Chapter 36
Petra
Malosym’s life would soon be over.
At my hand.
I wasn’t going to think about it. I wouldn’t think about what it felt like for Cal to lead me to the dungeon.
I wouldn’t think about how I could tell he knew something was off.
And I definitely wouldn’t think about the look on his face when I left him at the top of the stone stairs, telling him this was something I needed to do alone. I couldn't think about that.
The dungeon was mostly empty, only a few cells occupied with men who called out and jeered as I walked past. At the very end of the corridor, behind two guards and an iron door with a single barred window, was Malosym.
“Thank you,” I nodded to the guards. “You’re dismissed.”
The two men, both almost as tall as Cal, exchanged a glance. “Your Majesty, wouldn’t you like our protection? ”
“I won’t need it,” I answered quickly, and if they wanted to argue, they didn’t show it. They simply lowered their heads and walked off, leaving Malosym to me.
Bile surged up my throat at the smell of blood and sweat and damp stone that permeated the air.
The only light in the cell came from the torches flickering in the corridor, barely illuminating the form waiting for me.
There was no glowing blue light. No monster made of shadows.
No darkness incarnate. Just a man chained to a wooden chair, a trail of dried blood crusted from beneath his nose to his chin.
He looked like nothing more than a human. He looked like Castemont.
“My darling Petra,” he murmured with a lazy smirk.
My jaw was tight as I stepped further into the room, staring down my nose at him as I circled his chair.
I could just see the silhouette of his hands hanging chained behind his back, blood dripping from his fingertips to a puddle on the floor.
“I hoped you liked my little show tonight. Just a taste of what’s to come.
But your Myrin boys seemed to have bested me,” he remarked, his head lolling to the side as I returned to stand before him.
“What a lovely sight to see the brothers together again. I’ll have to take that little issue up with Tyrak, I suppose. Didn’t follow my orders.”
“You’re weak,” I finally said.
“As are you.”
“My powers are not as easily depleted as yours are, it seems.”
“And yet, hundreds of lives were still lost.”
I wouldn’t let him stoke my fury so hot that I killed him before I received the answers I needed.
“Here’s how this is going to work,” I started, clasping my hands behind my back.
“I’m going to ask questions, and you’re going to answer them.
If you don’t, I have no problem showing you how much stronger I am than you right now. ”
His smirk deepened. A challenge. “I’ve survived things far worse than anything you could do to my physical body.”
“Doesn’t mean it won’t hurt.”
“Why don’t you just kill me and be done with it?” he asked, and the squint of his eyes and cock of his head told me he knew why I wouldn’t. Not yet.
“Death is the kindest thing I could do for you right now. You should’ve killed me when you had the chance.”
“Maybe so. But do you know the agony one feels before they take a life?”
I raised a brow. “I highly doubt you felt anything akin to agony before killing any of the people I loved.”
“No. But what about the agony Cal felt when I tasked him with killing you? Do you know the pain it caused him? Do you know how much power I was able to siphon from him alone?”
Pain. Emotional pain. Fuck. The manipulation, the deceit…
I steeled my spine, my lip curling as hatred pulsed through me. “Why did the Occulti in Eserene appear to be human?” This was something I suspected the answer to. But I wanted to hear it from him.
Malosym sucked his teeth, surveying me in the dim light. “You look like your mother when you’re angry, do you know that?”
“Why did the Occulti in Eserene appear to be human?” I repeated.
Silence was his only response, that infuriating fucking smirk on his face.
“Have you ever lost a fingernail, Malosym?” I asked, addressing him by his true name for the first time.
“I have. When I was a kid, one of the fishermen down at the docks in Eserene gave Larka and I a silver each to pull a handcart full of fish to the shop on Gormill Road. Somewhere along the way, I tripped and Larka pulled the handcart over my little finger. Ripped the nail right out of the bed.” Though I couldn’t quite see it where his hands hung behind his chair, my focus homed in on the little finger on his right hand.
“Of course, by the next day, it had healed and regrown, and at the time I didn’t know why.
