Chapter Three - Evie
CHAPTER THREE
Evie
THE TRAY LURCHED in her hands, and the corner of it slammed into the edge of my desk with a sharp, ringing clang. A cup of water jumped, sloshing a bright line across the polished surface before she caught it again. The sound cracked through my alcove like a warning.
Her foot had caught on my boots. It was a small, stupid thing, the kind of mistake that shouldn’t matter, except nothing in this place was allowed to be accidental.
I’d been wearing them for days and finally kicked them off hours ago, leather buckles and laces abandoned beside my bed like I’d stopped pretending I was leaving. And then she stumbled, nearly knocking into me.
My hands flew to my middle before I could stop them, fingers curling there instinctively. I dropped them just as fast, embarrassed by the reflex. She had only stumbled.
The Luminant went rigid. Not because of me. Because of the noise. Her head snapped toward the billowy veil that separated my room from the hall, sheer and opaque, breathing softly as if the air itself was listening.
She looked over her shoulder like someone about to be caught doing something forbidden, like the new girl who hadn’t learned the rules yet, like she expected a hand to appear through the fabric and drag her out by the throat.
For a heartbeat, she didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Then her fingers tightened around the tray as if she could squeeze the sound back into silence.
“I’m so sorry, miss,” she whispered.
This was the third time she’d brought food to me today.
My stomach clenched, half with hunger, half with dread, and then a wave of dizziness followed, quick and disorienting, the room tilting again.
I braced my hand on the edge of the desk until it passed, annoyed with myself for feeling weak over something as basic as not eating.
There were sliced meats perfectly arranged in soft folds next to jeweled berries that looked like they’d been painted by hand, and there were these miniature cakes dusted in sugar that looked so tempting I wanted to pick one up instantly and shove the whole thing in my mouth.
Even the drinks gleamed, one pale and golden, the other blushed pink, and both were in glasses so clear and thin it seemed impossible they hadn’t shattered in someone’s hand.
Every piece was perfection. It looked so impossibly precise, too beautiful to touch.
I stared at it until my mouth watered despite myself, until the hunger became loud enough to make me hate my own body.
Before she could recover, turn, and leave the way she always did, I touched the girl’s arm. She froze. Her eyes went wide as her lips parted, but no sound came out.
I whispered, “What is it?”
For a heartbeat, I thought she hadn’t heard me, or couldn’t answer, or maybe she wasn’t allowed to. Then her gaze flicked up, quick as a stolen glance, and landed first on my neck, where Luc had bitten me, and then on my wrist, where my sleeve had ridden up in the movement.
The shimmer on her skin stuttered. She went very still, like something inside her had recognized something it wasn’t supposed to. Her eyes widened, not with fear of me, but with the kind of startled reverence you give a symbol you’ve only ever seen carved into a forbidden place.
She reached out before she seemed to realize she was moving, then stopped short of touching me, her fingers hovering a breath away from my wrist. Her mouth opened and closed, and then glitched as she shook her head, hard and urgent now.
She pressed two fingers to her own throat like she was holding words inside, and whispered, barely audible, “Marked.”
Her gaze darted to the veil again, then back to my wrist, like the sigil might burn a hole straight through The First Light’s perfect order if anyone else saw it.
Then she moved, quickly but subtly, further into my room, away from the veil. She pointed at the cakes on the tray. And shook her head once, small and fierce. No.
My pulse kicked hard as I asked again, “What is it?”
This time, she pressed a finger to her lips, and her eyes were wide with a warning. She moved her hand and made a tiny motion across her mouth, like she was closing a zipper that didn’t exist. Wordless.
Then she tapped the edge of the tray closest to the cake and mimed sleep by closing her eyes and resting her cheek against her palm. It was… drugged?
A chill slid down into my belly, and I forced myself not to look at the doorway, not to look anywhere His Light might be looking back.
I swallowed and leaned forward. “What’s your name?” I whispered, barely moving my lips.
She hesitated, trembling, her eyes flicking to the veil again, like my question might crack her open. Then she leaned in, close enough that I could see the faint, shifting sheen along her cheekbones, and breathed, “Mara.” It barely cleared her mouth.
My throat tightened. “Evie,” I whispered back, touching my chest, because it felt wrong to take without giving, even here.
