No. Everything burns.
I groan as the intensity of the pain settles in. It’s as if the blood in my veins has turned to sand, to gravel.
“It hurts,” I gasp, and the words fall flat, because there’s nothing, nothing at all to describe the pain.
My gasp warps into a scream as my heart beats faster, pumping my thick, grainy blood through my paper-thin veins, and I know they’re cracking, that the shards of glass in my veins will puncture them.
“I know, I know,” Nox says, and just as I feel the darkness beginning to take hold again, he presses something firm against my lips.
Cold liquid spills from the brim into my mouth, and at first I choke on it, unable to handle how quickly it runs toward the back of my tongue. Once I’ve coughed a few times, instinct takes over and my throat begins to pump. The liquid is bitter and coppery but I can’t seem to stop, can’t seem to get enough.
When Nox pulls at the flask to take it away, I jolt up, my fingers clinging onto it.
“It’s empty, Blaise.”
“No, there’s more in there. There are three more drops. I can smell them,” I say, my mouth watering at the disgusting stale scent.
Nox uncurls my fingers from around the flask, and I hardly have the strength to fight him, but I shoot him a nasty snarl.
Nox sighs, his pale eyes glowing, though the shadows have returned underneath his eyes.
Something about those shadows waves away the fog that’s swarming my mind. It’s the shadows that bring me back, and though the intense urge to rip the flask from Nox’s hand beats against my resolve, I dig my fingers into my thighs instead. The pressure tethers me, and now that my blood no longer feels as though it’s made of crushed glass, I feel more capable of assembling my thoughts.
“What happened?” I ask, a thousand questions coiled up into those two words. What happened to Cinderella? Did you extract the parasite?
What am I?
The dread coiled in my belly tells me I already know the answer to that one, but I don’t know how. Why.
Nox runs his hands through his hair, and for the first time I realize the counter behind him is neatly organized, not at all the chaotic mess of Nox and Gunter’s workspace. The vials are clean, neatly labeled in perfect script and organized by function.
The lantern light in this room is cooler. The candles on the walls give off a faint greenish glow that reminds me of the color of sickness. Of mold and vomit.
The dais I sit upon is not made of stone, but of marble.
I tense, and the glare I shoot at Nox demands an explanation.
“When you didn’t wake, I recruited the queen,” he explains, like that’s all that needs to be said about the matter.
“So it didn’t work?” I wait for my heart to sink, but it’s as if someone has poured cement over it.
Nox runs his hands down his face, and there’s something about the irresponsibility of that gesture that irritates me, has the muscles in my jaw twitching. But when his fingers slip below his eyes and I glance at those shadows again, everything else dissipates.
“I’d ask you to sit down, but…” he says, gesturing toward the dais.
He crosses the room and leans against the counter like he normally does, but there’s something precarious about it this time. Something about the way the vials are organized that makes his casual stance seem wrong.
Seem dangerous.
“Should I be afraid?” My chest twinges at the way the question comes out. I mean it genuinely. There’s no panic in my chest, no fear coiling in my belly, and that feels altogether wrong. It sits like vinegar and milk in my stomach.
Nox’s cheeks sink, but he responds with an even tone. “I don’t know. Probably.”
“Well then, get on with it.”
I note the harshness in my voice, but the guilt I would normally feel doesn’t register.
Nox winces. “There was something I didn’t account for, Blaise. Something about myself, about my nature, that I wasn’t aware of.”
When he says “my nature” there’s a pang in his tone, a slight uptilt of his voice, a negligible averting of his eyes that makes it taste of a lie.
“And what exactly could that be?” My voice is so dry, so devoid of life.
“I lied to you. Unintentionally, but it was a lie all the same.”
My back stiffens; my limbs go rigid. It shouldn’t infuriate me as it does. After all, I’m the queen of lying by omission, of deceiving those closest to me, but there’s something about the fact that it’s Nox that makes me feel as if I’m cracking from the inside rather than the outside. Like there’s a hairline fracture in my soul that keeps feathering outward.
It’s the most I’ve felt past the hunger, the lone prick in a void of numbness.
“I came to visit her, Cinderella, the first night you changed.”
His words ring like a gong in my ears. Pounding like the pulse at his neck, racking at my very skull. Unwelcome images assault my mind—Cinderella’s lips on his, her plush body inviting. I want to gag and claw and rip her to shreds, but my fingernails are digging into my flesh.
“Blaise.”
My attention flicks back to him, and something like fear—no, awe—shutters his gaze.
“I thought I was dreaming. She sliced her arm—your arm. The scent of the blood dragged me from my bed. I was half-asleep, and I thought she was you. That it wasn’t real.”
