Page 45 of The Princesses of Ruin (The Princesses of Ruin #5)

Chapter forty-one

Kazimir

I ’ve never liked the moniker for the Nest, or the name of its soldiers, or Zane’s power display. Something about it all feels unsettling. Now that I see the giant spider crouched in the corner of the lab, stuffing an entire deer leg into its mouth, I understand.

Spiders are disgusting.

Giant spiders are disturbing.

I have a very rational desire to murder it.

Zane must see the look in my eyes despite them being mostly covered by the mask because he steps into my path.

“He’s our ally,” he says, holding one arm and six spindles out to block me.

His right arm is in a spider-silk sling bound tightly to his bare chest and there’s a visible divot in his shoulder.

“The fuck happened to you?” I ask.

“Probably similar to whatever the fuck happened to you,” he replies. His gaze shifts to Alastair and he frowns slightly. “Is Adrik the only one who didn’t get horrifically mauled?”

“Me?” Adrik’s voice causes all the tension to release from my chest .

I see my brother at the alchemy table, completely unharmed, grinding something in a mortar, and the inescapable urge to embrace him overcomes me. I walk to him. Adrik drops the pestle and hugs me fiercely.

“It seems my arms don’t wrap around you like they used to,” I say as I pull back.

“Is that another fat joke?” he asks.

I slap his stomach with the back of my hand. “A skinny joke.”

The air huffs out of him and he gives me an annoyed glare. “I was on a diet of rabbit…and pussy.”

It hurts to raise my brow, but it happens anyway. The mask shifts on my face and I tsk in pain. Adrik scowls. He grabs the edge where the deactivation rune sits and thumbs it to no effect.

“What have you done now?” he asks, his voice weighed down by exasperation. I can see the concern in his eyes, though. This has never happened before.

“A dragon shocked me half to death. And what about you?” I ask, looking at Zane and then to the spider in the corner. It has just the hoof sticking out of its mouth. Fucking abomination.

“A giant pigeon tried to eat me.” He looks at Alastair. “What about you?”

“A duskwalker did eat me. And then saved me.”

We’re all quiet for a moment, marinating in our misfortune.

“Why?” I ask, ending the silence.

He holds up his scale-covered arm to reveal a thorny brand in gold, green, and red. It almost looks festive. “She made a deal with it to save us.”

I hold up my arm to show off the lightning brand. “Same.”

Adrik grabs my arm. “Come here. Sit down. ”

I sigh as I sit on the chair I know for a fact he got fucked in over the summer by those two Spiders. Adrik moves around the room, collecting tinctures and powders.

“The next part of the potion requires the bile,” Adrik says. “Where are Reina and Jasper?”

“Unknown,” Zane says. “We only arrived a few days ago.”

With just a week left before Zephrom’s “doom day,” the tension in the air is palpable.

“What can we do if they don’t return?” I ask.

“They will,” Alastair says with confidence and finality.

“How do you know?” Zane asks.

Alastair scratches the skin surrounding the scales on his stomach absently. “I can’t explain it, but something has happened to me after the encounter with Ashai. I can sense things. Not in the way that others prophesize events by seeing them, but…I feel things.”

“Perhaps the breeze,” Adrik says, motioning to the gaping rip on the side of his pants.

Alastair grumbles and cinches the spot shut with his hand.

“Your mother is a skilled prophetic, isn’t she?” Zane says more than asks.

We all know this.

Alastair nods. “However, there are no records of magus abilities being passed down generationally.”

“But you don’t have a magus ability, right? It’s just the…” I stall for words as I roll my hand through the air.

“The demon,” he says. “Yes. I’m a nomaj.”

“Or maybe you aren’t,” Adrik says as he brings a sanitary tray full of equipment to the table. “It may be that your mother’s protection runes suppressed your own magus abilities, too. You’ve been letting the demon out more and more with the war efforts. Perhaps your magic is showing as well.”

“That may explain some things, but…”

Zane wanders over to us, watching Adrik mixing something in a little cup. “What’s the intent here?”

“To get Kazimir to calm down enough to let us help him,” Adrik says, putting a few drops of something into the mixture.

“I am presently here,” I say.

“And so on edge you will flinch at the slightest movement,” he says.

“I will not—”

The spider in the corner jolts and so do I, reaching for my scythe with a, “Fuck!”

The creature adjusts its sitting position and settles back down onto the blankets, folding most of its legs under it.

I glare at Zane. “That was planned, wasn’t it?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know if he understands us. I can’t speak to him.”

