Page 46 of A Reign of Storm and Madness

Theos lingers regardless, as if Kalix’s words aren’t quite enough for him, but when I nod to him that I’m okay, he finally sighs and stalks out. Once more, I collapse onto the bed and cover my face with my hands. All is silent, but the smell of blood just gets stronger and stronger.

“Well, that was a fun scene to walk into,” Kalix muses as he, too, drops onto my bed. The rusty springs beneath don’t just squeal like they do with me, they scream loud and long as if the pressure of his body is torturous to them. “Guess you owe me a favor now, huh?”

“Owe you a favor?” I whip my head towards him. “You just fucking killed someone and they’re going to blame me for it!”

He arches one dark brow and swipes a hand over the top of his head, pushing back the shaggy, wet hair there. It’s then that I notice how he’s dressed. Body half naked with only a pair of trousers pulled up his long thighs and calves, not even laced properly. No shirt. No boots. His hair is dripping with water. He must have just come out of the bathing chamber.

“They would have blamed you regardless had you actually killed her,” Kalix replies coolly, those green eyes flicking to me, then to the body in front of us. He toes her arm with his foot and grimaces. “To be honest, though, she’s been getting annoying for a while. I’ve been looking for a reason to get rid of her. You just gave me that reason.”

“Killing … comes easy to you, doesn’t it?” I find myself asking.

His answer is little more than a noncommittal shrug. “I don’t really care about the things that don’t bother me and I don’t care about things that don’t matter to me. If something bothers me, though, then…” His hand moves over the evidence of what happens that’s sitting right in front of us.

He really is deranged, I decide.

I don’t have another moment to question him about that, however, as the door opens and Theos and Ruen appear carrying … I stand up at the sight of the crates and the swords and saws sticking out of them.

“I can’t watch this,” I say.

Ruen and Theos drop the crate with a loud thunk. “Fine.” Ruen nods to the open doorway and steps out of the way. “You should get cleaned up anyway, you’re covered in blood.”

I’m … I glance down at my front and am shocked to see that he’s right. I bite back a curse as I feel the blood dripping down the front of my throat and even if my uniform is now black, it’s soaking in the crimson color of Rahela’s blood, and I can smell it. I shoot a dark glare at Kalix, who doesn’t even bother to get up off my bed.

“Come with me.” Theos holds out his hand to me. I move around Rahela’s body, my booted foot stepping through her blood since there’s no path I can take around it—blood that I highly doubt will ever truly be cleaned out of the grooves of wood.

Just as I hit the doorway, I hear the springs of my cot squeal again as Kalix stands. “Not you,” Ruen barks. “You’re going to help me clean up this fucking mess.”

My eyebrows rise as I glance over my shoulder and see Kalix give Ruen a bland look, but instead of arguing or simply walking out, he moves to the crate of supplies. Theos’ hand touches my arm and I jolt, looking up at the concerned expression on his face. I press my lips together to keep myself from apologizing. He’d come down—they all had. Was it because they’d heard the fight? Would they have done that for another if I hadn’t been their Terra?

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Theos says, ushering me towards the stairwell.

I go simply because there’s nowhere else for me to go. I’m not a scared ten-year-old girl anymore. I’m a twenty-year-old woman with half a lifetime of experience handling pain and killing others for survival. These three are just obstacles in my way. I should not feel guilty for keeping Ruen and Theos in the dark about my identity. I should feel ashamed that I’ve failed Ophelia and Regis and the entire Guild by letting Kalix find out.

Theos is quiet as he and I move up the stairs and through the open door to the Darkhaven chambers, which looks like someone had nearly taken it off its hinges to get it open. Theos leads me up the stairs to the bathing chamber I’ve been in quite a few times before—just to clean it, of course—and opens the door, urging me through and into the still steamy room.

The mirrors along the wall are still coated in condensation and I stare at the blurry outline of my black and white figure in one of them as Theos goes to the bathtub that sits in the center of the room. He rolls up the sleeves of his loose-fitting tunic and then bends to mess with something inside. Faucets shriek and water spurts out as it begins filling the tub.

When he stands again and looks back to me, his golden eyes fall to my throat where the droplets of blood I suspect are starting to crust to my skin. Keeping his gaze there, he strides forward, not stopping until he’s standing right in front of me. His hand rises towards me deliberately and only when he touches the first button below my collarbone do his eyes lift to meet mine.

Whatever he sees has him undoing the button and then the next one. His pace is unhurried as he carefully undoes them all and then prompts me to turn and face away from him towards the mirror as he slides the uniform’s jacket from my arms. Beneath it, I wear a small cream tunic and my bindings under that.

A shuffle of fabric reaches my ears and I close my eyes, breathing deeply into my lungs. I expect Theos to leave then, but to my utter dismay, he comes right back after disposing of my uniform coat. This time, he takes my hand and leads me back towards the tub where he has me stand next to it as he then undoes my trousers and pulls them down my legs, stopping when they refuse to move over my booted feet.

I perch on the tub’s edge and he flashes me a grateful smile as he carefully unlaces my boots, pulls them off, and then my trousers. Once he’s done, he stands back up and stares at me, specifically at my tunic still covering me from shoulder to upper thigh.

“You know you’re going to have to take that off too,” he tells me.

My lips twitch into a smile. “I know how to bathe.” I’ve just never had anyone do this for me—take care of me like this, remove my clothes, or start my bath. Not since my dad…

“Lift your arms.” Theos’ command is followed by his hands at the hem of my tunic and I suck in a breath as he sweeps it up and off me, dragging it over my head and tossing it over his shoulder.

His nostrils flare as he takes me in, from the tops of my still marked shoulders—where there are a few of the lash scars—to the reddened, fast-fading bruises on my knees from where I’d fallen during the fight in my room. Absently, I reach a hand up, fingering the place behind my neck where the brimstone had heated up and nearly made me lose myself—and my life.

“Take the bindings off.” Theos breathes the words, eyes fixed on the place where my breasts are restrained against my body.

Leaning forward, keeping my eyes upon his, I take my fingers away from the brimstone shard and move them to where I’d tucked the end of my bindings—new ones that I’d had to find in the Terra infirmary since I was starting to run out of clothing here at the Academy. Pulling it free, I unwind the first piece and then continuously loosen the bands of fabric until more and more of my skin is revealed. All the while, Theos’ gaze never leaves my flesh.

Wrong. So fucking wrong.

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