Page 76 of Reap the Night
The beast inside me claws at the cage I’ve put him in, screaming thatweare her home.
I shut it down, because the only home we can give her is a grave.
Chapter 28
ORINA
It was easy to lose sense of time when in the safe room. There were no windows to allow me to track when the day turned to night, and even though there was a clock on the wall, for all I knew, five could be five in the morning or at night.
Hemlock kept me sane, dragging in a small table, a pack of cards, and a chess board. We played. We talked, and sometimes I even laughed.
But the moments of levity were few and far between, interspersed with Ezekiel’s waking moments in which his distress tore at my soul.
He screamed. He cursed. He cried.
Oh, how he cried.
Tears not for himself but for Arabella.
He was a man riddled with guilt, and it was obvious that Loviator had soon discovered that the best way to torture him was to hurt the woman he loved.
I found myself distracted after a while, my thoughts straying from the game to the vampire king who moaned in his sleep.
“Orina, it’s your move,” Hemlock said.
I exhaled and turned my attention back to the board. “He was with her for a century?”
It was Hemlock’s turn to sigh. He sat back and pressed his hands to his thighs. “Yes.”
I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to seeing him in such casual wear. Black joggers and a black tee and sneakers. He looked positively modern except for his eyes. There was age and wisdom in those eyes, the wisdom of an ancient, and sometimes it hurt to look into them.
“How long was Arabella with him there?” How long wasIdown there with him was what went through my mind. Me…I was her. Tortured and maimed, except my pain was forgotten. Those memories gone.
“I don’t know,” Hemlock said. “But I do know that there is no aging, no passing on from Loviator’s realm unless she allows it.”
Which begged the question of why the bitch had let Arabella die.
I left my seat and crossed to the bars, stopping close enough to watch Ezekiel sleep but not close enough for him to reach me if he woke. I’d fallen foul of that twice already. The only way to offer him physical comfort was when I slept, when he pulled me into his nightmare as a watcher and where, sometimes, I was able to touch his hand, hold it, hold him while he trembled and wept.
And Arabella? In those moments, she was gone, or maybe she wasn’t…Maybe Iwasher. It was hard to tell. But the last two encounters I’d felt as if we were getting closer to something. A moment: pivotal, important. But consciousness had pulled me away from him and out of the dreaming before he could share it with me.
“Orina.” Hemlock beckoned from the table. “It’s your move.”
I wandered over and put him in check.
He arched a brow. “You’re good at this.”
“I’ve had practice. Ezekiel’s door knocker plays a mean game.”
He tensed and looked up at me. “The door knocker?”
“Leo.” I smiled. “I named him. I spent a ton of time outside Ezekiel’s quarters when he was being evasive, and we kinda became friends.” And why was he staring at me with an odd expression? “What?”
“Orina. The knocker is not sentient enough to hold a conversation or play chess.”
“What? Then…how?”
His gaze flicked to the cell, to Ezekiel. My pulse hiccuped.