I sit up a little straighter, eyeing the beast. “Then how do you know it’s an ally?”

“Scarlett has communicated with it using Alyse’s power.”

The spider clicks its chelicerae and waves the stub of what was once a forelimb at me…just the scarred nub wiggling back and forth. A shiver travels down my spine and I grit my teeth, unwilling to let my body react beyond that.

Adrik puts a tube into the cup and shoves the other end into the mouth hole on my mask. “Drink.”

I sip the liquid tentatively. It tastes like dirt, but once I’m drinking, I don’t stop. The potion gurgles at the bottom of the straw as I clean the last few drops from the cup .

“Good boy,” Adrik says as he pats me on the shoulder. “Now I’m going to need the spider’s help.”

“Why?” I jump out of the chair.

Adrik laughs and Zane is barely suppressing a chuckle.

“No, I don’t need him. Sit down.”

“Why would you say that?” I ask, lightning-like adrenaline running through my body.

“You’re so difficult to spook. It’s amusing.” He grabs my arm and pushes me back into the seat.

I furrow my brow and grunt in pain. “ Who are you and what have you done to my brother ?”

“ This is payback for all the years of dropping me ,” Adrik replies in our native tongue. I hadn’t even realized I’d switched. My head is getting loose on my neck and it’s fun to roll it around.

Ceiling to floor to ceiling to floor.

Don’t let them take me off, Alyse whispers in my mind.

“What the fuck?” I mumble, touching the mask. “Why is it Alyse?”

“What’s wrong with him?” Alastair asks, his voice warbly and distorted.

“I’ve tranquilized him. He’ll be less likely to stab us or retaliate with magic.”

Zane glows with teal light. “Why would he do that?”

“Alyse informed me when they arrived that something was wrong. He’d been acting strange, speaking to her coldly—much more so than she believes she deserved.

“I think the mask has magically merged with some of his skin, and it’s consuming his face. I’ve never seen an urictsa do anything like this before, but I can only assume this close to his brain, it may be affecting his thoughts, possibly even his motor functions. ”

I don’t want to leave you, my love, Alyse blares from the front of my mind to the back.

“Don’t touch her,” I say, trying to push Adrik’s hand off the mask, off Alyse. I don’t know how she got in the mask, but I want her this close. I want her with me, in me.

Cold copper clamps onto my wrist, then another.

“This would’ve been a lot easier than drugging him,” Alastair says.

“Yes, but I don’t think he would’ve allowed us to chain him if he wasn’t already subdued. The mask is…integrating into him.”

I search for Alyse, but she’s gone. There is no more voice in my head. No presence.

She’s gone. I want her back.

“Who’s gone?” Adrik asks.

“Alyse,” I say, looking up into his dark face. “Why did you make her go away? I want her back.”

I’m shoved against the chair and something icy spears into my shoulders. I can’t lean forward, and my legs are stuck. My body won’t move!

“You’re restrained for your own good, brother. Try to stay calm. I’ll work as fast as I can,” Adrik says.

There’s pressure at my temple and my eyes cross, going dark. My lungs burn. I take a gasping breath, but it’s so restricted. I can’t get enough air.

“We need Scarlett. Her dagger,” someone says.

There’s a terrible noise in my ear, a wailing. I taste vomit at the back of my throat, but I swallow it down.

The door slams and I open my eyes. Adrik is holding my face. Bloody clothes surround us on the table. Someone with red hair approaches, a blade brandished .

Adrik takes it and moves toward my face. I try to jerk away, but I’m restrained. Why is he doing this? Why is he going to kill me?

“I’m not killing you, brother. I’m saving you.”

Sharp agony slices through my face, ricocheting around my head and draining down my spine. The searing intensity of helplessness moves in a wave up my body to my face, and I know I’m screaming now. I can’t stop screaming. It’s the only thing I can do. It’s the only thing she can do.

She doesn’t want to leave me.

Some part of me doesn’t want that, either.

Please, just let it end.

The faintest whisper of Alyse moves through my mind. “Be still, my reaper.”

I see her. She’s holding my head in her hands and there’s so much love between us. I fold into her embrace. This is what I want. Not the power of the mask—though it has served me well. I want her. I need her. I’ll die without her.

I’ll die without you.

You’re just a mask. You were never supposed to be alive.

You and Adrik made me so. And now you abandon me.

I’m sorry this is the way it is. I can’t be with you always. I don’t want that.

“I have you now,” Alyse says, and I know she does. I can feel it…the mask being pulled.

Her eyes are so golden, like the sun. I fall into their warmth and let whatever is happening to my body fade away.