Page 61 of The Devil In Blue
“He slaughtered them?”
“Didn’t think they were getting a just afterlife. Evildoers don’t often get what they deserve. Law says he can’t interfere with a soul’s journey inside the mist. But he can do whatever he likes to souls if they leave the Labyrinth. So…” She lowered her voice. “He coaxed the bad ones out so he could kill them before they reached their afterlife or found another body to occupy.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” I said, thinking about all the people I wanted to kill at Southminster now that the blindfold was starting to tear and I knew what they were truly doing.
“No, it doesn’t. But fury is a powerful thing and Rune didn’t stop at the bad ones. When a soul escapes into the Glyn, it changes. Bad, good, innocent, guilty. It’s all the same if they get loose. They all turn into beasts looking to feed on what they don’t have. So he started slaughtering them all. And he liked it… which was the problem. Thought he was doing good work. Thought he was the only one who could make those hard choices.”
I shuddered at the idea. Innocent souls and bad souls, all wrapped up in monstrous transformations. Images of Rune hunting them down and killing them put him in an entirely new light.
“But that was nearly a century ago,” Naeve said, trying to make light of things. “When he found you, it all changed.” She sighed sharply. “Sometimes I think Elanor doesn’t like that he changed, though.”
When my dress slid off my shoulders and pooled at my feet, I started to come back and realize what had happened. What hadtrulyhappened. I lifted my hands in front of me and glimpsed the dried blood under my nails and in the grooves of my palms.
“Gods,” Naeve gasped. She cleared the hair from my back and gawked at the scars I knew I had there. “So it’s true, then. Elanor was the one to change you when you arrived. She said what you looked like, but—”
I spun around, catching the shocked look on Naeve’s face. I said nothing. I just processed it and then took a deep breath, straightening my spine.
Truly, I didn’t care who saw my scars. My body was far from sacred. Less so now that I’d heard the truth of things from Father Eli. Being bent over a table and fucked by Lucien was one thing. Knowing he did it while I was strapped to a bed, practically dead, made the acid in my stomach boil.
Nothingabout me was sacred.
I faced away from Naeve just as the tub had filled up and I turned off the water. I knew how to bathe on my own. I often didn’t like Catlyn to help me since most of my baths followed moments of Lucien’s indulgence and I was always eager to wash parts of myself Catlyn probably didn’t want to see. In this case, I wasn’t washing Lucien away, but I was washing something much worse from my body. Shame, regret, and disgust to name a few.
Naeve stepped forward as I sank into the steaming water. I curled my knees to my chest and stared blankly at the vine-covered wall in front of me.
“I can bathe myself,” I said.
Naeve and Lura both paused like the statement surprised them. They were probably expecting to have to help me through my turmoil and nurture me, but I needed no nurturing. What I needed was a moment to soak it all in. To realize how utterly fucked I was. I just needed time to process how wrong it all was so I could at least mend my thoughts.
But who was I kidding? If I could not mend my thoughts before, I certainly couldn’t now.
It was the last day of the autumn crossing. The week of Allhalloween made the walls between worlds as thin as lace veils and I had one night and one night only to do the thing I’d wanted to do since the moment I sawhimat the masquerade.
Lucien Van Lock. The monster who’d defiled one of the most beautiful souls I’d ever met. My Briar. The way she spoke of him as if she needed him—as if she loved him—made me sick, but I couldn’t bring myself to tear a man apart if she felt so strongly for him. Not in the beginning. Now, after what I heard Father Eli say in that piss and shit-covered cell, there was no holding back. No more trying to remain good. I was rigid and bloodthirsty, through and through. I’d given my sweet Briar my fae blood. I’d given her wings to fly. Freedom to be curious. I’d promised her love and protection and I failed.
They took everything from her. They took her fromme.
I would burn the whole world for her.
I could, and that should have terrified people.
I stood inside the manor where Briar had been residing for the past couple of years, according to my findings. It was so far from the place I’d lost her initially. If only I had found her sooner. Even Elanor’s constant trips to the mortal world did not yield any results and waiting to be granted passage every year was torture.
But I would have ripped the world apart if I had been allowed to roam freely among mortals. Phariel knew it, the bastard, and yet he never once aided in my search. He was too caught up in how humans adored him to care that his brother was on the verge of tearing everything to shreds right under his feet. He hadn’t even complained about the slaughter at the Allhalloween masquerade yet. The masquerade I held right under one of his beloved cathedrals where humans sang their misplaced adoration for him on the daily.
The narcisistic cunt.
Maybe he was too afraid to complain. Murdering and bleeding dozens of his precious humans was a breach of our guidelines, but for me, it was simple revenge for him allowing humans to violate and break my sweet Briar right under his nose.
If he ever built up the nerve to face me, I would burn his heart right out of his chest and send it to Malvec to rot. And perhaps he knew it.
But none of it mattered now.
The manor was dull and smelled old and outdated. It was nothing like her. No part of that place reflected the colorful, vibrant soul that I knew was trapped inside the prison they’d built around it.
Lucien wasn’t home. Good. I wanted time to absorb the filth of it all. Time to be disgusted and furious. I needed to feel it all, to let it choke me so I could pour all of that disdain into Lucien when I killed him.
Aedon Heights was drab and cold and the more I walked, the more the place felt dead. Sadness gripped me knowing I did not find Briar sooner. Years of hating her felt like the biggest sin I had ever committed because while I was hating her, she was suffering immeasurable pain and torment.
