same way.
But, this time, there was no curse or poison to blame.
She steadied her breath and clenched her fists. She refused to regret a thing.
Without another word, she made her way alone to the prison beneath the castle, with no sound but the flustered tapping of her shoes as she made her way down the torch-lit staircase.
As she finally reached the door to the prison corridor and stopped, she heard another set of steps echoing behind her.
“I wanted to be here,” he said quietly. “In case things went anything like yesterday.”
She looked blankly at the door ahead, unable to find the words. She put her hand on the handle and stood still. Noec’s apprehensive hand crept over hers, but she had no interest in meeting his gaze.
“I won’t apologize,” she said sternly. She heard him sigh, and his hand fell away from hers.
“I—”
Flora pushed open the door. The cell-lined corridor was leagues louder than it had been the day before. In fact, much of the wailing and snarling had been replaced by boisterous laughter and idle conversation.
The handful of dying women and men who had initially volunteered to trial Aria’s injections were enjoying their time, stretching and grinning as though they hadn’t felt so alive in a long time.
There had been eight early volunteers, including Davy, but only seven of their original cells remained filled.
Though, it seemed, there were new cages filled nearby with rocking and anxious bodies.
Grease waved as they approached. “The idiot is yours, right?” he said, spinning the keys in his fingers.
“Bean?” Davy said, hopping to his feet. His arms and knuckles were bruised, and there was a chunk of stone missing from the wall behind him. “And snake-eyes? Gee, all for little old me?”
“Please, take him,” Grease begged, twisting the key with a click.
Finally, Flora gave her brother the biggest bear hug she could muster. He chuckled and hugged her back before whispering, “I’m so sorry for yesterday. I didn’t mean a thing.”
“I know,” she said, pulling away with a grin.