“I don’t expect you to feel anything,” I say. “You are what you are.”
“Yes. A monster. Isn’t that right?”
I shrug.You said it.
A moment of pause takes hold. Only the faint flickering light of the torches against the walls creates any noise, andthe occasional thumping of the obsessed moth against the large window to my left.
“Have you ever been defiled, chronicler?” I ask. “Do you know what it feels like—the helplessness, the disempowerment?”
Something like anger dashes across her eyes. “I’ve been defiled my whole life, Lady Lock.”
“Your whole life? Or ever since you were turned?”
“There is no difference.” She taps her quill again then sits up excitedly, surprising me. “Now then, that drink you were talking about. I have afineidea to sate your thirst.”
A devious smile curls the corner of Madame Kleora’s mouth. She takes a final pull from her goblet and licks a ruby-red droplet from her lavender lips.
I notice her abrupt subject change but say nothing as her eyes close. The orbs dance behind her lids for a moment, and I know she’s communicating with someone through their mind, because I’ve seen it before. I’vefeltit before—that invasive, thrilling pull.
A few minutes later, footsteps sound on stairs behind her. They grow louder as boots clomp on the winding staircase that brought me here. A lock clanks free and the door slowly swings open.
“Bregsitch, my dear,” Kleora says innocently, batting her eyes and looking over her shoulder. “Have you brought what I asked for?”
“Yes, mistress.” The grating voice recedes as a large man I recognize steps into the room—my tormentor over the past months of captivity. He’s muscular and pulling something behind him.
It’s when Kleora’s thrall Bregsitch steps aside from the door that my stomach tumbles and the first sign of fear and shock show on my face.
A chained man steps through the doorway, head hung low. He’s taller now, with his blond hair grown longer and more scraggly in the years since I’ve seen him. He sports a thin beard, where in the past he hadn’t been able to.
Taclo.
The name is a whisper in my head. One of Dimmon Plank’s ilk. One of the boys who watched as I killed Jeffrith. The last time I saw him, I was but a child and he was putting a hood over my head so I couldn’t see where his boss was taking me.
Kleora claps her hands once as Taclo steps in and stands beside her. “Oh, what a reunion this is! Don’t you agree, Lady Lock?”
I blink to hide my surprise. “I don’t know this man.”
Taclo looks up, a vague, distant expression in his eyes. His pupils are dilated, like he’s been drugged with bloodmist or redcloud before being dragged up here. “S-Sephania?” he croaks, his lips parting in shock. “Is it really y-you? What . . . what am I doing here? Where am I?”
Kleora’s eyes dance from me to him, mischief twinkling in her gaze. There’s unbridled joy at seeing me squirm. I haven’t yet seen her this animated.
“Really, girl, don’t be that way,” she coos, tsking disapprovingly. She lays a spindly hand on Taclo’s shoulder, lightly tapping. “Are you not pleased I’ve brought you a friend?”
“I have no friends, bloodsucker. Were you not listening to anything I’ve just told you?” My words come out angry, emotion biting through the haze.
“Right, right. Everyone you’ve ever known has betrayed you.” She rolls her eyes exaggeratedly. “If you had the choice, would you save this sorry soul?”
I think for a moment. The stone-walled fury that always seeps just below the surface takes over. I purse my lips. “I haveno choice here, Madame, as you’ve made abundantly clear. Why discuss hypotheticals?”
She lifts a hand and wags a finger at me. “Oh, that’squitegood, girl.”
Her phrasing makes me flex instinctively. She doesn’t know it, but it’s a sentence I’ve heard and cherished many times in my life.
Kleora’s smile widens. A crazed expression fills her eyes. “I have a better idea.”
With a single nod to her man-servant Bregsitch, the lumbering thrall messes with something behind Taclo, bending, rummaging, and then reaching for the ceiling.
A moment later, he walks to the wall next to the doorway and presses a lever.
