“I cannot begin to count the infractions you committed today, Farin.”
Blaise’s body crumpling, sweat soaking her forehead, and white, white, white…
“You will look at me when I speak to you, child. I’m your mother and am deserving of at least that much respect.”
The words grate against my skin, and suddenly I’m a youth again, craving nothing more but to lash out, to hurt her like she’s hurt me.
But I’m no longer a child, and my freedom is not the only one at stake, so I do as she says.
Tonight she’s dressed in training gear, black leathers that hug her form and leave her looking deadly. She called for dinner with me early, so she must not have had time to change after her training session.
There’s a coldness in her gaze that runs deeper than I’m used to.
The queen isn’t disappointed; she’s livid, and in her eyes is a thirst for blood only someone like me could truly recognize.
Fear prickles the hair on the back of my neck, not for me, but for…
“I cannot count the rules you disregarded today. And now a poor girl suffers unnecessarily.”
“Because you’re clearly so concerned with Blaise’s wellbeing.”
It’s the wrong thing to say; I know it as soon as it slips from my lips. There are a thousand reasons not to say it—the way it reveals how I feel about Blaise, the way it riles the queen and could circle around to her reworking our deal.
I’m too exhausted, too drained to conduct myself safely in the queen’s presence right now.
“Perhaps you have a point, child. Perhaps the girl’s death, unfortunate as it may be, would serve a greater purpose. I imagine the parasite could not hold onto its host if she were dead.”
The poorly masked threat has me clenching my fists beneath the table. “We’ve no evidence the parasite wouldn’t die with her if that were to happen,” I remind her.
She stares me down, and for a moment, I think she’s unconvinced.
But then the queen swallows, gritting her teeth. “Why did you do it, Farin? Why did you disregard the rules? Why did you administer a potion for which you’d created no antidote? Why did you attempt to extract the parasite without the assistance of Gunter, without informing me first that you believed you’d found a solution?”
She asks these questions as if they haven’t assaulted my mind every second since the moment I woke from my stupor. As if I haven’t been retracing each moment leading up to handing Blaise that vial, wondering why the warning trumpets didn’t sound in the back of my head, why it didn’t occur to me the danger I was putting Blaise in.
“I don’t know,” I say because it’s the truth.
“That answer is not to my satisfaction,” the queen says.
It isn’t to mine either, but there’s no use in saying as much.
It’s not like me to throw myself into experiments with unknown variables without first taking the proper safety measures. Without starting small and working my way up.
I made that mistake once, and now I’m a slave to the thirst that parches my throat, to the boy inside me who pounds against the inside of my head, begging to be fed the scraps of others’ misery.
So, no. I don’t know why I fed Blaise, the first person to bring light to my sun-forsaken life, a potion I wasn’t sure was safe.
Perhaps I was just so eager to please her that all inhibitions fled my mind. Perhaps I’m still that boy in the snow, aching for approval, more than eager to perform for a bit of praise, a scrap of attention.
But no. With Blaise, I really had wished to free her.
“My dear child,” the queen says, reaching across the table for my hand, though there’s no warmth in her tone. When her cold fingers caress mine, I’m fairly sure I blanch. “You know it’s my responsibility as your mother to make sure you’re disciplined.”
Discipline. The word would mean nothing to me if it were just my own skin I was worried about. But it’s not, and if she reworks our deal, I’ll never forgive myself.
She beckons me to follow her, and I leave my dinner on the table untouched.
We reach a pair of oak doors, inscribed with patterns of stars speckling the night sky. They dance to the queen’s touch, opening the lock with a click.
I already know what waits inside.
It takes three days locked in a room with her for me to break.
I never hate myself more than the moments I dig my canines into her limp wrist, the moments I steal the blood from the person I love the most in this world.
The worst of it is that I don’t know how to stop, not without the queen behind me to break my neck before I go too far. I suppose proving that is the point of the queen’s exercise.
So when I’m moments away from taking too much blood, when I’m a breath away from stealing life from this world, I’m grateful for the queen’s gentle hands in my hair, the sharp snap of the bones in my neck, for the shadows that steal me away.
CHAPTER 23
BLAISE
I recover well before Nox returns.
There’s little I remember about the days following our failed attempt to rid me of the parasite. Most of it’s a blur of flashing white light and languishing moments of the deepest darkness.
The rest of it is absolutely nothing.
