Page 114 of A Reign of Roses
The low ceiling at the bottom of the stairs told me we were standing just below the Neck Romancer’s main stage. The shallow basement had been converted into some kind of tiring-room, and candles dousing their votives in melting wax flooded the space in flickering shadow. The scents of sex and tobacco mingled with old wood and oily makeup. On a tufted, red leather couch that sagged in the corner, a kneeling man was tongue-deep in a very vocal performer.
“Fuck,” the woman groaned, face wound tightly. “Fuck,fuckdonotstop—”
“Or do,” I offered, leaning against the stairs.
Her wanton whimper warped into a shrill cry of surprise as her eyes sprang open to find myself, Griffin, and a stunned, pale-faced Mari. I unleashed a chilling grin that I hoped said,Correct. Now scram.
The still-panting woman snapped her legs shut so fast she nearly took Aleksander’s infamous head with her as she yanked her checkered skirt and its many layers of tulle down and scrambled off the couch. Breezing past us in a cloud of flustered apologies, I only caught a flash of those eerie, glowing red eyes as they lingered on Griffin’s body before she careened up the stairs.
Aleksander stood, his back still to us, and I worked my jaw free of its iron vise on my teeth. Then I unfurled my fists and flexed my taut palms. And then, for good measure, I breathed. Deeply.
“Aleksander,” I tried. It did not come out friendly. Not by a mile.
Aleksander’s long shock-white hair swayed at his back as he stood. When he turned, he was wiping blood off his lips, grave red eyes glowing. “What have you done to yourself, Ravenwood?”
Griffin’s head snapped sidelong toward me and I tensed my jaw. Aleksander, like all Hemolichs, could scent quite a bit from someone’s blood. Their fear, arousal, health. And, clearly, that I had been made full-blooded.
When I didn’t answer, Aleksander leaned his long neck to the side until acracksounded loudly across the hidden den. “Are you here to kill me?”
“Actually,” I gritted out, my smirk laced with venom, “I need a favor.”
31
Arwen
My stomach flipped so riotouslyI was sure I’d be spewing radishes and cherries soon.
The oblong birdcage was too short for me to stand, but too narrow to lay down, and hugging my knees in to contort myself had resulted in close to full-body numbness.
If there’d ever been an exotic bird that fit inside this cage or any of the other empty, bent-out-of-shape cages in here, they were long gone now. Not even the few fossilized feathers dotting the floor told me anything about what kind of creatures Ethera had once kept.
It didn’t matter. I neededair.
It was late, and the glass panes around me had grown dark, but I could tell by the mossy scent and coiled, twining vines that I was in a greenhouse. A stuffy, suffocating greenhouse. And a very neglected one, given all the shriveled blooms and prickly thorns. Overrun with vines and withered leaves that slithered along the floor and up the glass walls, curving themselves around the potted plants and twisting around the legs of raised wooden plant beds. The deteriorationwasn’t due to the wintertime—all the soil I could see was dry as bone, no cover crops or shrubbery to keep it moist. Maybe nobody had been in here for years.
Years…
I counted my inhales and exhales as my hands twined in my blouse.
One, two. One, two.
In, out. In, out.
That was making it worse. Now all I could think aboutwasmy breathing—or lack thereof. My heart—it was beating too fast. I was going to have a heart attack. I was going to die of a heart attack before I could escape.
No, I told myself.You cannot die from fear.
“Anxiety lives only in the mind. If your thoughts are elsewhere, you can’t panic.”
How many times had I conjured Kane to take over as the voice in my head and distract me when I was held captive in Lumera? How many times had I allowed him to flirt with me or anger me inside my mind so I could lose track of how long Octavia had been reaping lighte from my veins?
I could do that again.
Three things.Find and focus on three things you can name, bird.I could do that much.
One. A long-since-withered, rancid pomegranate. Rolled to the side of a dusty ceramic pot. Desiccated, kind of like a—
Bleeding Stones, I couldn’t think. Not as my blood lurched in my veins with the urge to run or move or breathemoreor breatheharder—
