I didn’t think the asshat-aniel noticed, he didn’t so much as look at the vilas in the palace.
But I noticed.
And I was so startled that my wide eyes fixed on them and I froze on the spot.
Flushed cheeks took them with shame and they kept their stares down at the marble floor.
I couldn’t explain it. But over my lonely and quiet lunch, I couldn’t get it out of my head.
A nod of the head, a brisk bow of respect, I could understand. Sometimes Nalla bowed or curtseyed for me. It changed to bows of late. But even she had made a slip up earlier that day. She’d almost called me Almighty. A word reserved for Gods.
The more I thought on it, the more suspicious I found it.
My lessons seemed to have stopped too. I hadn’t been taken to the worship room since I was released from the cell.
Did that have something to do with these bows? I was no God, but rumours of my power must have travelled through the whispering walls of the palace.
Those thoughts haunted me through the rest of the day, beyond the darkening dusk of the sky. Even as I sat, bunched up on the armchair, waiting for Damianos to come, I couldn’t shake the doubts clinging to my mind.
I feared—dread with all my soul—what those rumours said about me. All it could take was one whiff of “She’s a God” for my head to be mounted on the wall like those in the saloon nooks.
Decapitation wasn’t a good look for anyone. I doubted I could pull it off.
I lolled my head back on the high spine of the armchair and, with a sigh, turned my bleak gaze on the hearth.
The chill was creeping out from the unlit fireplace. I kept the hearth flame-free for Damianos’ visit, but the more minutes that ticked by, the more I convinced myself he wasn’t coming.
What if the mysterious Syfon wasn’t gone? What if he came back?
Damianos might not need me anymore.
I needed him.
Without him, my entire escape plan would be daggered to death.
Eyes on the fireplace, I hugged my folded legs to my chest and rested my chin on my knees.
If Damianos did come, I had to be prepared.
What if he offered to take me away from the palace tonight? I would be ready—I’d made sure of it after Nalla had finally left my bedchamber not long after supper.
I’d spent an hour trying to somehow turn a beige dress-skirt into a sack of sorts. It didn’t go too well. I ended up using a pillowcase from my bed, and stuffed it full of stockings, light fabric dresses, and some wrapped fruits from my meal spreads.
I sprinkled some dried rose petals into the sack. Phantom’s ribbon was in the sack, too. Don’t know why I kept it, but I did. It was bound around the many hand-bracelets I had, each one swamped with the Prince’s poison. Only the two that I wore now were empty.
Midnight came then ticked by slowly, each second on the new mantle-clock mocking me. Its ticks were so loud that I wondered how Nalla hadn’t noticed the out-of-place clock yet.
I ran my fingers through my hair for the hundredth time. Each strand felt like silk now, I’d toyed with them so much, as if I could comb out knots and tangles in my gut.
It passed one in the new morning when I was just about to give up. Of course that was when he came to me.
It started with smoke, the fog lifting from a wild fire, but it billowed out from the hearth.
I stiffened on the armchair, my lashes lowered into a dangerous look.
Chin still pressed into my hard knees, I watched the smoke lift up from the plush rug and take a shadowy shape of the night. Each wisp of black moved silently.
The knot in my stomach loosened, then travelled up to my heart instead. I swallowed back the ache and tried, hard, to bury it.
Damianos materialised from the vapour, stray wisps licking at his ashen boots. He smirked with those pink lips that constricted my insides.
His smirk stayed glued in place as he took in my fierce, unfriendly stare.
“Has prison hardened you?” he asked as he draped himself over the armchair opposite me. “Here I thought you would crumble in the dungeons. My mistake.”
“You’re not funny,” I bit back at him. We were careful to keep our voices low—Adrik was outside, still. “But you are late.”
Damianos picked at a loose thread on the chair’s arm. “Did we agree upon a specific time? I was simply told ‘night’ would do.”
“Yeah, well it’s past midnight, so now it’s just late night.” I muttered a curse under my breath, then tugged a blanket from the side-table over my legs. “The longer I have to wait for you to show your scheming face, the longer I go without warmth in here. I had half a mind to light the fireplace and burn that pretty skin of yours.”
His blue eyes glittered. “You think I’m pretty?
“Not if I burn you.”
“Well,” he leaned his cheek on his fist and studied me. The gleam in his eyes didn’t simmer away. “I almost convinced myself you might be pleased to see me.”
“No one’s pleased to see Phantom,” I said and held his stare.
He blinked, then in a flash, the flicker of surprise was gone. “Damianos,” he corrected. “Do you forget all men’s names or just the ones whose lips you crave?”
“I don’t want to kiss you,” I scowled. “I want to know why you didn’t tell me who you are, why I’ve seen crows since I was little, and why you’ve been coming to me.”
“Ah, see, those last two questions have only one answer,” he said and shifted on the seat.
“Fine. Tell me.”
“That would take the fun out of it.”
He smirked, but I saw those tightly pressed lips as what they were—a cage, trapping truths inside.
He wasn’t going to give up an answer yet.
As if reading my mind, Damianos said, “Some truths are best sugar-coated, and most secrets are best left for the right time.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “In other words, you don’t want to tell me anything, but you want my trust.”
