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I didn’t even thank him, so lost was I in my grief.

After that, they tested our affinities and sorted us by them. And once they found I shared the primus’s, I was handed over to a special unit.

That was the first time I saw Azazael, the flames dancing in his eyes. He burned me on purpose when I was handed over to him. I knew then what a curse it was to love your people even when they didn’t deserve it.

And then I was taken to the capitol. There I met the primus. There he spared me when he had no reason to. There I began my life, in earnest, as the primus dominus’s healer.

The memory was ten years old.

Someone made me forget it. The details of how the primus and I first met.

Why had that memory been taken from me? What did it matter how I’d come to be the primus’s beloved? War was war.

I opened my eyes, unaware that I’d closed them to begin with. Grandmaddox’s rotted floor was stained with my tears.

I could still feel those lost lives in me, the ache so acute. And my parents... my parents...

They would not wish for me to linger on that memory.

I cleared my throat and wiped the tears away with the back of my hand. The cut I had made on my arm had reopened and started to bleed again. I liked the feeling of the open wound, the way my magic felt raw and exposed.

Enough of this sadness for one night. Enough of the questions that burrowed under my skin the longer I was here.

Rising to my feet, I brushed myself off. The last vestiges of my headache disappeared along with the effects of the spell. I left the potions room quickly, making sure to lock the door behind me.

The stairs creaked as I descended down from the attic. It was only as I stepped off of them and into the hallway that I caught sight of Grandmaddox. She closed the door to Asher’s room behind her, her eyes finding mine a moment later.

Her surprised face must’ve mirrored my own. We each surveyed the other, her milky, sightless eyes moving from me to the staircase at my back. My own gaze bounced between her and the door.

What had she been doing in Asher’s room?

I forced my feet to move forward, down the hallway.

We eyed each other warily as I passed her, neither of us sure whether to be suspicious of the other.

I reached my door. “Night,” I finally said over my shoulder, brushing off a centipede from the knob. I didn’t wait for her to respond before heading inside.

I collapsed on the bed, not bothering to take off my boots before I hastily slipped under the covers. Sleep took me within minutes, and I welcomed it.

I was done with this gods-forsaken day.

Asher

I woke upto a numb tingling on my chest, my bare torso soaked in a cold sweat as my body tried to purge all the alcohol through my pores. The moth-eaten sheets of the twin bed tangled around my limbs. I kicked them off, disgusted with the filth of this house.

And that’s when I felt something slimy slither along my rib cage.

I jolted up, breathing faster.

My eyelids blinked against the darkness.

Then I felt it again, as something detached itself from my side and rolled into the sheets.The hell?

Panicking, I shuffled backward, propping myself on my elbows.

The city lights fell across my abs and pecs, and I sucked in a sharp breath.

A dozen black worms adhered to my skin.