by Bella Klaus
“What?” I blurted. As far as I knew, the woman had done everything Kresnik had demanded of her, including helping to bring him to life. What could she have possibly done to incite his anger?
“Kresnik wanted me to fetch another phoenix.” Her voice was so faint I had to edge closer to hear. “I failed.”
My brows drew together, and I placed a hand over my mouth and nose. “Did he want to make another baby?”
Aurora didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure if it was out of loyalty to Kresnik or because she’d passed out from the pain. My gaze darted to the glowing whip marks. Up close, they were a mix of yellow fire bursting from red. I clenched my teeth. How on earth could a person endure that level of torture?
“How can I help you?”
“You don’t have the magic,” she rasped. “Even if you did, you’d face the same punishment for treating my wounds.”
“That isn’t even fair,” I blurted. “Kresnik set you up for a task you couldn’t complete. But you’re just a fire mage, not a seer.”
Aurora didn’t reply.
“Are you?” I asked.
“Not an effective one like Father Jude,” she rasped.
I shook my head from side to side. “If Kresnik needed you to go to another realm, why didn’t he do it himself? He’s just Father Jude with a different soul.”
“A mingled soul.” She placed her palms on the table and tried to pull herself up. Her skin cracked, making her cry out.
My stomach flip-flopped, and I placed my palm on her shoulder, trying to keep her on the bed. “Don’t try to move. At least not until the wound has time to scab.”
Her body shook with harsh sobs. “This will be my fate for the rest of my life.”
Shock barreled through my gut, making my insides go numb. How could someone inflict such a brutal and long-lasting punishment on a loyal servant? I knew nothing about fire-based torture and only the basics about black magic and psychic attacks that I’d picked up while working with Istabelle.
“What’s Healer Calla giving you for the pain?” I asked.
“No magical healing is allowed.”
“What exactly happened?”
“The flame whip,” she whispered.
My brows drew together. Healer Calla said this, too, but the whip I’d seen during Jonathan’s banishment ceremony had been harmless. Father Jude had punished Aurora for not instructing Jonathan better, but the whip hadn’t done anything back then—it had barely reddened her skin.
I leaned forward, flinching at the heat radiating from her wounds. It was like standing too close to an old-fashioned bar heater.
“The punishment has to be cumulative.” It was the only explanation I could conjure up, and it would also explain why Aurora had been so desperate for me to forgive Jonathan, when he’d clearly been guilty of violating my mind. It also explained why some of the audience hid their faces while Aurora got her punishment.
“Yes,” she replied from between clenched teeth. “The first whipping doesn’t hurt, but the second stings. With each application of the whip, the body retains the heat, until…”
“What happens if he whips you again?” I asked.
“I burn from the inside out,” she replied with a cough.
An avalanche of dread tumbled through my insides, making me clutch at my belly. My gaze darted back to the molten flesh, which seemed hotter and more hellish than before.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, but words would never be enough.
Aurora didn’t reply, and my throat thickened, threatening to cut off my air. How many of those whippings were directly or indirectly because of me? Kresnik needed a new phoenix because the magic he had stolen from me wasn’t sticking. And I had disobeyed her request to forgive Jonathan and gotten her whipped.
Guilt clawed through my lungs and clenched my heart, making me catch my breath. Everything that had happened between us up until now no longer mattered. Aurora was suffering, and there was something I could do to ease her pain.
On legs that wouldn’t stop trembling, I walked to the single candle, plucked it off the shelf, and continued around the room, lighting up every other candle within the wall sconces and on the tables. A soft light filled the space, making it more like the atmosphere I’d become accustomed to with Istabelle.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “Our Lord specifically commanded—”
“I might not have any power, but I know how to draw out dark magic.”
She shook her head. “Don’t.”
“Did Kresnik say we couldn’t use non-magical methods to heal your wounds?” I asked.
