Chapter 11 #2
I don’t know how the minds of the fucking awry work. I never have been able to discern their truths from their lies, other than what’s obvious. So it’s a good thing that I want all of Bellamy’s fucked-up focus channeled into an already seriously malignant purpose.
“A weapon?” she finally says mockingly. She’s at the counter separating the small dining area from the only slightly larger kitchen, brewing something.
Multiple cast-iron pots are on the stove, with various herbs and reagents spread across the counter.
It all stinks, but it isn’t putrid. Not like the knife, whose stench still plagues me.
I know there’s no way Bellamy is brewing healing potions. I don’t doubt that every fucking pot is filled with liquid fucking death. I don’t have to move closer to know it.
No blood, though.
I don’t see or scent even a single drop. Which is interesting, but not currently fucking relevant. Not unless it will take more blood to fortify the weapon I need.
I wrap the blanket around my waist. Annoyingly, it itches in all the wrong places. I don’t whine about it, though, because I’m already a fucking disaster in my twin sister’s eyes.
I mean, I hate her just as much as she hates me. But dwelling on that isn’t going to be helpful right now.
I follow her to stand on the other side of the counter.
Shoving bundles of herbs and some nasty-looking red-capped mushrooms to the side, I drop the wooden box, opening it with a flick of my wrist to reveal the knife.
The blade seethes with twisted essence — enough that the cu-sith presses ghosts of his claws into my brain as a warning, like I’m a fucking idiot and can’t see that shit for myself.
Never mind that my beast knew Bellamy was glamoured, wearing Zaya’s face, before I did.
Bellamy eyes the blade for a moment. Then she sniffs, all haughty like she’s totally above the dire crafting it would have taken to make it. “You’re a fucking cu-sith.”
“Sure,” I sneer. “I’ll just get him alone in a soundproof area and bark him to death.”
She stirs something in the largest pot, glancing down at her handwritten notes. She’s got other books strewn about, presumably from Ingrid’s collection. “I assume you’ve tested it? The power of the cu-sith?”
“I’m not the fucking idiot you assume I am.”
She smirks. “Executions for the Authority? How adorable, brother.”
I stop myself from reaching over the counter and snapping her neck. It’s a near thing, but I manage. Ironically, it’s her calling me ‘brother’ that bothers me the most. She’s not wrong about the ways the Authority used me in the early days.
“Blood spells and rabid berserkers crafted just to please daddy?” I counter mockingly. “Ridiculously cute, sister of mine.”
She flinches. And I know it’s not because of ‘sister.’ Covering, she moves to chop up some of the mushrooms. “Tell me about the blade,” she says, her tone even and cool now.
“Touch it and find out yourself,” I say, being a fucking asshole because I don’t want to touch the blade myself. But she … with her clear eyes and healthy glow … she’s scared to touch it. Like a recovering addict might be scared to come into contact with the object of their addiction.
Bellamy goes back to ignoring me.
I let her, fucking pissed but not stupid enough to push it right away.
Giving her time to fucking cave, I search through the two bedrooms, finally finding a pair of old sweatpants that vaguely fit me.
I take a piss and wash my hands and face.
The bathroom still smells like Ingrid. It might be the soap scented with rosehip oil.
I shove away the memory of having stumbled across the red-haired healer, Disa’s chosen mate, about a year after Zaya’s faked death. Ingrid touched my arm and looked at me with so much fucking pity that I drank myself into oblivion right after.
And she knew … Ingrid fucking knew that Zaya wasn’t dead.
When I return to the kitchen, Bellamy has the knife out of the box and set on a silver tray on the dining table. She’s in the process of chalking runes around it, closing the circle as I step up across the table from her.
My stomach rumbles. We both ignore it.
Even over as many years as it’s been, the blood on the blade still looks fresh.
I don’t recognize the language or origin of the runes, but they vaguely resemble the ones the Outcast fucking carves everywhere, throwing power around indiscriminately.
Like our uncle has enough power to just burn it, waste it.
Like he was never taught to hide in the shadows, stalking, lying in wait for his prey, and only then tapping into the core of —
“They know you took the knife,” Bellamy says, nodding toward a phone now set on the corner of the counter, next to the box.
“Nothing happens on this property without Zaya knowing,” I say, my voice level. Though I do glance out the front windows to see if we’re about to be besieged.
