Chapter 19 The Binding #2
St. Silas continued seamlessly, his voice always smoothly apathetic, every aspect of his emotions hidden, his thoughts a blank canvas. Impossible to feed on. “A few secrets to strengthen you.”
“I do feel a chill today,” His Grace said. As always, a silver cup-and-saucer set was placed beside them on a side table. St. Silas’s expression remained neutral as he poured the Duke a cup of lukewarm tea and stirred in a teaspoon of sugar.
One undeniable truth I have learned about you, Mr. St. Silas, is that you always take two spoonfuls of sugar in your coffee.
“Good boy,” the demon said, gripping the cup with elongated fingers. “Now read aloud.”
St. Silas didn’t need to be the one to read the secrets for the Duke to feed. One of the servants could’ve done it just as easily. Or His Grace himself.
No, it was done as an act of power exerted over St. Silas—an act of degradation.
“As you please,” he said, as if indulging a small child. The Duke of Fray shifted, discomfited by the subtle amusement in his tone; St. Silas never gave him the satisfaction of his anger.
He handled the ledger with his gloved hand.
He read the secrets, the tragedies, written in his own practical script.
The captured emotions within those ledgers, the ones he’d withdrawn so meticulously—the grief, the shame, the agony.
The ledgers were demon-crafted, created using a powerful ancient curse that only a few demon nobles could enact, which bound and trapped emotions in physical objects.
In a desperate bid for his own survival, after seeing all the other boys in white either buried in the soil or the ocean, St. Silas had devised the idea to feed the demons through secrets rather than the emotions stolen from his own body.
Trapping the secrets in the ledgers would mean that the Duke of Fray could feed from an entire city, no longer needing to be confined to the seven boys he used to keep.
It had been a successful bid.
With every secret released, St. Silas saw the physical effects it had on His Grace: the faint wash of pink that now colored his pale skin, his back straightening away from its previous hump, his tongue snaking out of his thin lips as he fed with greed, his pupils expanding to hide the whites of his eyes.
It was a reminder to St. Silas that the reason the Duke of Fray continued to live was because of him. Because of what he fed the Duke. The irony was never lost on him that St. Silas prolonged what he wanted to kill.
“Halt,” the Duke of Fray said suddenly, a grimace twisting his face.
St. Silas raised his brows expectantly, but he felt a dullness in his chest.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“That secret you fed me just now was a lie. It held no emotion.”
St. Silas paused, glancing at the paper.
Although he was very accomplished at discerning lies, and had made his reputation widely enough now that most wouldn’t even attempt it anymore, a few still slipped through the net.
He would cross-reference his notes to see which customer had dared collect his coins and confess a false secret.
Arthur would deliver the false confessor to him for retribution. Or perhaps the Al-Sayer boy, now.
“Bram, Bram, Bram.” The Duke of Fray shook his head. “You know that I do not take kindly to liars.”
“A virtue, Your Grace.”
The Duke paused, his eyes flickering to the timepiece on St. Silas’s chest. “You were always guarded, even as a child. The other boys…what a sight you all were, dressed in a sea of white. How I miss it. I used to smell their fear from across the canals, but not yours. Never yours.” He sighed, and the throw fell from his shoulders, revealing a wasting body that yearned to have been buried decades ago.
“A secret for a secret. Your deal with me still stands.”
St. Silas bowed his head again. “At your service.”
He had been young the first time the Duke fed on him.
At the time, it had felt like a loss, an undoing, a death.
Something had shifted inside him that day.
No longer was he the young child who had entered the stone halls of the Duke’s estate, but anger and vengeance and survival wrapped in a boy’s skin.
He had learned to control his emotions. Knew when to hide them, and when to reveal them.
From then on, any secret he fed to the Duke was an emotion he had chosen to give.
Nothing could be stolen from him without his permission again.
St. Silas plucked one of the glass ornaments from the side table—a cube that reflected a beam of light across the walls—and played with it carelessly. “Nearly two weeks ago, I shot a boy in the forehead.”
“And do you regret it?”
It is customary for the people of the Aksari Mountains to plant Rosethorns over the graves of loved ones, symbolizing that if such a flower can endure the harsh winter of the mountains, so can the spirit find peace in the coldness of the earth.
