It washed through me in a rush. Swept away from one blink to the next, as if it had never escaped from his legendary control.
But it left me ravaged and scraped raw in seconds.
Bleeding alone in the dark from a thousand tiny wounds.
Chest collapsing, I curled around a breath that wouldn’t come. Collarbones jutting as my ribs hollowed out and I tried to weather the agony of his loathing.
And then a soft knock pattered on the other side of the door. “Plates are ready,” Alicia murmured.
Lingering, the captain watched me down the length of his nose for the space of three breaths, before he snorted. Shaking his head, he pushed off the door frame, turned, and strode away, tossing a careless, “Come,” over his shoulder.
I stepped clear of the door without a word. Watching the muscles of his back bunching and flexing as he moved.
Alicia breezed past me carrying two heaping plates piled high with food and made no mention of my blotchy, reddened cheeks. My puffy eyes. “Let’s get you fed, priestess,” she murmured, and, setting her bounty down atop the captain’s desk, she added, “Let me know if you want seconds. But you might have to shout.” She grinned at the captain. “I’m off to do my punishment, sir.”
“Good night, Alicia,” he drawled without bothering to look.
Sparkling green eyes found mine without an instant of hesitation.
And then she tripped.
Artfully.
Without blinking.
Kicking something hard beneath a stack of dirty laundry. Something that was stuffed deeper under the desk as she stumbled past. “Clumsy,” she murmured, and shot me a glance that positively dripping in meaning I hadn’t quite grasped until the moment she clubbed me in the temple with it.
…I’ve had something delivered to the captain’s rooms…
My eyes went wide as they were snared by the past. Unseeing, blind to everything except the horrors of that doomed demonstration.
Sasha.
Her lips crinkled around a sad smile, she’d given me no time to understand before her veins lit from within.
…it isn’t the answer for the rest…
The deafening clap of her trap snapping shut popped against my eardrums. Blue flames and blazing gold, I could all but feel that agony all over again. As if I were the one burning.
…I think you’ll know what to do with it…
A tiny puff of air escaped my lips. A gasp hidden inside a breath that hung on an icy cloud before my face. Frost that tasted of the Void and so much pain. Where Sasha had gone, and I couldn’t follow.
I understood.
At last.
Sasha’s last act.
A gift.
Licking lips gone dry, I met Alicia’s vibrant gaze and let my chin dip in a single, tight nod.
Relief flicked across Alicia’s face, and with a false airiness, she turned back to the captain and said, “Beau will be in to tidy while you’re at the funeral, sir?”
The captain nodded, making a sound at the back of his throat as he inspected the plates piled high with food.
“Tomorrow, then,” Alicia said, breezing past me with a weighted glance. “All of this will be sorted out by tomorrow.”