Aurora didn’t reply, which I took to mean that Kresnik had probably only ordered Healer Calla not to use her power to treat the flame whip. I turned to the exit, where two large cupboards stood on either side of the exit.
“Miss Griffin,” said Hades. “The healer just left the reception area to tend to another injured fire user. Now’s the time to visit her quarters.”
I shook my head, continued toward the storage cupboards, and pulled open its door. The Tibetan sound bowls sat on a shelf at eye level, along with all the crystals Healer Calla had removed from the display. Ignoring them, I turned my gaze to a roll of gauze.
The disembodied voice spluttered. “You’re going to risk your life for this lost cause? Kresnik probably wants her dead because he wants the secret of his power to die with her.”
My fingers paused over a container of salt. “What?”
“Forget that woman,” Hades drawled. “I’m the one who seized his magic for half a millennium and kept his soul in Hell for decades. It’s me who knows all his secrets, including his origins.”
I took the gauze and salt to a worktable on the right of the room then tore off several large strips to make a poultice.
“You’re being incredibly short-sighted,” he said. “There is no point in easing the suffering of a woman who is going to spend an eternity with me in Hell.”
“And you wonder why I ignore you,” I whispered.
The candles standing on the edges of the table flickered with annoyance before returning to their usual yellow flame. Acting like I hadn’t noticed the outburst, I continued toward the cupboard, searching through its contents for something that might help pull heat from a wound.
Healer Calla had a refrigerator or at least some form of cool storage. She could have extracted something from there to place on Aurora’s wounds, but she chose to dab sweat off the other woman’s face with a handkerchief. I shook my head. Why was I surprised? The old lady was completely under Kresnik’s thrall.
“If you’re angling for me to spare her soul along with those of your little friends, it’s a bargain,” Hades hissed. “Now stop pandering to the whimpering of a woman who will never give you an ounce of motherly love and come with me.”
I clenched my teeth. Hades could say whatever he wanted, but he wouldn’t distract me from helping Aurora.
After putting together the ingredients I needed—activated charcoal, bentonite clay, and baking soda—I extracted a mixing bowl from the cupboard along with a pestle and mortar and a wooden spoon.
“What is that?” he whispered.
“A healing poultice.”
Hades snorted. “Hedgewitch magic?”
I shook my head. “Mock me all you want, mighty King of all Demons, but don’t forget who’s the disembodied spirit begging for the help of a powerless Neutral.”
The candles flickered again, and one of them extinguished. Perhaps Hades had floated off in a huff. Right now, he could sulk because I wasn’t going to endanger Valentine and myself to collect his ashes without a solid agreement that he wouldn’t turn against us.
After grinding the charcoal tablets into black dust with the pestle, I poured the contents of the mortar into a ceramic bowl, adding the Dharma salt, the clay, and the baking soda. They all served the same purpose in herbal medicine—drawing out impurities—but the Dharma salt focussed on pushing out dark magic.
I took
the gauze to the small sink in the corner of the room, soaking its fibers and wringing out the excess water. After laying the fabric flat on the table, I spooned out the ingredients and created enough sausage-shaped poultices for each of the glowing whip marks.
“Aurora?” I carried the first in my hands.
She groaned.
“It might sting at first, but it’s going to help.”
“What are you doing?” she asked. “You’ll get yourself killed.”
I set my jaw. Something peculiar was happening with Kresnik’s magic. I didn’t know what, but he wasn’t satisfied with his resurrection. Valentine also wasn’t slavishly following his commands, and Kresnik knew that but needed Valentine’s continued existence to maintain his army of preternatural vampires.
It was the only thought that kept me going as I lowered the poultice onto the worst of the whip marks.
The sound of sizzling filled my ears, accompanied by a rush of steam. On instinct, I staggered back. This was like the times I’d dropped something into the shallow fryer without drying it properly and oil had splashed up my arm.
I wrapped my arms around my middle, waiting for the noise and vapor to subside. When it did, Aurora exhaled a long sigh. “Thank you.”
