Page 58 of Kill the Beast
“Drinking myself into oblivion.”
Sometimes his honesty was harder to bear than an obvious lie would have been. At least she could convince herself not to worry about him, if he lied. “And why is that on your schedule?”
“So that I can pretend the alcohol is the reason I can’t think of a single happy memory. So that I can get the image of you bleeding to death out of my head. So that I can forget to hate myself, for a little while.” He retreated into his room. “Good night, Carnifex.”
Before she could think of something to say, he shut the connecting door.
Lyssa stared at the stag carved into her side of it, trying to shake the unease that clouded her heart, trying to shake the feeling that she should under no circumstances let Alderic out of her sight tonight—or ever.
But he wanted the Beast dead as much as she did. He knew Lyssa needed him in order to complete the sword and find the creature’s lair. She was fairly certain he wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize their task, no matter how morose he got.
And after?her inner voice needled her.When you’re rotting in the ground beside your brother at long last, and Alderic has another victim to mourn? One he feels responsible for? What of him then?
The fear that took hold of her was so intense it scared her, and she shoved the thought away, as deep down as she could. She hadnever allowed herself to dwell on what she would be leaving behind, and she wasn’t about to start now.
The only thing that matters is revenge.
Maybe if she kept telling herself that, it would feel as true as it used to.
CHAPTER
FIFTEEN
THE ROOM WASexactly as opulent as Lyssa had imagined it would be, when she and Eddie were children loitering outside the hotel’s gilded doors. There was an enormous feather bed with plenty of warm blankets, and a balcony that looked out over the teeming mass of Warham, gas lamps and electric lights dotting the night like fallen stars. The bathroom featured an elegant claw-footed tub and an array of scented salts that loosened Lyssa’s muscles almost as well as Ragnhild’s hot springs did, when sprinkled into the steaming water. She gulped down red wine that probably cost more than everything she had ever owned put together, and ate imported chocolates that she found in a silver box on the bedside table.
But despite being surrounded by luxury, she couldn’t relax. Being in this place felt pointless without her brother to share it with. She wished Brandy were here, rolling around on the thick rugs and leaving his dog-smell on the sheets. At least then she would’ve had someone to talk to.
She turned out the electric lights and flopped down on the bed, wrapping herself in the plush blankets. It was late, and she had to go to the Iron Lane in the morning. She really should try to sleep. But although her body was languid from the bath, her mind was racing. The equinox was so close, and they still had four items to gather, a sword to forge. Alderic still had to unearth his map from that disaster of a parlor—a parlor that might have Hound-wardens waiting inside of it, when they got back—and lead her to the Beast’s lair.
There was still so much that could go wrong.
Lyssa pushed the writhing tangle of anxieties away as best shecould, and tried to think of some personal concerns to use for the sword, instead. If her mind wouldn’t let her sleep, at least she could put it to work.
The only thing she could come up with, after an hour of racking her brain, was that photograph her father had been carrying the day he’d bumped into her at the memorial park. It was from before Lyssa’s mother got sick—before everything went to shit. A time full of happy memories. But there was no way she was going to seek her father out and ask him for it, so she would have to come up with something else.
The problem was, she didn’thaveanything else.
Lyssa hadn’t been there when they buried Eddie, hadn’t had the chance to claim anything from his body before they sealed his coffin and lowered it into the ground. She had nothing left of him, none of the talismans the other street kids kept to remind them of their beloved dead—an old dolly, a lock of hair, a button.
A button.
The memory was a kick to the chest, stealing the breath from her lungs and leaving her gasping in the dark. She had all but forgotten about it, shoved it down with everything else that hurt too much to remember. That time her brother had wasted a penny on a button the same shade of brown as their mother’s eyes and sewn it into the lining of his pocket so that no one could steal it from him. Lyssa had asked him what the point was, of buying something he couldn’t even look at, and he’d replied that he didn’t need to see it to feel that it was there.
Like Mam,he’d said.Like love.
A sob welled up inside of her, threatening to escape, so she curled on her side and clamped her lips closed, letting hot tears flow silently down her face instead. Because if she let a single howl breach the dam around her heart, Alderic might hear, and the last thing she wanted was for him to come barging into her room demanding to know why the Butcher, of all people, was crying by herself in the dark.
Except that a small, traitorous part of her wanted that morethan anything. Wanted to confide in someone so that she could stop shoving her feelings down where no one else could see them, where they festered inside her like an infected wound unable to heal.
But she had tried that before, and look what it had gotten her: a sworn enemy bent on saving the very creature she wished to destroy.
And even if Alderic was nothing like Honoria, even if he understood what Lyssa was going through in a way the Hound-warden never had, sharing that part of herself with him wouldn’t matter. Not really. He couldn’t do anything about it, couldn’t take the pain away. Which meant there was no point in telling him, no point in risking that level of trust with someone again, even if he had shared his own pain with her.
Her grief was hers and hers alone, and she would have to bear it alone until the moment she plunged her sword into the Beast’s glyph.
The sword. Focus on the sword.
Personal concerns. Photographs and buttons and love.
