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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“ H e wants you.”

I woke up only moments before Erekkus stuck his head into my room. Atrius and some of his leadership had moved into the tower—now cleaned and devoid of dead warlords—and I, important as I was, was among the chosen few to accompany him. Apparently I’d missed a real bed, because all I wanted to do was sleep.

“Knock,” I grumbled. “I have a door now.”

Erekkus said, “He’s in a fucking sour mood. Good luck.”

“What does he want?” I pushed the covers back and rolled out of bed, not very gracefully.

“Hell if I can figure it out,” he muttered.

A breeze rolled through the window, making me suddenly very aware of my clothing—a nightgown that was once owned by one of the warlord’s concubines, and definitely looked the part. I’d just been so happy to see clean clothes. I didn’t much consider that anyone might see me in it.

I crossed my arms over my chest.

“Tell him I’ll be there after I get dressed.”

Erekkus, noticing my dress, snickered a little.

“Don’t be indecent,” I huffed .

“I don’t think I’m the indecent one here.” Then, “I don’t think you want to keep him waiting. He was very insistent you come now.”

“But—”

“That little thing will probably put him in better spirits,” Erekkus said breezily, turning away. “We can dream.”

“What the hell are you wearing?”

The first words out of Atrius’s mouth when I walked through the door.

I gritted my teeth.

“I heard you were very eager to see me,” I said sweetly. “I didn’t want to keep you waiting as I changed.”

“Close the door.”

I did. Atrius had claimed the warlord’s chambers, of course, though it was almost funny now to witness him among all this cheap finery. He was sprawled out in a velvet armchair near the fireplace, a gaudy purple thing marred by cigarillo burns and several very suspicious-looking stains. His limbs skewed out limply. He was shirtless, the fire playing over the lean furrows of his muscles.

It wasn’t the first time I’d seen Atrius half-dressed. More than his appearance, I was startled by his demeanor. Everything about him, from his stance to his expression to the few flashes of emotion he allowed to slip through his walls, reeked of utter discontentment.

He eyed me.

“You look ridiculous,” he snapped.

“What, you don’t like it?” I made a show of flouncing the little lace-lined silk skirt. “Shocking, since Aaves was clearly a man of great taste.”

“Don’t let any of the soldiers see you in that. Come here.”

The words were cold and clipped. Erekkus wasn’t joking. Atrius was in a sour mood.

I did as he asked, crossing from cold marble tile to slightly-dirty white bearskin .

Up close, I could sense something noxious pulsing in his aura—he tried to tamp it down, hide it behind that steel wall that usually shielded all his emotions, but it was too powerful to hide. I felt it like the throbbing heat of a fire on the other side of a door. It was just as painful, like a wound, but unfamiliar—I’d sensed many illnesses before, physical and emotional, and none felt quite like this.

I frowned. “What’s wrong?”

He looked to the flames and didn’t answer, his scowl deepening.

I kept reaching toward him with my magic, prodding gently, succumbing to my curiosity. I risked touching his hand, just to get a stronger sense?—

He jerked it away.

“I hear that some of the Arachessen can use the power of Acaeja to heal,” he said. “Can you?”

His tone was so sharp and aggressive that it sounded more like a rebuke than a question.

I fought the urge to grimace.

“Not well, unfortunately.”

I had never been much of a healer. Some of my Sisters specialized in it—they were able to read the threads within a body and use them to manipulate wounds or illnesses, though it was a slow process and not as instantly helpful as a healer trained under the magic of gods more naturally attuned to medicine. Still, I’d seen them perform remarkable feats with it.

I had trained in the method, as all Arachessen did, but it had never been a strength.

“But you know something,” he said.

“I can try.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d used those skills. Years, surely. Weaver, I hoped I remembered at least something. I was very conscious that Atrius’s blade had been at my throat not all that long ago.

Atrius didn’t seem comforted by this answer. He didn’t so much as look at me, still scowling into the fire.

I knelt before him on the rug, the rough fur tickling my bare knees.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Are you injured?”

He took a long time to answer, and still, he did not look at me.

“An old injury,” he said.

“Sometimes the worst ones. I did something to my knee a decade ago, and I still feel it. Suppose it’s an occupational hazard of our lifestyles, isn’t it?”

My attempt at levity fell pathetically flat. I was starting to think that Atrius was simply immune to being charmed. Or maybe I just wasn’t very good at being charming.

“So you can help?” he said gruffly.

“I can try.” I gave him a gentle smile. “Where is the injury?”

“‘Try’ isn’t good enough.”

My smile withered. It was getting harder to pretend.

“Well, it’s the best I can offer you.”

His eyes snapped to me, the normally cold amber suddenly searing hot beneath the firelight, verging on the red I’d witnessed in battle.

“Dozens of my men are dead because of your mistakes. Maybe your abilities aren’t good enough.”

The words were hurled with perfect aim, direct and deadly-sharp in their honesty. That didn’t surprise me—I knew Atrius could be cruel. What did surprise me was that they hurt when they landed, bringing with them the memory of rows of red beneath the moonlight and a wave of nausea that I struggled to swallow back.

