Page 72 of This Cruel Fate

The low buzzing of the tattoo needle disrupted the terse quiet. Irvine’s steady hand hovered over her neck for a brief moment before he brought the needle down to the exact line the sword had passed through.

Unbidden tears sprung from her eyes. Desperately—valiantly—she tried, and failed, to stop them from pouring out. The needle dug and gouged at the barely healed skin, skin that was still reforming over muscle and cartilage. She couldn’t even clench her jaw, the pain ricocheted up and down her body, singeing what nerves had grown back. And it would not end.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Xolia cracked open a sore eye, feeling like shit but more or less like herself. Her entire body ached, and chills assaulted her insides. Adonis and Bridget sat next to her, both of their faces were scrunched in concern. Adonis had a comforting hand over her own, his thumb caressing her knuckles.

“What time is it?” she managed to eke out with strained vocal cords. She opened her other eye.

Bridget leaned over, picking up a glass full of water. “Drink this.”

“It’s almost midnight,” Adonis said.

Xolia struggled to comprehend. More than twelve hours had passed. She pulled her hand from Adonis’s and grabbed the water. As much as she wanted to chug the entire glass, her throat was too dry and drinking hurt. Much of the water spilled around her mouth when a cough assaulted her. Bridget was quick to take the glass back. “I’ll go get some more, take your time, Xolia.” She slipped out of the room.

Adonis brushed hair out of her face. Xolia closed her eyes. He was so warm against her pallid skin. When she opened her eyes, she noticed Adonis wasn’t looking at her face, but right below. My neck. Gingerly, she brought a hand to her neck. The skin was raised and puckered.

A sob escaped Xolia. “What did they do to me?” Would she ever sound like herself again? She couldn’t stop rubbing her fingers around the raised skin. It didn’t feel right. This wasn’t right. It wasn’t part of the plan.

She raked her nails along the length of the scarring. Her neck burned.

“Xolia, stop.” Adonis grabbed both of her hands and pressed them against her chest. “Please stop.”

Xolia wept.

She wept harder than she had after the war. She wept the tears she had withheld when she got the news about Silas. She wept until the tears dried away and all she could do was shudder against Adonis. He held her, and that made it worse. They were together because they were strong, and they helped each other be stronger. Now she was changed. Variants didn’t scar. This was entirely human. She was both below and beyond her fellow variants.

A knock on the door silenced Xolia. She pressed her lips together and hid her head in her hands, determined not to let anyone else see her like this. Bridget entered the room, a full cup of water in her hands. “I brought more water. Irvine wants to talk to her soon.”

“Thank you,” said Adonis.

“Of course,” Bridget said. There was a small shuffling sound as she moved to put the water down. “Are you okay?”

Xolia whipped her head up. “I’m fine.” She couldn’t let Bridget know how much it was affecting her. “I want to see it.”

“There isn’t a mirror in here,” Adonis said.

“Then take me to one.”

Adonis helped her up. She leaned on him, tingles shooting up and down her extremities. Bridget swiftly moved to her other side, and the two of them offered their support as they left the safety of the office.

The fires of the torches burned low, leaving the hallway almost entirely in shadow. Once they reached the antechamber, Xolia broke away from Bridget and Adonis to go up to Caius. That sense of kinship was back. She studied him again. The anger in his eyes wasn’t fully directed at his opponent, Xolia suspected. Some of it was at himself, for having become the Selermine at all. That he would have to bear a scar when he’d not been born to do so. His neck was completely covered by the lift of his arm, but she knew there would have been a red, jagged mark around his neck. Her fingers ghosted around her own neck. She could feel the scarring, where her skin had been rejoined and tattooed over, but the area itself had no feeling. There was a sense of pressure, but that was it. Another tear leaked out from the corner of her eye.

She wanted to fall into the painting. If she could only ask him what made it bearable, how he overcame the garish display of his title, then she could survive it too. Xolia turned around, both Bridget and Adonis were waiting a respectable distance away. Slowly, she walked back to them. They started to lead her toward the main chamber and cold sweat broke out along Xolia’s forehead and spine.

“No. I can’t go back in there.”

“Of course,” Adonis said.

“Let’s go to the bathroom. They have mirrors there,” Bridget suggested. They went through a door on the right of the antechamber and into a restroom. Unlike the rest of the ancient church, this room had been updated to modern standards. Amber electric lights lit up the dark-green room. For the first time in over twelve hours, Xolia looked at herself in the mirror.

Her hair was matted and tangled and crusty with what she knew was her blood. Her skin was wan, and bags rested beneath dull eyes. Xolia bit her cracked bottom lip before letting herself look at it.

The scar wasn’t as jagged as she thought it would be from touching it. There was a thick band of scarring, though it was a much deeper red than any of the human scars she’d seen due to the tattoo ink, and it was relatively uniform. It was only upon closer inspection that she could see breaks in the uniformity, where the skin pulled itself together to reseal her head to her shoulders. Those, too, were made redder by the priest’s careful tattooing.

The temptation to touch it was too strong. No matter how many times she ran her fingers across it, she needed to do so again. Again. Again. Each time she touched it, it hurt less. It was just numb. Numb and red. Numb and forever. Sel, this is never going to go away.

“It’s proof of how strong you are, Xo,” Adonis said. Xolia looked at him through the mirror. He didn’t seem disgusted or repulsed by it.

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