Grave Signs (Hellgate Guardians Book 4)

by Ivy Asher

  Focusing, I reach out and scoop up two handfuls of blackness and picture taking those handfuls and pressing them against my eyes. I imagine my gaze deadening and going lifeless, and then moving the darkness down my face so that my features freeze up and are incapable of offering any kind of reaction.

  I’ve been working all day on this, and I’m so close to perfecting it. This is key to me being aware and able to move, while ignoring Morax’s commands, but making it seem like I’m under his control. This compliant, expressionless look is the mask I’m hoping will convince him that he’s won, and then when he lets his guard down...he gets a scythe blade to the jugular.

  I feel the blackness I’m envisioning spread over my face and soak in, so I pull myself out of my head and blink, bringing my attention to Medley in front of me. I reach out and tap her on the leg, happy that I still have control of my body, and then point to my face.

  “I hate this part,” Medley grumbles, but in the next second, I feel the sharp obsidian file Toreon let us borrow slash across my forearm.

  It hurts, and I can tell that, in her hurry to be done with it, Medley went a little deep. But I keep my focus on the darkness surrounding my face and wait to see if I can pass the test this time.

  Can I make my features glazed-over enough that I can use the darkness to mimic Morax’s mind control, not reacting to anything unless he tells me to?

  “Well, I’ll be a fox lovin’ hound,” Medley declares with awe and excitement in her tone as she watches my face with studious intent.

  Warmth spills over the side of my arm, but I hold my position so I can be sure that I have everything under control just like I’ll need if I’m facing off against Morax.

  “You did it, Sable!” she squeals, pulling me in and wrapping her arms around me through the bars.

  I shove the blackness away, and a smile spreads across my face just as pride fills my chest.

  I did it, and now we’re one step closer to saving ourselves and getting out of here.

  The hug jostles me, and pain shoots up my arm. I don’t want Medley to feel bad, but wow, I’m really bleeding. I look around instinctually for something I can press to the wound, but quickly realize there’s nothing in here that probably won’t give me gangrene. My eyes catch on Toreon, who’s once again watching us from the shadows, and a lightbulb goes off in my mind.

  I push away from Medley and scoot over to the other side of my bars. “Toreon, come here,” I request, my tone even as I cup my other hand under the wound and try to catch as much dripping blood as I can. No point in letting it go to waste when he can use it to feel better.

  He immediately moves closer, his eyes concerned, even though I’m doing my best to play it cool. He takes one look at the cut on my arm, and his eyes narrow.

  “Did I do too much?” Medley asks from behind me, and I instantly feel bad for the worry in her tone.

  “No, it’s totally fine. I just figured, why waste a few drops of blood when they can serve a purpose?” I offer her cheerily, turning back to Toreon and daring him with my eyes to say something different.

  With my back to Medley, she can’t see the blood pooling out of the wound she gave me, and I’m going to be sure to keep it that way. Toreon gives a little huff but closes the distance between us without another word. He sets my forearm on his shoulder so the blood can pour down one side of his chest until the cut starts to heal.

  It’s a great position for him to absorb my hemoglobin, but it brings our faces very close together.

  “You know, this isn’t how this should work,” he tells me quietly, his mouth entirely too close to mine.

  “What, the bleeding thing?” I ask, trying not to think about anything other than the plan and what else I need to work on, and not the fact that if I leaned in less than six inches, I would know what his lips would feel like against mine.

  “The males of my kind are supposed to strengthen the females this way,” he tells me, but before I can say anything to that, he closes his eyes and inhales deeply.

  It’s like watching a painkiller kick in for someone who’s in serious pain. His jaw slackens slightly, and the furrow in his brow smooths out. Every muscle in his body relaxes as his skin starts to soak up every drop of my blood.

  “It’s okay,” I reassure him. “No one has to know I’m the tough one in the relationship,” I tease, and he chuckles, still keeping his eyes closed as he absorbs relief.

  I take the chance to study his face this close up. His lashes are annoyingly long, and his skin looks practically airbrushed, underneath a few streaks of dirt. His jaw is strong, and his features incredibly masculine. His cheekbones are more prominent than they would be if he was being fed regularly, but I can already see the effects of my blood in the healthy flush of his sage-green skin.

  “You’re staring,” he observes, calling me out, even though he hasn’t cracked a lid since his skin went all sponge like.

  “You’re pretty much in my face, so what choice do I have?” I counter. “Besides, you’re nice to look at,” I confess, and his eyes snap open.

  Golden orbs soak me in, and I’m not sure what to do. Does that kind of comment irritate him? Make him anxious? Excite him?

  It’s hard to say one way or the other. We stare at each other for a beat, neither of us looking away to search for the right mask to hide behind. We just sit in the moment, absorbing the vulnerability and intimacy that strangely threads through us as my blood soaks into his skin and revitalizes whatever he is.

  “I’m sorry you’re in here, Sable,” he finally tells me, his voice quiet, like he doesn’t want to let Medley in on this moment.

