Chapter 44
The fire in me struck first, reducing the door to ash before me. I didn’t give a second’s warning as I flooded in after it, sending a series of light blasts about the room. But, as the smoke settled and my eyes readjusted, I found myself alone. And … not in an office at all.
In a cell. Bars, moist brick walls, and the unsettling sense I’d been played.
“You never were one to think things through,” Bethesda said from behind.
I whirled around and hurled more light her way, only to watch the waves dissipate as they passed through the bars now closing me in. “You bitch,” I screamed, teeth digging into my lip.
“Ah, ah,” she tsked. “Now that’s no way to talk to your queen, is it?”
“You’ll never be my queen!”
She tapped the bars, a clatter ringing out around the dungeon: a glamour.
She’d spelled the room before, set me up.
The same way Deception had. She’d known we were coming.
Probably had all along. My stomach tied itself in knots, hands quivering at my sides in both fear and the overpowering urge to sever her head from her shoulders.
“I may not be your queen,” she bit out with a wicked grin. “But I’m his.”
She snapped once, and the disgusting Lore I’d met upon my last visit to Malignant Manor appeared before her in an instant. The jewels embedded in its skin glimmered in the low torch light, pus oozing over its stitches.
“Beat her until she talks,” Bethesda ordered. “I want that bloodstone, and I want it now! Do whatever you must.”
The creature nodded but placed its palm hand up with expectation.
Bethesda sighed. “I have nothing to give you, but …”
She turned to me and tapped her chin. A cold flush raced down my arms.
“I sensed Ethereal magic in her last strike,” she continued. “Which means she must have awakened after all. I’ll tell you what, Envy. Rip that pathetic little stone from her chest, and I’ll let you keep it, hmm?”
Envy turned, face contorting into what I could only assume was a smile if it’d had features to support such an action, given its lack of eyes and mouth.
It stalked toward me, rubbing its hands together in anticipation.
My fingers went straight to my talisman buried in my chest. Rip it out?
No way my magic would let me part with it!
Yet, the ice in my veins said otherwise.
If they wanted it, they’d have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Envy stepped through the bars, body shrinking down into a thin layer before returning to its bulbous shape.
I ran to the edge of the cell, hurled magical blow after blow in Envy’s direction, each missing their mark with a gentle wave of the beast’s hand.
Deflection, it seemed, was among its skill set. Fucking great.
“You’re wasting your time,” Bethesda taunted from the sidelines. “Envy has trained long and hard in the ways of magical evasion. Learned from the best. Me.”
Before I could respond or throw another blow, Envy tackled me to the ground, hands digging through my clothes, face so close to mine I could smell the infection in its wounds. I threw fists, kicked, scraped, anything to escape.
And then I felt it.
The sharp stab as Envy latched onto my talisman, claws slicing into the surrounding skin.
And then a pop as the stone detached from my ribs, the corded muscle tearing at its removal.
My lungs gave out as my head spun, the light draining from my body until there was nothing left.
Nothing but a searing, hollow ache. The pain no longer demanded my attention, but the emptiness did.
Silent tears rolled down my cheeks. Reality took swift hold.
I’d lost.
My eyes shot open and locked on the moist ceiling.
The steady drip of water echoed off the stone walls, a strange melody playing somewhere in the distance.
Where the hell was I? I pushed to sit, but my limbs wouldn’t listen.
My memories filled in, sharp and sour. I’d been bound, back flat against a table. No magic. No escape.
Trapped.
My tongue slid against the blood coating my front teeth.
As I licked it off, a hard blow landed against my jaw, the flow of fresh, hot iron lapping against my tongue.
I gritted my teeth through the pain. How long had I been there, locked in Bethesda’s dungeon?
A day? A week? A month? And how long had that damn music been playing on loop?
Time held no meaning. Neither day nor night held precedence there.
Loneliness, pain, and emptiness proved the sole consistency in time.
Bethesda’s wicked laugh ripped through the cell. “Still not talking, I see?”
“Fuck you,” I spat, to which Envy repaid me with a swift fist to the stomach.
“Such foul language for a woman born to such a prestigious life.” She sauntered into the cell as she did most visits. A power move: to remind me I was the prey and she the predator. “You could save yourself so much agony if you simply told me what I want to know. Then all this pain, this struggle?”
