29. Chapter 29
The guard seemed unsteady on his feet when we made it back to Its room, but he offered no comment and even held the door open for me as It shrank back and relinquished the reins.
Someone was already in there. He’d been folded into the desk chair I’d sat in earlier and rose slowly and sinuously, like a snake before its charmer, out of the corner of my eye as the guard shut the door.
The man from the antechamber; Riquin, one of Its brothers.
So white his skin drank in the firelight, dyeing him orange.
Long and lean like an incubus, blue veins marbling his arms. Handsome in a way that barely even registered, the rest of him was so frightening.
He held up a hand as if he were pacifying me, wide eyes black and empty. “Did Remy tell you who I am?” His fangs flashed as he spoke, lips red as roses. I knew what fangs meant his diet consisted of, and I had never been more aware of all that blood, rushing ice-cold through my body.
I couldn’t help taking a step backward and into the door. “Who?”
His black eyebrows lifted, like for a moment he didn’t know what to make of what I’d said. Then: “You’re an ass,” he said, and it didn’t feel directed at me. “That’s his name.” Riquin gestured to me. “My brother.”
You are an ass, I said. I don’t know why you’re so secretive.
What did it ever matter what you called me? You have no other voice in here to confuse me with.
I think you just liked feeling mysterious. Keeping me in the dark gives you a thrill of power, since you feel you’ve got so little in there.
Riquin seemed perfectly composed but there was something rigidly controlled about his manner that made me nervous. And it must have shown on my face, because he said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
I tried to smile but looked away, where I found a dusty snarl of bedding on the floor.
“I changed the sheets.” He was jerking a thumb at the bed when I looked back at him. “They were disgusting. Sabine wouldn’t have sent anyone in to change them.” And when my brow furrowed at the name: “His mother. Remy, do you tell her anything?”
“Did you want to speak to him?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.” Riquin moved deliberately slowly as he closed the gap between us, like I was a wild animal he didn’t want to spook.
A shaft of light from the flames illuminated his pale face, the straight bridge of his nose, the sculpted bone structure, everything but his eyes, which were flat-black and without the smallest twinkle, like a moonless night.
He’s trying not to scare you. If he moved at his normal speed your heart would be in your throat, Remy said, tugging me back into the darkness.
Riquin hugged my body very carefully, as if I were made of glass. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“Then why do I feel like you’re about to lecture me?” Remy averted my eyes as he crossed my arms over my chest.
Riquin sighed like a disappointed father.
“If you want her to let you out you have to at least pretend to give a shit what she says. I hope you’re not plotting any more asinine stunts.
” He tipped his head toward the door before Remy could wrench my lips around a furious retort.
“I caught the guard as he was storming through the antechamber, likely about to tell your mother. Apparently he’d been stuffed in a weapons closet and relieved of his armor?
I convinced him to keep his mouth shut. You’ve been here five minutes and you’re already stirring up trouble. ”
“I was in here with her, minding my own business.” Remy sank onto the bed, jabbing my finger into my chest. “I would have stayed here all night if Valic hadn’t come. I didn’t do anything.”
Riquin looked unmoved, his black eyes unreadable.
They were chilling to look into, pupilless and strange.
He didn’t seem to shift around more than was necessary; he didn’t fiddle with his hair, didn’t tug on a sleeve.
It was oddly unnerving. Remy was a restless fidgeter; I felt him all the time, racketing about his cell, so restive he always seemed a moment away from climbing the walls.
“You’ve done plenty,” Riquin said, in the same dry tone I’d heard on Remy’s tongue.
“You’re the one who told Valic I was back. Did you really think he wouldn’t come?”
“I told him because he’s your brother and he had a right to know. Stay in your room. I’ll bring you what you need.”
“I want to see Jessa.”
“That’s not happening,” Riquin said, heading backward toward the door. “I’m not going to risk pissing your mother off even more. You can see Jessa when you get out. If you get out. Which will only happen if you’re a good boy and don’t do anything stupid or lash out irrationally.”