But let me tell you, that single day of pain was excruciating.
You’d never think such a tiny little fingernail could cause so much pain. ”
With nothing more than a thought, I willed the nail to lift only slightly. His face remained the same, but his body tensed the slightest bit.
“Tell me. Why did the Occulti in Eserene appear to be human?”
Once again, he remained silent. With a flick of my wrist, all five of the fingernails on his right hand lifted from the nail beds, the sound of them pinging against the stone floor obscured by his sharp intake of breath.
I fought the flinch that rippled through me, swallowing back more bile as it rose in my throat.
I wasn’t cut out for this, for torturing, even a monster like Malosym.
But like King Laion said, being royalty meant stepping on some toes.
And as divinity, I supposed that burden was multiplied tenfold. Pulling out fingernails would suffice.
Grinding my jaw, I repeated my question, each word annunciated.
“How did they appear to be human?” But the bastard still chose silence.
“You have five more fingernails, Malosym, and ten toenails. I’ll be forced to move on to fingers after that.
” I focused on his left hand, applying just enough pressure to his remaining fingernails to make him squirm against the chains that bound him.
“I didn’t have enough power to bring all of the Occulti over yet,” he spat.
I nodded. “And so, what, your Occulti used the Vacants as host bodies?”
“More or less.”
My focus zeroed in on his fingernails again, just enough to keep him talking. “More or less? ”
“The Vacants had no free will. Not with the leechthorn in their veins. I had enough power to embed certain aspects of the Occulti into Vacant bodies. Their consciousness and some of their strength.” His body relaxed as I took the pressure off his fingernail once again.
Miles’ theory had been right, at least to a degree.
The Vacants had been vessels for Occulti.
How had he known that? But as I stared back at Malosym, his chest heaving, I realized one thing.
“You can’t feed on your own pain. Interesting.
And that was all just from a few measly fingernails.
Maybe this next question will be easier for you to answer.
So, Eserene. Was that the first time there were Occulti in the Human Realm? ”
He hadn’t been expecting that question, because his eyes widened just the slightest bit. It had been just an educated guess until now, that the Vacants were humans possessed by Occulti demons. His surprise was confirmation enough.
“There were six here before then,” he finally said.
His face was expectant, as if he were urging me to put the pieces together. Six? Throughout the whole of the realm?
“Come on, Petra,” he urged, his voice taunting. “Use that clever little mind of yours. Six Occulti.”
Lords in the castle? No. What about the people who’d been hired to watch me my whole life? No, there had been far more than six. Think, Petra. The Board of Blood had seven members.
No .
The Board of Blood had Ludovicus as its leader — a human, ruined by blood magic — and six other members. “The Board of Blood… They weren’t Bloodsingers at all, were they?”
“I’ll admit I wanted them to look more human, but I could only muster so much power when I first created them.”
Fucking Saints. It all made sense. His standing in the kingdom.
The Board of Blood. Initiation. The yearly ritual all Eserenian royalty had been forced to partake in.
All the things Malosym had done to cause pain, on a scale small enough it would go unnoticed by the outside world.
All in the name of royalty. All so the six Occulti demons walking the Human Realm could grow stronger, little by little. All so he could grow stronger.
“Women will do anything to be accepted by society,” he crooned as he watched me put the pieces together. “That includes being beaten almost to death.”
Here came the bile again, and I took a deep breath through my nose, hoping the smell wouldn’t push me over the edge. “And the annual ritual in the royal court? Kidnapping someone from Inkwell for everyone to torture?”
He snickered. “Physical pain for the sacrifice, and emotional pain for the ones forced to participate. Mostly from the newer initiates. The longer humans are alive, the more ignorant they become to the pain of others.”
“And all of this to get to me.”
“The prophesied Daughter of Katia,” he murmured with a sickening smile. His head fell back, as if he were reveling in the picture he was painting in his mind. “And your pain… There was so much of it. So much to feed on.”
It hit me like a fucking boulder to the chest, so monumental and substantial, I wasn’t sure how I hadn’t seen it before. “You’re not going to kill me, are you?”