  I trace the curve of his lashes with my eyes and think about his words. “I’m not,” I admit. “Don’t get me wrong, I want to eviscerate Morax for what he’s done to us, and I’ll never look at tweezers or steak knives the same again, but aside from that, I’ve gained so much from being in here, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.”

  Toreon studies me like he’s searching my face for any hints that I somehow mean something different from what I’m saying, but he won’t find it. I wish I wasn’t locked in the dungeon and at the mercy of some evil creature’s plans, but I discovered that I’m not crazy, that I have family, and that I have purpose. And those are lifelines that I will never let go of for anything.

  I have hope that we’ll get out of here, and I may not know what will happen with any of these so-called mates when I do, but it’s all worth fighting for. Besides, I know a thing or two about surviving pain.

  “You can be the badass for now, but just wait until I get out of here and I’m healed up. I’ll give you a run for your money then,” Toreon teases, the tone and words themselves taking me by surprise.

  I smile, and I don’t miss that his golden gaze traces the curve of my lips as they tilt up with amusement. “You finally admitting to yourself that we’re going to get out of here?” I ask.

  His eyes flick back up to mine. “I’m finally hoping I will.”

  His admission and the look in his eyes as it spills out between us is anything but teasing. There’s no flirtatious tone or joking lilt. It’s heavy with seriousness, and oddly enough, I’m not intimidated at all by it.

  “Good,” I answer, my voice lower than before. Clearing my throat, I pull away my now healing cut from his shoulder. I reach out with my other hand, the one I cupped to catch the blood pouring from my wound, and press my catch against his chest, right over where his heart should be.

  My eyes stay on his, the moment unquestionably intimate. Blood spills out, pressing between my fingers and his warm skin, and I wait for him to absorb it all. I feel a steady beat against my palm and find myself eager to see him healthy and whole again.

  We don’t say another word as the blood disappears from our skin as it’s absorbed by his body. My fingers tap lightly against his chest, and it takes more willpower than I would’ve expected to drop my hand. As soon as I do, the private moment between us snaps, and I push away from
him to get back to work with Medley. I have work to do. I’m ready to see what life looks like outside of these bars. For all of us.

  15

  “You’re almost there,” I encourage, trying not to sound too excited and mess with Medley’s concentration. “That’s it, keep pushing small amounts of the darkness around that smudge in your head that Morax’s power left. Keep pushing until the blackness blots it out.”

  Sweat drips down Medley’s brow, but her hand moves even closer to her scythe. She’s inches away, and she’s been fighting for every centimeter, but she’s so close now. Just another handful of seconds, and she’ll have broken through Morax’s hold.

  I watch her progress like someone watching the Kentucky Derby and the horse they put all their money on as it races neck and neck with another. I’m silently urging her to close the distance and wrap her hand around the weapon, but the fact that she’s even gotten this close is incredible. It renews my hope that we’ll both be able to block Morax’s power and figure out a way to take him out.

  All at once, Medley lets out a breath, and the next thing I know, she’s snapping her fingers around the wood and pulling her scythe toward her. My heart leaps.

  “You did it!” I squeal with excitement and then immediately drop my volume, listening for signs that anyone is coming to check on my overzealous declaration.

  Thankfully, I don’t hear footsteps making their way to us, so I turn my focus back to Medley and the beaming smile on her face.

  “I did it,” she confirms, pride spilling out of her eyes and mixing with the relief I see in there too. “I can feel that it’ll get easier to do the more I do it, too. It’s like a muscle that needs to be exercised, but I just tackled the hardest part.”

  I push my arms through the bars that separate us and pull Medley in for a hug. Hope and determination wash through me, and I hear Toreon congratulate Medley from the other side of me.

  “We’re gonna get out,” she tells him in answer to his praise, and he chuckles and sits back, the chains around him clinking as he repositions himself so he can lean on the wall.

  He’s gone back to not saying too much, but he doesn’t argue or go too Debbie Downer on us anymore, and I feel his eyes on me constantly. Something between us has changed and grown, and my insides flutter every time I see him looking in my direction. Which is a lot, because he’s taken a keen interest in what Medley and I have been working on for almost a week.

  Tension is high in this little dungeon we occupy. Morax has never been gone for this long before, and we all know he can come bursting back through the doors any minute. Medley and I have been putting extreme pressure on ourselves to master what we can before that happens. I’ve been so anxious and nervous about figuring things out, but Medley breaking through Morax’s command to not touch her scythe is exactly the boon we needed.

  “Okay, so even if you can’t resist his initial command, now you know you can break it after the fact,” I tell Medley as we pull away from each other, and she sets her scythe back down in the exact spot it was in.

  “Right,” she agrees. “I can see what you were sayin’ about shuttin’ off certain parts of yourself too, and I think I’ll have that figured out quicker than green grass through a goose,” she says, and I laugh at the Medley-ism.

  “We can do this. We might have to bide our time a little to make Morax think he has a complete hold over us, but then we’ll make him pay,” I whisper to her, still worried that somehow Morax can hear us scheming, that somehow he’ll know what we’ve been up to this whole time that he’s been gone.

