“He’ll try again? Won’t he?”
Dommik’s stare hardened. It was a look I’d become all too familiar with. A look that meant he was about to share unfortunate news. “Probably.”
This was the constant fear I thought I would live with when I relinquished myself to the Hive. It was there all along, lurking, waiting for me to think I could live happily and safely before it sunk its teeth into me. What a cruel and clever predator.
A manic chuckle that didn’t sound like my own rumbled through me. But it had to be me, because Dommik’s mouth was pressed into a thin, concerned line.
“Great! That’s just great.” My feet met the cold stone of the cellar floor and Dommik’s oversized shirt fell to the middle of my bare thighs.
I looked down at my legs and then back to him. I didn’t remember removing my skirt.
“It had blood on it,” he explained.
“Right.” I lifted a hand to my forehead and began pacing. “Of course it had blood on it because you slaughtered those men sent to attack me.” My body ached from the dancing and my head throbbed from my piercing, sarcastic tone. “Because all anyone wants from me, is myfucking gift!”
“That’s not true.” Dommik scoffed and dropped his head, shaking it slightly as he picked at a loose thread from the bed.
“Of course it is!” I threw my hands up to the ceiling but quickly lowered them when I felt cold air meet the skin just beneath my ass. “Rhazien wants me to locate Lorana’s stone so he can ascend and wake Lorana to prevent a war that Eryx wants to start because he’s a horrid, horrid creature who wants to enslave all mortals. And you?—”
The glare that leveled me from across the room was enough to stop mytirade in its tracks. I licked my lips in my pause. Dommik tipped his head, waiting.
“Go on, what about me?”
“You—” Dommik stood. “You—” I hesitated, measuring my words. He stopped, just shy of closing our gap entirely. But he stopped. His defensive stance only one pace away left just enough room for whatever words I could hurl at him next.
“I—” he cocked a brow and growled “—what?”
Lingering on my tongue, just behind my teeth, was a question I had asked him weeks prior in this very cellar. But it didn’t come out as a question. It took the form of an accusation.
I mimicked his stance, grounding myself before I said, “You don’t see me.”
He narrowed his gaze.
“When you look at me, you see someone else. Someone you won’t mention. Someone you wronged. A mistake you can’t fix.” I folded my arms over my chest. “You can’t stand the sight of me, yet you can’t seem to look away.”
“Hm.” One by one, he bent his fingers, cracking the bones in his hands in an otherwise tense silence. Dommik’s next breath lifted his whole chest. He rolled his shoulders back, as if summoning strength and courage.
“It’s true. Youdoremind me of someone. My second greatest failure.” He scoffed and gestured to the space around us. “Worse than my failure to ever live up to my father’s expectations.”
It was his turn to pace. A heaviness descended on me as I watched him rub at the back of his neck. He’d never shared anything about his human life, and I hadn’t asked, except abouther. Shame pricked at my arms, leaving goosebumps in their wake.
“My family was long-dead when I turned. The disappointing second-son outlived the wealthy father.” He slumped into the chair next to the bed. “Eryx was already in power when my makers brought me to the Northern Hive. Not having lived under the ruler before him, I had no understanding of the level of his cruelty. His predecessor was more like Rhazien. Appointed by Lorana, he was a firm ruler, but the village outside their Hive had been filled with people who lived peacefully next to them.”
I vaguely remembered the decrepit buildings near the Northern Hive. With no residents, there were no candles or torchlight. Just the shells of abandoned life illuminated by the waning moonlight. Homes, barns, wells, all crumbling beneath the earth as it reclaimed them.
“As a human, I’d been a trained soldier. As a fledgling, I was made into a weapon. Eryx wielded me and others like Vaspar to strengthen his rule, to root out dissenters, and punish them accordingly. That’s how I existed for sixty years.”
I was quiet and still as Dommik bared himself to me. His hands ran through his disheveled hair before they fell to his knees, palms up as if to beg for forgiveness.
“I’m not proud of who I was. I’ve done horrible, unforgivable things, Reyva.”
A fresh shiver quaked down my spine and settled in my gut where it churned last night’s ale. I didn’t dare submit to the nausea. I wanted to hear every word Dommik would allow himself to share.
“But then—” his breathing changed, quickening slightly “—then I met Kaia.”
Her name cracked on his lips. Like he hadn’t formed the shape of it in decades. Dommik bit his lip and stared at the floor, lost to his thoughts.
He took in a sharp inhale and continued, “She—uh—” he cleared his throat “—she was born in the Northern Hive for breeding. I was given sentinel duty and, over time, we—” he stammered and struggled to recount his memories.
