But sense doesn’t matter much in your final moments. That, I learned.
“I am slowing the process,” he told me, his voice a distant echo that danced around my crushing reality. “You have a chance. You can survive this.”
A sharp sound cut through me and I stared at him, as though I couldn’t quite make him out.
The poison was in me, now. At my collarbone, lingering in bruises and stained splotches of skin.
But my brain was touched already. I could hardly think straight.
“H-h-how?”
His hand left mine and he turned to look down at the kneeling mortal. “Make your choice,” said the Prince. “Die or kill.”
I traced his gaze down to shivering shoulders and the weeping face of a terrified man. And I understood.
My sobs turned feral and I cried an awful, rage-fuelled sound.
I lunged at the servant.
He landed on his back, and he didn’t fight me. Not one bit.
My hands latched onto his damp face, and I let a scream loose along with every trace of bitter, inky poison within me.
I’m not sorry.
The Prince watched me with blazing eyes. But I watched the man beneath me flood with bruises. He started to writhe; his legs squirmed and his hands clasped onto my wrists, as if ready to fight.
I shoved through the fog encasing my mind, finding that invisible hand within me, and I reached for every lump of poison I could feel still inside of me.
I threw it all into the mortal servant I straddled.
The servant went limp.
First, his arms flopped to the rug with a thud, then his legs drooped under me.
Catching my breath, I fought back the tears and watched him go. I watched his eyes roll back to his blackened eyelids. His crusty lips parted and—a smoggy sigh escaped them.
He took his final breath.
I killed him.
I killed him to survive.
And I didn’t feel a damn thing other than relief.
With a sigh, I slumped on top of the corpse and let harsh breaths course through me. My hands smooshed his lifeless face as I let all my weight roll out from my unwinding muscles.
Quietly, the Prince slipped from the sofa to crouch behind me. His warm, excited breaths came out as fast as mine, and disturbed the hair falling down my back.
He ran his fingers down the length of my hair gently, careful not to touch my skin. I could practically feel the excitement spark from his fingertips.
Tension held his voice in a tight hush, “How do you feel, Valissa?”
With a deep, steadying breath, I shut my eyes and let the last of my muscles unfurl from their knots. Then I probed around for any traces of that sloppy ink feeling that had consumed me before.
I felt nothing other than a faint tickle at my fingertips. A numb tickle that faintly brought opium to mind.
“Fine,” I breathed, and opened my eyes.
I stared at the blackened, ugly face of the innocent mortal I’d killed.
Well, at least I thought he was innocent. One could never really be sure of those things.
“I feel fine.” Saying it again helped the Prince believe it. And other than the numb prickly feeling at my fingers, I was telling the truth.
I really did feel … fine.
Monster…
She was good for something, I supposed.
The Prince drew away from me.
I looked over my shoulder at him, my lashes lowered and sweat clinging to my brow. The Prince settled himself comfortably back on the couch and stared down at me.
“As I said, your lessons have not satisfied me. Your progress has been slow and meagre. And as I anticipated, you simply needed better motivation.”
I choked on a breathy laugh.
The Prince’s eyebrow cocked, and dangerous shadows danced over his eyes.
Wearing a dazed half-grin, I asked, “And what if I failed?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Then it would be your corpse at my feet right now.”
I ran my tongue over my teeth and turned back to the face of the dead body. “Better him than me,” I muttered to myself.
The Prince heard me. “You do not know how much you have pleased me, Valissa.”
I didn’t look back at him. Instead, I ran my fingers down the corpse’s slack face, feeling for any traces of inky poison. But the poison was as dead as its host.
“Come with me to the Season’s Festival,” the Prince said. “I’ll be glad to have you by my side.”
I knew I had no choice. So I nodded and drew my hands back from the corpse.
“Join me.”
I pushed up from the floor and turned on the Prince. He was smiling at me, a small dark smile full of danger and deceit, but a smile nonetheless. He looked pleased.
I stepped over the corpse’s legs to reach the couch, then sank into the cushions.
Wearing that devious smile, the Prince asked me, “Who are you?”
I blinked, and a frown knitted between my eyebrows. “What?”
His smile started to thin. “Who are you?”
“I…” I glanced between him and the body, as though a corpse held all the answers. “I’m Valissa?”
The Prince flicked his hand lazily and—
Pain like nothing I’d ever known ripped through me.
One flick of his hand, and a searing hot pain was rushing through me, blinding me. It was so sudden than it took me a moment to hear my screams ricochet off the walls and claw at the ceilings.
I was on my back, my spine arched, and my legs flailing wildly.
All I could see was white—boiling white.
Is that my eyeballs? Are they searing out of my skull?
A storm was raging through my veins, a forest fire blazed beneath the surface of my skin.
I couldn’t feel anything else—only the agony.
“Who are you?”
That voice whispered around me, prodding the edges of the world of pain I lived in. I barely heard it over my screams that sounded so distant, so far away…
“Who are you?” His voice was like icicles stabbing at me, gutting me alive.
“M-m-m…”
“Say it!”