“I don’t want to tell you anything yet.” His smile turned soft as he leaned forward in the chair, his hands clasped between his spread knees. “If I had told you who I really am when you first stumbled upon me in that corridor, would you have welcomed me a second time?”
I considered him.
In that dark corridor, I’d felt drawn to him. Even now my heart yearned for him, not out of love, but because we feel connected somehow.
But no, it was unlikely that I would have been so eager to see him time and time again if I’d know then who he was. A banished God, another threat to my life, one I wouldn’t have afforded when I first came to the stardust palace.
“Fine,” I said. “How did you know I would be in the dungeons? Your letter was there before I was.”
“I have friends,” he said with a devious look. “Friends who know your move before you do, lucky for me.”
I made a face, like a petulant child. “Why send me a letter at all?”
Damianos didn’t answer right away.
He studied me for a moment with those stunning ocean eyes that pierced through the night darkness in the bedchamber. He pulled back until he reclined in the armchair, a regal calmness enveloping him.
“There is much poison coursing through this palace and not all of it lies within your beloved prince. Words can be the greatest poison of all, and there’s an antidote.”
“Which is what?”
“Choosing the right words to believe.”
“Why should I choose yours words, then?”
“Because we are alike, Valissa.” A serious shift hardened his tanned face, and for whatever reason, my stomach flipped. “You called me by the name I was not born with,” he said. “A name I did not achieve by being impossible to capture. It was a name granted to me as a ghost of a God.”
“Because you’re part vilas. I know. The Prince told me.”
Really, it was the scrolls that told me. But I doubted letting Damia
nos in on my scheming ways was the right move just now.
“He told you with a dose of poison, I’m sure.”
“He might say the same about you,” I challenged. As he arched his perfect eyebrow, I went on, “I know what I am now, what I mean to you. I’m a thief of power.”
Damianos slowly rose from the armchair and advanced on me, his steps lazy.
“And what does it mean to the Prince?” he asked, reached out his fingers for my chin.
He brushed his soft fingertips along my jawline before he tilted my head back, forcing my face to align with his.
“A Prince who would see you dead before he would see you with me,” he added darkly.
I didn’t need the warning. The Prince had pretty much admitted to those thoughts of his.
I leaned my cheek against his palm. His skin was warm, and I craved to melt against him.
Home, sweet home.
“My soul yearns for yours too.” His whispered confession stabbed my heart with the most blissful pain.
I looked up at him. “What is this magic?”
Damianos lowered to one knee in front of me.
At eye-level, he let his hand journey to my hair and toy with a strand. My lashes fluttered at the sensation.
“A secret for a later time?” I probed at his silence.
Damianos smiled and, forcing my heart to restrict, he leaned closer, so close that his breath warmed my lips with the taste of cocoa and fresh coffee.
“Yes,” he breathed over my mouth. “But soon.”
My eyes fluttered shut. “How soon?”
Against my mouth, he murmured the answer. “In two nights.”
“You’ll get me out of here?” my voice was strangled with bottled hope.
“I will.” He pulled back, his hand cupping the nape of my neck, and looked me dead in the eye. “I will free you of this prison, and take you far away.”
“Promise?”
“With my life.”
I lunged at him, my mouth hot on his.
Stunned, Damianos fell back onto the rug. I was latched on tight, straddling him.
Side by side, we lay on the rug.
His fingers lazily played with pieces of my hair as he studied the side of my face.
I must have looked either content or feverish, because he smiled softly at whatever he saw, then he was moving over me, a dark blanket of comfort during a cold night.
Body over mine, he wandered his lips down my jaw to the ticklish bit of skin behind my ear.
I shuddered beneath him, skin still sizzling with need. We didn’t go past heavy petting or kissing. I couldn’t risk the Prince sensing another on me.
Oh, but I wanted so bad for this night to be more.
Damianos’ breath was hot on my skin. “Someone will meet you in the baths two nights from now.” He planted a soft kiss on my neck before he drew back to look down at me. “You will have your freedom.”
I reached out for his face, then traced the shape of his cheekbone. “Will I?”
He frowned down at me, a question in his brilliant blue eyes.
“An aviary is still a cage, even it’s large.”
Something my mother used to tell me. She always said it about marriage, but still, I felt it fit the moment.
Damianos pushed up from me and stood in one fluid move.
Looming over me, he fastened the buttons on his shirt and said, “I can see your doubts, Valissa. But I hope you make the right decision. Not for anyone else but you, as you are the one who will have to live with it.”
His implications didn’t go unnoticed.
Don’t make this decision for Ava. Make it for me.
Isn’t that what I’m doing?
Things hadn’t been about Ava in a while.
“Run away with you,” I echoed the thought aloud, as though I could make sense of the insane.
I was lumping all my trust from one God to another, all in an effort to be free. But free from what? Potential death? That seemed to face me every day, no matter which path I took.
I wasn’t sure what I was running from anymore.
“I don’t even know if I like you,” I confessed, looking up at him.
His grin was as wicked as a Malis. “Like has nothing to do with us belonging together.”
