Chapter 9 Saskia #2
Saskia, he repeats in a low rumble, rolling my name across his tongue, savoring every syllable. A dark pause hovers over us. It’s nice to meet you, Saskia.
Fear rushes back in like a burst dam. My heart thumps, and the vial laying across my sternum rises and falls rapidly with it.
Just as I wrap my palm around it, Lucan—no, the Monster—calmly chuckles out, Sweet dreams. You’ll be ba— before I rip the chain off my neck.
For good this time.
I’m on top of the Wall.
My feet are planted between two spikes that rise to my shoulders, and I grip their pointed ends as I brave the dizzying glance downward.
My stomach plummets. There are no fields of rainbows waiting for me on the other side. The ground is nothing but a hazy horizon below me, so far down and so slathered in mist that I can’t make out the details of what would await me if I jumped.
Wind whips at my hair, a storm churning around me as if to try to push me off the ledge.
I smell blood and salt. Earth and pine. The sweet, cloying scent of rot and a whiff of what I can only describe as moonlight—something simultaneously rich and light.
It’s calling me, those scents, but just as I lean forward to inhale more of it, the howling erupts around me.
It’s loud when I’m safely tucked away in my housing unit, but out here, on top of the Wall, that howl swells louder than the wind itself. It wraps around me, tugs on my wrists, plays with my hair like a living thing, like ropes trying to yank me away.
I’m afraid, but the reasons drop in my stomach like a stone.
I’m afraid I like it.
I’m afraid I want more.
I want to wake up, I realize. Or do I?
“You do not deserve this safe haven.”
I nearly lose my grip on the spikes as I shriek and whip my head around.
The Third Guardian is there, his head right near my ankles, his fingers gripping the edge of the Wall, as if he climbed it like a spider.
His golden waves don’t seem to move in the wind.
His blood-red eyes gleam hungrily up at me, but there’s murder in his expression.
Not like he sees me as something to feast upon and cherish, but something to feast upon and then squash.
“What do I deserve?” I cry out over the wind and howling.
Despite the fact that he’s supposed to be one of my twelve protectors, I’ve never been so terrified, seeing him clinging to the Wall like that just below me. Behind me. I don’t want my back exposed to him, and I have half an idea to turn around when he pounces.
“You deserve a Monster.”
The Third Guardian pushes me, and I fall.
And fall.
And fall.
My own scream is tearing apart my lungs. My hair whips around my face. I close my eyes to prepare for the impact of that distant ground when I land against a warm, solid body that breaks my fall.
Instantly, I want to curl up against that chest and cry against his shoulder. I want to let his hands press tight against my body and keep me safe. I want to kiss his mouth as a thank you for catching me.
“Don’t worry, you’re safe with me,” his familiar voice croons.
My eyes pop open—and yet I’m still caught in the dream.
Yellow irises gleam wickedly back at me. A cruel mouth opens to reveal teeth as sharp as the spikes on the Wall. Claws scrape against my skin in a threatening caress. And in the thickness of the mist, it looks like two horns rise from either side of his head.
“Hello, little nightmare.”
I wake up with a start, panting heavily.
My throat is dry, my eyes wet. Every inch of my skin tingles, as if despite the horrible dream I just endured, my body wanted it to keep going. To feel what would happen, in the confines of my unconscious brain, if the Monster continued to hold me and touch me.
Not good. Not good at all.
For the last four days, I’ve wrestled with the choices laid out in front of me: throw the necklace as far away from me as I can, just like Diggory did, and be rid of that deadly, masculine voice in my head, or turn it in and risk the wrath of the Guardians for keeping it in the first place.
I’ve done my best to push away the sly, third option that whispers in a dark recess of my mind: keep it. Keep it and wear it and get to know him more. Find out why your pulse quickens at the very thought of him. Push and pull and take and give like a heart that has finally started to truly beat.
No. No more of this. The longer I have the necklace, the longer I’ll be subjecting myself to this special kind of torment, where nothing is straightforward and everything doesn’t make sense.
I shouldn’t be afraid of the Guardians. I shouldn’t want to see what the Monster looks like without all that mist shrouding the rest of his features.
