Page 48 of Xantera
Enjoy it?I think back to the smacks on the hand that my instructors used to give me whenever I talked out of turn in the schooling phase.Who would enjoy that?
You might, if it was someone else doing it. Someone who knew how to wring out the right amount of pain to enhance your pleasure.
My insides flutter, and I nearly lose my footing. I grasp the walls on either side of me, feeling a slice of pain as one of the rocks cuts through my finger. A startled breath tears out of my mouth, and the sound rebounds back to me in waves.
Shit.Lucan’s side of the connection explodes with alarm.Are you okay?
I’m fine.I can feel the slight pulse of the cut on my finger, and the wetness of blood trickling down my hand. I’ll have to sanitize that as soon as I get out of here—there’s no knowing what kind of bacteria could be on the stone that cut me.It’s just a scratch,I tell Lucan.
He doesn’t sound convinced.Okay, but no more distractions for you untilyou reach the bottom safely.
I do as he says, focusing on my balance with each step, further and further down until I finally sweep out a foot to find that the ground has flattened out. The darkness in front of me seems more spacious, too, as if the tunnel has widened slightly. I still can’t see a thing, but I hear the unmistakableplink, plink, plinkof dripping water from somewhere up ahead. It seems to pulse in time with the cut on my finger, and in the darkness, my imagination tells me it’s my ownblooddrip, drip, dripping onto the ground.
I’m sure the sentries are gone,Lucan starts.If you want to turn back ar—
Goodness, Lucan.I shuffle forward, keeping my hands out in front of myself in case I run into anything.I’m almost starting to think you don’t actually want me to do any of this. How am I supposed to sneak into the Blood Moon Palace or bring down the Wall if you keep telling me I can turn back around or try again later? This is obviously where Diggory went when he disappeared, so if we want to find out how he got into the Blood Moon Palace, I have to keep going.
Lucan stays silent on the other end, and I know I’ve hit a nerve. As my footsteps begin to swish through thin puddles of standing water, I cast around for a different subject. I need to keep the conversation going or else I’m definitely going to be imagining all sorts of hands reaching out of that water to grab at my ankles, andthatwouldn’t be good for anyone’s blood pressure.
What was that word you said earlier?I ask.Right after I almost fell?
What? Shit?
Yeah, that one.My fingers brush against a wall in front of me, and when I drag my hand along its surface, I feel the slight curvature of the tunnel—now I’m angling slightly to the left.What does it mean? Is it like that other word you taught me—asshole?
Lucan snorts.Not quite. Technically, shit refers to a bowel movement. Less technically, it meant I… cared. That I was worried something had happened to you.
My breath squeezes in my lungs.You were?
Yes.
Because you need me to get inside,I say.
He’s silent again—as if his thoughts have clammed up. As if he himself doesn’t even know the answer to that.
I know I’m right, though. It might be a crystallizing fantasy in my head, that the male on the other end of the connection actually gives a… a shit about me. But the truth is, we’ve never even met each other face to face. If I had fallen and broken my leg—or worse, cracked my skull open—it would be a grievance to him only because his connection to the inside would have been lost with me.
Saskia, that’s not—
How does the necklace work?I interrupt, not wanting to hear him flounder around for an excuse to soften that blow. I’m using him too, after all. Because I have a feeling I’m going to need him to get to my mom.If you don’t have a matching necklace,I continue,then how does this one connect us?
A pebble of something cold lands on my head. I flinch and freeze. Another one lands on the tip of my nose, and I exhale when I feel a bead of liquid roll off. It’s just the dripping water I heard from earlier.
Still, I resume more slowly, trying to blink away the wavering shapes and shadows that have begun to cultivate in front of my eyes—just my imagination making up images in the absence of anything real to see, I’m sure.
Lucan seems to sense I need his voice to ground myself. He answers my question with the edge of a growl lacing his words.
The blood of my kind is unique, to say the least. When we’re in our monstrous forms, it becomes a transmitter of sorts, a conductor of the electrical impulses of our thoughts. We can all communicate like this when we shift.
There’s thatweagain, a reference to the mysterious others who are with Lucan physically. For the briefest moment, a pang ofjealousy pricks my insides before I snatch at a different thing to focus on.
Shift?You have another form?
He told me once that he could retract the claws, but I never imagined he could actually change his entire self. That he has a formotherthan his Monster one.
Yes, I do,Lucan murmurs.And you’d probably find it more appealing.
I swallow the sudden urge to ask him what he looks like when he’s not the Monster. All I can really picture are amber eyes.So when you’re in your… more appealing form, your blood doesn’t connect you to the others? Or to me?
