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Chapter twenty-one

ATALIIA

The flames from the fire licked at my skin as I sat on the floor only a foot from it, staring blankly into the scintillating colors, and prayed the heat would burn the shame from my veins.

I had no idea how long I had been sitting here when I heard Andrues say my name from the doorway, but I didn’t look at him.

I couldn’t.

“What do you want?” I asked, my voice sounding hollow against the quiet.

“A rat came to find me and led me here. I assumed that it belonged to you,” he said, pushing the door shut behind him.

“Cyloe. I named her Cyloe,” I responded, closing my eyes and listening as he walked toward me. I could feel him as he squatted down next to me and it took all my strength not to recoil from his presence.

“Ataliia,” Andrues started, his voice low. “Please, back away from the fire, you are going to burn yourself.” Opening my eyes, I finally turned to look at him.

A deep crease had formed between his brow as he extended a hand to me and I stared down at it for a moment before turning my eyes back to the flames.

“I deserve to burn,” I whispered, more to myself than to him.

I had hurt her.

Hurt her.

The only person I knew in this world that didn’t deserve to be hurt. And still, after taking my beating, after letting my words rip her to shreds, she still only showed me love.

I did deserve to burn after what I had done to her.

I wished I could take every second of it back, every word I had said—every blow that I had landed.

I hadn’t meant any of it but this rage , this hellfire, was consuming every corner of my being.

I could see it in the way she’d looked at me when she dragged herself from the floor, I had broken her heart.

I was the one person she trusted to never wound that part of her, and yet I had still done it in such a cruel and unspeakable way.

I pushed myself from the ground, dragging my eyes away from the flames and locking them on Andrues.

“Why are you here?”

“I needed to make sure you were all right,” he said, rising from the floor. “Despite what you may try to convince yourself of, you are not alone.”

“I want to be alone, Andrues. I don’t want or need you here,” I snapped as the anger began to rise again.

But I was screaming inside.

Screaming at whatever demon was controlling my heart. Begging it to release me and stop the poison it was spewing from me. To stop hurting people just so I wasn’t alone in this agony.

“I do not care,” Andrues said, unfazed by the malice dripping from my words as he crossed his arms over his chest. “You are not well, and I do not care if telling you that wounds you—if it makes you foam at the mouth with fury like the wild beast you have been behaving like.”

He took a step toward me and I stilled.

“I am the very hand of death, Ataliia, your rage does not scare me. So inject your poison—fill me with it. It will not kill me.”

The words vibrated from his throat like a sinister rumble, a sound that sang to the devil crawling inside my body.

My teeth locked around my tongue, biting down on the fury readying itself to unleash on him.

Blood filled my mouth and I swallowed it back as I finally pulled my gaze from his.

My fists clenched at my side as I turned away and walked toward my bedchambers, shutting the double doors loudly at my back.

The sound of my heart beat in my ears like death’s drum as I rushed to my coat thrown over the edge of my bed and pulled the tonic from its pocket. All I wanted was sleep, to have one second of peace from this hell I had built around myself.

I tore the cork from the vial’s opening and pressed it to my mouth, making sure to swallow every last drop of it.

Screeching, horrifying sounds filled the dark room, echoing off the walls of my bedchamber like talons dragging on the surface of glass.

“Ataliia!” A voice cut through the shrieking and I felt hands on my shoulders, frantically shaking me. “Atallia, wake up.”

My eyes snapped open to see Andrues standing over me.

The screams were coming from me , were fleeing my throat.

I tried to bring my hand to my mouth, to clamp it shut and silence the screams that were shredding my lungs, but it was like my veins had been filled with lead.

My limbs trembled violently, a cold sweat pouring off of me, drenching the sheets as they clung to every part of my naked body, plastering the silken fabric to my skin.

Andrues’s grip tightened around my shoulders but my eyes refused to focus, the nightmare still clinging to the edges of my mind like a thick, suffocating fog.

“Ataliia, what did you take?” Andrues hissed, dragging me from the bed.

His voice sounded distant, scared .

But my limbs refused to move, refused to listen to the commands my mind was giving them. My head fell back as I was lifted into the air, lifted against his chest, and I could almost make out the stones in the ceiling between the black veil that danced over my vision.

