No.
Must not.
Shoving down her natural urges, The Other lifts the weapon from the line of sizzled flesh. “Though you may not have understood Líri’s pained sounds, I did.”
His eyes bulge, and he looks at The Other like she’s utterly mad, his nostrils flared, chest bucking with the violent beat of his panicked breaths.
“Unlucky for you,” she sneers, tipping her head to the side, “I’m here to show you exactly how she felt.”
The acrid smell of his urine fills the room.
She paints another sizzling trail across his chest, down his tensing abdomen. Rekk jerks and jerks—fierce, primal satisfaction shaping The Other’s features into a vision of savage glee.
“Then I’m going to use your own metal spurs to dig holes all over your body, before slashing what’s left of you with that whipping tool you cart around.”
Another groan as she digs the poker deep … deeper … then tosses the thing. It clatters across the stone floor, coming to a halt by the wall.
Rekk chokes and heaves, his wide, wild stare bouncing around the room, like he’s searching for something that can help free him of this predicament. Too bad for him, the one she loves was thorough with her preparation. Impressively so.
There is nothing here to save him.
“Vaghth,” The Other whispers, and Rekk’s gaze whips up to meet hers.
She hears his heart skip a beat. Feeds on the pulse of his surprise as a bulb of flame flutters from the open fireplace and settles in the palm of her clawed hand.
She can almost hear the thump of his thoughts, no doubt churning over the fact that she can wield three elemental songs—not just Clode and Bulder as he’d witnessed in the Undercity.
He doesn’t know about Rayne. Doesn’t know it’s actually four. Neither does the one she loves, The Other having gone out of her way to absorb Ignos’s spitting, scalding tune so it doesn’t trigger her strong but delicate host.
Until she’s ready.
She tilts her head, the motion smooth and animalistic. “Do you know how it feels for a Moonplume to scald in the sun’s harsh rays, Rekk Zharos?”
He shakes his head, whimpering, his stare flicking between the fire in her hand and her rattling leer.
“A bit like this,” she sneers, then paints his face in flames.
There’s a coldness about this place that digs all the way to your marrow.
I blame it on the fact that I’m not used to it. That I was born and raised north of the wall. Toss me amongst endless plains of snow, flurried storms, and breaths that make your lungs feel frostbitten, and I’m suddenly questioning every life decision that led me here, to this moment—walking through the sable halls of Arithia’s grand Imperial Palace dressed in the stark-silver garb of a servant.
My long, flowing skirt rustles with every step, a plain blouse buttoned to my nape where it meets a collar of fur that matches the tufted cuffs around my wrists. Not nearly enough layers to battle this bone-biting chill.
The vast size of this palace is boggling, the building cut into the side of a jagged, snow-covered mountain like spears of obsidian shot up from the ground, reaching for the numerous rounded moons nesting in the sky. All of Arithia is cast in a whimsical pearly glow that penetrates through the many windows in this haunting palace. So many windows that, with every turn up the obsidian stairway, I’m granted another fragmented view through panes crafted to look like shattered glaciers, made from thousands of shards in every tone of blue, silver, and white.
On and on I go, up the ever-winding stairs that are buffed to a high gleam, skirt shushing in my wake. Unsure why I’m going up.
Something in my gut, I guess. Not something I want to look in the eye any longer than I have to.
Get in.
Get the diary.
Get the fuck out.
Coming to an ornamental mirror on the wall, I pause, tucking strands of pale hair behind my pointed ears, checking my sharp, pretty features and blue eyes for any cracks in my imitative appearance—jarring as it is to see myself as not me.
Truly, very weird.
My silver, appearance-altering bangle hangs heavy around my wrist as I rearrange some strands back into place. A bangle with a hidden spike I used to poke both my finger and that of the female now bound, gagged, and unconscious in a cupboard in the servants’ quarters on the ground floor. With a pillow under her head—because I’m nice like that.
Too bad I didn’t think to ask the poor thing for directions before I knocked her out. This palace is a labyrinth, each doorway bracketed by stern, silver-armored guards known as Thorns, the hallways haunted by a constant stream of stone-faced maids bustling about the place, keeping its many sharp edges perfectly polished.