Chapter 2 #3
I squeeze my eyes tighter, trying to shut down those thoughts as I manage to curl my legs into my chest in a fetal position, keeping my back to the rest of the room.
But the darkness doesn’t take me this time. Sleep doesn’t rise to comfort me.
Jewels stifles her sobs, moving around the room.
I try to ignore her. I cannot protect her in this state. Anything I ask of her will only lead to more grief.
The quiet thud of a glass being set down on the bedside table draws my attention.
“Pinky …”
The shifter whispers so quietly I barely hear the words over the brush of her breath against my neck.
She leans over my shoulder, fingers pressing lightly against the pulse point of my wrist as if to check on me.
“Pinky is a friend of my mother’s … she said …
she said … that you owing me a favor is the most powerful thing in the universe … ”
Pinky.
Pinky?
Grinder’s Pinky?
Pinky, who offered me an open-ended favor far more valuable than the minor knowing that redirected Grinder’s fate with the smallest of nudges … Pinky, who I’ve never even met …
By the time I register what any of that could possibly mean, then manage to find the strength to roll over, the room is empty again.
A glass of liquid — presumably water mixed with one of the mage healing brews the Diné healer left behind — sits on the bedside table.
That’s … never happened before … food or liquid of any kind doesn’t get left in the room.
I stare at the glass.
I shift up on my elbow.
I glance around the room. Still empty.
I reach a shaky hand for the glass. My fingers tremble, but I’m not scared. Just weak.
The glass is too heavy. I shove the pity instantly rising at that observation to the back of my mind. I get the glass clasped in my hand. I drag it to the edge of the side table. It dips and sloshes as I pull it off the table and onto the edge of the bed. I get it to my mouth. I take a sip.
It hurts to swallow.
I take another sip, then one more.
The mage brew might actually help me if I’m taking it willingly. I want to drain the glass as if it’s my salvation. But it’s not. Not all on its own, anyway. So I take only those three little sips.
Then I very deliberately tip the glass over, hand shaking and water sloshing. I tip the glass and pour the liquid over the head of the bed, down the wall and across the blood-etched runes painted there. As if by accident, just in case anyone is watching via the cameras.
I pass out before I can get the glass back on the table, before I can wipe up the liquid and cover up what I’ve done.
Or rather, what I’ve attempted to do.
When I wake, the glass is full again. And a small black towel is tucked under my hand, under my pillow.
I take another three careful sips, then I pour the remainder of the liquid over the blood-etched runes mostly hidden on the wall at the head of the bed.
This time, I manage to return the glass to the table, then soak up the water with the towel — scrubbing at the blood runes as I do so. If I manage to smear their edges or disrupt the power embedded within them, I have no sense of it.
The wound at my neck aches, and pain streaks through my limbs with every movement. I tuck the towel under my pillow again.
But I swear that for just a moment between consciousness and sleep … I swear I feel a whisper — a cobweb-thin thread of essence — brush against my cheek.
As if the universe is reaching out — collecting Pinky’s favor through Jewels in order to do so — to set me back on course. I just have to be strong enough to follow the path when it opens up to me.
The glass is filled two more times. The towel collected and replaced. But the next time I wake, there’s no glass waiting for me on the bedside table.
Instead, the Cataclysm is sprawled across his chair in the corner with his feet casually resting on what appears to be a massive antler.
“Good morning, little Conduit.” A smug smile etches across his face at my attention.
I push up into a sitting position, leveling my gaze on the antler as he obviously wants me to. My long-sleeved, high-necked silk nightgown is a light blue today, and my hair feels silky, wispy across my shoulders as if recently brushed.
I have no doubt there are commands etched through the blood runes meant to make me compliant as well as caging me, cutting me off from the essence that threads through the world. But today, I can feel the embers of rage deep within my belly, simmering at the ready.
The Conduit isn’t supposed to be emotional or irrational. My opinions, my wants and needs, are all secondary to what the universe demands from me. A personal vendetta is trite, completely beneath me.
But that rage slowly simmers within me, and as soon as it’s within my reach, within my grasp to wield, I’ll wipe the smugness from the Cataclysm’s face.
My aunt might not have been willing or even able to kill him. They were soul bound, after all. But I’m the Conduit now.