I could feel Andrues’s heart pounding wildly inside its cavity, pumping furiously as the beating of my own did not come fast enough.

I tried to focus on the sound in my head, the sound that muscle made when pushing and pulling blood away from my chest, but the ocean I usually heard rushing there was silent.

Every one of my senses began to flee from my body as I sank deeper into the darkness the world around me was beginning to drown in.

Ice ran through my blood as consciousness crashed back into my body and my limbs thrashed in water I didn’t remember getting in.

My head broke the surface and my lungs gasped for air as Andrues hands clasped both sides of my head, his thumbs digging into my temples. His eyes went wholly white as he chanted three words in a language I did not recognize.

He dropped his hands as soon as the words left his lips, the deep blue seeping back into his irises as I leaned over the lip of the bath and vomited.

Andrues knelt beside me, his muscles clenched tight, his breath heavy as he watched me lean back into the bath and rest my head against the copper walls.

Sucking in a sharp breath, I forced myself to look at him and shame exploded through every vessel coiling under my skin.

“What did you take?” he asked slowly. I could hear it in the wavering at the edges of his voice—the fear that hid behind the rumble of his timbre.

“Nothing,” I snapped, turning my gaze away from his as I tried to hide the crimson that was flooding my face.

This was none of his business.

He shouldn’t have even been here, should have never been in my quarters in the first place.

“Ataliia.” Andrues dragged a hand over his face, and as I watched his bare chest flex with the movement, I suddenly felt very aware of my naked body on display.

I resisted the urge to pull my knees to my chest to cover myself.

I had never been self-conscious of my body, never cared who saw it—but there was something about the look in his eyes, like he could see the turmoil swirling just underneath my breasts that made me want to hide every inch of myself from him.

“I tried waking you for fifteen minutes before your eyes finally opened and your screaming ceased,” he said, taking in a deep breath as his voice softened.

“I am a necromancer, Ataliia, and a healer. I could sense the death that was coming for you and I know an overdose when I see one. I just need to know what it is you took so I can give you a tonic to remove the remnants of it from your system.”

I wanted to tell him to fuck off—scream at him that it was none of his business and to get the hell out of my chambers.

But I didn’t have it in me to hate him.

I didn’t have the energy to hate anyone other than myself.

Cin was right, Ardan would be ashamed of me, disgusted that I had let myself become this vessel of rotting flesh.

My eyes began to sting and I cursed the tears that rolled down my cheeks, but for the first time since holding his limp, bloody body in my hands, I didn’t try to stop them.

I lay there in silence, buried in the ice water that felt scalding against the frost running through my veins, and stared at the wall across from me.

Andrues’s features softened as he watched the tears stream down my face and he reached out a tentative hand, brushing a strand of dark, wet hair from my forehead.

The gentleness in his touch broke something inside of me, cracking open the walls I had so carefully constructed. A strangled sob escaped my lips as I met his worried eyes.

“It was just supposed to help me sleep—to stop the nightmares,” I whispered through the tears. “I just want to sleep, I want to sleep without . . . without seeing his face every time I close my eyes.”

Understanding dawned on Andrues’s face as he leaned further back onto his heels, his shoulders falling slightly. Sorrow flickered behind his eyes as they met mine.

That was the look.

The sight that I couldn’t stand to see.

The pity his gaze held made my intestines twist around each other.

I was pathetic.

“What did you take?” Andrues asked again, his voice firmer this time.

“A tonic; I don’t know what it was,” I answered, my voice barely audible over the lapping of the water against the sides of the tub.

“How long have you been taking it?” His jaw feathered at the question and I averted my eyes.

“This was the first time. But . . . Valerian root for the last few months,” I admitted, forcing my voice not to crack.

“Okay,” he breathed out, running a hand through his tousled hair as he pushed himself from the floor, standing to his full height. “How much did you take?”

I hesitated.

“The whole vial,” I finally answered and he stayed silent.

I glanced up to see his eyes already on me.

“I thought, because I had been taking Valerian root for so long, that my tolerance would be higher and I just . . . I just needed sleep.” He nodded, reaching for a towel that sat on the vanity across from me and draped it over the edge of the bath.