Chapter 39
Flush,” Claudia says, grinning.
Eyeing both of their cards now face-up, I see she indeed has all hearts and Tristan has a sad pair of threes.
I chuckle, and Tristan jerks his head back with a smirk.
“You lost just as bad,” he teases me.
“It was my first game,” I say, blinking innocently.
Claudia sits back against the sofa, relishing in her winning hand. “Time to collect.”
One by one, the men rise to their feet and sit beside her. Her eyes stay trained on my face, making me shift uncomfortably in my seat, as they each whisper in her ear.
What did you put up? Lucan asks me hesitantly.
Well, my clothes at first. But they were betting with secrets.
Lucan snaps his teeth. I’m late by twenty goddamn minutes and you find yourself in the middle of a strip poker game. Great.
I fold my lips into my smile, just a little too happy to keep it off my face. You’re cute when you’re angry.
If you could actually see me, he growls, you wouldn’t think so.
My thoughts convey that I very much doubt it. In fact, I think it’d be even sexier—amber eyes and a hulking monstrous form stalking over me, making me obey. What else is there to dream about now that all hope is gone?
After Tristan returns to his chair, Claudia levels me with a stare. “Well?”
Glancing down at my cleavage, I joke, “Do you want my dress or…”
She huffs. “This girl’s got nothing. Tristan, next time you need to consult us before inviting someone to play. This isn’t social hour for your dates.”
“I have secrets,” I insist, raising my chin as I rise and walk around the table before I mumble, “Along with a sense of humor.”
Saskia… Lucan warns. But if I understand correctly, a bet is a bet. You don’t go back on one.
Claudia tracks my movements, watching me settle next to her, and she doesn’t back away when I lean in closely.
I don’t know the quality of the other’s secrets, or if mine are even relative, but they’re all I have.
“I snuck into the north wing,” I whisper in her ear so that the others can’t hear. “And we’re all turning to stone.”
Claudia tenses. For a moment, she pulls away from me, blinking into my face while the others watch on uncertainly. Then she lets out a harsh laugh. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not,” I say, sitting back.
“You figured that all out in a week?”
I throw my hands up. “It’s not my fault if you don’t pay attention.”
“I pay attention,” Tristan interjects, jokingly placing a hand over his heart like I’ve wounded his ego.
I’m quick to roll my eyes, no longer worried about who might be offended by what. “You’re the worst,” I quip. “All those people lying in bed all day sleeping. Right.”
“What people?” Geo asks.
I shake my head. Fuck it. They can all know my secret. It pertains to their own futures anyway, and whether I trust them or not has no relevance. Death is inevitable. “The people turning to stone.”
They blink back at me before all five of them bark out laughs. I just blink back, exasperated, until only Claudia’s chortle dies.
“What people?” Claudia asks with a darker tone to her voice.
Standing, I fluff out the skirt of my dress. No one moves as I step toward the door.
“Well, are you coming?” I ask, turning around.
Tristan scrambles to his feet.
“Not you. Claudia.”
Claudia takes a moment, her eyebrows creasing deeper. “Where?”
“To prove myself.”
Maybe she doesn’t want to know the truth, Lucan offers, which makes me pause.
“Only if you want,” I add sincerely.
Geo shrugs. Andreas bounces his eyes between everyone. Victor isn’t paying attention. And Tristan pouts.
Patiently, I wait—the room seems to freeze in place, everyone held in a moment of uneasiness—until, finally, Claudia rises slowly without a word and follows me out the room.
My steps are quick, purposeful. I know exactly which path to take, down the identical hallways, up the thousandth staircase.
Claudia, half-intrigued, half-skeptical, stays right on my heels with her anticipation palpable against my back.
I don’t even bother trying to step lightly when we come to the last set of stairs. I’d tell Arad to his face that I discovered the effects of his venom, and I’d know he’d laugh in my face and ask me what it feels like to see into my future.
Knocking lightly on Sylvia’s door, I try to prepare Claudia before I open it.
“Her name is Sylvia. She can barely move, and she’s hard of hearing, so try to enunciate so she can read your lips.”
Claudia’s face tightens with a hint of fear, like whoever we’re about to encounter could rip her head off.
In a moment of panic, I question whether this is the right thing to do. If you could see the future, would you actually choose to know when and how you were going to die? Or would you just live every day to the fullest?
