Page 9 of A Reign of Storm and Madness

Before I can ask myself ‘why him?’ though, ‘why Theos?’, he sets his eyes on me and jolts to a stop when he sees that I’m awake. Shit. I should’ve kept my eyes closed or shut them when I realized who it was. Now the edge of surprise is gone. My muscles tense in preparation for a battle, and I’m not entirely sure I can make it much of one. Not with the wounds on my back and the fact that any movement causes the shredded skin of my spine to stretch with renewed fire. Unfortunately, that one motion, my single act of stiffening my muscles does nothing but send sharp ripples of pain sliding down my spine and through the open and aching flesh of my wounds.

My hand eases against the dagger’s hilt but doesn’t release it completely. I hiss out a long breath as I blink rapidly, shoving the burning tears that threaten to break free back into oblivion from whence they came. Theos takes my distraction as an invitation, and he slides the rest of the way into the small room that sits below the Darkhavens’ chambers. The door closes with a snick and another follows as he locks—or rather, re-locks—it. The rapid pace of my heart stutters. I hope he can’t smell the fear in the sweat beads that pop up along the back of my neck.

“You’re awake,” he says quietly.

Unable to keep my discomfort and agony at bay, I flick him an annoyed glance. “Why are you here?” I demand, unable to force even a hint of subservience into my tone. The wolf that crawls beneath my flesh is a wounded animal, a raging monster. Angry. Hurt. Fearful. She doesn’t wish to show vulnerability, and so she doesn’t. If Theos wants to kill me for it, then so be it. At least it’ll put me out of my Gods-damned misery.

Unfortunately, though, Theos doesn’t end my unhappy and agonized existence. In fact, if he’s at all bothered by my disrespectful tone, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he strides towards me. His long legs eat up the distance between us as he narrows the small space between the door to my bedside in seconds. He doesn’t stop until he’s close enough that I can feel the heat of him. I unintentionally sway closer to it, images of tangled arms and sheets and hot, wet flesh slide over the back of my mind, caressing me like he had that night.

Mistake. The word pours through my mind once again. It’d been a fucking mistake to sleep with Theos Darkhaven.

Once again, I stiffen. And once again, my body punishes me for it. The stretching of my shredded flesh with the movements of my muscles brings tears to the corners of my eyes.

Don’t cry, I tell myself. Don’t you dare cry. No one here cares if you’re in pain and no one cares if you cry.

Despite that cold reminder, I can still feel the prickle of awareness along my arms and the soft burning in the back of my eyes. As if the tears are resting there, just beyond my reach. I can neither wipe them away nor let them free so they just sit and they wait. If they’re waiting for the day I’ll unleash them, though, then they’re going to be waiting a long Gods damned time.

Theos’ puckered brow, as he stares down at me with an unreadable expression, forces me to try and sit up on my own. His hands are empty, hanging limply by his sides. Though I feel much better with the sensation of the cool hilt of my dagger against my palm, I unclamp my fingers from around it before I pull my hand out from beneath the thin pillow.

I pause.

Then, for some reason, I quickly push the dagger away from the edge closest to Theos, and carefully reach back, slipping it beneath my mattress as I hook my hands around the side of the bed to make it look like I’m using my hold as help to sit up further. I don’t trust that Theos will take the hint that I’m most assuredly giving him via my angry expression, tense posture, and lack of dutiful respect to not come closer.

After all, everything I’ve learned about the Darkhaven brothers over the last few weeks is contrary to anything I would have expected from them. From the actual love and care they show their friends and the grief they hide from the world to the small bits of respect they show me—small bits of course, not including Ruen’s spectacular attempt at getting rid of me—even though I’m a Terra.

Before I can open my mouth and demand to know why Theos is here again, he looks at the nightstand and frowns. “Someone else was here.” It’s a statement, not a question. Yet, there’s a light of confusion and curiosity and something else in his eyes when he glances from the nightstand to me again and then back. I don’t want to pick apart that last emotion in those sunset-colored eyes of his. I don’t have the energy to.

I follow Theos’ gaze and frown at the pitcher full of water and the glass sitting there, taking up nearly the entire minuscule space of the small rickety table that masquerades as a nightstand. Beside the water is a small bag of crackers—something a sick person would be able to eat easily. I certainly hadn’t been the one to put them there, neither the water nor the food. Had it been Kalix then? After I’d passed out? That doesn’t seem like something he’d do, but it must have been. I was sure there’d been no one else since.

