I jump, as a heavy roll of parchments land in my lap.
“Look at them,” Freya insists.
I unroll the parchments, holding them up. “May the Shadow Gods preserve us…”
Shadow Vampires being burned alive…wrapped in crimson ribbons, before being held under the waters of lotus ponds…weeping as soldiers raise maces above their heads…being bent over an ornate silver altar that sears their skin as blades rest across their throats…
They’re beautiful drawings of death.
Pages…and pages…and pages…of executions and murders.
I’m numb.
If I was faced with my own killings — in battle or assassinations — how many pages would they fill?
Would I have the courage to face them?
Is this what Lanlin is doing? Cataloging his kills? Facing his guilt or relishing in his triumphs?
“Is this the darkness inside him?” Freya whispers. “Has he done this?”
“Or are these only fantasies?” I feel sick, but also, like I’m missing something.
“They’re my nightmares,” Lanlin’s hard voice says from the doorway.
I drop the parchments in shock. “May the Shadow Devils blind you; I am hanging a bell around your neck.”
“You are welcome to try and put it there.”
“Pass.”
I hear Shadow and Devil prowl into the room and settle into their bed, making soft chuffs.
“What do you mean,” Freya demands, “nightmares?”
“I am an outcast in this court because I was born with The Power,” Lanlin replies like the words are being dragged from him. “Animalism. I am the only Blood who can shift into orcontrol animals. When I was young, Nebet showed me visions of what happened to my kind throughout history. The Scarlet Temple have a sacred duty to hunt and kill…me. I am the monster, and she is the monster hunter. I draw what she made me relive repeatedly to make me feel sufficientlygratefulthat I was allowed to live because if I don’t, then it is trapped in my head. And I can’t live alone there with their screams.”
I understand that. I wish that I didn’t.
“I’m sorry.” I wrap my wings around myself. “I shouldn’t have looked at these. I just want you to know that you’re not alone with their screams anymore. If you want to take revenge on those who committed this genocide of your kind simply for being born with an incredible gift, then I’m here, however I can help.”
“You can’t mean that.” Lanlin’s voice wavers with a depth of emotion that catches me off-guard. “It is sweet of you to offer but you can’t even protect yourself here, Little Dove.”
“You’d be surprised.”
Freya crosses her arms. “I was hunted in my kingdom precisely because Icouldn’tshift. Fuck people who tell us what we should or shouldn’t be. These fanatics are the raven starving dickheads. You’re safe to be yourself with us, right?”
When Lanlin sweeps toward the nest, I suddenly realize just how much bravery that takes.
In fact, how much bravery it has taken from the moment that Lanlin met us.
Themonster,freak, andoutcast.
All those words are what I thought would make him, as Maximinus told me, easier to manipulate.
Yet my hand shakes, when I remember the images that have been shoved into Lanlin’s mind of the deaths throughout history of his own kind.
Every time that he has trusted showing himself to Freya and me, he has trusted that we won’t treat him as that samemonsterwho deserves to be burned alive.