She snapped her fingers, changing the scene around us to one she often tortured me with: Fhírinne. How she’d seen it, knew it’s every detail, I hadn’t the faintest idea. But she never missed an opportunity to remind me what I’d lost.
“Gone,” she yelled, smashing a fist against the bars. “Just like that. You and Cillian can go back to life as normal. No more visits from me. No more death. Free.”
I looked up through swollen eyes. “You’re a lying piece of shit.”
She knelt down next to me, leaning in close enough for me to catch a glimpse of her talisman.
So close, I could reach out and take it.
But with Envy hovering above, I didn’t stand a chance—not to mention my hands were still bound—and in the end I’d leave with nothing.
It’d tackle me to the ground, beat me until I released it, and then I’d be back in the same position.
I had to bide my time; wait for my perfect moment.
“Such a shame.” Bethesda sauntered back to the cell door, snapped once for Envy to follow, leaving me in utter darkness once again. The hollow ache inside me bloomed.
The next time Envy visited, I made a discovery. The new shimmer below its jawline, right there in the side of the neck: my talisman. A small success, worth the endless torture that followed. All the while, I continued to loosen my bindings, a little at a time.
And the record started over, again.
Bethesda returned for her usual taunting after what felt like an eternity I’d lain to rot. Envy wasted no time landing a punch, and she proved quick to follow it up with a snide comment. “I can make this all end, if you just say the word.”
She was growing impatient. Sloppy.
“Why?” I snarled. “Why do you hate the world so much that you’d want to unleash these monsters?”
She pondered, hooded head tilted to one side. “I don’t hate the world. I hate you.”
Me? That … that made no sense. I didn’t know her, had never done a single thing to her. She had to be egging me on, trying to get a rise out of me.
“Right,” I said, another scream escaping me as Envy’s closed fist collided with my black and blue shoulder. Fractured, without a doubt. I cringed, steadied my breath as much as possible.
Bethesda sauntered in, drawn to the defeat in me. “You don’t believe me?”
“Not for a second.”
“What if I told you this …” She gestured around, then to Envy. “All of this was because of you? Even this little song was created in your honor.” She paused to reset the damn record player in the corner, the song starting over for the umpteenth time.
I gritted my teeth as she turned the volume up. My eyes rolled, the repetitive notes threatening to split my skull open. “I’d say you’re a liar.”
“I must admit, I thought you would have caught on much sooner. But then again, you have proven yourself foolish on more than one occasion.” She flicked the bar, metal clang ringing.
“Still haven’t placed this melody, hmm? I will give you a little hint: It brought you to Saint Peter’s to begin with. ”
“Fate brought me to Saint Peter’s,” I spat back.
“You wound me! Here I’ve gone through so much trouble to lure you to my manor, built by my own sweat and tears might I add, and you give the credit owed me to an old, dead God.”
“I found Malignant Manor because your henchman has shit for brains. Easy to follow.”
She leaned through the bars, a wicked grin on her face. “Who said anything about Malignant Manor?”
My vision tunneled, breath catching. With the power of a freight train, the pieces jammed themselves together in my mind.
Saint Peter’s history. The stories of the witch who lured maids there.
The bones Roxie mentioned, found in the garden with sigils carved into their forearms. The eyes, hidden around the institute.
But more blinding still was how the song I’d been forced to listen to until my ears bled suddenly sounded entirely new, just as it did the first time I’d heard it …
at the Art Faire. I’d walked freely into her web before I’d ever known the spider existed.
“Ah yes,” she hissed, “there is the realization I was waiting for.”
My stomach turned, but I swallowed the bile rising. “You monster!”
“Monster? Now, how can you make such a bold claim when you haven’t even bothered to ask why I went through all the trouble to find you. Aren’t you the least bit curious?”
“All of this is so you can exact some misplaced revenge plan and make everyone in the world feel as shitty as you feel. There is no deep-rooted reason, or you would have bored me with the details days ago.” A laugh escaped me.
“Really, you’re just weak. That’s why you need the Lores in the first place. ”
A snarl slipped through her lips as she leaned down to look me in the eye, shoving Envy aside, hard. “I have well enough reason, not that I owe you a damn thing!”
It was then that a plan began to form in my mind, wheels turning about as I looked her over.