With that shout, a whole fresh wave of fire flooded through me.
My screams turned wild, frenzied, and I was thrashing on the cushions like a woman possessed.
“Say it!” His command boomed all around me.
“M-m-m-mmmo-nsterrr!”
It stopped.
All of it.
It was sucked out of me instantly, and to replace the fiery flames of death, a gasp struck through me.
My gasps were wretched and hoarse.
I clutched at my chest, my face, my arms—any bit of flesh I could get my hands on. I was stunned to feel layers of sweat, not the bubbling boils I’d expected to coat me.
Catching my breath, I slumped on the cushions and let myself go limp. I was certain a little urine trickled out of me. But I really didn’t give a damn about that in that moment.
I’ve been poisoned, and I survived.
I’ve been touched by a God, and I lived.
I’ve been burned alive by his power, and here I am.
What else could I survive?
My lashes fluttered on the dim light around me as I lay there.
The Prince sat in silence for a while, patiently waiting for me to gather my strength—whatever was left of it at least.
He’d surprised me. Stunned me. Terrified and tortured me.
The Prince had done something far beyond my expectations. It wasn’t just his poison I had to fear now.
I felt like the fool in Zealot’s story more now than ever before, because it wasn’t the Gods who were limited in their powers. That was the aniels.
The Gods faced no such boundaries.
They could do anything. And I’d let myself forget that.
The Prince sliced through my thoughts like a blade through flesh. Though his voice was gentle.
Soothing, almost.
“You have done well,” he said, and I felt the brush of his fingers run down my breech-shielded calf.
Guards stepped into view. I wondered for a moment when they’d come into the alcove. But then I found I didn’t care, as long as they took me away from the God of torture.
One of them scooped me up into his arms and cradled me like a child—or a corpse to be moved.
The Prince’s farewell followed me out of the alcove; “Rest, my monster.”
Monster.
Not Valissa, not Lissa.
Monster.
Here, I would need to become her. Or embrace her, like the Prince said. Without her, I wouldn’t have survived my visit to the saloon. I wouldn’t have survived much at all.
In the Palace of the Gods, where monsters lurked in every corridor, to survive I had to become what I feared most in myself.
I had to become my beast.
25
Gloom clutched to my dreams like aches to my bones.
I tossed and turned most of the night. At one point, I woke with a start and cried out the memories of agonising pain writhing on the floor of an alcove.
The memory of the torture stuck to me; stuck to my insides.
I thought of something my brother used to tell me.
Our flesh and bones have better memories than our minds.
Of course when he’d said that, he’d always been talking about those little cuts that scarred his hands, and the way his left kneecap indented the length of a pinkie-nail. Scars and scrapes he’d gotten from harsh fishing weather, and he would wear them forever.
The Prince’s torture didn’t leave scars or cuts on my flesh. But what of my bones and my mind?
Inside, I am as ugly as a water-beast.
I must have been, after all that had been left there to rot me; tortures and attacks and blackmails and Gods and aniels and lost friends and dead mothers. More than I ever thought I could survive.
And yet, each time I woke in screams and sweats that night, I somehow managed to settle myself down, soothe my breathing, and find sleep again—no matter how restless it was.
Monster was looking after me. Or herself. After all, weren’t we one? Not two souls divided within one body, but one whole person at odds with herself.
Yes, to survive the palace and the Prince, I knew I needed Monster. But what if I really needed her all along, just as much as she needed me?
Those thoughts carried through the veil of sleep with me.
I dreamt of her between nightmares of the Prince feasting on my soul, and Jasper beheading Ava right in front of me. When those horrors that plagued my sleep ended, Monster was there—
She was there, facing me, wearing my skin. Then, beside me, holding my hand.
In my last dream of the night, Monster kissed me and we became one. She drifted into me like a ghost into a grave, and for that fleeting moment of bliss, I felt whole.
Complete.
And then I was forced awake by the thunderous caws of a dozen crows.
I jerked on the bed, eyes wide and alert.
Flames still licked along a thick, black log in the fireplace, casting faint orange glows over the room. Still, it was light enough to see them—the crows scratching and cawing at my windows.
Legs tangled in the sweaty sheets, I sat upright and watched them. Not a dozen. I counted ten of them; fierce blue eyes piercing through the thin glass between us, and all of them scratching at the windows as if desperate to get inside.
Caw.
I’d always loved crows. I’d always watched them fly away and the crows would watch me sometimes.
Caw.
I felt a kinship in them, like they were my home, that maybe I belonged with them in a way. I’d never feared crows before. Until that night.
Caw.
I shifted off the bed and pushed the sheets from my clammy body.
Slowly, I advanced on the windows. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from them. They looked savage. Their blue eyes gleamed, like sharp diamonds cut into blades.
Every step closer to the crows at the window, another muscle seized up in my body.
Run.
Monster was uneasy. I was uneasy. We both were.
Yet, I drew closer still. I couldn’t turn away or shut the curtains on them or shout for my guards out in the corridor.
