Chapter 22 Do as You’re Told
TWENTY-TWO
DO AS YOU’RE TOLD
“The full moon,” Creatchin announces dramatically. The crowd idolizing their queen murmurs just as excitedly. “Tomorrow night is an exciting time indeed, but do not shy away from the dedication I will show. Instead, match it! The Goddess speaks to me and we will find what we’re searching for!”
“Fuck,” Zilo whispers at my side.
His hand pushes to his temple, and as the followers clap and encourage their reckless leader, the three men surrounding me all pass a serious look among themselves.
I knew I wasn’t the craziest bitch in the room.
I’m just pleased someone else is finally agreeing with me.
“It’ll be anarchy,” Avian says casually under his breath.
“Just . . .” Zilo smiles and nods, and it takes me a second to realize Creatchin has beckoned him over to her. Like the fucking dog that he is. “Just keep Cersia safe. Stay in the room tomorrow. And Avian, don’t leave her side.”
I blink as he starts to trot away toward his master.
Is he serious? That’s his epic plan to protect these people and the realms this woman will surely destroy if given enough time? And he just wants to keep me out of sight, out of mind, while everything here in Hell flies out of the handbasket!
“No!” I nearly shout it, and only my sister seems to recognize my voice within the rambunctious crowd. Her big eyes snap to me but only for a moment. Just long enough for Vanitee to grab her attention and whisper sweetly in her ear.
Well . . . Nyra notices as well as the three hellhounds who are now pinning me hard with the simple weight of their gazes.
And glares.
“No?” Zilo stops in his tracks and then slowly, predatorially comes back in long, lazy strides.
Ready to pounce at any moment.
“Why the fuck,” I hiss those two words like they’re a major secret the rest of the realm has never heard of, “would I just hide away? I could—”
“No one likes you, Cersia,” he says so loudly and bluntly that a few of my peers nod along in agreement.
A sort of ‘that-is-true’, unanimous nod that makes me roll my eyes at the ass fucks.
“I know that!” My arms fold hard because if I don’t, I’ll reach out and slap the person nearest me.
Poor Avian doesn’t deserve that.
Roman, yeah, maybe a little.
And Zilo, definitely.
He comes closer and closer until his chest bumps my arms, and he’s a mere few inches from my face.
“You being there will just make tensions worse.” His quieted words are hot against my lips as his head dips low, and he gazes into my eyes so deeply, it suddenly doesn’t feel like we’re arguing at all.
It feels like . . . a different sort of tingling passion.
I just need him to know that I want to protect my sister. I want to be there for her. For all of them.
“I can’t just—”
“You being there will make tensions worse,” he repeats, and his whispered words drop to an impossibly soft, gravelly tone. “And it’ll distract me so much that I’d be useless to protect you. We all would.”
The heat that blooms through my chest melts every single part of my little black heart—I swear it.
My mouth opens but then closes again as I try to process his words as well as my own tumbling emotions. By the time my logic is done kicking the stunned stupidity out of the way to find some real words left in my brain, he’s already slipped away, disappearing into the crowd of hellions.
“Sometimes he remembers he has feelings.” Roman smirks my way. “Scares the hell outta all of us. Don’t be afraid.” He pulls at my arm until I follow him and Avian away from the others.
I peer back only once.
To Nyra.
But she’s applauding, looking up at her queen with stars in her eyes—stars in her eyes and a tainted black void of friends surrounding her.
The silence that was heavy in the bedroom finally is smashed through like the room itself is collapsing. It’s not though. I’m used to the growling snores of three enormous hellhounds by now. The roars of their slumbered peace are obnoxious, annoying things.
“Goddess Moon, leave some air for me occasionally,” I hiss at the three sleeping men who for the most part, are puppy-piled atop each other. Just slightly. An arm draped here. A leg touching there. A head nuzzled sweetly against a hard, round ass.
You know, normal guy stuff.
I smirk at them in the candlelight as I stand over the cute fur fuckers.
I wish . . . life was easier here. If they’d rescued me away without the messiness that looms over this realm, would I have fallen happily into place among these three secretly sweet men who protect me more than I protect myself?
If things were different, would I have just fallen in love and lived happily ever after?
The thing is, happily ever after doesn’t exist in Hell.
I know that firsthand.
Without a sound, I tiptoe to the door, hold it tightly in my hands as I pull it open, and slip out into the silent hall.
The rays of dawn bleed across the floors, but it’s still dim and muted.
Still hours before the staff begins stirring awake and cleaning up the castle for another chaotic day of What-the-Fuck-Will-Creatchin-Do-Next.
It’s odd to walk alone with only the occasional guard being spotted in corners here and there.
It’s like this beautiful kingdom is a ghost town of what it once was.
And really, maybe it is. Maybe once, centuries ago, before Ravar and before Creatchin, before either of them stained the crown of this realm, maybe it was peaceful. Maybe it was flourishing.
And maybe there was purpose aside from power hungry hate that I see in every aspect of this place.