“I do.” St. Silas threw the trinket in the air and caught it with ease. “I’ve never cared for violence—as you are aware, Your Grace. Still, it was necessary. I always do what is necessary.”
He fed the Duke the remorse that had been wrapped around his throat for the past fortnight.
St. Silas clenched the glass cube in his bare hand as the emotion ripped through him, and when he looked down he noticed that he’d cut his palm.
A trail of red dripped down his wrist. Discreetly, he hid it behind his back.
The wound didn’t matter to him because it was over.
St. Silas had revealed only as much as he’d intended to reveal.
“Why did you feel it was necessary?” the Duke prodded, searching for a way to prolong the feed.
Leena.
Her name came to him with so much force that he could not bar it this time. It filtered through. The Duke grasped at it, leaned forward, excitement curdling his face.
“What was that?”
St. Silas did not allow a break in his composure; years of experience had taught him to keep a firm hold on himself. “Your Grace?”
“I tasted an odd feeling from you, something completely foreign to your nature. What was it?”
St. Silas’s glance was half lidded. “Ah, that. I’ve hired a new secretary, Your Grace.”
The Duke leaned back. “And what is she to you?”
Demons understood lust, cravings, beauty. Any other emotion would pique the interest of the Duke.
St. Silas shrugged his shoulders, but his bleeding hand formed a fist behind his back.
He had learned the trick of lying to the Duke of Fray years ago, even when the rest of the boys in white had never been able to achieve such deception—to their detriment.
To their demise. “A pretty face to keep around until she wears out her welcome.”
Maskless, standing within the revelry of the Festival of Demons, she stared at him, wild hair unbound, eyes large and flared with emotion, mouth inescapably full, the gun still held to his abdomen.
It was not the first time he’d marked how beautiful she was, but it was the first time he’d resented it.
The Duke’s expression was oddly speculative. “Have you bedded her yet?”
“Not yet,” St. Silas responded stoically, ruthlessly quelling the images that flashed through his mind at the Duke’s question. He did not have the luxury of his thoughts carrying him there, not while His Grace watched him carefully.
That speculative light never left the Duke’s eyes. “Bed her, if you desire, but a word of caution: It will not serve you to become fond of her. Do not forget your loyalties to me.”
St. Silas wanted to bare his teeth at the Duke.
Instead, he inclined his head. “We have unfinished business, Your Grace. I’ve had plenty like her before, and never have I let myself lose focus.” He tapped his gloved hand on the ledger. “And the proof is here.”
Oh, yes, St. Silas’s business would not be finished until the Duke lay in his death shroud.
His Grace assessed him with narrowed eyes for another moment before nodding slowly. “You may continue, Bram.”
“Will you call me Bram?”
“I am safe here, sir, on the other side.”
An unfamiliar feeling had risen in his chest then: humiliation.
In a moment of rare weakness, on that night when Theodore Daye had reappeared, St. Silas had wanted to hear his own name said back to him—and not by a demon who held power over him, but by her.
The old Duke leaned back once more in enjoyment as St. Silas read.
Finally, just as he turned the last page, the Duke’s eyelids began to droop, and he heaved a sigh as if he’d just finished a satisfying meal.
Years had been scraped from his face. He held out his hand, showcasing the silver ring that he wore on the knuckle of his index finger.
“Come, bid your farewells. Leave with health.”
With his bleeding palm, St. Silas took the Duke’s hand. Schooling the disgust that threatened to curl his lips, he placed his forehead on the ring.
The Duke smiled. “As always, your payment for the next round of confessors will be delivered to you.”
For the first time, St. Silas allowed his eyes to harden as he gave a brief nod.
“Good boy,” His Grace said. “You’ve proven yourself to be an asset. Was I not merciful for having decided to keep you all those years ago?”
“Why should I keep you?” the Duke had asked, barely glancing up from the accounts he was reading. “You cannot meet your end of the deal. You’ve become useless to me.”
Bram stood frozen on the stone floor, his heart hammering.
He’d only just turned sixteen. He knew that because he was the only one of the Duke’s boys to know his birthday.
Even Theo Daye had to guess his age based on the day his mother had left him, like a wrapped parcel, on the steps of Weavingshaw.
