A Deadly Bite

41.1 || Nuisance

Sarielle wakes with the grace of an old, rotting windmill, bones creaking to life like rusted mechanics. Pain wrestles in as pointed spokes. She winces, shifting, arm rubbed raw by throbbing heat.

Despite the burn's persistent prodding, cold ruminates in her chest. The flighty, lulling warmth that seeped from Fiesi's fingertips and snagged control of her heart's beat, weaved in languid loops between her ribs, has vanished now, and a hole is whittled in its place. That isn't painful exactly, not nearly as much as real holes cut into flesh are, but it's a physical sensation she can't deny. There's an emptiness to it, a sadness. A grief.

Perhaps that feeling isn't entirely supernatural.

Her shoulder blades press against a texture smooth and hard, her spine aching from its assumedly prolonged contact. She's been laid there, curled up against it. Carried there. This isn't the underground passage she last knew. Warm light pours through her eyelids. Fear's lingering teeth snap them open.

Nathan's face greets her.

For just a moment, she could forget who truly watches from behind those black eyes, let herself glide into a delusion where the world is right. Interest sparkles in his gaze, its intensity nothing particularly new. The slight, dazed smile his lips pinch could be preoccupied, not malicious, the smile of a boy looking beyond her and into a harmless daydream that slackens his focus on reality. He lies on his stomach, feet listlessly swaying behind him, chin propped on a fist. His mussed hair curls thicker on one side than the other.

"Hello," he says. One, simple word to shatter the foolish image. A split tongue flicks over his fangs, snatching a taste of the air, like he's debating which piece of her to tear apart first.

She claws herself upright, limbs tangling in their hasty scramble. Her left hand fumbles for her sword. Her feet slam against a shockingly soft floor, and the blade swings to point down at him, tip angled at his nose. Serene smile still in place, he flicks a glance from it to her. Amusement sparks in his eyes.

Blood rushes to the top of her head, and she staggers in the wake of her momentum, arm flying out to the side. More solid hardness catches her, angles too smooth for it to be rock. Insides rattling, she looks to the side and sees white marble, bold and plain. A seat. The throne. He's taken her to the throne room?

Wild, jittery energy courses through her. Her surveying sweep of the room is a series of bouncing glances, soaking in each wall and corner without clarity, the gold trails that decorate the high ceiling blurring into spirals at the edge of her vision. Tiny fires glitter like red stars, light scattered by the chandelier's glass adornment. White walls glow. The double doorway hangs eerily ajar, a gaping maw with nothing beyond it. In contrast to the wreck she's witnessed so far, it's surprisingly intact, enough that her stomach drops with the plunging shock of being pitched off a cliff. Delusions and pretence have no place now, yet this room could make it scarily easy.

All that saves her is the emptiness. The lack of bustle is a void, a sizzling silence that slits her eardrums. Her grip on her sword's hilt tightens.

"Do you like it?" Nathan asks. There's something imploring in his gaze -- familiar, but wrong, and that wrongness makes her skin crawl.

Jaw clenched, she gathers the fragments of a glare. "Where's Fiesi?"

He sits back on his heels, deftly avoiding the blade, then delivers a shrug. "Oh, your father's killer?" A grin slides with his head tilt. "Do you care?"

The weight that slams into her chest is numbing. Her feet trip backwards, struggling to recall how to balance her. The air is liquid, muddling sound and cranking up the laboured volume of her own breathing, her ribs and heart and lungs thumped at in a vague rhythm like out-of-tune piano keys. The music is terrible and grating, suffocating. She's left feeling like torn parchment, edges rough and detached in the wake of a violent slash she wasn't ready for.