Over the next few minutes, I applied poultice after poultice on the woman’s back until I’d covered every strip of molten flesh. Aurora panted on the treatment bed, babbling an incoherent thanks.
My throat thickened. It was nearly impossible to even fathom the level of pain she suffered. I’d burned myself cooking and ironing but never from the inside out.
I returned to the cupboard, looking for papaver honey, which contained both pain-killing and calmative properties, but there was none on the shelves. Instead, I found a tub of aloe vera, dumped its entire contents into my bowl, and stirred it into the rest of my salty mix. Aloe was a human remedy that soothed first- and second-degree burns, but combined with the other ingredients it would create a healing gel Aurora could apply to her wounds for extra relief.
“Sorry,” she croaked.
I turned to find her head turned in my direction, and tears streaming from her eyes. She had to be feeling betrayed. It wasn’t her fault that Jonathan had infiltrated my brain, nor was it her fault that she couldn’t catch a phoenix.
“Are you feeling better?” I asked.
“Much,” she replied with a sob. “I cannot thank you enough.”
The fabric of my shirt itched, making me shift on my feet. I wasn’t used to Aurora’s gratitude, and I didn’t know where to look.
I cleared my throat, trying to picture how I might act if she was a client who had come to the crystal shop for a treatment. “There’s enough Dharma salt in those poultices to remove the black magic. I’ve added a few other ingredients that will speed things along.”
Aurora squeezed her eyes shut and sobbed, making my heart lurch.
“I’m sorry, too,” I murmured. “It was wrong of Father Jude and Kresnik to dish out such a brutal punishment.”
“One more of these, and it will be my death,” she said.
My stomach tightened. Hades had said this earlier, but hearing it from Aurora made it blisteringly real. Shallow breaths whistled in and out of my lungs, and I edged toward the woman, hoping the Dharma salt might prove her assumption wrong. I was about to say something comforting when she spoke again.
“I have no regrets about sending you to Arianna,” she whispered.
“Oh.” Disappointment made my stomach plummet to the floor. I dropped my gaze and winced. I pulled back my shoulders and inhaled a deep breath. It wasn’t like I was treating her injuries to earn her love.
“Arianna brought you up with love and compassion. I would have moulded you into a tool for Our Lord.”
My tight muscles loosened enough for me to exhale. “Is that why you sent me away?”
“The phoenix gets its power from pain,” she rasped from the table. “If you had grown up here, the warriors would have treated you as special. In Logris, you were guaranteed a life as a Neutral who would amount to nothing.”
I ran a trembling hand through my hair. “So all the things I suffered—”
“We can’t take any credit for Ellora Vandamir. That girl persecuted you of her own volition, but we spread enough petty rumors about you to ensure a steady stream of misery.”
The acid in my stomach simmered, heating my blood to a boil. All that crap I’d endured at the academy was because of them? Guys like Karsten from Gourmande would ask me if I’d let some vampire or another feed from the vein or if I was already practicing for carrying someone’s baby. Aunt Arianna had said it was just immature idiocy and they would eventually grow out of it, but the truth was beyond imagination.
“Why?”
I stepped back from the treatment table, shaking my head from side to side. This was beyond cruel, beyond pathetic. Some of those rumors had started when I was twelve. I turned back to the table and cut a strip of gauze long enough to drape over the aloe-vera mix.
“Your magic is like a pressure cooker. The more heat applied, the more explosive the outcome,” she said, her eyes trying to meet mine. “You were supposed to have a life like Coral’s and we failed to account for Arianna’s overwhelming influence.”
Blood roared through my ears. I took the gauze to the sink and soaked it in water before wringing it out and returning to the table. These events were in the past. Aurora was suffering more than she deserved for all the hurt she’d caused Coral, me, and whoever else she and her masters had tormented in Logris.