“Irrationally?” Remy flung at his brother’s retreating back. “How else was I supposed to get him to come down?”
“Not like that.” Riquin’s hand found the doorknob. He stood there for a moment with his eyes pressed shut, the hollows beneath them darkening under the spray of his lashes. “Let her sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.” And he shut the door noiselessly behind him.
To my complete lack of surprise, Remy was sullen as he sank back behind the bars.
I was curious, certainly, about all of it, the asinine stunts, the identity of who Remy had wanted to ‘come down’, but unsure if I ought to acknowledge the awkwardness or else skirt the subject as diligently as I would that drunken uncle of Lord Fletcher’s.
Of course it never mattered what I voiced or didn’t. He heard it all regardless.
Well, I eventually said, pulling back the sheets on the bed after a strained little interlude. I’m guessing he’s an older brother?
He’s forty-five, Remy said, cranky as a sleepy child.
He looks half that. I thought you were all ancient. Hundreds of years old.
After a stunned silence, he let out a shock of laughter. If I was hundreds of years old, why would I be working your lack of underwear into conversation? You’d be a nubile invertebrate to a demon that old. I’m not a lecher. I’m two years older than you.
I supposed that explained quite a lot about his temperament. What do you think he did to convince the guard not to talk?
He probably meant he lulled him, he said in a calm, easy voice, and I was relieved that the anger hadn’t bled back into his tone. It probably wouldn’t work that well on anyone who has succubi or incubi blood, but it’s pretty effective. You’ve seen that.
It would be a while before I forgot the way Serich had fallen under that succubus’s spell. But before my mind could wander too far into more what-ifs over Serich, a shadowy hand waved off the worry as if it were smoke.
I returned the cloak to the wardrobe and milled around extinguishing the sconces before sliding into the bed beneath the chilly pile of blankets. I had a feeling the moment I sank into a bath was the moment someone else would arrive, and I didn’t need that. It would have to wait till morning.
It felt odd, a bed. I supposed it hadn’t been long since I’d slept in one at Blathilde’s, but it had still been viciously uncomfortable beneath her old bones.
Remy seemed smug about that, that I found his bed comfortable. He didn’t comment on it but he hardly had to. I could feel it radiating through my mind, felt the twitchy smile on his lips.
It’s been a while since I’ve slept in an actual bed, I said, mostly to wipe the smirk off his face.
Serich’s rock cave didn’t do it for you?
We can’t all live like demons. I had studiously avoided thinking very much about the grotto so as not to let Remy in on any details, but even the act of thinking about not thinking about it was enough.
You try very hard not to revisit that. Not a good memory?
I didn’t say that.
You didn’t have to. You didn’t finish?
I don’t know, I said defensively, flopping onto my other side. It’s hardly your business.
You’d know if you had. It’s not exactly subtle.
I wouldn’t know what it felt like, but I remembered the way Serich’s finger had felt against me for the split-second when it had found the right spot, how it made my heart feel fuzzy and strange, my stomach pool with heat.
Oh, you poor thing, he said, latching onto the thought. You should have asked him to keep his finger there. You have to use your words if you want something.
I want you to shut up. Warmth bloomed all over my body, whether from embarrassment or the teasing in Remy’s voice or the aftershock of the memory of Serich’s finger, I couldn’t tell.
Good. I won’t, but good. You know, he said, as if struck by the sudden thought, his voice going silky, I could take control of your hand, give you what you want. You’d find out what you’ve been missing.
You’re a pig. I said it mostly by reflex, but I didn’t really mean it.
It amused me when he was like this, mischievous, no undercurrent of ire, though there was no telling how long it might last. His voice in my head, a hand between my legs—it was a chillingly stimulating idea, one I felt my body responding to already, every inch burning and tightening.
Maybe so. But you’re considering it. Do you know how easy it would be, hearing all your thoughts? I would have to take my time of it in the interest of being thorough but we’d get there in the end.
I cleared my throat loudly, hoping it might bring all my corkscrewing thoughts to a crashing halt. Why don’t you tell me what you did to earn your punishment first?
