Page 31 of A Heart Of Bitter Poison
“You’re okay, Lu. You’re safe,” she says as her eyes dart across my body, looking for wounds. I smell blood, none of it mine. And I smell urine.
“I fucking pissed myself,” I whisper in my new, smoky voice.
Ediye’s eyes go wide and I hear the sharp intake of breath from her surprise. For a second, she doesn’t move, then she clasps me in a fierce hug.
“Your voice! You can talk, Lu. You cantalk.” She keeps saying it over and over, her voice thin with the effort of holding back tears. She pulls away, her eyes glassy as she surveys my face. “Are you all right?”
I nod, my hand drifting to my head as it hums in pain. It’s not the scrape of needles like before, but a buzzing sensation, like a swarm of angry hornets circling in my brain. I can’t say it’s a massive improvement from the needles.
Ediye’s head tilts and her eyes narrow as I rub my head and sigh. She looks down at my naked body, then up at the bloodstained bed, then back at me. “Where’s Ashen?”
My hand falls from my face and I draw my lips between my teeth. My eyebrows climb my forehead.
“You smell like sex.”
I give her a grimace of a smile.
“You had sex with him.”
I nod, biting down on my bottom lip.
“And then you killed him.”
I nod again.
Ediye seems caught in a moment of stasis. And then she bursts out laughing. “Ofcourseyou did. And that is just one of the reasons I love you,” she says as she clasps me in another tight hug.
“I love you too,” I croak, squeezing hard in reply.
Ediye stands and offers me a hand. “Come on,” she says as we clasp each other’s forearms and she hauls me to my feet. “Let’s get you in the shower and you can tell me all about it.”
When she’s sure I’m steady on my feet, Ediye whips the bedding off the mattress and tosses it onto the puddle on the floor. She finds an old robe in an armoire then guides me out of the bedroom and down the hall. I tell her about Ashen as she starts the water and waits for it to heat up. By the time she’s guided me into the stream and slid the curtain closed behind me, I’m onto the strange dream I had in the darkness.
“First it was about Aglaope,” I say, skipping the part about Ashen on the altar. “It was so brief. It was the moment she encountered Ember on Anthemoessa. Ember said she was there to reap my sister for the Crime of Sedition, but then she alluded to something else. Something she seemed to be looking for. She asked where‘it’is, but I don’t have any idea what she meant.”
“Hmm. Okay,” Ediye’s voice says from the other side of the curtain.
“Then there was something about Davina. It was… indistinct. Some parts were unclear. Something from long ago. She was a Scythe. She harvested a body. There was something… unusual about it. And she knew she shouldn’t but she did it anyway. Something… dangerous. A betrayal. She broke a promise for a heavy price.”
I sense it like an ambience in a room. It’s an impression. A feeling. The strongest emotions are there, but the images are hazy. They’re behind a curtain that I can’t sweep aside. I can only press my face to it, making out an incomplete picture through the weave of fabric that clings to my third eye.
“And you saw all this when you took a piss on the floor?”
I snort a laugh as I froth shampoo in my hair. “Yeah, I guess.”
“What else?”
“Cassian.”
“Cassian?”
“Cassian.”
“That’s… weird. And unfortunate.”
“Mmmhmm,” I murmur, though I’m not sure I really agree. He is part of this, whateverthisis. Our weird band of misfits? Our… quest? To save the realms? Fuck, that sounds crazy. Cassian is the last vampire on Earth I’d peg for a quest, unless that quest involves debauchery and a significant quantity of wine. “He belongs with us, that much I know. I didn’t see him as clearly or how he fits, I’m just sure he does, somehow. We have to find him.”
“Shouldn’t be difficult,” Ediye says as I rinse the shampoo from my hair. “He hardly ever leaves Rome.”