  Part of me hopes that someone already got to him. That this abnormally long absence is because he’s been caught and dealt with, but I doubt things would be that easy. I don’t have that kind of luck.

  “We can’t let him know, no matter what. If he crosses the line with one of us, that person will deal with it, but we want him to think it’s a fluke. We need to make him as comfortable and confident in his hold as we can. Just like you said, we need him to let his guard down.” She agrees and I nod, my stomach churning at the thought of what crossing the line with one of us could entail.

  “We need a code or something for I got this or I need your help.”

  Medley’s gray eyes drop in thought as we both think through what kind of signal we could give each other.

  “Maybe twitch our wings twice if we got this?”

  I think about that for a moment. “But what if we’re on our wings and can’t move them?”

  “Good point,” she concedes.

  “We could sneak the okay sign when Morax isn’t looking.” I hold my hand up, my index finger and thumb forming a circle, with my middle, ring, and pinky fingers straight.

  “That could work, even if we’re strapped down, we can see each other’s hands.”

  “If you’re in trouble, just call for your scythe,” Toreon offers, once again draped in the shadows he seems to wear so well. “Don’t give him time to shut down any kind of help signal you could come up with. Just call your scythe and do your worst,” he adds, and both Medley and I look at him in thought for a moment before nodding solemnly at the advice.

  I hate that he has a point; by the time we send a secret signal for help, we could be in deep trouble, and if the other person is in their cage, they wouldn’t be able to get out anyway.

  I make a mental note to test my darkness against the bars of these cages next. It works against Morax’s power, so maybe I can figure out a way to externalize it and break whatever wards he has on the bars trapping us in here.

  “Well, if we’re just gonna call our scythes when we’re in trouble, then maybe we shouldn’t have an okay signal. We can just say if you see a scythe poppin’ up in the other’s hand, then…”

  I look around at our cages again and know exactly why she trailed off. If one sister is in trouble, what is the other sister going to do? We’ve been feeling all excited and ready for Morax because we’ve figured out a way to override his orders, but really, it’s just one step of many in order for us to get out of here. There’s so much more that we need to figure out.

  I take a deep breath and shake off the heaviness of everything we still need to do in order to escape this place.

  “We’ll keep focusing on one thing at a time,” I tell Medley and myself. “You keep working with your darkness and manipulating it and your body, and I’ll start working on my cage, see if there’s a way to use what we can do to help us open it somehow.”

  “He might feel you messing with your bars,” Toreon offers. “If you break his wards somehow, he very well might sens—”

  The doors to our dungeon slam open, and all three of us jump. I know just from the sound that shocks through me that it’s Morax. He’s the only one who storms in here like that.

  When he does stride through the shadows, I see he has what looks like a small rectangular box in his hand, like he brought us some assorted chocolates or something, but what really worries me is the pleased glint in his eyes.

  He drops the box on the table and turns to survey first Medley and then me. The black slit in his white eyes settles for a beat on my hair and then my wings before the corners of his lips tilt up slightly. Alarms blare inside of me at the appearance of his smirk, but I try to quiet everything inside of me and reassure myself that no matter what, I’ll be okay.

  I will survive whatever he has planned for us next. We will get out of here. He will pay for what he’s done.

  “I see that Medley still has her eyes.” Morax leans forward slightly and scans her wings with his quick gaze. “And the damage to her feathers couldn’t have been too severe, as I don’t see any patches. It’s a wonder what you can do when you’re properly motivated, Sable.”

  I try not to narrow my eyes at his words and his condescending tone, but I’m not completely successful, and it seems to excite Morax even more as a glare breaks out over my face in spite of my best efforts to stop it.

  “From the look of you though,” he starts, hi
s creepy eyes once again raking over me from top to bottom, “things will be much smoother moving forward. No more of this willful nonsense your wards afforded you. You can’t hide behind them anymore now that they’re gone.”

  This time, when my eyebrows want to jump up in surprise at his words, I stop it from happening and instead drop them down like I’m confused. The look is what he wants, I can tell by the slight flaring of his nostrils and the way his eyes flash with eagerness.

  It’s clear he wants to flex his almighty power, the thing he’s depended on his whole life to violate the laws of balance and free will and ruin countless lives. He thinks my wards are what gave me the ability to deny him, and as much as I would love to show him that he’s wrong, and that I’m stronger and cannot be bowed by his commands, now is my chance to start our plan to lull him into a false sense of security.

  Talking earlier about what we need to do made it all feel so easy, but staring at the smirking Ophidian and seeing the malevolence in his eyes slams reality into my gut like a kick from a steel toe boot. This is going to be anything but easy.

  “Sable, face forward and don’t move,” Morax commands, his voice oozing putrid power.

  Here we go.

  I force my body to go rigid and saturate my face and eyes with the darkness inside of me so that my features go empty, just like I’ve been practicing for days.

  Morax watches for a moment, not moving or saying anything else, but I can feel the elation suddenly wafting off him as he studies me. He pushes off from the table and slowly, confidently walks over to my cage. He opens it with a touch, revealing a door that swings open silently, like even the metal refuses to creak and bring Morax’s attention to it.