I shake my head, fear welling inside my chest. Outside, a soldier shrieks. The noise is quickly silenced, coupled with the crunching of bones.
You know I am speaking the truth, it says.
The adamant box buzzes at my chest.
The darkness of the closet threatens to swallow me. And I’m back in the pantry with Derek, back to that sinking feeling of dread and not knowing how to say no.
“No,” I cry, harsh and bitter.
Salty tears run down my cheek, coating my lips and stinging my eyes.
“No,” I whisper.
You know it is the only way to save him.
“No.” I’m sobbing now, fear drowning me. “You’ll take me, and you’ll never give me back.”
I won’t. I will take your body and use it for whatever I desire. It will be mine, and you will vanish from existence. Except for maybe the times I choose to allow you to exist, the times I choose to let you experience what I’m doing with your body. But your friend will live, Blaise. Or do you value your life over his? I can’t say I’ll be surprised if you refuse. You always have been a selfish little whore.
“No,” I say again, but my voice is weak now, warbling. “No, please. Please.”
Who are you begging, child? Tell me it’s not the Fates. They turned their ears away from you long ago.
Sweat drips down my forehead, mingling with my tears. It’s so, so dark. The closet feels as if it’s closing in on me, the walls crushing my limbs. He’s in here with me, touching me, pulling at my trousers, whispering to me…
Your shame, child. I know you believe me incapable of such an emotion, but it makes me pity you. I know you fear me, but just think. It could be better this way. You would be gone, erased from existence. Far, far away, where that shame that tortures you would never reach you. Doesn’t that sound better?
Shame.
I hear Piper’s voice in my mind.
What is the antidote for shame, Blaise?
Pride, I’d said in the moment, knowing that to be the wrong answer as soon as it fled my mouth.
I didn’t know the answer then, and I don’t know now, and I suppose I never will.
Because outside, the wyvern roars, and I hear it when Evander hits the ground. I feel it in the rumbling of stone when the wyvern approaches him, rearing back for the kill.
I don’t know what the antidote for shame is when I burst from the safety of the shadows.
I don’t know what the antidote for shame is when I unfasten the latch of the adamant box at my belt.
I don’t know it until I cry out to Evander, and he turns his head to me. And in the moment before my friend is convinced he’s about to die, I witness not an enemy, not the disgust I anticipate, but the warmth of a friend.
Evander’s eyes welcome me, the same as the day Clarissa dropped me off at the castle years ago.
It’s at that moment I understand the answer. I understand the antidote to shame.
I mouth something to him, and for a moment, I think there’s no way he’ll see it, but he swallows and nods all the same.
The parasite lets out a wicked laugh.
And then, for the first time in a long, long while, I step into the light.
CHAPTER 106
THE PARASITE
The parasite curls herself around the dark crevices of Blaise’s mind, swimming through the current of this pitiful girl’s soul.
The parasite has had a difficult time admitting it to herself, but now that she’s regained Blaise’s body, she can finally accept she’s missed Blaise.
She’s missed that intoxicating desperation, that pungent shame that consumes Blaise’s inner being. As much as the parasite detested being bound by the curse of the full moon, she had savored the moments she’d been allowed control over Blaise’s body.
The girl is just so…easy.
So easy, the girl doesn’t even realize it about herself. It’s been a pattern in the girl’s life, starting with how she let her stepsister convince her that her menstruation was simply a prank, a curse purchased from Madame LeFleur’s shop. Then there had been Derek, who (the parasite judges from rifling through Blaise’s memories) hadn’t needed very many folds on his brain to coax the stupid child into the pantry with him. Then there was Madame LeFleur, and even that dreadful Azrael character. The parasite has been forced to gather information on him from eavesdropping on Blaise’s memories of conversations with the other infested girl; the one-eyed queen infested with the parasite’s most naïve of siblings.
Blaise has spent her whole life under the impression that she is obstinate, stubborn, a force to be reckoned with. The parasite chuckles at the very idea, when all a person has to do is tug on the shame that seeps from Blaise’s very being. It’s like a bit in the foolish girl’s mouth.
It’s the same shame Derek used to keep her from voicing her fears—shame over the pain she’d caused her dying father in spoon-feeding him food his body could not handle. The same shame Clarissa reinforced when she locked Blaise away for the better half of the year to conceal her pregnancy. The parasite assumes Azrael used a similar technique, planting doubt in Blaise’s mind about whether she could trust her friends with her secrets, her needs.
Oh, how the parasite is looking forward to taking ahold of that shame, to bending Blaise’s body to her will.
Perhaps she’ll use it to transform into a glorious female warrior. Use it to slay the wyvern and save the prince, then settle into her preferred form.
It won’t take her long to steal the prince’s heart. Before she’d been limited by the time constraint of the full moon, the only reason Ellie Payne had an advantage in stealing the prince’s attentions.