He groaned elaborately, flopping back against his chair. Why do you always insist on ruining our moments?
I don’t think being forthright would ruin anything.
It would make me far more inclined to follow your whims. And I seem to remember a time when you didn’t like taking control of me.
I buried my face in a pillow, my thoughts in a tangle, wishing I could just blow my consciousness out like a candle.
I could ask him to force my sleep but I didn’t think he’d do me that courtesy at the moment.
I would have happily granted an exception, had you asked for a favor like that, he said, the last thing I heard before a hard wave knocked me over into luxurious darkness.
I was woken by three smart raps against the door and jerked up against the headboard, sorting fuzzily through a disordered heap of thoughts and images that must have built up in the night: Serich dead, likely on my account, and would I ever know what had become of him?
Sharp fangs and Fury, a sleek, sly voice asking to play with me, knives and cold snaps and, with a painful clarity, the palest eyes I’d ever seen, surrounded by spikes of iced, spidery lashes; a little girl’s eyes and I knew her name—and then it all rushed away from me with a sickening speed as the knocks on the door started up again.
It was Its room—Remy’s, actually; I had woken in Hell and I had no idea what would be done with me. It wasn’t that my prospects were simply bad but incomprehensible, a dark void on a frozen horizon.
“Come in,” I croaked, somewhat surprised anybody would even bother to knock.
Torchlight from the hallway spilled into the darkness of the bedroom. It was a woman who entered, maybe a few years older than me. When I gave her a hesitant hello, she shook her head as if I’d offered her something she couldn’t accept.
She can’t speak, It—Remy—said. She tends the apartments up here sometimes. A domestic worker. And when, with a touch of her hand against a sconce, all the candles sprang to life and she looked at me with amber-orange eyes through a swirl of sparkling dust motes: Her mother is Flame.
So they’ve made her a servant because she has no voice? It seemed distinctly unfair.
Not every demon wants to work in a circle. Riquin never liked it. He chose something else. There’s always work that needs doing here, just like at Lord Fletcher’s. Someone has to do it. If my mother ever deigns to let me out, I might be the one on cleaning rotation.
The woman offered me a distant smile, ostentatiously running her fingers through her hair like some sort of pantomime, and I realized as she drew closer that what I had taken for sparkling dust motes was actually her skin, a vague, ruby luminosity, like dying embers on a log.
I think she wants to run you a bath. My mother probably asked for someone to tend you. I shouldn’t be surprised she’s forgotten to feed you. She doesn’t eat at all.
I don’t need help bathing. I wasn’t a lady; I had no need for attendants to do what I was perfectly capable of getting on with myself. Plus I was slightly afraid of being lit aflame by her touch, which Remy found amusing.
So I assured her I could do it myself, and when I emerged from the washroom wrapped in a sheet of linen to dig through Remy’s drawers for something to wear, I found the old dusty bedding had been removed from the floor and the woman working on scrubbing years of dust from the room.
I hurried into his overlarge clothes, sticking myself a few times with the pins in my haste to secure the wrist and ankle cuffs. It felt foreign to me, not helping her when I was so used to housework. I couldn’t just loaf around and watch when my hands were so familiar with the motions.
At my approach, her ocherous eyes were shy as she shook her head.
I had expected a quick, knee-jerk refusal.
It’s what I would have done if Lord Fletcher had ever taken up a rag and joined me, but she didn’t make any moves to stop me picking up one of the spare clean rags.
I had always found something soothing in mindless, repetitive work like this, or maybe I saw it in that light because it had been the only way I could cope with such drudgery.
My thoughts again strayed to Serich as I worked, but the moment his face popped into my head it spun away from me, as if Remy had punted it from my mind.
I’m worried about him, I protested. Anything could have—
The only thing you need to be worried about right now is yourself.
So the Flame demon and I cleaned in companionable silence for a few minutes until I became vaguely aware of the chill in the air, the way I could suddenly see my own breath, and I didn’t need her son’s grunt of dread to know who had next come to pay me a visit.