Page 33 of Oracle of Ruin

“And you don’t even have a concept of time these days. Off your ass and let’s go,” my second snips back in response. Her withering glare almost has me lurching to my feet, but I sit a second longer, basking in her ire with a smug grin. I finally rise when she fiddles with the holster that hangs at her hip. I have a feeling that Amír would have no qualms in helping me find religion if I test her patience any longer today.

“Maybe you should be the one going to talk to this rebellion leader. Clearly, you have no respect for authority, especially not mine.”

Her gaze hardens and she all but hisses at me. “I respect authority.”

“When it’s your own,” I say with a sardonic grin.

She tries to swat at my hand when I flick her forehead in passing, but Kya holds her hands down. Blaine snorts and is left scurrying to my side when the gunslinger flips her pistol from its holster.

I find Derrín and my mother standing in the kitchen. Her hands are shaking as she chops something, her face deathly pale.

I’m by her side in three paces, gently taking the blade from her grasp and setting it aside. “Careful, you’ll hurt yourself.”

I await the joke back that she is more than capable, that the knife should be more afraid of her, but I get nothing. She has that far-off look in her eye again, the one she had for ten years before Vera came into our lives.

Panic grips my heart and I grasp her shoulders. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

She shakes her head. “Another box came,” she croaks, her voice barely above a whisper.

Derrín is the one who steps forward with the package. His face a perfect mask of stone.

Anger lights in my chest. They weren’t going to tell me until after the meeting. They wanted me to go, and knew I wouldn’t if I saw whatever horrors this box contains.

“Show me,” I bark.

Derrín stiffens, but lifts the lid regardless. My mother falls heavily into a chair and closes her eyes.

Four perfectly white teeth rattle around the center, their roots bloody and flecked with bits of pink gum. They stay tied together by a clump of black hair, gory skin still attached. Five fingernails lay littered amongst it all.

I’m not a good person. I have never claimed to be one. I have killed and tortured countless faces that I hardly remember anymore. A good man remembers the face of the life he took. For me, it is all a blur. But I know how to make someone hurt so it is swift or prolonged. How to meticulously cut the human body so it bleeds but breathes.

The finger was short-lived pain. She will miss it the rest of her life, but a large amount of the pain would have been gone in a few moments. The fingernails, teeth, and hair?

This was a methodical torture.

The rest of the Nightwalkers enter the room to the sound of the table splitting as I ram my fist into the worn wood. It splinters into my palm and drops of my blood splatter across her severed parts.

Blaine steps forward, swearing. His face has gone red as he reaches for the sword that hangs at his hip, but Kya stops him. She whispers something through gritted teeth. Anger. They’re all angry. Verosa is one of us, and if Mavis is going to fuck with one of us, she is going to have all of us breaking down her door.

“We aren’t going tonight. We are searching. We don’t stop searching until we find her.”

I expect them to argue, for Amír to call me a shit leader and throw this in my face. She stays silent.

It is Derrín who steps forward. With one look, he has the rest of them silently filing out, my mother in tow. He closes the box and puts it in a corner with the container that holds Vera’s thumb. It is slowly beginning to rot and smell, but I don’t know what to do with it.

What do you do when your love’s body parts are being shipped to you one by one?

For now, we’ve elected to save them. Just in case…

Just in case we need something to bury.

In case it is all we have left.

Derrín sits beside me, his knees bumping against mine. “What’s it like to love someone?” he asks suddenly. “Romantically, I mean.”

I jump but he says nothing else. He only sits, silently waiting for some answer. Derrín has never liked the unknown, and I suppose this is uncharted territory for him.

“It’s like burning. Being close to them hurts and yet even when you’re touching, you want to be closer than that. You want to be the air they breathe, their everything. You want to give them everything you can just for the off-chance of seeing them smile. It’s all-consuming. And when they’re in pain…” The image of her finger cold in my hand, her teeth and nails… I clench my fist. “It’s like dying. And you would do anything,giveanything, to take that pain away. To bear it yourself.”

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