“I told them I was looking at it. Got a bit more info, not that Rath wanted to be forthcoming. You are all fucking assholes. I pity poor Zaya, having to manage you three.”
“Zaya doesn’t have me to manage,” I snap.
She snorts. “Right.”
“The knife.”
Bellamy presses her essence into the runes she’s chalked.
Energy runs through them, shifting toward and under the knife.
The blade lifts on a lick of that essence until it hovers around Bellamy’s eye level.
She leans in, then starts the blade on a slow rotation with a quick flick of her fingers against the essence holding it.
“Why the tray?” I ask, interested despite myself.
“Solid silver,” she says absentmindedly. “Not just plated.”
To ground the blade, maybe? If Bellamy’s control slips?
“Our father used this blade to kill our uncle,” Bellamy says, as if I don’t already possess that information. “The two of them were also soul bound. Legend would have it that either of them killing the other should have been near impossible.”
I grunt, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Rath is the book nerd, the history-and-other-useless-shit buff. I’m just a killer with a badge, looking for a weapon with which to murder my father.
Nothing to unpack here.
“Zaya thinks this is Disa’s blood.” Bellamy ghosts a finger along the edge of the knife, careful to not touch it. “And I … I recognize the runes. I learned them at a young age.”
“What’s the spell? It’s rune-etched, right?”
She nods, unhappy. “It’s a sharpening spell on one side and a modified break spell on the other. Though that application seems odd for a knife, which you’d use to stab or slice, not to smash something.”
“Because it needed to break the soul bond.”
She looks up at me sharply, then narrows her eyes thoughtfully. “If energy passes between soul-bound mates … lending strength and resilience and maybe even some power transfer …”
“It does.” I can feel that effect between Zaya, Rought, and Rath now, even in its nascent stages. “That’s also why Disa’s chosen mates all died when she did. And why none of them aged either.”
“Huh. I didn’t know that.”
I scoff at her.
She ignores me, which is … well, smart on her fucking part but still seriously fucking annoying.
“The modified break spell,” I say. “To sever the bond between Ward and Disa so Disa’s strength, her own ability to cheat death over and over, couldn’t transfer to him.”
“Severing that bond, even without also killing her soul-bound mate, would have weakened Disa too,” Bellamy murmurs. “Even made her vulnerable afterward, maybe even in the long term …”
I swallow and look away, up toward the main house, toward my soul-bound mate.
Zaya walked this world with three severed bonds for thirteen years without even knowing it.
I rub the seething psychic wound at my chest, feeling like I’m bleeding out under my skin, right beneath where a tattoo should be. A tattoo I had painfully removed.
Right where the name Larkspur should be etched into my skin, into my soul. But now there’s nothingness instead. A malignant void.
“Still with me, asshole?” Bellamy snarks.
“Tell me if it will kill him.”
She grimaces. “Disa is dead. The essence trapped in her blood, even preserved here, is still powerful. But the break spell is probably useless.”
“Can you modify it? Then fortify it?”
“I can modify it … tweak the intention. Though I’m getting that we don’t have days to set this up, so it will have to be something that works with only a couple of tweaks to these runes. And we still need something specific to tie it to the Cataclysm.”
I hold out my bare arms, all the tattoos that tied me to my former life likewise scoured from my skin. “What about the DNA of his eldest son?”
Bellamy shakes her head, but it’s not a no. “Fuck. I’m going to need Gigi to anchor me. I … I don’t think we want Zaya involved in this part.”
I’m already moving for the door.
“Just text her, asshole,” Bellamy snarls behind me. “And come up with a way to modify a break into something useful.”
I pivot, reaching for Bellamy’s phone. “The other runed spell is for sharpening, right? Maybe modify the break into something like … rupture?”
“Rupture …”
“Yeah, for when I stab him in the fucking heart.”
Bellamy blinks. Then a wicked, utterly malicious grin swamps her face. I don’t need a mirror to feel it echoed across my own.
“Hard to heal from a ruptured fucking heart,” she says, viciously gleeful.
I shrug like the arrogant asshole I am. “Or it’ll at least fucking slow him down enough for the fucking dragon to bite off his fucking head.”
Gigi shows up, gaze riveted to my homicidal twin the moment she enters the beach house. Now that I’m not leaving Bellamy alone with the fucking knife, I slip into the bedrooms again in search of more clothing. The combat mage doesn’t even glance my way, which is perfectly fine with me.