“Then maybe you should have kidnapped a better seer,” I snapped, before I could stop myself. “It was never my choice to come help your band of monsters.”

He went rigid.

“What a sacrifice you’re making,” he sneered. “Let’s see how long it takes the Arachessen to take you away if I dump you at the gates. Days or hours? Do you think they’ll leave me the pieces, or just feed them to the wolves?”

Another mark perfectly struck. Not just harsh words. No, they were accurate, yanking back the curtains on the things the Sisters often did not like to think about. The threads held us together, and the threads held our vows. A Sister who had broken her vows was in pieces. And so, that would often be her punishment for abandonment .

Sometimes I wished I could close my eyes against unwelcome images. Instead, I needed to let those memories pass through me, and then watch them go.

Sharp words lingered at the tip of my tongue, prodded loose by his. I had to take a breath to fight them back.

“I sense that you’re suffering,” I said. My voice was tighter than it should have been—I should have leaned into ‘ comforting, healing presence, ’ but instead landed somewhere closer to ‘ frustrated schoolteacher. ’ “I may not have been the best healer in the Arachessen, but I studied it. They drilled it into me just like all the rest.” I gave him a weak smile. “I can try.”

His eyes flicked back to me. Lingered.

Then, at last, he pressed his palm to his chest. “Here.”

I was confused. I didn’t know what kind of injury he could be referring to. “Your… pectoral muscles or?—?”

“It’s more complicated,” he snapped. “It’s—” He looked away again and let out a huff. “Never mind. This is none of your concern. I’ll be fine on my own.”

Weaver help us all. I rubbed my temple. “If the choice is between trying to help you and suffering through your sulking for the foreseeable future, then for the sake of everyone who has to be around you, just let me try to help.”

I wasn’t prepared for it when, in one abrupt movement, he turned, grabbed my wrist, and pressed my hand to the center of his chest. The movement practically yanked me onto his lap, my forehead nearly bashing against his.

“Do you feel that?” he said—and there was a hint of hopelessness to his voice, something that almost sounded like a plea.

I was ready to snap at him, but the words died on my tongue.

Because I did feel it.

His skin was neither warm nor cool, instead exactly the same temperature as the air. His chest rose and fell heavily under my palm, and I could feel the pulse of his heartbeat—vampire hearts beat slower than humans’, but his was quick right now, perhaps with anger or fear.

But what gave me pause was beneath all of that—something intertwined with his presence, his threads, into the very core of his being. It was so intense it drew a gasp from my lips. A withering decay that seemed alive , like it was trying to push further into him. I sensed, too, the strain of holding it off—the exhaustion.

My lips parted, but words escaped me. Our faces were so close, his breath warmed my mouth.

“So you see it now,” he said.

“What is this?” I choked out. “I’ve never felt anything like this.”

Once the initial shock faded, curiosity took over. Life as an Arachessen was not a boring one—I’d witnessed or inflicted every kind of injury, physical or magical. I’d seen curses before. Most of them felt like a cloud surrounding their target, something that slowly burrowed further. This… this was strange because it started so deep within him, like it was trying to eat its way out instead of in. It would have taken a very powerful sorcerer to plant it that deep.

I searched my mind for Obitraen history—for what I knew of the House of Blood.

“Is this your curse?” I asked. “The Bloodborn curse?”

A shiver of shame. My hand was still pressed to his chest—our bodies nearly entangled. In my surprise, I’d let my weight settle onto his knee, and his grip on my wrist had me practically curled onto his lap. Despite his impenetrable self-control, this close even he couldn’t hide his truth from me.

I knew he didn’t want to answer.

“No,” he said. “It’s something more than that.”

“A curse, though. An… additional curse.”

He was hesitant. “Yes.”

“How did you—who?—”

I pressed my hand harder against his chest, lost in my morbid fascination. It was probably some of the most advanced magic I’d ever seen. No, it was , without equal, the most advanced magic I’d ever seen.

“What—what is this?”

I couldn’t help reaching deeper, pulling it apart with my magic. I was now fully in Atrius’s lap, but no longer noticed the awkwardness of it .

He asked gruffly, “Can you help?”

Weaver, what kind of a question was that? I didn’t even know how to answer it. My gut instinct was, Absolutely not. No one can. Whatever this is, it’s incurable.

I chose my words more carefully.

“I—I don’t know. I think it would take a very powerful healer to cure?—”

He let out a growl of frustration. “Not cure . I’m not a fucking fool. Just?—”

I had been so transfixed by this—this thing inside of him that I had barely been paying attention to Atrius himself. Not until now, when I felt something strangely vulnerable from within his presence. It was so innocent, so guarded, that it almost seemed wrong for me to sense it at all.

He let out a breath. “Time. I need time .”

Desperation burrowed, carefully hidden, into all the little crevices of his soul. I swallowed a stab of sympathy— sympathy , for the conqueror of my home.

Weaver fucking help me.

And yet I wasn’t sure if it was all an act when my voice softened in my answer.