I turn my attention back to Theos to find that I was correct in my assessment of his intentions. He isn’t taking the hint at all. Theos leans down, his face coming closer to mine, his lips and eyes mere inches from my own. It happens so quickly. The fact that I didn’t even hear him shift causes my heart to leap once more within my chest. Is it because I’m wounded?

With a shaky hand, I lift my palm to my face and feel the sweat that has long since dried on my skin. Does it seem hotter than normal? Have I gotten a fever? An infection? I’ve seen a few common assassins lose their lives to the remnants of an old wound, infections, fevers, or illness in their blood, but I’ve never been one of them. The Divinity I possess should have kept it all at bay and yet … just how well did this fucking Belladonna work? My fingers itch to scratch at that place beneath my hair at the back of my neck, where the shard of Brimstone lies.

“Answer me, Kiera.” My shoulders go rigid at the low, dangerous tone of his voice. It’s like a silken-covered blade, that sound. “Was someone else here?”

“It didn’t sound like a question,” I throw back at him, biting down on the words to keep other ones—far more offensive and insulting ones—at bay.

“I’m making it one,” he says. A moment later, a softer note of a musical quality is threaded through the two words he demands of me. That silk loses its sharpness and becomes as soothing as honey. “Tell me.” Persuasion. Damn him.

“Kalix.” I blurt his brother’s name out before I can think better of it. In fact, I can’t seem to think about it at all. My head is swimming with pain and exhaustion and thirst. My eyes revert to the water on the nightstand. If Kalix had left that water here, then there’s no doubt that I shouldn’t drink it. With his unusual nature, I wouldn’t put it past him to slip something into it and see if I’ll survive whatever else he wants to do to me than simply taunt me in my vulnerability.

This whole damned Academy is nothing but a pit of snakes. It’d been a fool’s hope that brought me here, the hope that I’d ever manage to escape my contract with the Underworld, with Ophelia. Likely a trap or a trial entirely made up of her own desire to keep challenging me, to test me continuously. She would never be sure of me. She’d never be sure of anyone—not with the way she lived. In the shadows and dark, a queen sitting in madness needing those around her but unable to trust. I pity her as much as I’m grateful to and resentful of her.

Theos sighs, the soft whoosh of his breath blowing out over my face. It smells of something spicy and deep. Rum? Had he been drinking before he came here? Because of Darius … or because of me this time? The springs beneath my cot squeak as he sets a hand down on the edge and swivels to sit alongside me.

“What are you doing?” The question shoots out from me as he takes hold of my shoulder and pushes. Skin stretches and I cry out in shock at the red-hot fire as it zips up my back. I recoil from him, that movement too causing just as much pain as the first had. Those tears from earlier rise back to the surface. I stomp on them, squashing them into nothingness.

“Shit, sorry,” Theos’ apology comes a moment too late. He releases me at once but the pain still remains.

Fresh sweat beads pop up along my neck and forehead as I fight back the urge to gag. I’d already vomited up bile and water, all that resided within my stomach, not long after waking the first time, and the involuntary muscle spasms that take over upon the action do nothing to dampen the pain. I don’t look to the floor where it’d happen, afraid to see it there. If Theos notices—and with his Divine abilities and heightened senses, he should—he doesn’t comment. Clamping my fingers around the edge of the bed, digging into the metal, I breathe through my teeth in long hissing sounds.

“I was only trying to see the wounds,” Theos murmurs, his tone far softer than I’ve ever heard it before—outside his bedroom that is. No longer cajoling, yet still silken and sweet. I hate that sweetness. In my current state, I struggle to know if he means it or if it’s simply another manipulation. That little piece of my heart that I’ve tried to protect for the last decade craves something gentle, something kind.

I bite back an angry retort and pray that my next words come out with less venom than I’m currently feeling. “Any touch close to them … pulls at the skin,” I say, still panting in heaving breaths as the pain subsides.

Theos is quiet for a moment and then a long-suffering sigh slides from his lips. Him? What the hell does he have to sigh about? I’m the one with a back so shredded that it feels more like strings of ribbons cling to my muscles rather than actual flesh. I can feel his gaze on me, the cool rich warmth of his burning golden eyes, so like seeing the crest of a sunrise over the distant shores, and finally, I look at him. Really look at him. I meet his gaze and this time, I don’t try to hide.

I let him see all the pain and agony in my expression, the resentment, the exhaustion that I’m sure darkens the skin beneath my eyes. Theos doesn’t blanch from it. He doesn’t shy away. Instead, he—far more carefully than before—lifts a palm to my face. He cups my cheek, his fingers like molten fire against my freezing skin. Cold? Wasn’t I just hot? I feel … ugh, groggy.

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