Page 37 of The Surrender

I haven’t tried since before that night.

“You broke the darkness of ash and flame. Now, break the darkness of your own name.” He lowers his head, and all of me stills as Shadow, not Kyan but Shadow, claims my mouth in a kiss of deep hunger, of thirst, of need. He doesn’t explore with his tongue like Kyan. He doesn’t woo me. No, this kiss is starved and monstrous and filled with everything dark and delicious. He kisses me like I am his air. The very breath in his lungs.

My spine nearly buckles from the aching power of that kiss.

“I’ll show you the dark soon, my little spirit moth,” he purrs against my mouth. “Show them your light!” he finishes in a whisper so ferocious and a storm so violent, he doesn’t need to lift one finger.

I turn. And rush for the bed with Sylie still bound to my chest.

27

You love the ink. Now, love your scars.

QUINTESSA

“Does anyone have a knife?” I dart my eyes around the room.

It’s the first time I haven’t kept razor blades sewn into any of my clothes. My ink itself seems to tremble when the father hands me a small paring knife—concern etched in his eyes. I don’t know if people in the Waste have binders since this is a cursed world. Magic doesn’t work the same.

Fear clots my throat as I move toward the bed. The cutting is the simple part. I jerk a little from the pain when I slice a fine line upon one of my old scars, opening the old wound. Not something I normally do, but I hope my vym will awaken through the familiarity.

My scars are my demons. The ink upon them are my angels.

The mother unleashes a deep long groan as Zephella gets between her legs and urges her to breathe out a few times. I wince from the sight of the feet crowning from her swollen and stretched slit. The scent of sweat, iron, and salt beneath the fragrances of...my stomach clenches because no familiar sage burns. Nor does lavender oil perfume the sheets.

Instead, dried bundles of weeping roses linger in vases and dangle on short threads from the ceiling.

“Gently now, not a big push. Little one,” caws Zephella.

Up close, the mother is younger than I assumed. The older man standing next to the bed cups the back of her neck, supporting her as she follows Zephella’s instructions. I close my eyes and call to my vym. Panic shudders down my spine when I don’t sense its presence. My ink doesn’t shift or swirl to signal its approach from my blood essence into my veins.

“Good, Nyrielle,” I learn the mother’s name. “Don’t move. The buttocks are out.”

I remember the last time I was close to this. How Sarai was suffering from the pre-term miscarriage, how my vym helped deliver the stillborn and healed my friend. I understand the great risk of this birth. If the baby so much as draws a breath in the birth canal...

Grateful baby Sylie is still asleep in the sling, I cut open a scar on my other palm, waiting. No tingles erupt on the tips of my fingers. No static prickling the hairs to life. The man with gray eyes and dark plait studies me with head tilted much like an owl. Similar to how Kyan’s studied me in the past. Except, he deepens his eyes in suspicion, in apprehension.

“Elder, fetch me another towel?” Zephella calls to him.

He offers a firm nod, kisses Nyrielle on the brow, and departs without a word. It’s not lost on me how the mother winces if only through the slightest narrowing of her eyes.

A few more breaths. A few more grips of the father’s hand.

More memories strike my brain and launch hot embers into my throat. My mouth is too dry. I can’t swallow.

“His body hangs,” announces Zephella the moment I slash my arm, and I still. “Nyrielle, you must not move an eyelash,” warns the midwife.

The legs and feet dangle. Unmoving. My heartstrings unravel. Painful tears splinter through my eyes. Blood oozes down my arm, drips from my palm to stain the bed sheets. I bring the paring knife to the curve of my shoulder when Kyan seizes it, wrenching it from me. When I look up, I gasp to find his pupils dilated. Those eyes bruise me. The great force of his inner predator is on full display while gusts of wind—coming from nowhere—tangle with his feathers and blow his dark hair so wildly, they remind me of black, writhing shadows.

“You have shed enough blood,” he dictates in an unholy fusion of his own and Shadow’s voice.

“I have his body,” Zephella says quietly. Out of the corner of my eye, the Elder stands next to the midwife, so I must have missed his entrance when Kyan confronted me. The towel he brought is now wrapped around the baby’s body.

“Bone and blood and flesh and heart. The dark and demons love your scars. Blood and blade became your bane. Ink and light and beauty from the pain.”

“Now, push as strong and hard as you can, Nyrielle!”

Zephella’s voice and the mother’s groaning wails fade in the wake of Kyan and Shadow brutalizing me with those eyes—as dark as craters hewn deep enough to touch the underworld.

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