Page 66 of Xantera
We’re going to find both of them,I say.Your mother and the key. But first, you need to rest.
She scoffs.This was supposed to happen tonight. Itneedsto happen tonight.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she curls her fingernails into the wood hard enough to leave a mark. The pain shoots down her arms and cuts into my own heart.
We’re inside, I assure her.First step accomplished. But you can’t go anywhere right now, especially when you need to sleep this off.
I feel fine, she says, and I believe her. Her mind has calmed, settled back into her somewhat normal rhythm, but it’s still accompanied by the occasional zap to her brain. She’s in her right mind—everything is just heightened.We don’t have time to wait around.
The me from three months ago would have agreed with her regardless of her condition. But I can’t risk it now, not when she’s still in such a fragile state. She needs to stay put for now. That newfound fire pumping through her veins has made her feel invincible, but if she finds a way to break out right now, she’ll be putting herself in even more danger than she already is.
And that’s simply unacceptable.
I need to figure out how to calm her down. Relieve her stress. Take her mind off everything that just happened andrecover. A dozen wicked things I can say to her, do to her, flick through my mind, but I swallow them down for the time being. I’ll let her take the lead on that.
Let her relinquish her beautiful control whenever she wants me to take over.
You can’t accomplish anything if you get yourself killed,I say softly, knowing she deserves logic and reason even if the words taste like acid on my monstrous tongue.Rest is more important right now so that wecanfind your mother and the key.
When she pauses, I take the opportunity to tug her attention in a different direction.
Saskia, I tell her,just turn around and open your eyes. Because I’m sure your room is unlike anything you’ve ever seen. And you deserve to see what you’ve always deserved.
Lucan is right. My room is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
Pressing my back against the door, I gape at the enormous scope of it.
I have no frame of reference for whether this is ancient or futuristic. What I do know is that it’s gaudy and I shouldn’t be so enamored with it—but I am. And I wish everyone back in the city had the same chance to experience laying eyes upon it… without having to sacrifice their blood, of course.
Three pristine sofas form a semi-circle around a polished coffee table crowned with a vase of fresh roses. Standing lamps cast warm glows throughout the room, highlighting an elegant desk with drawers against the wall behind them. On an ornate bedside table, a handheld mirror exactly like the one Diggory had sits beside a familiar packet of blue birth control pills that I’ve been taking mywhole life. For a moment, I wonder why I would still need to take them now that I’m no longer with Malcolm, but then my eyes stray to the actual bed.
It has to be the most lavish thing I’ve ever laid eyes on. Four wooden posts thick as my waist jut up to the high, high ceiling that’s carved with intricate floral designs, winding outward in a circular pattern. Deep crimson curtains hang around the bed, probably to block out the morning sun from the enormous lancet windows that line the back wall.
At the sight of those windows, I bypass all the other furniture and beeline toward the nearest one to search for a latch or opening. I feel along the windowsill and edges, but the colored glass is just as solid as it is thick with no crack or indication that it even opens at all. Escaping through them isn’t an option, then.
And it wouldn’t be even if theycouldopen, Lucan growls.Considering you’re several stories high.
I could’ve made myself a rope,I mutter.
With what clothes? You haven’t even checked your closet.
I have the distinct impression he’s trying to lure me away from the window, and it works. Curiosity tugs me toward the armoire on the far back wall.
Throwing open the doors, I’m met with dresses upon dresses upon dresses.Dresses.I’ve only worn one outfit my entire life, but these… these are nothing short of decadent.
Rich silks, delicate lace, velvets, something soft and shiny I don’t have a name for. My hands sweep across them of their own accord. Sinking into the fabric’s smooth texture.
Although he stays silent, Lucan’s pity seeps into me—pity that this is the first time I’m experiencing something outside of the carefully curated Wall and my rigorous schedule and my mundane belongings, that this is the situation in which I finally get to experience the things of the world I’ve been deprived of my entire life.
They gave us the Cardinal Rules,I murmur,so that we wouldn’t realize we were missingout on all this.
And yet there is so much more they’re missing out on by stifling you,Lucan muses, his thoughts drifting up and down my body, tightening my throat.
Before I can respond, a rustle behind me makes me whip around—
—and find myself face to face with a pair of squinting, watchful eyes.
Fucking hell. Lucan’s heart pounds in tandem with mine, but I realize it’s just the servant from earlier, the one Arad dismissed.
