Dread soaks my limbs. I can’t imagine having more self-control than Nox—not when I’m not exactly known to possess such as a strength. I’d rather not consider what the parasite will do with this bloodlust of mine when she gets a hold of my body during the next full moon.
“It’s possible your Turning destroyed it,” says Nox. “That it didn’t survive the dark magic poisoning your mind, your blood.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I ask with a huff, tracing circles in the dust on the altar.
The edges of his lips twitch into something resembling a smile. “If anyone can wade through the darkness and come out the other side brighter than ever, my money would be on you.”
“I was under the impression that as a slave you didn’t have any money,” I say, and I’m almost teasing. Almost.
“I have enough,” he says, and something in the way his pupils dilate tells me he’s not speaking of coin anymore.
But I can’t bear to listen to him speak like that, to hint about me, about the future I pretended to hope for with him. Because…because… “So we didn’t deliver it to the queen. Meaning we didn’t fulfill our end of the bargain.”
Nox swallows and tears his gaze from me. The sharp line of his jaw highlighted by the shadows framing his profile.
The little bit of the Blaise that was left, the fragment I was hanging onto, the Blaise that could pretend that she and Nox had a future, slips through my fingertips. Falls fast asleep.
“And if it wasn’t destroyed? If it’s still inside me?” The pang of the very question radiates through me. Implications that I might never be free. One stupid trip to a cosmetics boutique would leave me enslaved for the rest of my life. For eternity, if being a vampire involved immortality. I run my fingers through my hair, feeling for whether the change has made me like Nox, but my ears are still rounded.
I’m not exactly like him, then. Most likely not like the others, either.
I’m not like anyone.
CHAPTER 42
BLAISE
The next several days are a blur of seclusion and darkness and bloodlust.
My bloodlust isn’t like Nox’s—at least, that’s what he tells me during the brief occasions he visits me in Abra’s laboratory.
I think he’s avoiding me. I also think it should hurt, but I’m too hungry to think of much else.
When Nox does visit, he brings vials of lamb’s blood. It’s savory and rich, but there’s something about it that’s missing.
Nox says nothing quite tastes like human blood. That it’s better never to taste it at all.
In my more coherent moments, I know he’s right, but my coherent moments are shells on the seashore, and my bloodlust is numbered by grains of sand.
Still, Nox says I’m doing better than he did. I haven’t tried to break out of my confinement, and though I’m not exactly coherent, I don’t black out for hours on end.
I remember everything. Every swallow that scrapes like sandpaper against my throat. Every drop of animal blood that satiates the pain, a blissful reprieve for a moment before vanishing into the ether.
But I expect Nox just thinks I’m doing better than he did because I haven’t killed anyone. Yet.
I can scent them, though—the servants roaming the palace halls. Their pulses drum against my ear, fingertips tapping against a hollow table. They smell of wildflowers and cinnamon and mulled spices, and I find myself fantasizing about how their skin would feel against my lips.
My canines ache from lack of use.
But still I stay. I stay in the queen’s sterile laboratory, the eerie greenish vials glowing in the eerie greenish candlelight, their pristine surfaces mocking me with their purity.
I’m surprised she hasn’t come to visit me yet. Not that I expect the queen to have any interest in pointless chatter, but I could see her hands slipping, a stake finding its way into my heart as she was “checking up on me.”
Apparently, she’s granted me a reprieve—I’m free to leave when I wish—though I can’t say I trust her motives. Our deal was that she would free me if I helped hand over the parasite, and though the parasite has likely been extracted, Nox still doesn’t know what happened to it.
For all we know, it perished with me.
I’ve decided that if the queen comes to visit, I might just have to bite first and ask questions later.
Nox refuses to restrain me, though I tell him he should.
He has faith that I won’t hurt anyone.
I’m pondering the likelihood of this when footsteps sound in the room adjacent to the queen’s laboratory.
I know immediately they don’t belong to Nox, and although I haven’t seen the queen since I turned, I’m fairly certain they don’t belong to her either. They’re too hesitant, too jittering to belong to that disgustingly austere female.
The stranger’s pulse is flighty, skipping erratically, and some primal instinct in me pairs it with the musk of the human’s sweat and recognizes it as fear.
The scents of freshly baked rolls and fresh lamb’s blood hit me a moment later, and I realize it’s a servant bringing me dinner.
Or perhaps it’s breakfast. It’s not as if I have access to the sun to inform me either way.
“Miss,” the servant girl says, her voice jittering through the cracks in the barred door.
I say barred, because Nox technically closes an iron rod across the other side when he leaves me, but we both know the actual wood stands little chance should I wish it splintered.
I suppose Nox just can’t stand the thought of locking me up.
