Chapter 29 Saskia #2
The Monster’s howling sounds extra vicious tonight. Usually, it’s one of the only sounds Diggory’s daughter can pick up on, especially from the vibrations, and right now it only grows louder when the palace doors open with a booming echo.
My own goosebumps crawl up my arms at the sound of Lucan’s voice, the cadence and tone, and the fact that I now recognize it. It baffles me that it used to frighten me.
But everyone else is frightened, that’s for sure. Just like my own Choosing, a Guardian’s presence stills the crowd. Diggory’s daughter fidgets, her fingers curling and uncurling repeatedly… until the Fifth Guardian appears with a hum in his throat and a red-eyed stare that hammers her still.
“You are perfect.”
Diggory’s daughter reads his lips, her heart stops, and she’s yanked away before she can even remember to look over her shoulder for a last glimpse of her mother and father.
But she can hear her father’s scream behind her.
“SYLVIA! NO! PLEASE! TAKE ME INSTEA—!”
A sentry is already muffling Diggory’s voice, and the sound cuts off abruptly.
With the Fifth Guardian still yanking her forward by one wrist, Sylvia throws her free hand behind her back and gives her father one last goodbye in the language they made together: “Stop making a fuss. I’ll find a way to talk to you. ”
The memory fades to black, replacing itself with a new one—and this time, I’m staring into a pair of eyes that aren’t mine through a reflective surface.
It takes a second for me to orient myself, but finally it clicks. A mirror. The one that I ended up pulling from Diggory’s shower, to be exact.
Sylvia blinks at herself, angling the mirror to each side just as I did, as she takes in her features. Her hand drops to pick up the jewelry sitting on her dresser, the same piece I slid on my finger in Belinda’s shower, too.
I knew it, she thinks with disgust. I knew they don’t follow their own rules. If only the rest of Xantera could see all this wealth they keep from everyone else, they’d realize…
Her thoughts morph into an idea, and the room swirls into a new memory. Now, we’re on a balcony—reliving a long-ago Sanctuary Sunday.
Faces peer up at us from below, just close enough to make out their doleful smiles and waves. Diggory and Belinda are there, mimicking the motions of everyone else, but Sylvia watches the way her father’s hand moves through the air and deciphers the coded message.
“Are you okay?”
Sylvia leans over the railing, plastering on a face of happiness and exhilaration, while she waves her own arm regally and brings her fingers snapping down against her thumb. “No.”
Immediately, Diggory’s hand movements get sharper.
“What did they do to you?”
“Besides the obvious?” she signs, thinking about the puncture wounds that already litter her body, courtesy of the Fifth Guardian. “I’m not sure yet, but I know they’re not being completely honest with us. Here. I can prove it.”
“Prove it?” Diggory asks, his forehead wrinkling in confusion even from afar.
Beside him, Belinda is blatantly gazing off into the distance, choosing to remain in ignorance rather than acknowledge that her partner is doing more than waving at their daughter.
Or maybe she’s watching out for any sentries, making sure nobody else notices the strange exchanges. Either way, Sylvia chooses to risk it.
She reaches into her cloak, whisks out the mirror, and drops it.
Diggory’s hand flashes out to grab the object before swiftly hiding it within his cloak, and Sylvia lets out a satisfied breath.
I catch her thoughts and feelings just as the memory begins to morph: a rush of adrenaline that she’s already addicted to. She’s going to do it again—find more evidence of their hypocrisy and give it all to her father. Just to defy them.
The memory swirls into another one. Now, my pseudo-heart is pounding nails into my ribcage. Sylvia looks over her shoulder, and I stamp the hallway into my brain, somehow aware that we’re entering the Eleventh Guardian’s bedroom, before she clicks the door shut behind her and turns around.
If a new Chosen One’s bedroom is massive, a Guardian’s is simply unbelievable.
Spreading into more and more rooms, the place has to be bigger than a handful of housing units put together, brimming with furniture, drapes, decorations, and other gaudy, elaborate things that make the rest of Xantera look like the barest of bones.
But Sylvia doesn’t hesitate as she starts toward the bedside table by the colossal, four-poster bed filled with rumpled sheets.
She’s been sneaking or sleeping her way into every Guardian’s bedroom over the last six months, and she knows they all have a key they keep beside them when they sleep.
Just last night, she saw the Eleventh Guardian glance at his before he continued sucking on her neck, but she didn’t dare nab it. Not then.
