Page 57 of Hell's Secret Omega

My vergis. He marks Cyrus completely so that thick pearls of come bead on his silver skin. Cyrus’s chest heaves. His hand goes to his neck.

The mark is dark and rude. He broke the skin. But Cyrus’s mouth curls in satisfaction. He draws one leg up, showing Mezor his winking hole. A few drops of seed escape from it, sliding through the gleaming slick there.

“Nowit’s my nest.”

Chapter 33

CYRUS

Mezor leaves.Cyrus tries to keep himself occupied—no, exhausted. He doesn’t want to think. He wakes, eats the strange green stuff Mezor harvests from his garden, shoots, rests, shoots some more, washes in the stream and lies on the shore to watch the glimmering moths flit around the ceiling. He crawls into his nest so he can sleep, then does it all over again. Still, he can’t keep his mind busy enough. New fears spring up like poisoned buds. What if all the Grey Company have been killed? What if Ekko gets sicker? What if the tunnel collapses into the grotto?

Only once Mezor is back, when Cyrus curls into his arms inside the nest Mezor built for him, do his thoughts calm.

When Mezor’s latest trip runs long, and Cyrus stops sleeping.

It’s not the bond keeping him awake—it burns, but it’s a manageable pain now. Something else eats at him, a prickle that sends him round and round the grotto in a restless circle. Annoyed, he picks up the bow to occupy himself, ignoring the warning shiver up his spine. Mezor’s quiver of white arrows catches his eye and he takes them to the target range on the far side of the grotto.

When he draws the bow, the bowstring snaps with atwangand whips his cheek. He yelps as the arrow clatters aimlessly to the stone.

“Damn it,” he hisses, touching his cheek. His fingers come away black.

He cleans the wound back in the cottage, gritting his teeth through the sting. Then he digs out Mezor’s spare bowstrings. The bow seems to twitch in his hands, ducking to and fro as he tries to pull the string tight. Finally he grips it between his knees and forces it into submission. With a groan, the wood gives in.

He sighs. There’s no way more practice will be fruitful.

A loud splash interrupts his self pity. He freezes. One of the minnows?

He sets the bow on the table.

Outside, he’s plunged into darkness. The moss has gone silent. Cyrus fetches a torch, heart pounding. The sense of wrongness builds.

The splash must have come from the basin, but torchlight bounces off the surface of the water, hiding what’s beneath. At first it looks like there’s nothing. Maybe the lack of sleep is getting to him.

Then he spies something floating in the water. It’s a pale thing about the size of his palm. It looks like a piece of rope coiled in on itself. He goes back into the house to find something to scoop it out with.

When he finally gets the thing on shore, he’s perplexed.

Whatever it is, it’s dead. He prods it with the stick, wary, but it’s stiff and unresponsive. The white, worm-like body is rolled into a loose ball, with hundreds of tiny legs that are pulled in tight.

Close up, it’s probably the length of his forearm, with a thin segmented body and pincers around its mouth. Cyrus lifts thetorch and peers at the roof. A faint, silvery trail winks back at him.

He follows the trail across the grotto, where it disappears into the staircase. Is this odd visitor coincidence? Or something more sinister?

Cyrus leaves the insect pinned to the table with an arrow—just in case it’s faking. He digs out the uniform he wore for so long, which now feels foreign. Over the once-white shirt and the conspicuous blue pants he rubs ash from the pit fire out back, slowly turning them both muddy grey. He mixes some of the ash with water and sticky sap collected from the vines, making a pungent paste to smear across his scent gland and cover the mark Mezor gave him—fading, but obvious on his bare skin.

Instead of pulling his hair back in a tight queue, he lets it fall around his jaw. His face is of course instantly noticeable, even accompanied by a grubby uniform, so next he rubs ash into his skin. If someone recognizes him he’s dead.

The grittiness and the smell are almost unbearable. When he peers into the water basin, a dirty, dusty, exhausted stranger stares back at him. It will have to be enough. He has to be anonymous, just another Marcus blending into the masses of the Court.

His heart thrums with worry—but also with anticipation.

He’s going to investigate, that’s all. Nothing more. But along the way, he just might find answers about what’s happening in the Court.

He follows the creature’s trail up the long staircase leading into the Court. In the hidden tunnel, he pauses to listen for footsteps, but there are none. The trail is harder to track in the main hallway, disappearing into the rough ceiling before reappearing elsewhere. He traces it as best he can. But somewhere in the Obsidian Wing, it sinks into the stone and disappears.

It may have been just a lost Hell-creature. But his gut tells him otherwise.

He re-traces his steps and searches again, but it’s as if the creature emerged out of thin air.

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