I clenched my teeth and smoothed the damp gauze over the bowl, making sure the aloe vera didn’t evaporate. “Life wasn’t all that bad. Valentine—”
“We thought he would use and abuse you for your blood,” she rasped. “But he made your phoenix slumber. At that rate, it might have taken a century before you gained enough power to resurrect Lord Kresnik, and we grew impatient.”
“So when Valentine and I hatched the plan to move me to London, you erased my memory before the ball?” I asked.
“Kresnik’s shadow infiltrated your mind,” she replied.
I bowed my head. This wasn’t news. I’d already worked out that Kresnik had been responsible for both my memory loss and my curse. Until now, I didn’t know why he would go so far to make my life miserable. Well, now I knew.
While some farmers fed their poultry a diet of corn to make them nice and fat before slaughter, Kresnik and his allies had fed me a diet of misery. Tears stung the backs of my eyes. I wasn’t sure why because there had been no betrayal. Aurora, Kresnik, and Father Jude had been my enemies from birth.
“I have a plan to free you.” Aurora tried to push herself off the bed but flopped down with a groan. “If it works, you will leave here with your powers restored. But you mustn’t discuss it with anyone, not even—”
The door opened, making my heart jump into the back of my throat. I spun around to find Valentine standing in the doorway.
His violet eyes narrowed, and his features tightened with the promise of a harsh punishment. “I told you to stay in your room.”
Chapter Fourteen
My breath caught, and I stepped back, clutching my hands to my chest. Valentine had been in a generous mood last night—perhaps because the fellatio had put him in a better mood—but seeing me out of my room had wiped away all my goodwill, and I was back to being the blood cow who couldn’t obey orders.
Annoyance tightened my skin. Since when did my life come to being bossed around by a vampire who thought I was his chew toy? The wretched fiend fed off prisoners all day and didn’t need an ounce of my blood.
As he stalked toward me with reddening eyes and fangs that lengthened with each approaching step, the truth of my situation made my heart stutter. My fiancé had killed himself with my fire in his veins and had now transformed into a preternatural under the control of Kresnik.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Valentine had also been Kresnik’s target, considering the p
revious Vampire King had served him so well.
I bowed my head. This wasn’t my Valentine, and as soon as I got the chance to hear what Aurora had to say, I might be able to save him from this magical bondage.
Valentine’s warm fingers slid beneath my chin and tilted my head up so our gazes met. Candlelight reflected in his red eyes, making them dance with malice.
I licked my lips. “My father summoned me this morning to test my magic.”
“You should have returned to your room afterward.” His other arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me closer.
“I was hungry,” I said. “A girl needs to eat three times a day.”
His hardness pressed into my belly, and a breath caught in the back of my throat. The corner of his mouth curled into a smile, making his eyes twinkle. It was the kind of smirk that said he had something for me if I needed sustenance.
Maybe if I played along, I could get through this with my senses intact.
“Thank you for bringing Macavity.” I placed my palms on his chest and pressed a kiss on his jaw. “It was a pleasant surprise to wake up next to him.”
Valentine stared at my lips with a hunger in his eyes that said he wasn’t just going to take my blood today.
“Let me change Aurora’s dressings, and I’ll join you upstairs,” I said with a wink.
Valentine scooped me bridal-style into his arms, making me squeak. Without a word, he sped out of the dimly lit room, through the infirmary, and through the curving hallway.
I whacked him on the chest. “You were supposed to let me finish. Aurora just got—”
“Aurora Griffin has fallen out of favor with Our Lord,” he said as he passed through the wards that led to Kenwood House.
“For failing a mission?” I wrapped an arm around the back of his neck.
He paused halfway up the stairs and glowered into my eyes. “What do you know of Aurora’s task?”
“Only what you told me.” The words tumbled out of my mouth, and I stared into my lap. The last thing I needed was to have him rummage through my mind and discover that I knew about the failed plan to steal a phoenix from the realm of the gods. I also didn’t want Valentine finding out that a part of Hades had escaped his jar.