I could do nothing but gaze at the wild birds in awe.
My fingertips tingled with spikes of ice as I reached out for the window. One tug of the brass handle and the murder of crows would sweep into the room. Something I shouldn’t have wanted.
But I was never all that good with shouldn’t.
Sweat licked all over my palm as I clasped onto the handle.
Just as I made to pull it down and let these savage beasts inside, a voice struck out from behind me and froze me on the spot—
“I would advise against that.”
26
A startled sound choked in my throat and I stumbled back.
The windowpane shoved into the small of my back, blocking my retreat.
Lounging on the armchair by the fireplace, an olive-skinned man faced me.
His darkness blended in with the shadows, and they clung to him as though he was their master, their home. Only his eyes stabbed through the gloom like beacons to lost ships, and they were aimed right at me in all their calm ferocity—
The stillness before a storm strikes the sky.
“Damianos.” His name rasped out of me in a breathy whisper. Relief didn’t cling to my voice, or even the stunned fear on my face.
His eyes gleamed. “Valissa.”
He ran his fingertip over his lips, as if to savour my name.
An icy grip had my heart, and dragged it down to the bubbling pit of rising fear within me.
Damianos…
How had he gotten into my room?
With guards at the doors and windows that only opened to ledges higher than a tower above land, there was no way in or out.
I hadn’t thought about it before. But there he was, sitting on the armchair as comfortable as a cat on a ledge, as though he’d simply waltzed in through the doors.
Damianos had snuck into my room, but what if it hadn’t been the first time…
He could have been the one to attack me. And now, he’d come to finish what he’d started.
I chanced a glance at the doors. Shut firmly. But my guards were on the other side, a shout’s distance away.
As if reading my thoughts, Damianos let a wicked grin sweep over his face. He pressed his gloved finger to his lips, hushing me silently.
I swallowed back a shuddering breath.
For all I knew, he was as powerful as the Prince. A God, or an exceptional aniel even. And he could end me before I had the chance to cry for help.
I pinched my lips shut and met his studious, patient stare.
“So we are to play nicely, are we?” His voice was slick with amusement, and a mocking glint sparked in his eyes.
I snubbed the mocking turn of his tone. “Who are you?”
“That is not important,” he said, and reclined comfortably on the armchair. “Not at the moment.”
“Are you the one who attacked me?” My voice was as small as I felt.
I leaned back against the windowsill as though it would save me from any malice he might have nurtured.
“No.” His answer was instant, without a hint of hesitation.
For whatever foolish reason, I believed him.
But that didn’t mean I trusted him.
The darkness from the shaded side of the room crept over him, like spidery fingers of gloom. Still, his ashy blue eyes speared through the shadows with a chilling resemblance to a blade slicing apart the night.
“So what are you doing here?” I tightened my grip on the ledge and studied him closely. His unreadable mask gave away nothing. “What do you want with me?”
“Many things, I’m sure.” A dark smirk curved his pink lips and he let his ga
ze drift downwards.
I was suddenly aware of what I was wearing—a creamy silk slip.
My arms shot up to my chest and crossed.
His smirk turned into a lazy grin and he looked back up at me. “The Prince must be pleased,” he said darkly.
I frowned, hugging myself. “What d’you mean by that?”
“You come in such a fetching package.” Slowly, his smile faded into a ghostly grim look. “Were you unfetching, I doubt Prince Poison would show as much interest in you as he does.”
My face twisted into a feral sneer. “Whatever you think you know about me and the Prince, you can stuff it up your backside. It’s between me and him.”
Damianos rose from the chair.
I watched as he slipped his hands into the pockets of his breeches, then advanced on me slowly.
“The Prince and I,” he corrected lazily; his gaze to match. He stopped in front of me, a breath away from my face, and let his head tilt to the side as he studied me. “I suppose an isle girl is just that, no matter where she’s held captive.”
Held captive.
Those words struck through me like lightning through the bluish storm clouds he called eyes.
He was the first to acknowledge it, other than me and Ava.
I was a prisoner. A captive of a God. And yet, no one truly acknowledged that until now.
“I have been watching you a long time, Valissa.”
As he slipped closer to me, I watched him warily and pressed further into the ledge. A bruise was undoubtedly starting to form along my back.
I let out a rushed breath. “How long?”
Damianos flattened his hand against the window and drew closer to me; I was trapped between him and his arm. His face lowered to align with mine, stealing my breath and throwing my heart into a flutter.
It hadn’t been the corridor—when I first met him, I’d felt at home. Safe, almost. Just like at my damp cabin on Zwayk, danger and comfort threaded together all around me.
Fears always lived with me there, not always that I would be discovered by the Gods, but that the villagers would turn on me, or my own brother would cast me out. Even when I felt most at home there, danger was never far beneath the surface.
Damianos sent that feeling rushing back to me.
“Months,” he finally admitted, and my breath caught in my throat. “But I have searched for you far longer than that.”
Gods and Monsters, Books 1-3: A Dark Gods Bully Romance (Gods and Monsters Box Set) Page 16