Still, despite the turmoil he felt, he’d already learned the trick of turning his voice into a smooth poison. “Let me live, Your Grace. It would be an honor to serve you longer.”
The Duke put the accounts down. One long, spindly finger tilted Bram’s chin upward, and the glitter from the silver ring mocked him.
“Such beautiful manners,” His Grace murmured. “Almost like a demon. But there is something bitter about you, boy, that repels my taste and has the undesired effect of aging me. You have become a burden to me, and I cannot keep you.”
“Unbind me, then.”
“You have broken your promise to me.” He clucked his tongue. “I do not take kindly to liars.”
The Duke of Fray had taken everything from Bram.
He would not take his life. Bram bent a knee on the cold stone floor and placed his dark head at the feet of his sire.
His posture was lowered, but spite kept his mind agile.
It was not to the demon he bowed, but to the altar of his own making.
The ring on the Duke’s finger became his contract, Bram’s silence his signature, the demon unknowingly his witness, as he vowed to himself: One day my hands will be stained red by the blood of the Fray house.
“Have I not done everything you have asked of me? And am I not yet willing to do more?” Bram could not stifle the bleakness from breaking his voice.
His Grace’s tone flattened, his gaze already drifting away from the boy. “More? What more could I want of you?”
“Secrets,” Bram replied, with a wild desperation in his gaze. “I can feed you what you crave. I can make you live forever.”
St. Silas rose from his knees, droplets of blood collecting on the floor. No longer was there desperation in his gaze.
He was the danger now.
After St. Silas left the Duke’s estate, he made his way through the township. The lamplight created distorted waves on the canals in the twilight; only a few longboats were out. The boat demons cut through the preternaturally still waters with their bony hands dipping in and out like oars.
St. Silas walked behind a funeral procession, but he didn’t stall even as the mourners extended burial offerings—sweet biscuits shaped like coal—and burned incense.
They wore masks to cover their faces—various exaggerated depictions of grief molded in clay, a carnival of sadness—as the pallbearers carried the casket that would eventually be thrown into the ocean.
Since the Duke’s town was on an island without enough land, all the damned corpses were buried in the water—even the nobility.
Perhaps that was why the canals, which fed from the sea, always smelled like decay to him.
It was this town’s only water source. So the broths they made, the tea they drank, even their bathwater came from rot.
St. Silas walked to the docks. He’d need to take a boat to the mainland, to reach the gate that would allow him to slip back into his world.
Once again tonight—unwillingly, forcefully—his thoughts drifted back to her.
Turning abruptly on his heel, St. Silas made his way back through the township.
—
The hill where the two graves lay remained untouched.
St. Silas had marked the spot not with a tombstone, but with a rock he had dragged here when he was sixteen.
Eight years had passed since then and still the place was unchanged.
Two graves he had dug; two boys who had indisputably died because of him—Joseph by St. Silas’s own hand, a rock shattering his temple, and Theo by the unfortunate luck of knowing him.
St. Silas knelt down to rip out the weeds that had grown over the two mounds. The soil was unturned and undisturbed these last eight years.
From the depths of his pocket, beside where he carried his pistol, he withdrew the stems of two Rosethorns he had purchased from a demon at the Black Market. He placed them on the graves and rested his hand for a long minute beside the orange petals.
Rosethorns are…
For a brief and rare moment, he felt the iron grip around his heart loosen. It was a remarkable turn of events that she—half-dead Leena, barely dragged from the hands of phantoms—could create within him an elusive comfort bordering on momentary peace.
He stood up and dusted the dirt from his hands, her face flashing once more before his eyes—this time not a recollection but a fantasy. Leena, mouth tipped not into a frown but a smile, face edging toward him, his hands reaching…
He clamped his teeth and ripped himself away from the flowers and the grave and the girl.
This would be the last distraction he allowed himself.
Especially now that Weavingshaw lay in sight.
All the oaths St. Silas had made—he was twelve years old, standing in front of a mirror, repeating the words his father had told him—every revered promise—he was seven and holding a clod of earth in a tight, grasping fist—every murmur of vengeance—he was sixteen, prostrate, head bowed, pleading for his life from a Duke he vowed to kill—hung like a loosened noose around his neck.
To be suffocated slowly, conscious all the while, memory-eaten, was the worst form of death.
He would not succumb to it.