He’d gone silent again, but my patience was wearing thin. I focused on his spine, willing it to straighten. He winced as he sat taller in his chair, but I didn’t let up. He cried out as his spine began to pull apart, his teeth gnashing together as his face contorted.
“Oh, that’s right,” I muttered. “Cal told me of the arrow wound in your back.”
“I was going to kill you!” he shouted, collapsing back in his chair as I let my powers ebb.
His breath hissed through his teeth. “I’d planned on having Cal take your life.
But then the bastard couldn’t separate his heart from his head, and when I saw the pain his death caused you, I thought it might do me better to keep you alive. ”
Outrage boiled in my stomach, but it shouldn’t have. Why should I be surprised at this admission?
“So you no longer plan on killing me?”
“Why would I kill you when you’re such a concentrated source of power for me? Unlimited, concentrated power.”
I once told a room full of kind and queens there were fates worse than dying, and now I knew the true meaning of that statement. Malosym thought to keep me alive indefinitely to feed off my pain.
One question remained. “Why?”
Even in the low light of the cell, I could see Malosym’s eyes darken at my question. “The world deserves to feel half the pain I have.”
That caused me to pause. The pain he felt?
From what, being an outcast? Being pushed to the side by the Forgotten Saints and the other Extos?
I couldn’t tell if he was baiting me to ask him, but I wanted to know.
“What pain have you endured, Malosym? What pain could be so great it would cause you to want to lay ruin to the world?”
“That mind of yours couldn’t even begin to wrap itself around what I’ve endured.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Humor me.”
He sucked his teeth, surveying me. “You had two sets of parents who wanted you,” he said slowly, his foot tapping against the stone floor. “I didn’t have one.”
I furrowed my brows, my lips parting at his unexpected confession. “So, what? You’ve decided to take out your childhood neglect on the rest of the world?”
“The rest of the world doesn’t know what it feels like to see nothing but disgust in their mother’s eyes, and nothing but disappointment in their father’s.
They have no idea what it feels like to only have ever been looked upon with hatred, like a fucking rat.
Never with warmth. Never with love. Never with understanding.
Always a problem needing to be dealt with.
” His chest heaved against the chains, his teeth bared.
“They could’ve killed me, but even the most hateful person pauses for a moment before their boot comes down on the rat’s skull.
They were weak, and they burned the Old World to ash because of that weakness. I have no pity for weakness.”
“You want to look at me and tell me you’ve never known love?
My mother loved you,” I snarled. “She never looked at you with disgust or disappointment or hatred. She loved you and trusted you completely, even when you were leading me to my destruction. She handed over her only remaining daughter to the brutality of Initiation for you . So she could spend her life by your side. That was love, Castemont.”
The name hung in the air between us, echoing off the walls until it settled on the floor. A false name for a false man — a person who never truly existed.
Malosym’s lips were a thin line, his eyes hardened on me as he stared back. We were face to bloodied face. The only two Extos in the Human Realm. The only two of his bloodline in the Human Realm.
My jaw ached, sudden tears pricking the backs of my eyes.
Not now , I told myself. No tears right now.
Cal’s face flashed into my mind, my resolve faltering for just a moment.
Fear began creeping over the walls I’d built around myself, snaking and vining until the walls began to shake on their foundation.
I didn’t want his last memory of me to be descending the stairs into the dungeon.
I didn’t want that to be my last memory of him, either.
“You’re going to kill me, yes?” Malosym asked, his voice hard, but no fear broke through. It was a simple question.
“I am going to kill you.”
I would be the one to end his life. Of that, I was sure.
But it would be tomorrow. Because I wanted one final night with the love of my life, one more night spent memorizing the colors of Cal’s eyes and savoring the feeling of him by my side. Then I’d end it all .
Without another word, I turned on my heel and walked out of the room.
As the heavy iron door slammed behind me and its echo faded, a voice filtered through the bars.
“Petra?” I stopped my steps but didn’t respond, didn’t turn back to look him in the eyes through the window.
“Do send my regards to Lieutenant Landgrave, will you?”