Mara looked at the veil again, toward places I couldn’t see. Her voice was so soft it almost wasn’t there. “Drink the golden,” she murmured. “Not the pink.”
I glanced at the two cups beside the tray. Mara nodded once, urgently. Then, she stepped back as if she’d never moved at all, her face smoothing into polite emptiness.
“Please eat,” she said in that same calm, scripted voice she always had, and the words sounded like someone else’s.
But her gaze dropped to the tray again, and she shook her head, just once, so small I might’ve imagined it if my life didn’t suddenly feel balanced on it.
Then she turned and left, the light catching the strange wet sheen sliding over her skin as she vanished down the hall.
I stared at the tray for a beat before picking up the golden drink because thirst felt like a more immediate way to die.
It went down too easily, but it didn’t taste.
I sat there and watched my hands afterward, waiting for them to shake, for my thoughts to blur, for something in me to soften like the others I could see.
I felt fine, or as fine as someone could who’d been caged against their will. My stomach let out a roar and twisted. Hunger wasn’t brave. It was loud. It clawed into my brain. I hadn’t eaten in possibly days, so I gambled.
I crouched down next to the side of the bed, like that would keep anyone from seeing, and hurriedly ate the meat and fruit, fast enough to make my jaw ache, my body urging me on with a strange, impatient insistence.
The fruit had a cold sweetness to it, too perfect, like it had never known bruises or bugs or dirt. I swallowed until my throat burned, then drank what was left of the golden water in quick gulps.
I left the little cakes untouched, even though I felt this strange urge to pick one up, that same pull like when He was near, and I found myself leaning towards Him.
But their sugar dust sparkling was too pretty to trust. And I didn’t touch the pink fizzy drink at all, hoping Mara had told me the truth. It hissed softly to itself.
I sat back on my heels and waited for the consequences.
I had seen what happened to the others. Across the hall, through the soft arches of light in the curtains, I could see them, frozen in their alcoves, perfect and terrible as museum pieces.
Some stared straight ahead. Some smiled.
Some breathed like they were asleep in the middle of a dream they didn’t want to wake from.
Later, when He came, the hall changed. The air thickened like it always did, slow and syrupy, like it had to make room for Him. The light followed, softening, warming, drifting across the walls in a way that felt… intimate. As if the building itself breathed differently when He walked in it.
Then the sounds began. Soft laughter. A choked gasp. The kind of moan that tried to sound like delight, but kept breaking halfway through. A rhythm of breath that didn’t quite match the words being murmured over it.
I pressed my hands over my ears the first time. It didn’t help. The noises crawled under my skin anyway, wormed down into my chest, settled there, and pulsed.
After that, I learned to sit still, very still.
I told myself to think of something else. Think of Luc. Think of the stupid little anxiety games Destiny had taught me, like naming dog breeds in alphabetical order, or vegetables, or cities, or anything my mind could stack into neat lines so it didn’t have room to fall apart.
Airedale. Beagle. Collie. Dachshund.
I kept going until the sounds blurred into background noise, until my breath found a rhythm that didn’t shake, until my pulse stopped trying to climb out of my throat. If I didn’t move, none of it could touch me.
The curtain breathed in and out with a draft, brushing the floor. Shadows sometimes moved on the other side, long and bending, like arms. I kept my eyes on the seam between the wall and the floor.
Asparagus. Broccoli. Carrot… My mind snagged on the next letter like a hook in my skin. D. D. D.
Nothing came. Not fast enough. A thin spark of panic flashed up my throat, sharp and stupid, my body ready to bolt even though there was nowhere to go.
I swallowed hard, forced myself to stand, and paced back and forth as I stared at the rug, cataloging the colors, naming them, and forcing my lungs to obey.
Gold. Rosy Pink. Cream… My eyes swept the rug, and I couldn’t think of a color. Gold, pink, cream… what else? What else? What else?
“Forget the game.” Destiny’s voice slid through my memory, dry and steady, like she’d leaned in close at the bar and pinched my earlobe. “Okay, babe. Don’t be clever, just breathe. Count it. In and out. That’s it.”
So I did.
In. Two. Three. Four.
Out. Two. Three. Four.
I counted my breaths until the air cooled again, and His Light left the hall. Everything folded into the same pale quiet.