None of that really lingers in my mind when I come to the door in the middle of the hall that I know is hers.
The new, glossy wood has hearts engraved in swooping designs.
They’re not really hearts. Just swirls, but they nearly touch in a point here and there, and because this is Nyra’s room, hearts are all that my mind sees when I look at the carved loops and swoops.
My hand lifts, and the quietest knock that ever resounded against a surface can barely be heard.
The pounding of my heart is louder.
Because this room, like my room, is a shared space.
The odds of any number of hell fae opening this door are far likelier than Nyra opening it. And wouldn’t that confrontation be just what I need at the ass crack of hellish dawn?
The shining gold knob turns. The door slowly pulls open.
And the kindest brown eyes peer up at me.
“Cersia,” Nyra whispers with a pinch of her pale eyebrows. “What time is it? What are you doing?”
“I just wanted to talk. We haven’t had a moment to ourselves, and I just—wanted to catch up.” The stumbling words that fall from my lips are a confused muddle of syllables that sound like I pulled them at random from a hat.
The way she blinks at me for several seconds only confirms that that’s exactly what she heard too. “Right now?”
“Well, there’s just a lot. Like. How are you healing? Have you heard from Nathias or little Berline?” A nervous smile pushes to my lips, but the way she flinches at the sound of those names causes the half-attempted look of happiness to slide right off.
“Ravar had them all killed, Cersia.” She says those words so harshly that I flinch at the sound of it.
“He killed Berline?” He killed my nephew. He killed a little fucking boy. He killed my sister’s husband.
Just to bring her here.
To punish me.
Nyra stares at me so hard, I can feel the animosity in her gaze. It’s heavy and it’s spiteful.
And it’s pointed at me.
“I’m so sorry, Nyra.” My voice quivers, and I honestly can’t get the sound of Berline’s laughter out of my mind. It’s crackled with the sound of youth in it. Sweet, gentle, unharming youth.
It’s gone now.
No one is more aware of that than Nyra.
“I’m so fucking sorry.” I feel like I can’t say it enough. I want to say it over and over again in hopes that it’ll sooth the ache in my chest that I know must be eating away at my sister as well.
But she says nothing.
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t visit me,” Her voice lifts and echoes around me in the hall, surrounding me with the sound of her hidden anger.
She’s always so good at forcing happiness that it’s sometimes hard to remember that other emotions are there deep inside.
“You would have known if you’d paused your own problems for ten seconds to check on your sister in the infirmary. But you didn’t.”
“I couldn’t! No one was allowed—”
“Seelvie and Vanitee came. Every day.”
My mouth is so dry, it just hangs open as that information sinks in. Creatchin let her daughter visit Nyra but not me.
She lost her family because of me and had to heal that emotional wound. Alone.
“Mother always treated you like you were fragile, and it made me walk around you like the ground you walked upon was the egg shells you were made of.” Her tone isn’t cold or even angry any more.
Just sad and tear stained. “I just—I just thought you’d have made the same great effort for me as I made for you. ”
Effort?
I don’t know why my energy changes so quick at that.
“What effort? I’m not fragile. I was never treated differently.”
The laughter that cuts from her trembling lips is loud and sudden.
Genuine, even.
“You are different, Cersia. Of course, you’re treated differently!”
This is our first real argument I think we’ve had in our entire lives, and it almost pisses me off that my sweet, kind sister is navigating it better than I am.
What the fuck.
“I’m weaker. I get it. I was given beauty, and I wanted to make up for it with physical strength. Maybe I practiced too often, and maybe I took a lot of time away from Father, but—”
Another gasp of stunned laughter has me taking a step back from the woman I considered my best friend our entire lives.
“You weren’t blessed! Oh my Goddess.” She throws her hands in the air, and it’s then that footsteps sound behind her quietly.
“I was,” I whisper. “I was blessed to be the most beautiful woman in all the realms.”
“You are so damn full of yourself. My Goddess. You didn’t get a blessing, Cersia.
And that’s when mother knew. She knew what father knew all along and she feared others would someday find out.
And so, she shoved it down anyone’s throat who would listen that Cersia was the most beautiful child in all the realms.” Her eyes are damp and crazed as she frowns at me.
“And if you repeat something enough to people, they too will do the same. The news of the most beautiful woman in all the realms spread like wildfire. But the truth is, she’s just a simple blonde girl with too much ego to let anyone think for a single second that she might be average. ”
If my mouth could fall open any farther, it would unhinge like an old rusty part that I no longer know how to use.
And I think that might be true.
“You—you’re lying,” I whisper. But I know my own words are far more likely to be the lie. Because Nyra doesn’t lie.
Never.
Before Nyra can say more, a slender hand wraps around her hip and pulls her back against something behind her. Another hand wraps around her, and the person holds her intimately.
“Who are you talking to, love?” Vanitee whispers against my sister’s neck.
“No one,” she says.
And my heart sinks even more.
It’s clear then that nothing I thought I knew was true.
Not even about myself.