I settle back against the pillows, keeping my gaze leveled on the creature across from me.
I’m fairly certain now that I have Bellamy to thank for this cage, though I cannot fathom her blood being powerful enough to hold me.
It’s likewise difficult to imagine that the cunning creature regarding me from across the room is capable of painstakingly creating this containment web.
No, the antler that’s clearly been wrenched from the head of a beast of myth and legend is much more his style. It’s also evidence of yet another childish tantrum from a creature with too much power. Power he wields without any moral judgement.
Bone white but iridescent where the light from the milk-glass lamp reflects against its curves, the antler has clearly been snapped off near the base, where it’s still spattered with blood.
I know of only one beast with antlers like that. A beast I hadn’t even known existed until the week before I was taken. And, I have to admit, if only to myself, that it feels like even more weeks have passed since then.
A celestial dragon.
My soul-bound mate.
Rath.
Rath went up against his father. That’s what’s kept the Cataclysm away for these few days, giving Jewels the opening to help me. Rath is trying to get me back. Or at least he knows — they know — that the Cataclysm is responsible for my absence.
“If he was dead,” I say dismissively, my voice still a painful tangle, “you would have brought me his head.”
“Next time,” the creature that resides within the Cataclysm snarls with deadly promise.
Unable to hide his anger at my lack of concern or fear, he shoves off the chair, kicking the antler out of his path as he strides to my bedside.
“Next time, I’ll take his heart with a knife carved out of his own —”
“Still won’t be enough to kill him,” I say. Thankfully, I sound sure, because I’m not entirely certain of that.
The Cataclysm looms over me. “A weapon of his own flesh? Dipped in your blood? Even a mythical dragon tied to the Conduit will fall to that blade.”
I sigh as if utterly bored. “Is that how you killed your brother, Oso? With my aunt’s blood?” I say mockingly. “Did you give Disa his heart on a silver platter? Did she love you forever and ever after?”
“Love is for simple creatures.”
I meet his gaze steadily. “You were never enough,” I rasp through my damaged vocal cords. “Never enough without your brothers. I know, because once you killed Ward, she had no use for you and Ari. It was three or none.”
I don’t actually know anything of the sort. In fact, I’m pretty certain I’m wrong. But on some level, the Cataclysm believes me. Because he heaves me off the bed and sinks his teeth into my neck, not caring if he hurts me, damages me.
This time, though, I only pretend to go limp in his arms.
Only half drained and half dead is better than all the way dead, after all.
Still, the Cataclysm siphons enough of my essence, blood streaming down from the wound to soak my silk nightgown, that the room goes hazy.
Right before I black out, he tosses me onto the bed, striding out of the room without looking back.
Without noticing me watching him, even as the wound on my neck radiates pain throughout my system.
I catch sight of Jewels in the hall. Seeing the Cataclysm, she cowers, falling to her knees, but he simply snarls at her and strides out of my sight.
Jewels catches my gaze and holds it steadily for the entire time it takes for her to straighten and yank the door shut. With her on the outside.
I can’t remember the last time someone held my gaze like that without fear or awe, but I know it’s Jewels’s desperation fueling that courage. A desperate hope. And I already know it’s not herself she wants me to save. Not solely, at least.
The door latches, and the locks clunk back in place. Only then do I look to the antler now lying alongside my bed.
A blade made from that antler, coated in my blood … that’s what the Cataclysm suggested was powerful enough to kill a celestial dragon bound to the Conduit.
I study the blood runes etched across the walls, extending up to cover the ceiling.
Thinking, thinking … again and again — whose blood?
Whose blood was used to create my cage? Certainly not my own.
I don’t think my own blood could be used against me at all, no matter the power of the caster, be it Bellamy or someone else.
The essence would cancel itself out, wouldn’t it?
I reach over my head, hiding the movement under my pillows even as pain streaks through me at the barest shift of my neck and the weeping wound on my shoulder.
I reach for the blood runes hidden behind the top of the mattress, hoping the gesture isn’t caught by whatever monitoring system is in place.
Though Jewels, who evoked Pinky’s name, must be covering for me somehow with the water already …
I press my fingers against the concrete there and feel a grainy texture where I’ve previously dumped the water. I’m slowly — too slowly — eroding the wards.