I scramble over Gartox’s dead body, fumbling to get to her. When I do, I carefully brush the red strands of hair from Sennet’s face, hoping against hope that there’s still a chance for her, but there isn’t. Just like Taria, her eyes are empty, fixed, and what made Sennet who she was is absent. Her shirt is in tatters, her body bruised and broken. The wounds cut and bit into her aren’t bleeding anymore, and her face is in that far-off land that only death holds the key to.
She’s gone.
We survived against the odds. We made it to the Bidding. And now, she’s died saving my life even though I was too late to save hers. She’s escaped to a place where my gratitude can’t follow, and it all hollows me out in a way that’s far too familiar and crushing. My eyes sting as I close her lids, forever hiding away her now empty hazel eyes. I crawl back and lean against the wall. I simmer in defeat as I stare at the two dead bodies, debating the merits of curling up alongside my fellow blade slave and hoping to join her in whatever awaits us after death.
Too bad for me, my body is awake and buzzing thanks to Gartox’s blood. With my good hand, I reach up and pull the daggers from my shoulder. I drop them, the noisy clangor they make when they fall against the stone floor too loud in the eerily quiet room. I wince but swallow down a hiss, no longer worried about bleeding out or doing more damage to my shoulder. The evil fucking Bruin’s life force is working inside of me, mending and healing my body despite the fact that I just helped destroy his.
I need it to heal me and yet I want to purge it from my veins at the same time. I wipe my mouth with the bottom of the guard’s tunic I’m wearing and try not to think about the blood that comes away from my face as I do. I take in Gartox’s dead body and run my gaze over the puncture marks in his throat that I know I need to hide. The likelihood that I’m going to live beyond tonight is low, but it feels right to take my secrets with me when they finally slit my throat. These bastards have gotten enough of me over the years; they won’t be getting any more.
With far less effort than it should take, I grab the push daggers from the floor, and one by one, I slam them into Gartox’s neck. The little blades erase any signs of fang marks, and I once again sit back against the wall, breathing hard and unsure of what to do next. Do I leave Sennet here? Do I clean up and hunt down Tilleo and his people like I vowed to do? Or do I just sit against this wall, in shock, angry, tired, overwhelmed, and saddened by the horror that is this heinous, fucked-up life?
Before I can decide one way or another, three tall, muscular, skeletal apparitions step calmly from a dark corner and then freeze as they take in the room. Intense black stares land on the streaks and splatters of blood, the broken furniture, the chips in the stone walls, and then finally the dead bodies before landing on me.
“Fuck,” one of them whispers with awe, and then a skeleton is crouching in front of me, his two warm hands cradling my face as he looks me over with both shock and worry.
His touch is soothing in a way that threatens to break me open and leave all of my soft spots vulnerable, but I can’t bear to pull my face from his grip or my eyes from his probing stare. I want to harden myself against the questions I see floating in the onyx abyss of his gaze, but I can’t help but wonder what it would be like not to have to. A thumb caresses my cheek, and I wait for the questions to come, the ones I’ll offer up lies to because that’s what you do when someone asks if you’re okay whenokayis impossible. But Scorpius says nothing. I don’t know how I know it’s him when they’re all magicked to look the same, but I do.
“Gartox is as dead as dead gets,” Skull declares. He’s crouched over the bodies, wiping blood on his black trousers from where he checked the Bruin for a pulse. “So is the slave,” he continues, gesturing to the other body next to him.
“Sennet,” I speak up, surprised by how even and calm my tone is.
I don’t know why I expected to sound as raw as I feel, but the fact that I don’t makes me uneasy, which is stupid. I’ve killed before. I’ve watched people being killed before. So why doesthissit differently with me? Is it because it’s the start of my end, or could it be that I’m finally embracing all of who I am, just in time to die?
“Her name was Sennet,” I offer again, and Skull nods, his dark eyes gentling as they find mine.
“Do we need to cover anything up?” Bones asks as he kicks at the broken leg of a chair that rests by his feet. “It looks cleaner than I thought it would,” he admits, looking around clinically. “It looks like Gartox attacked a couple of blade slaves and they got the better of him,” he observes, and Skull nods and stands up.
He surveys everything slowly, and I get the impression he’s making sure that he’s not missing any details or hints of anything that could disprove the scene that Bones just described.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” Scorpius inquires softly, dropping one hand from my cheek to pull my tunic away from the wound in my shoulder. The fabric makes a sticky sucking sound as he peels it back from the punctures, but the bleeding has slowed already, and I know some time soaking in moonlight can do the rest.
“No,” I answer, but Scorpius’s gaze drops down my body like he needs to check for himself before he’ll believe me.
I would be offended by that, but truth be told, I would have told himnoeven if I were on the brink of death. Scorpius reaches down and runs a finger quickly inside my leather clad thigh. My breath hitches, and when Scorpius pulls his hand up closer to his face to reveal the blood on his fingertips, the malevolence that fills his face makes the hair on my arms stand up in warning.
“It’s not mine,” I rush to tell him, unsure of why I feel the need to reassure him or console away the baleful look in his eyes.
I don’t even know why he’d care if it was. But with the way he stares at me, hard and intense, as though he’s reaching into my soul in search of the truth, there’s no denying that it matters to him, however nonsensical that may be to me.
“It’s not mine,” I whisper again, gently, soothingly, as a tic starts in his jaw and the room grows thick with tension.
“If he touched you, I’ll bring him back and then kill him far more slowly for it,” Scorpius declares, his tone a lethal purr that should do none of the things it’s doing for me right now.
I scoff at the ridiculous statement. Dead is dead. Not even the Scorpions in all their glory hold dominion over that. My eyes flit back and forth between his lethal heated stare, trying to interpret what I’m seeing. I know I’m misreading possession for something else, I just can’t figure out what that something else could be. There’s absolutely no way the Order of Scorpions gives a shit about what might or might not happen to me.
“Why are you here?” I ask instead, my senses once again firing off and trying to comprehend everything that’s happening.
“Because we failed you once, and we weren’t going to fail you again,” Scorpius answers quietly.
My brow furrows as I puzzle out what in the crowns that means. I look over at Bones and Skull, who are both staring at me too, and I realize something feels different about it. Before, they looked at me like I was something amusing, an intriguing problem that would be entertaining to solve. Now, there’s more in their eyes, in their countenance. A hint of promise maybe, dedication…guilt?
Realization hits me harder than Gartox ever did, and I suddenly know what I see in their faces.
They remember. They know I was there that night in Dorsin’s quarters.
I shut down so fast it makes Scorpius reel back in surprise. I douse every flicker of heat that was building in my chest. Deaden my eyes. Fortify everything inside of me and set any stray emotion on fire until it’s nothing more than ash and emptiness in my head. I don’t know what’s going on here, what they’ll do now that they know, but alarms blare loudly inside of me.
“Are you here to kill me?” I ask, a shell of what I was mere seconds ago.