The problem is, though, I’m not sure this is living. And Claudia could have easily discovered this herself if she’d just cared about her fellow Chosen Ones. Their suffering has always been only ten floors above her head. All she’s had to do is look up and see.
Clenching my jaw, I push open the door.
The light from the tiny window cuts a sunbeam across the room, the dust illuminated as it hangs in the air.
And the tiny bed in the middle of the room is…
Empty.
Nothing but a bare mattress—no trace of Sylvia except the outline of her body pressed into it like a stone stamp.
My gasp claws out of my throat, my voice ragged and stilted. “No.”
“Where is she?” Claudia whispers over my shoulder, surveying the room like someone still might pop out of the blank walls.
“No,” I sob out again, rushing over to the side of the bed. “She’s… gone.”
I can’t bring myself to say it—dead—but I know in my bones that her fossilization must have reached its last phase. In a way, she died on my watch—just like her father.
As I fall to the mattress, Claudia watches me intensely, chewing on the inside of her cheek in shock. Unsure of what to say, what to do.
I’m sorry, Saskia, Lucan murmurs. I’m so sorry. She knew, though, in the end that you would continue what she started. That it wasn’t for nothing.
Wasn’t it, though? I bite back, tears wetting my face now.
All of this has truly been for nothing. My mother is gone. Diggory is gone. Now Sylvia.
Instantly, the image of that body on a stretcher rolls through my mind. That person was stone, I’m sure of it now, and the servants put them somewhere in the north wing.
Claudia crosses the room and sits somberly in the wooden chair angled in the corner. Each of my breaths drag through my lungs like gravel, my face buried in my hands, until she speaks out of nowhere.
“About six months ago, I started waking up every morning exhausted. Like I hadn’t gotten a second of sleep despite a full eight hours passing.
My partner, who is such a heavy sleeper, thought I was sleepwalking.
So, I brought home a tiny camera out of the Repair Inventory and set it up in my bedroom.
I rewired it to my screen to record one night, just to see.
I thought it couldn’t hurt.” She takes several deep breaths that mirror the panic in mine.
“But instead of finding out that I was in some drowsy trance, I watched a Guardian drink my own blood right from my neck as I slept.”
I gape at her, trying to process what she just said. A Guardian was sneaking into her housing unit? To drink from her while she slept? Before she was even Chosen?
Claudia nods at the disbelief on my face.
“That was just the beginning of the end. I set up a few more stolen cameras between the complexes and caught more than one Guardian stalking in and out of doors in the alleyways. Always at night, never lingering too long in one part of the city. I don’t know how they were getting around… ”
“The catacombs,” I say, horrified.
“What?”
“There are catacombs beneath our city.” I swallow. “Tunnels from the palace leading to the complexes. They must have been using those to…”
I can’t even finish the thought, but a young face swirls in my mind, a patient whose blood pressure was too low, who’d woken up dizzy even though we could never find out what was wrong with her.
But I know now. Just the other night, I dreamed of something like that.
A Guardian, actually… just stared down at me and told me to go back to sleep.
That had never been a dream. I grab my throat, as if that’ll help me breathe better, the enormity of how vile the Guardians actually are crashing into me. They aren’t just taking from us in a legal way. They’re taking from us in illegal ways, too.
They created the law, Lucan mutters angrily. Of course, they feel entitled to breaking it. They think they’re above it.
“What did you do when you found out?” I ask Claudia.
“Told my partner, thinking that he would help me figure out how to stop them.” Claudia shrugs noncommittally.
“But it was like talking to the Wall. My partner didn’t want to hear it.
He thought the Guardians must have a reason.
That they needed extra strength to continue to protect us from the Monster.
And what did it matter anyway if they took a little of my blood while I slept?
It was an honor, he said. Told me to forget it. ”
My gaze lands on Sylvia’s empty bed, and grief buries itself into my stomach all over again.
Would everyone think this is an honor if they found out what happens to the Chosen Ones and what happens to the innocents while they sleep?
Or would some stand with Claudia and me, knowing that it’s wrong, knowing that we can’t keep being complacent?
I lift my chin and wipe the tears clinging to my cheeks with the heels of my palms.
“You couldn’t forget it, could you? That’s why they Chose you?”
Claudia nods. “I tried to go back to normal, but the secret festered inside me. I couldn’t stop questioning everything about this city and life. But there’s nothing I can do in here.”