With those words left to linger in the air, a gust of black fog swept through the room and, he was gone.
I really hated how he did that.
After a few moments, I peeled myself off the floor and lumbered over to the bed. I flopped down on the tangled sheets, exhausted.
Dreams didn’t steal me away from my mind.
I could think only of the two Gods who plagued me.
At the festival, Prince Poison told me, my mind was fractured.
But I felt whole when I was with Phantom. I felt complete, myself, I felt accepted.
And wasn’t that what everyone wanted?
Maybe Phantom was the key to my cracked mind.
I’d been looking at it all wrong. When I became whole again, it might not be the me I expected.
Maybe with Damianos, I could find my true wretched self and, with it, the depths of my power.
11
Now that my lessons didn’t seem to be happening anymore and Jasper didn’t darken my doorway, I only had the challenge of Nalla’s constant presence to face.
Tomorrow night, I would be escaping.
And I still hadn’t packed everything. But that had a lot to do with the fact that I just simply didn’t know what to pack for an escape.
Bracelets? Yes. Dresses, stockings, undergarments—all of that. Some pieces of fruit, bread and dried-out meats? Not enough.
Were blankets needed? Would it be cold wherever Phantom was taking me?
I couldn’t fit much more in the pillowcase-sack I had stuffed under my canopy bed, and Nalla had already noticed the missing pillowcase.
I doubt she bought my whole story of how I left it by the pond, and I couldn’t come up with a good enough reason for me to have taken to the ponds to begin with.
It made for an uncomfortable silence that morning after breakfast.
After she left, I sat in a brew of anxiety, half-expecting the Prince to burst in and order my head to be mounted on the saloon wall.
But that never happened.
The only disappointment that day was that Adrik was still on duty as my guard. I let the dismay show on my crumpled face when I stepped into the corridor.
“You again,” I muttered.
Adrik shot me with an up-and-down look that wasn’t sparse with disdain.
“Come along, then,” I sighed and led the way down the corridor.
He never asked where I was headed, and I didn’t tell him. Though he likely figured it out when I went through the main atrium for the vilas halls.
When we reached Ava’s door, I shot him a look over my shoulder. “Stay here.”
With that, I pushed through the door then kicked it shut on any answer he might have had.
My gaze locked onto the washtub through the translucent screen. A feminine shadow stretched up it, a shadow with all too big of a bust and the kind of curves that my mother called “birthing hips”. A body so different to my slender, small-breasted one.
I knew that silhouette anywhere. It was the source of plenty of envy in my teen years.
“Ava,” I called out so that she knew it was me who’d just barged into her room. I flopped down on the foot of her bed. “Are you almost done?”
“She’s just getting started,” a voice came from the head of the bed.
I jerked up with a yelp and turned my wild stare on the pillow. Only, the pillow was obstructed by a smarmy face and sleek dark hair that shined like tar.
“Jasper?” I shrilled, outrage twisting my face. “What in the mud are you doing in her bed!”
Ava popped her head around the side of the screen, clutching a towel to her body. She wore cheeks redder than blood.
I hadn’t even heard the splash of wa
ter as she rushed out of the tub.
“Good to see you too, jailbird,” Jasper said before he stretched out his very naked body. The sheet glided down his torso.
I tore my gaze away before it reached the peak of the V-shape down there.
Glaring at Ava, I gritted out, “Mind your manners, Jasper. Get out.”
“Only because I’m a gentleman, I will abide.”
Out the corner of my eye, I could faintly see his sun-kissed body slip out of the bed. He started putting on his clothes, much to my relief. Seeing Jasper butt-naked wasn’t terribly unlike that time I walked in on Moritz getting out the tub when I thought he was still out at sea.
Horribly embarrassing. And I wasn’t one for too-easy pink cheeks.
Ava mouthed a silent ‘sorry’ my way, but my frown only deepened. I couldn't explain why, but I was beside myself. Angry.
Jealous, even.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen Ava with men before, even sometimes in her bed at the crack of dawn. But it was past dawn and treading into the hours of pure daylight. And the men in her bed had been just that—men. Not aniels.
But after what I’d been doing last night with Phantom, a banished God, I knew I didn’t have much of a ground to stand on here.
Still, when you’re angry, you’re angry. Common sense doesn’t have a whole lot to do with it.
Buttoned up, Jasper threw a wink at Ava, then a scowl down at me. I flipped him off before he left without another word.
I turned my gaze on Ava, my eyes burning like green flames.
“Don’t start,” she warned me as she fastened a robe around her dewy body then joined me on the foot the bed. “We both have a lot to say about each other’s choices, so let’s not waste our breaths.”
If I wasn’t about to try and convince her to run away with me, I would’ve booted her off the bed for being a fool. But instead, I sucked my teeth to trap our unspoken insults.
“This isn’t a friendly visit,” I warned her.
Her interest piqued with an arched eyebrow. “Go on.”
I took in a breath deep enough to fill my chest and dizzy my head. “If I leave, will you come with me?”
Syfoner: (A Dark Bully Romance) (Gods and Monsters Book 4) Page 6
