I’m to be punished for the lives I took in the village.
“You must learn the consequences of your actions, Farin. It’s my responsibility as your mother,” says the queen as she leads me to the topmost tower.
My head is still pounding from my blood-soaked revelry, so it’s easier than it should be to spout off, “And what of your responsibility as queen? Your responsibility to your people? Shouldn’t you avenge their deaths? Administer justice?”
“Execution is quite a waste as a punishment, don’t you agree?” she says. “It never allows for the violator to change their ways.”
She means she doesn’t want to execute me, because somewhere, deep down, the worm that’s left of her son’s soul writhes inside of me.
We reach a set of doors. Intricate carvings of constellations decorate the facade, and when the queen places her palm against the wood, the stars begin to quake.
Then a lock clicks and the doors swing open, and when I behold what lies inside, I’m confused.
There’s a beautiful female laid out across a raised dais, her pale skin sparkling like a diamond in the playful specks that pass through the painted windows on the right side of the room.
“Go, have a look,” the queen says, jerking her head in the female’s direction.
I cross the glittering floor, and with each step, dread fills my chest.
By the time I’m standing above her, my lungs have been cleaved from my ribs.
I didn’t recognize the female at first, and that’s the worst part.
I didn’t recognize my own sister.
For years, I’ve known the queen was keeping her. The day Abra carried Zora’s limp body into the infirmary, she’d let me weep for hours before she bothered explaining that Zora wasn’t dead.
“She’s only sleeping,” she’d said, as if that was all the explanation warranted for why Zora didn’t as much as twitch at the sound of my screams. “And she will do so until I deem that you’ve learned your place. Until you’ve earned your keep.”
That was the last time I’d seen Zora, before the queen dumped her into the arms of a nearby guard and sent them away.
I’d assumed she was being kept far away, in a recluse location, in a dark tower on the outskirts of Mystral.
I’d never imagined she was here.
Examining her smooth face is jarring, because though I’ve thought of Zora every day since I was taken, it’s always been the Zora I knew. The child who had a propensity for shoving dirty snow in my face and cackling loudly enough that one could often expect a murder of nearby crows to be spooked and flurry away in a cacophony of black feathers.
But that Zora is gone, Time itself having replaced her with this mature female.
It’s then that I wonder if, when she awakens, her mind will have caught up with her frame.
If her mind will be stunted, frozen at the age of twelve.
I slam my eyes close, because I can barely stand to look upon her. This female who is Zora, but who isn’t Zora at all. Somewhere in the distance, the queen explains, in a voice feigning an attempt to be soothing, that Zora is a dreamer. That her mind has been set free, Fates-graced to live hundreds of lives more exciting and marvelous than her own. I know I should pay attention. Later I’ll be kicking myself for not filing away every detail the queen admits about my sister’s condition, but I can’t bring myself to focus.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper to the darkness as I stroke my sister’s clammy hand, but I detect no awareness in her—no true reaction. I can sense her heart beating steadily against my ears, but its rate is constant, bearing no signs that she hears me.
Still, I grasp onto the steady drumming of her pulse, the only evidence that my sister still lives. There’s a strange comfort in being able to sense the blood that flows constant through her veins, causing them to swell and ebb..
Her blood smells of fresh snow and our mother’s cider, and it makes my chest ache and my eyes burn.
A sharp pain strikes my gums as my canines puncture through.
It’s not until Zora’s wrist is at my mouth, not until my fangs sink through her flesh and her blood soaks my mouth that I realize what’s happening.
Panic seizes me, but it does no good. Zora’s blood is warm and sweet, but it might as well be saturated with bile for how it fills me with disgust.
Still, I drink.
My skull reverberates with my inner screams as I command—no, beg—myself to stop. But the taste of her blood has awoken a monster within me, and the harder I push against it, the deeper my fangs curve into her skin.
It’s then that I realize I will be the one to murder my sister, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
Her only reaction is that her pulse slows as I drain her of blood.
This is my punishment for laying waste to those villagers. This is how the queen plans to avenge their deaths.
I beg the shadow within me to stop, and the only response I get is a faint cackling that reverberates against my skull.
With the next sip, I forget why I’m so upset.
After all, this is the sweetest blood I’ve tasted yet.
Sharp pain lances through my neck, and there is nothing but darkness.
When I wake on the sparkling floor, the queen is there. Once my grogginess fades, dread swallows me, but when I search for Zora’s pulse, I find it beating steadily once more.
My gaze finds my sister. She’s laid out upon the dais, looking serene as ever.
She’s paler than she was before.
It’s then the queen explains she must be the one to teach me the consequences of my actions.
For years, any time I displease her, the queen brings me to Zora’s dais. I think she does it in the hopes of speaking with Farin, but even in the heat of bloodlust when he’s most in control, he refuses to acknowledge her.
For years, the queen tells me this is for my own good. That eventually I will learn self-control, learn to stop.
I never do.
CHAPTER 38
BLAISE
Vials clank together and moondust clouds the air of the chamber as Nox prepares the spell that will rip the parasite from my brain and shred my consciousness to pieces.
He’s stifling a hum as he works, like he’s trying to keep from getting his hopes up, but so far has been unable to contain them.
He has a bag packed for me, stuffed under the slats of his rickety bed.