“I’ll try,” I said, and beneath my palm I felt Atrius let out a long, slow exhale of relief.

I shifted awkwardly, suddenly conscious of my position on Atrius’s lap. I needed to scoot further onto him to stabilize myself—I’d lose awareness of my body when I did this, so I needed to make sure I wasn’t about to just let myself slump onto the floor. I placed my other hand on his chest, next to the first.

“Don’t let me fall,” I muttered, and before I could think too hard about the way his hands gripped my hips, I threw myself into the threads.

I limited my awareness to him and this thing eating him alive within—reached deeper, and deeper, and deeper into the threads. Everything else fell away, reduced to distant gray fog. I was wildly exposed for someone in the presence of an enemy, but this demanded my full focus. It was so far within him that I had to push a little further with every breath, like trying to walk against the brutal winds of a storm, hands shielding my face.

With every step, I ventured further into darkness.

The curse was deep inside Atrius—near to his heart, his soul. It was a ravenous thing, devouring all the threads of his life force into a tangled, rotting mass, pulled tight like a clenched fist.

I could do nothing about the rot. That was magic far more advanced than mine. But the tangles…

I reached for his threads and grabbed hold of one.

An involuntary gasp, as a surge of terror cracked through me. It was raw and tender, like a child’s fear. For a moment, I froze, staggering against it—against the way it reminded me of my own childlike fear, belonging to a version of myself I left behind long ago.

Keep going.

I kept my hold and continued. Slowly, I worked at unraveling the threads. Some were irreparably gone, consumed by this thing inside him, but others could be extracted if I did so gently and cautiously.

With each one I freed, images flashed through my mind. Faces—so many dead faces, black blood seeping from their lips and pooling in eyeless sockets.

Cold. Muscles in legs screaming against the exertion of a long hike. You look up and the sky seems so close, closer than you ever thought it could be.

Another thread. I gently worked it free.

Nyaxia’s eyes are the sky, a gradient of sunset that does not move with her face. Her beauty is staggering, breathtaking—painful, actually, like looking upon something you were never meant to see.

Pain pulsed at the back of my skull, in my magic, in my soul. My own threads were intertwined with Atrius’s now, working this deep. It was harder for me to focus. Harder for me to keep my grip on the threads as I grew closer to the core of the curse.

Still, I worked.

Another thread.

You fall to your knees in the snow. You can’t feel anything for the cold.

Another .

The head in your hands has his eyes still open, silvery amber, staring past you.

A sudden spike of pain, this one so intense it drowned out everything else. I froze, my body going rigid.

I lost my hold on the threads.

In a faraway world, my body fell.

I was only barely coming back to awareness when rough hands caught me, but clumsily, limbs tangling with mine. The next thing I knew, Atrius and I were on the floor together, both slumped over in the furs. I reached out and my hand instinctively found his chest again, right over his heart. His breath came heavily. The pain that radiated from his inner presence still throbbed in my own.

He was in such unimaginable pain. How could anyone exist like this? He had done so, I could tell, for a long time. This was old pain, etched deep into him, beyond walls he had constructed over the course of years to keep it in.

He started to push himself to his elbows and help me up, but before he could, I rolled onto my knees and pushed him back down.

“What are—” he started.

“Sh,” I said, gently pushing him back to the furs, my palms against his chest again.

I reached for his threads. This time, I stroked them gently—I had worked whatever I could free from his curse, but this was something else.

No, like I’d told Atrius, I was no healer. But I knew how to sedate—though usually for far less benevolent purposes than this.

Atrius went rigid. His eyelids fluttered, though he yanked them back open every few seconds. He didn’t have the strength to raise a mental wall against me, but he tried anyway.

I slid one hand down his arm, my thumb tracing a comforting circle.

“Don’t fight it,” I whispered.

“I don’t have time—” he choked. “I have to?—”

“Shh.”

He was tired. So, so tired. When he gave up, he did it all at once.

His hand slid around mine, so his palm lay atop it. I could feel his eyes on me, holding on for as long as he could.

“Thank you,” he rasped, finally.

And then he let himself fall.

I lay there next to him for hours. The sun rose, leaving streaks of pinkish daylight seeping under the drawn velvet curtains, the castle growing quiet, and I remained.

Atrius slept heavily, but fitfully, despite the sedation. In the beginning, he stirred every hour, muscles twitching and deep lines of concern or anger or terror spasming over his forehead. In sleep, he had a much lighter hold on his presence—or perhaps my connection to him still lingered from earlier that night. I could feel that fear, just like that terrible cold, seeping out.

I didn’t wake him. With every nightmare, I sent him another comforting wave of peace until he finally stilled.

With every one, I solidified the realization that this was likely the first time Atrius had slept for more than an hour or two in a very, very long time.

Eventually, the gaps between his nightmares grew longer. In the dead quiet of midday, my own exhaustion started to set in. It had taken so much of my energy to treat him. My magic and my body were spent.

I didn’t remember drifting away—only that when sleep came for me, I accepted it with open arms.