Now, the Eleventh Guardian is off tormenting other Chosen Ones, and Sylvia sets her sights on the little open box where a key lays horizontally on a red cushion. So out in the open. So stealable. She doesn’t know what it unlocks, but she knows her father will figure it out when she drops it to him.
Her long slender fingers trace the heart-shaped end.
I jump when a door handle twists, a metal sound scraping my nerves. Whipping my head around, I realize it’s the memory, not reality. Sylvia snatches the key, drops to the ground, and squirms her way to a plank underneath the Eleventh Guardian’s bed.
Chest heaving. Heart hammering.
Two footsteps click inward. If the Eleventh Guardian realizes his key is missing, he’ll tear the room apart and find her trying not to breathe beneath his bed frame.
Cursing herself for her stupidity, she clenches the key in trembling, sweaty fingers, feeling the Guardian’s presence pulsing like the opposite of a beacon. And then—
“Felix, you’re needed in the library.”
It’s Arad’s voice from the hallway, loud enough for her to hear. The vibrations of the Eleventh Guardian’s footsteps recede, the door slams shut again, and Sylvia exhales against the floor with the key still tight in her grip.
The memory spirals into a new one again.
This time, Sylvia crouches in some kind of internal courtyard, where rose bushes circle a set of benches and a fountain tinkles merrily in the middle of a placid pond.
When she peeks out from behind a thorny bush, it becomes apparent who she’s here to spy on: Arad himself.
His laugh reaches us, a darkness vibrating through it that makes acid rise in my throat.
Peering up at Arad through the leaves, we watch as he holds up my necklace, and a sick smile twists his lips.
The chain graces his throat. The vial now trapped in his clenched fist.
And he can’t help but speak aloud, angled in a way that Sylvia can read every word on his lips.
“You know, it’s such a beautiful day. I really wish you could see it. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, everyone in my city adores me, and they all loathe you. How wonderful is that?”
Lucan. He’s talking to Lucan, and hatred crackles in my bones as I get my first taste of the taunting my Monster has had to endure for centuries.
I’d give anything to rip the necklace from Arad’s cold, undeserving fingertips so that past Lucan wouldn’t have to hear the slimy words dripping from his lips.
But this is Sylvia’s memory, so all I can do is listen with curdling disgust.
“Oh? You loathe me? Well, why don’t you do something about it, then?
” Arad waits for a response with a smile widening his face before he brings the vial close to his mouth and says, “That’s right.
Because every time you try, you just end up whimpering like a little puppy.
You are not a Monster. You are just pathetic.
And there is nothing left for you to try. I always come out on top.”
I want to swing my fist into Arad’s face, but Sylvia just cocks her head at him through the leaves of her hiding place, eyeing the necklace with gleaming interest. She doesn’t know why he’s talking into it like it’s an intercom, but it might be the most interesting thing she’s had an itch to steal yet.
And maybe whoever’s communicating with him on the other side can help.
Slowly, she rises from the bushes, pretending she’d been bending over to smell the roses. Arad jolts and stuffs the necklace away, his mouth opening as if to admonish her—or perhaps worse—but Sylvia throws on her most flirtatious smile and begins her game.
The next memory feels different. Sylvia’s resolve has hardened, but so has she. Almost physically. Sluggish, disoriented, and exhausted, her limbs seem to weigh a ton. But her desire has never wavered, and she’ll do anything to take the necklace.
She’s lying on a bed, counting in her head, and when she turns slowly, I’m horrified.
Arad is sleeping shirtless next to her, his chest moving in a slow rhythm, the sheets rising and falling with every breath, as if even they obey him.
I’m not the only one horrified. Sylvia hates herself—for liking what just transpired between them.
The feeding. The sex. The multiple orgasms. She’s drunk on power and revenge, loving that Arad became putty in her hands over the last several weeks.
Loving how easy it was to manipulate him with a few fluttering eyelashes and wiggling fingers.
Sylvia’s eyes travel south along the grooves of his stomach muscles, somewhat sad she won’t experience this again.
She smiles, thinking what a waste.
When she reaches one hundred and one in her head, she reaches over his body and plucks that gold necklace off his bedside table.
For a second, she eyes another silver chain hanging around his neck, but taking that one would be too risky.
So she simply leans over to place her puckered lips at the corner of Arad’s mouth, knowing she’ll pay for this steal.
And slips away.