Time passed, but I had no way to measure it, a day, a week, maybe longer.
There was no night here, only constant, smothering light.
But sometime later, I felt Him before I saw him.
The syrupy way His Light danced around the room.
And then… He was just there, standing just inside my alcove.
The light pooled around His outline as if the curtain didn’t dare cut through Him, and He spoke like we were sharing some private confession.
I didn’t look at Him. But He talked anyway.
“Do you feel it?” He murmured, voice soft as velvet. “How quiet becomes easier when you stop fighting it.”
I kept my eyes on the marble floor. My hands clenched in my lap.
“You’re beautiful when you’re stubborn,” He said, almost fond. “Not many can manage it for long.”
I said nothing.
He laughed softly, like my silence amused Him. “Everyone eventually learns to be adored.”
“And you,” He continued, gentle as a blessing, “you are rare.” A pause, as if He savored the word. “Something that refuses. Something that pretends it doesn’t want to be looked at.”
His presence drifted closer, not quite touching, but never needing to. Warm breath brushed the shell of my ear, intimate and deliberate, and I hated that my body reacted before my mind could stop it, the instinctive baring of my neck like something trained.
“It’s almost a shame,” He murmured softly, amusement threading His voice. “To keep something so lovely hidden.”
My heart hammered in my chest. I swallowed hard, fighting the urges and staring at the floor like it could become a door.
“I could make it easy,” He added, His voice dropping into something coaxing, almost indulgent. “You could rest. You could stop holding yourself together with your teeth.”
He lingered there, close enough that the warmth of Him pressed into my skin, waiting, like He expected my body to betray me again.
“You don’t need him anymore,” He said softly, the words placed with care. “What he offers is struggle and hunger and waiting.”
He paused with a smile I could hear. “I can give you pleasure you don’t have words for yet,” He murmured. “Peace. Completion. The kind that doesn’t ask anything of you in return.”
He drew back just enough to let the absence ache.
“You’ll come around,” He said, quiet and pleased, like it wasn’t a question at all.
The light warmed the edge of my skin, intimate as breath, and my body reached for Him again, that reflexive urge to open, to give, braided tight with a rage so sudden and violent it scared me. I wanted to kill Him. Right there. With my bare hands. I wondered if He could feel that too.
The thought dragged up an old memory I hadn’t meant to touch. A Sunday sermon, smiles all around as my father warned us that God saw everything. Not just what you did, but what you thought. What you hid. Even what you wished for in the dark.
He knows your heart, he’d said. There’s no lying to Him.
I wondered then, distantly, coldly, if He could hear my thoughts. If He knew that given the chance, I’d sooner rip Him apart than ever kneel.
But this time there was something else. It wasn’t just in my mind. It was small. Almost nothing. But my hand didn’t try to lift. Didn’t try to reach.
Instead of opening, instead of answering Him the way my body had learned to before, my fingers curled into the bedding and clenched hard enough to wrinkle the perfect fabric.
I felt it happen, felt the choice land somewhere deeper than thought, deeper than fear.
My knuckles went white. The mattress creaked softly beneath my grip.
If there was one thing He noticed, it was this. I knew He did.
The pull was still there, that wrong heat sliding through my veins, that sickening invitation my body answered without consent. But underneath it, something else stirred now, tiny and quiet and unyielding. A resistance that didn’t scream. It simply held.
I didn’t give Him my hand. And for the first time, I wondered if that was how it began. Not with fire or fury, not with some dramatic grand gesture, but with refusal. With one small piece of me choosing not to move the way He expected.
The thought lodged in my chest and wouldn’t leave. Whatever had risen in me before, whatever had made Him hesitate that first time, hadn’t vanished. It hadn’t been taken. It had just gone still, coiled and watching. I was sure of it.
In Hell, it had come on like a reflex, fast and wordless, as if something in me recognized a line being crossed and answered before I could even think to beg.
Here, though, I reached for it until my body ached, and got nothing but the wrong heat in my veins and the quiet, humiliating fact of my own helplessness.
It was infuriating. Like I could feel it in there, heavy and patient, refusing to perform on command, refusing to save me just because I needed it.
But beneath the rage, somewhere deep, a small, sharp truth flickered, too quick to hold onto yet, but real enough to sting, that whatever it was… it didn’t rise for desperation.