Chapter 15 #2
Time flattened to a steady, dull rhythm.
Eat enough to sustain myself, but no more.
Sleep the bare minimum, and try to forget the dreams I had when I did.
Spar every other moment—Atrius and me, clashing until one or both of us was spitting blood into the sand and he was already commanding, “Again.” Again. Again. Again.
All while Septimus leaned against the wall, exhaling vanilla smoke, that permanent smirk affixed to his lips. He watched like he was committing every movement of my body to memory. Like he couldn’t stop even if he wanted to.
I felt that stare constantly. I tucked away every weakness under it—swallowed my gasping breaths and clamped down the tremble of my muscles.
My body was weak. In my rare time alone, I would strip naked and stare at myself in the mirror, counting my wounds.
The bruises that crawled across my tan skin like black mold, the burns of Shiket’s final vengeful light, the gouges her fingers had left on my arms—deep enough to scar.
Sylina sent in a healer to work on me every day after training, and Zefiah’s magic helped me recover faster besides, but the marks of what I’d done were still etched all over my flesh.
I counted those wounds, and I thought of the ones that would never heal. Valentina’s, Mirie’s, Marko’s, and so many others.
So perhaps it was a twisted sort of relief that I rarely got alone time at all.
Septimus got into the infuriating habit of accompanying me to my chambers and planting himself in the armchair next to the hearth like some kind of stubborn cat.
The first time, when I’d asked him what, exactly, he thought he was doing, he’d given me a pitying look.
“I’m watching over my investment,” he said, extracting a slim pair of silver-rimmed glasses from his breast pocket. “Can’t have you doing anything rash.”
Zefiah practically quivered with distaste. I knew the feeling.
“And what exactly would you do to stop me if I did do something rash?” I said.
He flipped open a small, beaten-up book in his lap and slid the glasses on. “I’m sure inspiration would strike me.”
Inspiration wasn’t the only thing that would strike him.
But I was so exhausted that I couldn’t even argue with him.
And shamefully, perhaps a part of myself appreciated having the silence interrupted.
Before, I’d escaped too-quiet nights with alcohol and strangers’ breaths. Now, there was nowhere to go.
“Fine,” I huffed. “But you stay here, in the sitting room. Never in the bedchamber.”
“It’s not often that I’m asked to stay out of beds,” he remarked, without looking up from his book. “But I suppose, for you, I can abide it.”
He flipped a page of his book. I stared at him.
I didn’t know why it seemed odd to witness him reading.
He seemed like the kind of being whose entire existence was limited to turning up at inconvenient times and smirking conspiratorially.
I wondered what he was reading. Perhaps The Art of Dissecting Living Prey.
At that thought, my mind immediately went to Hegaella, and my private joke to myself no longer seemed funny at all.
The nights were long, the days longer. I was grateful that I had little time to sleep, because when I did, the nightmares came.
I dreamed of Valentina dying at the hands of that vampire.
Dreamed of Marko’s legs getting ripped off as he crawled to her.
Dreamed of Mirie torn apart by a soulless.
And I dreamed of all of them crying out for me, and though I tried to tell them I was coming, that I’d be there, I never was.
One night, I awoke already upright, dripping with sweat, my mouth open with the final dregs of a strangled cry. I blinked away the images of death. Blinked away Valentina’s lifeless face. And then, to my horror, I saw that my door had been left slightly open.
I rose to close it, and when I did, I saw a pair of broken-glass eyes peering over those reading glasses.
Septimus didn’t move. He didn’t speak. But we both knew he had heard me cry out. And though, in what might have even been a strange kind of mercy, he didn’t acknowledge it at all, I hated him for it.
I slammed my door shut and went back to my room.
I hated all of it. The Keep. The training.
Septimus. All of it serving to keep me locked up here, trapped with nightmares and no blood to drown them in.
Sparring was, as far as I was concerned, useless.
Once, more than ten years ago, someone had told me how to kill a vampire—push really hard, right here, right over the heart—and over the years Zefiah had taught me how to use her efficiently to that end.
You do not waste your blood on sand or your blade on flesh you don’t intend to carve from the bone.
More than a week passed. My patience was growing thin. Even Zefiah now echoed my frustration with every heartbeat.
“You hired me for a job,” I snapped at Septimus as we left yet another sparring session. “How long do you plan on keeping me from doing it?”
He laughed softly, lighting up one of those gods-damned cigarillos. He had an infinite supply, it seemed. “There are many things I appreciate about you, dove, but I have to say, your eagerness is among my favorites.”
Eagerness. Like I was an overly excited puppy.
“Come now,” he said, reading my face. “It’s only practical of me. A god’s teeth will be at our throats before long. Only wise to use what little time we have to make sure you’re in prime fighting shape.”
“And what about you? Are you in prime fighting shape?”
I gave a pointed stare to the cigarillo between his long fingers.
He laid a hand over his chest and raised his brows.
“Such concern about my health from the Vindica Ultis herself! Should I be flattered?”
“If I need to choose between taking down a god and saving your sorry ass when you’re on the ground wheezing, I’m choosing the former. Let me establish that now.”
“I make it a point to know my collaborators, Kyrene. I am well aware that you will not save anyone but yourself.”
He spoke so smoothly, so calmly, the words casual. But they slid between my ribs like freshly forged steel, burning all the way.
I stopped short. Zefiah was sheathed across my back, and my hand was halfway to her hilt before I even realized I was moving. That was my instinct—to lash out at whatever hurt. And, gods help me, those words hurt more than I ever should allow a vampire to inflict.
Septimus merely continued walking.
{His time will come soon enough,} Zefiah said. {Think of the way his blood will feel on your hands. His words will mean nothing then.}
But she didn’t tell me that he was wrong. After all, she did not lie.
I bit down so hard on my tongue that I drew blood and wished I were tasting someone else’s instead. Still, the tang of iron was a welcome distraction.
And just as that blood flooded over my tongue, Septimus’s steps faltered.
It was such a subtle movement; carefully masked, barely an interruption, but my gaze seized it. I was used to finding weaknesses in my prey.
Weakness. Weakness in this man who acted as if he were so damned untouchable.
I clung to this. My sadistic delight drowned out my unwanted hurt. A welcome trade.
I wanted to make him feel that weakness. I wanted him to look me in the eye and know that I held power over him. An appropriate punishment for the way he had just made me feel.
We reached my chambers, but I didn’t open the door. I just stopped and stared at him, tongue still bloodied. It was impossible to deny that he was almost offensively pretty. And that was the word for it: pretty. Like a flower. Painstakingly cultivated.
It would be satisfying to disrupt it.