Page 90 of Blackwicket
Victor was a few years older than I. We would have been children at the same time, living in Nightglass together.
A wraithlike hand rose to my cheek, the touch cold as he traced trails countless tears had followed.
“That merger should have ended my life, but a little girl in the house on the cliffs took pity on me and fed me the magic that kept me alive.”
The asphyxiating pressure of memories crowded the air from my lungs, recollections of events that had ruined everything and buried me in fear.
“You’re frightened,” the Drudge rumbled. “I’m not ashamed to admit I like it.”
“Stop.” The words were too quiet.
“This part of me enjoyed the terror you radiated across that table in Devin, as though you expected me to cross it and devour you whole.”
His abominable power yawned wide, and my magic responded to it intuitively. It took effort to pull my guard into place as tightly as I was able.
“No longer eager to have a Nightglass man between your legs?” The laugh was primordial, like nature forming in fire. “Shame.”
“You’re not Thomas.”
“You’re right, Curse Eater. Thomas is dead, consumed by vile magic. Victor is the monster who replaced him, the one you tremble against now, who has tasted you, made you keen in the dark. This soul is rooted in blood and stolen magic.”
He paused, shifting, standing to his full height.
“But you had nothing to do with that.” The burr of his voice couldn’t sound gentle, but the threat had lessened. “When your mother received me she knew what Grigori had done, believed it was better that I die. She walked away to let me, notto find your sister. She saw my future, what Nightglass had planned for me, and thought death would be a mercy.”
Tired of fighting tears, I let them come. The memory of my mother, gentle and caring, giving and sacrificing everything for everyone, was forever altered. Just like Fiona, Isolde carried a darkness in her that I’d never seen, because she’d protected me from it.
“You took nothing from me when you stepped in to do your mother’s work. You severed a piece of yourself, offered it, and it’s lived in me always, tormenting me as the Drudge torments me.”
My memories rearranged themselves as I exhaled, reshaping into a past where I hadn’t killed Thomas, my mother was capable of cruelty disguised as mercy, and Victor and I were inexorably linked by a decision I’d made so many years ago, in the desperation of saving a friend I’d loved.
“Are you behind the recent disappearances?” I asked.
“Some of them,” he responded, unaffected by the admission, standing like an infernal god answering to the feeble moral questioning of mortals who were incapable of following their own principles.
“Darren?” I asked
“No.”
I was surprised by how much relief this denial offered me.
“Are you the reason there are no other Drudges here in Nightglass?” I thought back on the small Drudge that had attacked me in the morgue, the utter lack of them at the Vapors, and throughout the rest of the town, despite the vast amount of magic available to seize. I’d believed William had been using Jack, but this explanation was more likely.
“Someone like me. It seems Grigori made more.” The possibility was nauseating, cruel. “It lurks in the skin of someone you may already know. I’ve been trying to lure it out.”
“You shouldn’t have kept this from me,” I said, though instead of my heart hardening towards this man, condemned to live in damnation alongside a monster forced upon him, it softened, a burden lifting.
“And why not?” He asked, his voice a thunderclap.
“It was my right to know I didn’t kill you!” I replied, matching his intensity, rising to meet him with anger of my own. I took a step closer, less timid. “That you weren’t just Authority stalking me to my grave. What good did it do to hide it?”
My aggressive approach provoked the curses comprising this grisly component of Victor Harrow. He loomed, seething, reaching to take hold of me, possessive. I raised a hand to stop him, but his gnarled, tapered fingers encircled mine, pulling me in. He pressed my palm to his chest, and the insistent prodding of tainted energy retreated slightly at my touch. Though the Drudge remained, its energy settled into something less primeval.
“Until I saw you with your sister in Devin, I knew you as the woman who’d killed Brock Moftan. Even after I’d discovered you to be Eleanora, I assumed you’d chosen the path of the Brom. I felt betrayed. I wanted to punish you.” These truths were yielded with an earnestness I’d never expected from Inspector Harrow, delivered from the mouth of a curse, blurring the lines between the two. “But you ignite me, soothe the ache of this affliction. Being near you is like feeling spring after endless winter.”
I was a weak woman—weak and foolish. Inspired by the urge to preserve the infuriating, essential bond we’d created, I tentatively lowered my guard, allowing my power to rise to him, giving in. There was no greed, no unrestrained indulgence, only the caress of his magic.
“Can the Drudge be unraveled?” I asked.