I shouldn’t be dreaming of the other side of the Wall.
Lucan was so confident I’d run back to him a third time, but the Cardinal List of Rules trained me better than that.
I can’t allow this to go on any further.
As I lean my head back against my pillow, my breath finally settling, my ears pick up the sound again, for real this time. Howling. Tormented, furious howling, as if the one making the sound is flinging it at me and me alone. For the past four nights, it’s been like a morbid lullaby.
Well, good.
I hope he’s reeling, unable to forget me—that my brief appearance and sudden departure haunt his mind for the rest of his life, however long that may be. Maybe forever. I hope I do become his nightmare. Because my sudden streak of rebellion officially ends here.
I know what I have to do.
The congregation in front of the Blood Moon Palace is as thick as it always is on Sanctuary Sunday.
Instead of going to the Recreation Center, I’ve come to the Asking, when the Blood Moon Palace accepts visitors. Well, at least up to the front steps.
Some people spread out beneath the balconies and wave up at their Chosen loved ones, while others, including me, form a line leading to the double doors.
There, stationed right between two sentries, a human representative sits on an oversized wooden chair to hear requests, questions, and grievances from the citizens of Xantera.
Our messages are then passed on to the Twelve Guardians, who will take all the information into consideration when they decide all aspects of our lives.
I’m willing to bet nobody’s ever stood in line to hand in a forbidden necklace that connects their mind to the very Monster we’re taught to fear since birth. But here I am, doing exactly that.
As soon as I get to the front of the line, that is.
Still, my hand fiddles nervously in the inside pocket of my cloak, rubbing the necklace’s chain between my thumb and forefinger, even though I’m careful not to touch the vial itself.
A dozen scenarios have played out in my mind regarding how this could go once the Twelve Guardians realize what I have.
They could hear my case and let me go. They could keep me for questioning.
They could inflict various types of punishments on me.
They could throw me over the Wall—probably the worst option, since then I’d have to come face to face with the very Monster who put me in this position in the first place.
And I doubt I’d actually survive that fall, anyway. Not like how I did in my dream.
Sweat dampens the small of my back as my spot in line inches closer and closer to the door, and my eyes betray me by flicking up to those balconies where a few dozen Chosen Ones are leaning against the railings, looking down at everyone beneath them.
I don’t know any of them personally, and disappointment thrums through me like it did on the night of the last Choosing, so strong and hard that I nearly sway on my feet.
Instead, I abandon all pretense and let my neck crank upward, spearing my focus at the Chosen One hanging over the balcony directly above me.
He’s middle-aged, fair-haired, and looking just as regal as all his companions as he sweeps a cupped hand through the air. To my right, a woman of the same age is smiling up at him, two children on her other side waving frantically at the man who must be their father.
The man who was their father, I should say. Hard to be a real one when the Guardians whisk you away from your family and everyone else you’ve ever loved under the guise of it being an honor.
And just like that, I’m rooted to the spot, even as the line shifts forward.
I’ve never really let myself think all the thoughts that press against the forefront of my mind, but now they explode and fracture into a hundred different questions that prick me from the inside-out.
How is this considered an honor—staring down at a city you can never be a part of any longer?
Why don’t the Guardians feed from our necks to get the sustenance they need to protect us and then release us back to the city?
What makes them Choose one sacrifice over another?
What makes them Choose anything? They’re never here, among us, unless a blood moon blares from the sky.
Even now, it’s a human representative who’s holding the clipboard and scribbling down a message much slower than an eager, blue-badged boy is talking, trying to plead his case about switching to a new job assignment.
Why isn’t he allowed to plead his case on a random Tuesday? Why is his ability to use his voice limited to once a week?
But of course, it’s the Twelve Holy Guardians who think they know us better than ourselves, and a human representative who will decide what to do with me when I drag out the necklace from my inside pocket.
Either he’ll find my injustice trivial, thanking me and slipping it into his own pocket, or he’ll find himself speechless, unable to process the gravity of what I’ve done.
In that case, he’ll haul me through the front doors to face the wrath of the Twelve, where one of those dozen scenarios I’ve played out in my head will become a reality.
“Excuse me, miss, are you still in line?”